Wolcott Memories – Being a bad boy

The most recent posting on the wolcotthistory.org website, written by my friend Florence Goodman, was part of a continuing series about Wolcott residents who served in WWI. One of the featured soldiers this month was Albert James Homewood. Two things about this article caught my eye – one that his mother’s maiden name was Frances Ella Alcott, thus meaning that he was a descendant of James Alcox/Alcott who was one of the earliest settlers to the area and thus was a relative of mine as I am also descended from the same individual. The other is that information from the article was obtained from Elaine [Homewood] Martinelli whom I knew growing up as she was only a few years younger than I was. I contacted Elaine via Facebook and we shared a few things. But that got me thinking about an incident of my childhood that I want to relate in detail here.

I was a “good kid” growing up and seldom got into trouble. I was always a top student academically and generally lived up to the expectations of the adults in my life. But there were two occasions where this was not true and one of them that I will relate here.

As I have posted earlier (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-growth-of-wolcott-neighborhood-1935.html and http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-growth-of-my-wolcott-neighborhood.html), I attended Alcott School (named after one of my relatives as well as one of Elaine’s relatives as above). There were about 20 in first grade – the only students of that grade in the entire northern half of the town. As mentioned in the second article, one of my classmates was Don Therkildsen who lived on Center Street. Like me, he was a somewhat gangly blond boy and we got along well together. He and I are the focus of this story.

For a reason that I don’t recall, and for one of the few times in my childhood years that I did not sleep in my own bed (except when camping), I stayed overnight with Don at his house. I believe it was a Friday night until Saturday afternoon. The Therkildsen’s had a large family like ours, and Don and his younger brother shared a bedroom at the top of the stairs. There was no bed frame, just a double bed mattress on the floor, but they made room for me and we shared it for Friday night. In the morning, his mother made a good breakfast for the family. The Therkildsen family were from Denmark – I believe that Don’s grandparents were immigrants, and Don’s father had a job working for the Homewood family on their chicken farm which was right behind the Therkildsen house. The Homewoods lived across the street down just a short ways and on a rise so that their basement/garage level was accessible from the street.

After going out back to the chicken house – a large structure where the chickens ran free in the center part of the building and the nests were along the side – we then went across the street to the Homewood’s basement which is where they processed the eggs. For those unfamiliar with egg processing, the eggs are cleaned, then inspected, graded for size, and put into cartons. Part of the inspection process is what is called “candling” where the eggs are placed in front of a strong light which can reveal the contents as the shells are translucent. Any cracks or blood spots inside the shell are easily seen and that egg is then rejected as unsuitable for sale. Don and I helped in the processing of that morning’s eggs for a while, then, on his instruction, we each took a few of the rejects and left.

The northern side of Center Street toward the town center and west of the Homewood house was a steep embankment with no other dwellings. Up past the Therkildsen house there were also no dwellings on the south side of the street. At the top of the embankment was a rocky outcrop where you could look down to the street perhaps 20-30 feet below. It was then that Don revealed to me why he had us bring some of the reject eggs with us. I thought that we were going to throw them at trees or rocks in the woods, but he had an idea of lobbing them down toward any passing vehicles. As I said earlier, I’m generally a “good kid”, and this is not something that would have occurred to me. But for once my “bad boy” streak kicked in and I decided to go along with the idea.

Getting the timing right to lob an egg over the intervening trees below us on the embankment and having them hit the street in time to intersect an oncoming vehicle is not the easiest thing, so the first few never hit the street until the vehicle had safely passed. But we quickly got better and scored a few hits. It was all fun until one of the cars stopped, the driver got out, and started up the steep hill towards us. We immediately took off running, going back into the woods beyond the embankment and eventually circling around to re-emerge farther down the street near the Therkildsen and Homewood houses and back to Don’s house.

We did not get caught, but I immediately vowed to myself to never get involved in that kind of activity again – and I never did. For Don’s part, he eventually became a policeman for the Town of Wolcott, rising to be their highest ranking official – and no doubt with an awareness of his own background, learning how to deal with “bad boys” like we were on that particular day.

It’s now been 60 years or so since that incident. But the lessons that I learned from being the “bad boy” for once in my life have stuck with me that entire time. And they have also made me much more understanding of how to deal with both my own children and now my grandchildren as they go through different phases of their life.

Thanks to Flo for her stories about Wolcott History and to my newly discovered cousin Elaine for triggering my memory about that long-ago day in my growing up years.

PS – for those who are intrigued about my second “bad boy” incident, I’ll just briefly mention that once my cousin Dave and I were playing with matches in a vacant field at the corner of Seery and Long Swamp Roads and I accidentally set the field on fire and it got too big to stamp out. The fire department had to be called and I was named as the culprit (for which I was appropriately disciplined). Part of my personal learning was that as soon as I was old enough I joined the local State Forest Fire crew that was run by my uncle and thus spent several years trekking into the woods with an Indian Pump and equipment to put out small forest fires that were too far into the woods for the fire department to reach with their hoses. Everything can be a learning experience!

Genealogy Story – Spouses of my Mother’s Siblings

I have done much genealogical research into both of my parents. Their ancestors, both on the Russell side and the Pierpont side, extend back into early New England as they came to America as part of the Great Migration in the 1630’s. I have also written about my father’s sister and her marriage to Robert Hill (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/06/genealogy-story-my-hill-relatives.html). The Hill family also has the same sort of deep American roots. But I’ve never done much research into the spouses of my mother’s four siblings and their ancestry. So this will fill in that gap in my research.

My mother had four siblings – Clarence (Zeke) who married Barbara (Babs) Bishop, Alice (Alie) who married Ewell (Joe) Tucker, Richard (Dick) who married Gertrude (Trudy) Clark, and Violet (Vi) who married Anthony (Tony) Semeraro. Here is the story of each of these spouses.

Aunt Babs

My Aunt Babs maiden name was Barbara Leete Bishop. I have touched briefly on the Leete connection before as her great*8 grandfather was William Leete who was one of the early governors of Connecticut (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/04/governors-of-connecticut.html). But the Bishop family has also been in New England since the 1600s. Her great*7 grandfather, John Bishop, was born in England in 1625, but he arrived on a ship in the New Haven Colony as a young lad of 14 in 1639 – just one year after the founding of that colony. So her American roots are as deep as my Uncle Zeke’s.

Uncle Joe

My Aunt Alie did not marry until a bit later in life, marrying Uncle Joe in Arizona when she was in her late 30’s. But Uncle Joe was not a native of Arizona either, having been born in Laurel, Mississippi. His family had been in Mississippi for several generations, in South Carolina before that, and in Virginia since the 1600s. So while not the same type of New England English roots, the Tucker family has been in this country just as long and originated from England as well.

Aunt Trudy

The Clark family has the same sort of deep American roots as the Bishop family. My Aunt Trudy’s great*8 grandfather, George Clark, was born in England in 1604, but he came to Boston as part of the Great Migration in 1637. But Boston was only a stop on his journey as his son Thomas was born in Milford, CT the following year. The family resided in Milford for several generations, then moved inland to Orange, CT for several more generations, before settling in Prospect in the mid-1800s. Clark Hill Road in Prospect, named for them, has been the home of the Clark family ever since. My Aunt Trudy is the only one still living among those of my parent’s generation. She is now 92 and living with my cousin Cindy and her husband on the family farm on Clark Hill Road.

Uncle Tony

My Uncle Tony is the only decidedly non-English individual among my aunts and uncles. His father, Pasquale Semeraro, was born in Sortino, Sicily in 1887 and his mother Lucia was also from Sortino. They emigrated to the US in 1910 and married here a year later. Although the Pierponts are pretty accepting, there was never much mixing with the Semeraros like there was with the other families above. I knew the siblings of my other aunts and uncles, but not the Semeraro family. Pasquale died before I was born, but Lucia did not pass away until 1971. She continued to speak Italian and not English. And the Semeraro family were staunch Catholics which the Pierpont family were not, putting another barrier between them. I wish that I could have known more about that branch of the family when I was growing up. 

Remembering 9/11 – Stranded in Europe

As I write this it is the early morning hours of 9/11/2017. Hurricane Irma is lashing Florida. I have been praying for all those who are being affected by this “natural disaster,” including my son and family, a cousin who shares the same name as my son but who is a law enforcement officer who will see many additional hours of duty before the week is over, and many other friends and relatives who have chosen to make Florida their home. But until the storm is over later today there is not much else I can do except pray.

But as I sit here, my mind is drawn back to another 9/11 which happened 16 years ago. On that date, the disaster was not natural, but was a man-made one. But the activities of that week are etched on my mind because of what occurred. I’d like to recount the rather unusual events of the week.

A few weeks before, the company I worked for had been involved in negotiations for a potential acquisition of a portion of a large chemical company which was located in Belgium. As I had been involved a few years earlier in coordinating all the Y2K compliance in our joint ventures and subsidiaries around the world, I was tapped to be the IT representative on the acquisition evaluation team. The assignment for the team was to visit the target company in Belgium and perform an in-depth evaluation of all aspects of its operations, finances, IT, etc. and advise management so that a final decision could be made on whether to proceed with the acquisition. Most of the acquisition team members, about 10 in total, were from our US headquarters, but one was a manager at our existing facility in Utrecht, Netherlands. The plan was for everyone to travel to Brussels on Monday where we would meet each other and make the detailed plans for the rest of the week, spend Tuesday-Thursday at the target company, and return home on Friday. As an experienced traveler, I packed lightly for those days, taking just one piece of carry-on luggage.

Monday went as planned. After dinner we met in a conference room at the hotel in downtown Brussels, got to know each other, and prepared for the following day. Because the employees of the target company were not to know that they were being considered for acquisition, we were scheduled to be taken by shuttle bus around 9:30 the next morning where we would be escorted to an unused part of their corporate campus. We would spend the work day there with lunch being brought in, then picked up at the end of the day (around 6:30 after the plant employees had left) and shuttled back to our hotel. I went to bed early (by my bodily clock) to finish the adjustment to the new time zone (I have learned over the years how to adapt to world travel and avoid the typical jet lag that many people experience).

Tuesday morning went as planned. I had a leisurely breakfast, then joined the others to take the shuttle bus to the plant outside the city. Our work space for the next three days was a vacant third floor of a building where the only contents were a large work table with chairs and two long rows of file cabinets with all the materials they had collected for us to examine. We had our own company laptops, but there was no Internet connectivity or phone service available to us. However, the one team member from Utrecht had a cell phone that worked in Europe. Also, as we were to soon find out, he had brought his wife with him on the trip. She was going shopping that morning and she was back at their room in the hotel in the afternoon. We began carrying on our individual assignments and going through the material in all the file cabinets. Lunch was brought in (trays of sandwiches and fruit) and we continued into the afternoon.

Around 3:00 in the afternoon, the team member from Utrecht received a phone call from his wife at the hotel. She had been watching TV and the initial reports from the first plane strike in NYC were coming in (Brussels is six hours ahead of New York, so this would have been 9:00 am on the east coast of the US). She was relaying the information that she was watching to her husband, who then would summarize it to the rest of the team. All acquisition work stopped as we sat silently, listening as he passed on the information to us for the next several minutes. Then the second plane strike happened and we were all stunned. The initial reporting from that day was rather jumbled as it was not yet apparent what was happening. There were many rumors mixed in with the facts.

When it became obvious that none of us in the room were in a state of mind to continue working for the day, we contacted our hosts to ask them to have the shuttle bus return for us as soon as possible. While we were waiting, they were kind enough to escort us to the company fitness center a few buildings away where we could watch some TV monitors while we were waiting (since it was mid-afternoon there would be no employees there to encounter us). We no sooner had entered the fitness center than we got a chance to observe the collapse of the first tower in NY. What a shock that was. Once the shuttle bus arrived, we returned to our hotel where we all quickly went back to our rooms to watch TV. Many of the local European stations were playing feeds from the US, CNN-International was available, but the BBC was also covering everything and had probably the best coverage from my perspective (more on that below). Because Brussels is home to the NATO headquarters, there was initial fear that they might also be a target, so that part of the city also went into lockdown mode. The team leader called each of us in our rooms and we scheduled an early morning get together for Wednesday morning to decide how to proceed with the week. I don’t think any of us got a good night’s sleep.

One of the things I knew I should do was to let my wife know that I was ok. Phone service to the US was down as not only were many transatlantic cables routed through NYC and had been destroyed, but the remaining circuits were so overloaded that you couldn’t get through. However, the ever-reliable Internet was still running. I chose one of my co-workers in the US as a trusted go-between and sent a quick email to ensure she was at work, then composed a message to my wife which I sent to my co-worker together with my wife’s phone number at work. I would use this a few times over the next several days (thanks, Pat!).

At our morning meeting on Wednesday, we all agreed that with all travel to the US suspended that there was not much we could do except to carry on with our assigned acquisition tasks for the week. So on Wednesday and Thursday that’s what we did – but spending time glued to the TV in our individual rooms all the hours we were not otherwise engaged in the acquisition. Our team leader also spent some time trying to handle our return travel arrangements. We had no idea when travel back to the US would be possible or how backed up it would be with so many people having had their travel plans interrupted. The one team member from Utrecht would be driving back home to the Netherlands. The corporate attorney felt that he was too important and could make his own plans – he tried scheduling himself to fly to the west coast (which didn’t work as ALL of US airspace was closed), then to Canada where he would rent a car and drive into the US. He was ultimately successful in this, but it wasn’t as easy as he thought it would be. He flew out on Friday morning, but ended up getting stranded in Spain waiting for a flight (even his first-class upgrade didn’t help). After a rather convoluted and lengthy travel itinerary (two full days!), he finally got to Toronto and drove back to PA, arriving around the same time the rest of us did on a direct flight back (more on that below). By this time, the rest of the team had gotten confirmed flights back the following Wednesday, but we were waitlisted for all the days until then and we had to check with the airline each morning to see if we had gotten moved up.

I had only brought enough clothing to last me until our original flight back on Friday morning. Since that was obviously not going to happen, for the only time in all my international travels I sent out my clothes to be washed by the hotel laundry service so I would have clean clothes for the next several days. Also, I had not brought a jacket since my original plans were that I would be either in the hotel or in the acquisition workspace and would have no time for any outside activities. On Friday morning, I walked from the hotel down into the town center, located a store (kind of like the European equivalent of an Army-Navy store) that had reasonably priced clothing, and bought a light jacket (which I charged to my expense account).

Thus outfitted, I spent Friday doing an extensive walking tour of Brussels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels). I went into a store that sold Belgian chocolate (I think I gained weight just with the smells!), had lunch in a nice outdoor café in the central market, went to a classical music concert in the town hall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_Town_Hall), and saw the famous Manneken Pis statue (which is on a small somewhat obscure alley a few blocks from the town hall) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manneken_Pis).  

On Saturday, with our confirmed flight now moved up to Monday, three of us on the team decided to do some more extensive sightseeing. We walked to the train station, bought tickets and took the train to Bruges (about an hour away and up near the coast). (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruges). Bruges is the capital of the West Flanders region of the Flemish part of Belgium. It had been an important city for two millennia, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is also known as the “Venice of the North” with many canals, including one which encircles the main city center. The three of spent the day there in a walking tour, climbing the 366 stairs of the historic belfry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfry_of_Bruges), and generally enjoying a nice fall day. At the end of that rather nice day we took the train back to Brussels where we were able to confirm that our flight had been moved up again and we were scheduled to fly home the following day.

I need to add here that the people of Belgium were all most sympathetic towards us when they learned that we were Americans. Their hospitality and deeply felt concern are still feelings that I have warm remembrances of. Unlike the somewhat biased news and reporting that happens in the US (which is now often referred to as “fake news”), the reporting in Europe was much more factual and introspective.

Sunday morning, we all took taxies to the airport for the flight back to the US. We were all once again sobered by what we were returning to. We had a direct flight on US Air from Brussels to Philadelphia. That particular flight follows a flight path that parallels the coast of Long Island and just to the south of NYC as it is descending toward Philadelphia. The weather was very clear that day. As we were flying past NYC, if you were on the right-hand side of the plane (I had a window seat on that side), Manhattan was quite visible. Seeing the skyline without the twin towers was shocking enough. But there was also still smoke rising thousands of feet into the sky from where the towers had been. Since everyone wanted to see it, those of us on the right side would flatten against our seats so those from the left side could lean over us and take in that sobering sight. I was concerned that we would overbalance the plane with everyone crowded onto one side.

Getting back to Philadelphia, I quickly went back to my car and drove back home where I could embrace my wife. The next several days were consumed with getting back to work and catching up on the US version of what had been happening.

What did I learn? Several things, the chief ones being:

·       US news media is the most biased in the world – they seem to forever focus on small “sound bites”, concern for ratings, and almost solely things which happen in the US. World events receive scant coverage. I greatly prefer news reporting from places like the BBC.

·       People around the world will generally be nice to you if you are nice to them – and if you show appreciation for the things that they are/have. I tried to avoid crowds of tourists in Brussels, I took the regular train to Bruges, ate the local food, went to a concert in the town hall, etc. And in return I was warmly received everywhere I went.

·       Being apart from family during trials is difficult. I wanted to be able to hug my wife, to reassure her, and to be able to share with her during that week. It was very nice to finally get back home again!

It’s taken me three hours to write this blog. The sun is now coming up, the news will be able to report from Florida, and I have family responsibilities in getting our grandsons up and ready for school. Enjoy your day!

A Legacy of Diversity

Some of my efforts at work had nothing to do with IT. The company at the time had a number of “diversity groups” – the “standard” ones such as WIB (Women In Business), EDEN (Ethnically Diverse Employee Network) (for African-Americans), HOLA (Hispanic Organization of Latinos and Amigos), and others. I became aware of someone down the hall from me who had fibromyalgia and was very sensitive to light and noise and so had a closed-in office with modified lighting instead of a cubical. But since she didn’t “look” disabled she was getting discriminated against by some others who couldn’t understand why she rated an office with a door when they didn’t have one. As a result I decided to make it my goal before I retired to start another diversity group – we eventually named it ABCD (AnyBody Concerned about Disabilities).

I made an announcement about it, found some like-minded individuals, and we created the group, worked through the process of getting both recognition and funding through our corporate HR department, got an executive sponsor, etc. We were able to bring in an outside speaker on the subject and gave a presentation in the company auditorium to begin to expose others to the topic of both visible (such as blindness) and invisible (such as fibromyalgia) disabilities. We also noted that there were temporary disabilities (such as a broken arm or advanced pregnancy).

The latter were important because in the event of a fire in a multi-story corporate building the elevators are normally blocked from usage (you’re all seen the notices in hotels, etc. about not using the elevator during a fire). We created a cadre of group members who were trained on how to use the elevators during a fire (requires a special key), and ensured that each individual who needed assistance to safely exit the building had a buddy and all were accounted for so none were left behind. We also lobbied for additional handicapped parking places and created a standard procedure for individuals who needed to request one (either permanently or temporarily).

Today the ABCD employee group is one of the eight recognized diversity groups which receive recognition on the corporate website. While I’m proud to have had a part in starting it and knowing that it’s a permanent legacy that I have left behind, I’m also happy to have made a number of new friends whose life has been made better because of my efforts.

Changing Names

Introduction

When I had a hospital visit last week the nurse looked at her schedule and said, “Hello, Mr. Alan.” I quickly realized that she had mistaken my first name for my last name, so I corrected her and we had a brief conversation about how my first name and last name could be interchangeable. But this got me thinking about the subject of names and how they change over time.

While the most common error that people make with my name is misspelling “Russell” by only having a single “s” or a single “l”, the name itself has not gone through too many spelling changes since it came into being a millennium ago. The original was spelled “Roussel” or “Rozel” in Normandy, France, but by the time family members went to England in 1066 under William the Conqueror, the spelling got anglicized into its current form. (*1)

The Pierpont Name

But there is a different story with my mother’s maiden name, Pierpont, and that’s what I’d like to explore in more detail here.

The original family name was “de Pierrepont” and was from Normandy, France in the late 900s. The “de” is from a Latin preposition which means “down, from, down from, off or concerning,” and “Pierrepont” has the meaning of “stone bridge” (Pierre means stone and pont means bridge), because there was a stone bridge in front of the family castle. So the name literally meant “from the stone bridge.”

Family members still living in France (my distant cousins, including a few with whom I am friends in Facebook), continue to have this last name. But a grandson of the original de Pierrepont went to England as part of the army of William the Conqueror. And it wasn’t long after that the family dropped the “de” part of the name, simply becoming “Pierrepont”. The family manor, Holme Pierrepont, was established in the 1200s (*2).

During the next 400 years that the family was in England, the Pierrepont spelling continued to dominate (probably because they were minor royalty). However, there were a few variations, including “Pierrepoint” (adding an “i”), “Perpoint” (*3) and “Perpoynt”. The name still persists in England to this day, the most recent “famous” family member being Albert Pierrepoint who was a hangman of renown (*4).

Around 1631, John Pierrepont came to America as part of the Great Migration. Early records mention the name as “Peirpoint” or even “Pearepoint”, but he changed his name to “Pierpont” and this is the spelling of the name that he passed along to his children (*5). This is the spelling that persisted in the US, but with one exception. In the late 1700s, one of the great-grandsons of John, Hezekiah Beers Pierpont, decided to adopt the original French spelling (minus the “de”) and changed his surname to Pierrepont (*6). This name can now be found in Brooklyn, NY, both in a street name and a prominent building. There are also a number of Pierpoint families in the US, but most of these are descendants of Henry Perpoynt who settled in the Maryland/Virginia area. The relationship between Henry and the New England Pierponts has not yet been determined (*7).

How Name Changes Happen

We now live in a very automated, computer-centric age. Your name is registered at birth and thus appears in several different government computer systems. The exact spelling is registered and it cannot be easily changed. Doing so is a time-consuming process and involves one of a number of different court scenarios (marriage, adoption, etc.). Whether going to school, getting a driver’s license, getting prescriptions filled, or a host of other daily activities, you must spell your name for their computer system – changing your name, even if in the process of a female getting married, is a complicated thing.

Thus, it’s difficult for those of us living in today’s society to consider what it was like before this automation. But for much of history, even of just the last millennium which we are considering here, things were much different. We are used to a near 100% literacy rate in the US. But the earliest figures I can find for the period in question is that the literacy rate in England in 1475 was only 5% (*8). With so few people being able to read/write, most communication would have been oral and anything written would not only have been “long hand,” but would have been based on what the individual said to the person keeping the records and how they were heard.

The first “automation” would have been the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg around this same time (1455) (*9). But few people would have been able to read it. And very few of these books were actually produced – only about 180 copies which took three years to print.

By the time the Pierpont family came to America, literacy in England was about 50%, and the Pierpont family, being of minor aristocracy, were almost certainly able to read and write. But everything was still hand-written. Also, the process of changing your name would have been as simple as deciding to change it, calling yourself by the new name, and using it whenever appropriate. Of course, there were still many processes which would have been others writing down what you said, so a variety of misspellings were apt to result. Also, there would have continued to be misinterpretations based on people trying to read what had been written in cursive.

Going from cursive writing to typing in a standard font would take another couple hundred years. It was not until the latter part of the 1800s that commercial typewriters came into use (*10), and they were not standardized until the early 1900s (roughly 100 years ago). It was only then that the problem of misinterpretation could be addressed.

However, there were still many processes where typing was not viable, one of them being the process of taking the census every ten years. Here, the census taker knocked on the door, usually talking to the wife (who would be home during the day), asking her questions and recording her answers (*11). He/she was not allowed to presume that she could read/write (even though the literacy rate was up to 80% by 1880), but had to continue to deal with the misinterpretations that could come – both by the wife’s interpretation of what the census taker was asking, and by his interpretation of what her answer was.

Thus, name changes came into being for a number of reasons. Sometimes is was in order to simplify/Americanize, like John Pierrepont shorting his name to Pierpont. Sometimes it was deliberate, like Hezekiah Pierpont wanting to restore the original French Pierrepont. Sometimes it was a mistake in recording by a census taker or recorder of a baptism and the revised name “stuck.” And since there were no computer systems to worry about back then, or government procedures to be followed, there was no “red tape” involved in making the name change.

I’ve run across my fair share of name changes, both in first and last names, during my genealogical research. One of the most interesting was when I was looking for information on one of my father’s cousins. Her name was Juanita but when I eventually found her birth records it was recorded as “Wanita” – based on how the name sounded, but by someone who was totally unfamiliar with pronunciation of the name. This is just one more of the roadblocks that we deal with in genealogical research.

Footnotes:

*1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Russell gives the background on the area and manor near Dorset which bears this name. The name dates back to around the year 1200 when John Russell was a knight under Richard I. However, note that the original granting of the land (written in Latin) spelled the name “Russel” but the English translation spells it “Russell”.

*2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holme_Pierrepont gives some of the history of the area where the Pierrepont family settled in the 1200s.

*3 – The History of the Worthies of England, Volume 2, p. 215, Thomas Fuller and John Nichols, (available on Google books)

*4 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Pierrepoint. Albert (1905-1992), when he retired in 1956, was officially recognized as “the most efficient executioner in British history.” I’m not sure that I would want to have that job, but he did and was evidently very good at it.

*5 - http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak//gen/pier/piergen.htm

*6 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezekiah_Pierrepont

*7 - http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/03/connecting-ne-and-vamd-pierpont-family.html

*8 - https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/

*9 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible

*10 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter

*11 - https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/index_of_questions/

Retirement – What’s That?

In the latest post in my sister’s blog (pseudomyxomacancer.blogspot.com), she wrote “We had dreams of spending our retired years being spontaneous, getting out of town on a whim. Dreams of sitting and enjoying many more sunsets in our golden years. Now we are fairly certain that will not be our future.” She was writing that on the third anniversary of my brother-in-law being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Although that’s not what’s happened to me, I share those same feelings with her.

I “retired,” in the sense that I was no longer working for a living, in my late 50s, when changes at my employer made working no longer enjoyable and when I estimated that I would have as much income from pension and investments as I would have by working. My wife was still teaching, so we weren’t yet “free” to enjoy my less scheduled hours, but I thought that would only be a matter of a few years. But then a series of events changed all of that.

My wife taught for two more years, then decided to take a sabbatical. However, within a month, her mother began having falling incidents and we decided that she needed to devote some time to taking care of her mother. Since that was in Michigan, she essentially moved out there for the next year and a half while I “held down the fort” here in Pennsylvania. Then, when she finally came home after her mother passed away, she overnight transitioned from senior care to child care – going to New Jersey to help our son and daughter-in-law who had just had a difficult pregnancy.

Meanwhile, our daughter had gotten married. And since their finances were somewhat limited they were living with us in the space over our attached garage which we had designed several years earlier as a “mother-in-law apartment.” But only two months after helping my son and daughter-in-law, our daughter also delivered her first child, a grandson, and with both she and our son-in-law working, my wife and I jointly took on the role of child care during the day. Little did we yet imagine what that was going to turn into!

Fast forward another seven years, three more children (all of them boys!), and our child care duties have expanded to more than full-time. The last two were both preemies, so that was yet another wrinkle. Then, because our son-in-law was not willing to work to help support the family, at the beginning of this year our daughter asked him to leave the home until he was working at least 30 hours/week. He still comes by a few times a week and helps, but for the most part my wife and I have the responsibility of raising those four grandsons.

Don’t get me wrong – we love all our grandchildren. But when one’s day starts with getting them up in the morning, fixing breakfast, watching over all their activities, changing diapers (so looking forward to that ending in the near future!), overseeing homework, etc., it takes a lot of energy. And neither my wife nor I have as much energy as we did 30 years ago.

And there is no sign of it ending. The boys are ages 7, 5, 4, and 3. It’s going to be 15 years before the youngest will be off to college and by then we’ll be in our mid-80s. As my sister said, being spontaneous, acting on whims, sitting and enjoying the sunsets – I don’t envision those in our future.  

Retirement? What does that mean in this context? Certainly not the carefree life that I had envisioned. I no longer get paid for what I do, but if anything, I’m busier that I was back when I “worked for a living.” My calendar is filled with increasing numbers of doctor visits as our bodies age. And my wife and I have to coordinate our schedules since we both cannot be out at the same time. And other activities have to be planned well in advance, certainly not be spontaneous.

Yes, I do see changes coming. The end of diapers. The time when the youngest is also in school so the hours between the bus departing in the morning and meeting it at the end of the street in the afternoon will be more open. But I haven’t been able to think much beyond that. And by the time the youngest is off to college we’ll be in our mid-80s – assuming we’re still alive at that age.

Retirement? Yes, I will admit to sometimes being jealous of some of my friends who get to spend time travelling, sleeping in, doing things on the spur of the moment. But on the other hand, we are exactly where God wants us to be. We are surrounded by family who love us and whom we can love. We are able to use the skills that we’ve honed over the years to help raise another generation of young men.

Retirement? Perhaps what’s really wrong is the idealistic view that we have of it. Why should we think we can just stop working, sit back, and watch others slave away the way that we did for 40+ years? Rather, shouldn’t we be asking God, “What can I do now!” Instead of having the focus be on ourselves, maybe we need to keep the focus on God instead.

I’ve had other people of my age tell me, “I admire what you’re doing, I couldn’t do it!” And perhaps that's the point. My wife and I are still healthy enough to be able to do this. Yes, there are times when my joints ache. Yes, there I days that I look forward to having an afternoon nap (as long as it’s coordinated with my wife’s schedule since we can’t nap at the same time). But God has given us the strength to handle this, and as long as He continues to do so, then we will continue to follow His leading in our lives.

Retirement? I just have a new boss – and He will grant me a future pension with Him that’s worth far more than the monetary one that my earthly employer did.

WWI Effects

I was recently doing some research on the residents of my hometown (Wolcott CT) who served in WWI. As part of that I came across a questionnaire that had been given to all the individuals in CT who served after the completion of their service. Besides a lot of demographic data, list of the places that they were, etc, there were a couple of questions on the last page that intrigued me.

To paraphrase the questions, they asked, “What have you learned from this experience” and “How has this effected your state of mind.” Not everyone took the time to answer these particular questions, but of those who did, it offers some interesting perspective into how these individuals thought nearly 100 years ago. In particular, I’d like to look at the responses of two individuals.

The responses to the two questions of the first individual are:

“That an American fighting man was equal to anything any country could put into the field. That the first four divisions of the Regular Army could and did prove superior to other units.”

“The effect has been encouraging. Believe America has a real future and believe her head and shoulders above any country on earth."

The response from the second individual are:

“My stay in France tended to broaden my views of life and to make me realize that people can live differently than we do here.

“I think more and show my feelings less. I would be more than mildly interested if we had another war and would enlist at once.”

There are two very different responses here – which interestingly are some of the same things that we discuss regarding US exchange students experiencing after their time abroad. The first individual has come back with a very nationalistic attitude, i.e. note his use of the words “superior”, “head and shoulders above”, etc. In contract, the second individual has returned with a much broader view of the world as noted by his recognition that other people live differently and that he should ponder these things rather than just “show his feelings” immediately when confronted with new situations.

As I look at my own perspective after having been abroad to many countries and experienced how people have different approaches to things, I’m much more like the second individual in that I value what others have to offer.

So, even though these are thoughts from individuals a century ago and under very different circumstances than my own (i.e. having gone to fight in a war), we can still learn from them.