Category: My Family and Friends

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Jason Turns Forty-Eight

This week is Jason’s 48th birthday. I love remembering the day he was born. He was such a tiny baby, the doctor assumed he was going to be a girl. This was before the days of ultra-sound or amniocentesis. Back in 1973, no one knew what color to paint the nursery or knit the baby blankets until the baby was born. I was happy to have a girl. But when the doctor announced that he was a little boy, I was over the moon. I remember thinking, “another little boy in blue jeans” and laughing out loud at the thought of having two little boys to love.

That was also back in the day when mothers got to stay in the hospital for a long time after the baby was born. Jason and I hung out at St. Joseph’s Hospital for five days before we agreed to go home. In the meantime, Jim took care of Garth and together they painted the nursery blue.

More than anything, Jason has always been outgoing, cheerful, patient and kind. He makes friends quickly and still has many of his friends from high school. He’s a great dad to Devon, Tyler, Connor and Max. And to Kirby, their turtle, and Polaris, their dog.

Jason loves animals. When he was nine years old, he spent the first six weeks of summer vacation trying to grow tadpoles in a jar at home. Unfortunately, they all died (croaked?) before we left for Minnesota to pick up Garth. As soon as we got to my parents’ house, I realized that Jason was still thinking mostly about frogs. Every bait store we went into, he stood longingly over the frogs. When we went to my uncle’s cabin, Jason tried to catch frogs that lived by the dock. One morning I got up and overheard him calling all the pet stores in St. Paul to find out if they had frogs and how much they cost.

In one of those moves that mothers always regret, I agreed we could buy a frog, on the condition that he take good care of it. Jason took excellent care of it. And also of the salamander my cousin’s daughter found for him just before we left for Colorado.. 

We drove back to Denver with the frog and the salamander in an ice cream carton in the back seat. Jason took care of his frog then, and he took care of it later when the salamander ate the frog’s foot off. He called my dad to find out what kind of medicine he should put on the wound. He carefully rubbed an antibiotic on the frog’s front foot twice a day for a week until the infection was gone and the frog could again climb out of his terrarium every time the lid was left slightly ajar.

Next to his family, his friends, and his pets, Jason’s the greatest love is sports. When he was nine, he was addicted to watching All-Star Wrestling and the Roller Derby. He knew the life stories of the Road Warriors, the Fabulous Freebirds and Moon Dog Spot. Each week he could hardly wait to see if Gwen Miller would body-check Georgia Hasse over the railing and then stomp on her with her roller skates.

Jason wrestled in middle school and played baseball from the time he was seven until he was out of  high school. Being the youngest and smallest member of the team, Jason didn’t get to play a lot, but he never lost his enthusiasm for center field.

My most telling story about Jason, however, happened when he was in first grade and learning how rough the real world can he. He came home one night with a story about Dearmon, a boy in his class, who cried every morning. Finally, in exasperation, the teacher called a class meeting. Dearmon sobbed through the meeting and finally blurted out that he had no friends. He never had anyone to sit with at lunch or play with on the playground. Dearmon knew that absolutely no one in school liked him. At that point, Kiki, a most sympathetic and tactful girl, put her arm around Dearmon, looked anxiously around the room, and then told him, with much relief, he could stop crying ~ because Jason liked him.

Happy Birthday, Jason. Thank you for forty-eight wonderful years!

 

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An Olympic Adventure

It all started in late February, 1980. I was working in a four-track, year-round elementary school. One of my favorite families, a single father with three boys, didn’t return to school in January and everyone wondered where the children were. The teachers wanted me, the school social worker, to find out if everything was ok. I called their house. There was no answer. I knocked on their door. It looked as if they still lived there, but no one answered. I asked other students from the neighborhood  if they knew anything. No one seemed to know where they were. I decided not to panic. I wanted to wait and see.

At the end of February, the three boys came back to school with their father. They looked fine.

“Where have you been?” We all wanted to know.

“We were in Lake Placid, New York. We went to the Olympics.” The boys were excited. Their father was proud of what he’d done. The teachers were aghast.

“How could he take them out of school for such a long time? Doesn’t he know how important it is for them to be in school?”

I had a completely different reaction. I went home that night and couldn’t wait to talk to Garth and Jason over dinner. They were eleven and seven years old. 

“Guess what we’re going to do!” I announced. “We’re going to the Olympics.” 

I told them we needed to save our money because the 1984 Olympics would be in Los Angeles and we were going to be there. It was one of the best decisions of my life.

We saved our money. We bought tickets in advance. Jim’s sister, Kathy, and her husband graciously agreed that we could stay with them so we could go to ten days worth of Olympic events. 

In 1984, Garth was fifteen and Jason was almost eleven. We were psyched! I bought a new car, a red 1984 Subaru , to drive from Denver to L.A. and back. I mapped our route and we started out. I’d been having a lot of back pain, but there was no stopping us. Or, so I thought. 

By the time we got to Vail, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to drive all the way to L.A. I turned to Garth, who had recently gotten his learner’s permit, and told him he was going to have to drive. He didn’t hesitate. He climbed into the driver’s seat, with me in the passenger seat, and logged 1000 miles of driving in two days. I still think the best part of the Olympics for Garth was not the events. It was driving all the way California and back.

The 1984 Olympics was pure magic. We went to as many of the events as we could afford, which included watching endless field hockey games because the tickets were $5.00. We skipped the opening and closing ceremonies. Much too expensive! We watch one day of track and field. One day of diving. One day of baseball. We saw the end of the marathon. 

Mostly we soaked up the California sun and the Olympic culture. We ate our lunch in the park outside the Colosseum, surrounded by people from every country in the world. People were exchanging pins and a few were just giving them away. We said “thank you” in English to people who smiled and answered us in their language. Smiles are universal!

I drove while we were in LA, but Garth took the wheel again for the trip back. Jason slept in the back seat. We stopped at the Grand Canyon on the way home and spent our last night in Durango, CO. We talked about all we had seen and done on our two week vacation to California. Before eating our last restaurant meal, we drank a toast:

“To us!! Because we said we were going to go to the Olympics. And we did!”

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A Minnesota Fourth of July

I checked with my brother to make sure that my memories of the Fourth of July, growing up in Minnesota, were true ~ not some made-up Norman Rockwell picture in my mind. While I had some of the basic facts straight, Bob’s memory for details was razor sharp, as usual.

The Fourth of July was an all-town celebration in North St. Paul, a town of 2000 people that covered one square mile when I lived there. Early in the morning, while my parents were drinking multiple cups of coffee and smoking cigarettes, we kids washed our bikes and decorated them with crepe paper. We wove crepe paper through the spokes and tied streamers onto the handle bars. The boys put playing cards on clothespins and pinned them to their wheels. Riding up and down the block, the noise from the playing cards sounded like motorcycles. Or at least the boys thought they did. We didn’t organize an actual parade. We just rode up and down the street, until our parents were moving and something more exciting happened.

One year there was an actual parade down main street, that included the North St. Paul High School marching band, a group of men from the VFW and the American Legion, and a float made by the Silver Lake Store. Because Leo Fortier’s uncle owned the store, Leo got to ride on the back of the float. He wore a straw hat and dangled a paper fish from the end of stick. My brother and other neighborhood boys walked beside the float, along the two-block parade route that stretched from the VFW club to Sandberg’s Mortuary. Bob remembers being exhausted by the time the parade was finished.

The family picnic began at lunch time. Before Highway 36 cut the town in half, the picnic was held in a large, beautiful park next to the railroad tracks. Later, the picnic moved to Silver Lake where, if you went early in the day, you could snag a picnic table. My mother packed a lunch of potato salad, coleslaw, jello, potato chips and brownies. Men from the American Legion grilled hamburgers for sale in the parking lot. Our cooler was filled with bottles of soda “pop” for the kids and lots of beer for the adults. 

Sometimes my grandmother joined us at the picnic table. Adults visited with one another while we swam, chased each other in the sand, and fought over trivial matters. So much for Norman Rockwell. 

VFW members sold raffle tickets as they walked through the crowd of families. Hal Norgard stood in the back of a truck and, in his booming basketball-coach voice, announced the winners of the hourly drawings.

At 3:00 the Bald Eagle Water Ski Club put on a spectacular show of beautiful girls in modest bathing suits, performing all sorts of amazing tricks on water skis. Since we didn’t know anyone with a boat, I never learned to water ski. Given my athletic ability, it’s probably just as well.

As the sun went down, we pulled out a bucket of worms and tried fishing off one of the docks until it was time for fireworks. Huge, loud, booming, once-a-year fireworks! Maybe they pale by comparison to today’s pyrotechnics, but to us they were absolutely magical.

Later, sometime in the 1960s, the Fourth of July picnic became an Ice Cream Social in August. My Dad’s Dixieland band, the Polar Bearcats, played for the crowd from a platform on the side of a truck, as the Ladies Auxiliary sold ice cream cones. By August the lake had turned green from algae and “dog days” had arrived. Gone was the smell of hamburgers on the grill. . Like most things, the Fourth of July would never be as much fun again.

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Identical Uncles ~ Double Trouble

I loved all of my uncles, my mother’s brothers, and especially my twin uncles, Ray and Len Hunt. They were devious tricksters. Always full of mischief and seldom thinking of the consequenses. Everyone said they were “full of the devil.” It was an apt description. They teased my mother and her brother, Bob, unmercifully and my mother adored them. 

Ray and Len were identical, “mirror twins.” It was impossible to tell them apart, without looking to see which hand they used. Uncle Ray was right-handed and Uncle Len was left-handed. They got their names before their hand-dominance was established, but it certainly worked out well for those of us who knew them.

Beginning in first grade, Ray and Len often switched seats in school and the nuns couldn’t tell them apart. They walked the mile and a half to school each day, dreaming up tricks to play on their teacher and their only classmate, a boy they named, “Rabbit Tracks.”

One morning they came to school, excited to  tell their classmate they had captured rabbit tracks in their hands.. Their classmate, naturally, was eager to see such an unusual sight and only after they opened their empty hands did he realize he’d been tricked again.  The poor boy was known as Rabbit Tracks for the rest of his life.

The twins were thirteen years older than my mother. They called her “Dolly,” but treated her more like a rag doll that the china variety.  My grandmother told me she didn’t think my mother would live to be six years old, with those two brothers around. They liked to hold her upside down by the ankles and listen to her scream as the blood ran to her head. They taught Bob to steer a car when he was five years old and my mother, the passenger, was three. 

When they were older, Ray and Len took my mother and Uncle Bob all over the farm with them ~ milking cows, inspecting their traps, delivering eggs and working in the field. They named the cows after their girlfriends. They taught Uncle Bob to drive the hay wagon, pulled by two big draft horses, Duke and Nellie, while they rode alongside in the Model T.

On one terrifying occasion, Bob was driving the team of horses, when he lost his grip on the reins and fell between the two horses. My mother hung onto the side of the wagon, screaming, while Bob wrapped his arms and legs around the single tree between the two horses. The twins saw what happened and turned the Model T around in time to stop the horses. Of course, my grandparents never knew about any of those antics. My mother and her brother were threatened and bribed, and never said a word.

By the time I was old enough to recognize my uncles, Uncle Len had a son, Dick Hunt, who was as mischievous as Ray and Len. For a long time I thought they were triplets. Dick died young, but before he died, he helped the twins carry out one last mad caper. 

Uncle Ray had knee surgery and was recovering in the hospital. Len and Dick went to visit him. They wheeled Ray into the bathroom and undressed him down to his underwear. Len put on Ray’s hospital gown, and climbed into the bed, leaving Ray sitting in the bathroom. Dick went to fetch the head nurse and insisted she come to see the surgery, 

“I’ve always heard that the surgeon was a miracle-worker, but you have to see this. That doctor didn’t even leave a scar,” Dick told her.

When the nurse pulled back the sheet to inspect Ray’s surgery, she saw Len’s knee with no stitches or any sign of surgery whatsoever. Only after she went back to the nurse’s station, did the two brothers and my cousin, Dick, find her and explain how they had tricked her. 

By the time they died, Ray had lost his wife, Betty, and a daughter, Joan. Len lost his wife, Mary, and his son, Dick. But my uncles, Ray and Len, never lost their sense of humor or their playful spirit. 

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My Grandmother, Julia Schmitz Hunt

My family lived with Grandma and Grandpa Hunt from the time I was one year old until I was eight. After Dad returned home from the Navy, we lived on the farm with my grandparents. When Grandpa sold the farm, we moved to a duplex on Sixteenth Avenue, across the street from St. Peter’s Catholic Church. Grandma and Grandpa lived in a one bedroom apartment upstairs and we lived in a two bedroom apartment on the lower floor. There was an indoor toilet, but no bathtub and no hot water. The stove was an “old fashioned wood stove” in the kitchen which, of course, wasn’t considered old fashioned back then. It was considered normal. 

Grandpa Hunt was a big, imposing man who seldom smiled. I avoided him whenever I could. But I loved living downstairs from Grandma. She was a small woman with a soft, billowy chest and huge arms, the result of baking bread every day on the farm, where she raised eight children ~ six big boys, my Aunt Fran (second oldest child) and my mother (the youngest child.) Snuggling with Grandma was the most comforting moment of the day.

Our neighbors on Sixteenth Avenue were Old Man Grunke and the Courneyour family. Grandma was a friend of Mrs. Grunke, but Old Man Grunke was a skinny snake of a man, who hated kids. He especially hated my brother Bob and I because we used to swing on the chain he stretched across his yard, dividing our property from his. He told us to stop swinging on his chain but, naturally, we didn’t. One day he coated the chain with motor oil. Bob and I went home covered in slimy oil. My mother was furious at Old Man Grunke, but he really didn’t care. The war between our families went on for years.

On the other side of us lived the Cournoyer family. They had a garage in their backyard, built over an open pit. They threw all their garbage in the pit, including tin cans and broken bottles, which attracted rats. Huge rats. Some of them as big as small cats. One day, Grandma Hunt was hanging wash on the line when one of the rats ran across her foot. She swore in German, grabbed the pole she used to prop up the clothesline and beat the rat into a bloody mass, swearing at the rat the whole time. Grandma was small, but she was fearless. As I stood there, staring at the dead, bloody pulp that used to be a rat, Grandma turned to me and told me to get the shovel out of our shed and throw the dead rat into the alley. She quietly went back to hanging her freshly washed clothes on the line.

Eventually my family moved to a different house, two blocks away. My grandfather had a stroke and went to live with my Uncle Bill, who was big  and strong enough to take care of him. My grandmother continued to live in the house on Sixteenth Avenue and my Aunt Fran moved in with her. I often walked to Grandma’s house, especially in the quiet hours after dinner. I loved sitting at the table as Grandma finished her coffee, slathering a piece of bread with butter and jelly for dessert. She would tell me stories of her life on the farm. I still have two of Grandma’s coffee cups. I warm my hands around them, as she did so many years ago, and I smile.

My last memory of Grandma Hunt was at the nursing home, where she spent her final days. I had moved to Denver to go to school, and went to see her when I came home on vacation. By that time, Grandma had wasted away.  She weighed less than eighty pounds. Most of her marbles were gone, but she recognized me as I walked into the room. She grabbed my hand, with tears in her eyes, and pleaded with me to go to the kitchen and take her name “off the list.” 

Grandma was convinced that even as she lay dying, there was work to do. She believed that she was “on the list” of people who had to report for duty to prepare the next meal and then wash the dishes.

“Of course, Grandma. I’ll take care of it.”

I didn’t try to tell Grandma that there was no such list. Instead, I walked out of the room and came back a few minutes later. I told her that I scratched her name off the list and told the cook to never put Grandma’s name on the list again. I told Grandma she never had to prepare another meal or wash another dish again. Grandma was happy. It was the least I could do.

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Remembering The Boys Of Summer

When I was growing up in the 1950’s, we lived across the street from St. Peter’s Catholic School and playground. There were a lot of boys around my age who liked to play baseball and by late morning, we usually had six or eight kids ready to play ball. 

Leo Fortier was not available until after 11:00. Leo’s dad worked for the post office and had to get up at 4:30 in the morning. Leo’s mother, on the other hand, was a night owl. She made Leo stay up every night until midnight, watching the Jack Parr show. Leo would tell us the next day everything that Hermione Gingold or Charlie Weaver said. We couldn’t have cared less.

Since we only had three or four kids on a side, we had local rules to make the games competitive. Any hits to right field was an out. Each team had a pitcher, a shortstop and a left fielder. Since there was no first baseman, if a fielder threw the ball to the pitcher before the runner got to first base, the hitter was out. This was known as “Pitcher’s Hand Out.”

The batting team supplied the catcher and also the back-up catcher. The playground was higher than the street, and if the catcher missed the ball it would roll down the hill about a quarter of a block.

There was always a lot of arguing about balls and strikes, and if the pitcher caught the ball before the batter got to first. Did the catcher drop the ball on purpose when there was a play at home plate? The arguments were endless.

St. Peter’s had a baseball team and it was usually pretty good. Tryouts were during Holy Week (Easter vacation) and in 1956, I tried out for the outfield. Since I was a short, skinny sixth grader, a slow runner with a weak throwing arm, and seldom caught a fly ball that was right to me, I didn’t make the team that year.

The next year, 1957, I tried out again. I was still short and skinny, slow with a weak arm, but now I could catch most of the fly balls that were hit right to me. That was not enough. I didn’t make the team that year, either.

North St. Paul had a summer league. The St. Peter’s team was the Dodgers. The local American Legion Club sponsored the Braves, and I decided to try out for the Braves. I didn’t make that team, either, because my father was not a member of the American Legion.

Hy Ettle was the Braves coach. He told us kids who didn’t make the team that we should come to all the practices and if someone quit, we could get his uniform and be on the team. Hy was a local realtor so he was able to call practices during the day. These were usually on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, at 1:00.

We would all ride our bikes down to the field behind Main Street and be waiting for Hy at 1:00. Hy never showed up for these practices, so we would then jump back on our bikes and ride up the alley to the American Legion Hall. We went in the back door and there was Hy, sitting at the bar with a shot and a beer in front of him.

“Oh,” he said. “Is it 1:00 already? The gear is in the trunk of my Cadillac. Take it to the field. I’ll be down in a half hour. If I don’t get there, just leave everything and I’ll pick it up on my way home.”

After the third game of season, Craig Longfellow didn’t show up. Hy said to me, “Do you know where Longfellow lives?”

“Sure,”  I said.

“Looks like he quit. Go over there and pick up his uniform. You’re on the team.”

Our pitcher that year was Don Arlich. He was a big left-hander who could throw the ball harder than anyone in town. He had a curve ball that no one could hit, and he hit the ball a mile. We won every game until he left for New York and the Boy Scout Jamboree. Mike O’Reilly was the catcher and he went to New York, too.

That left my friend, Leo Fortier, as the catcher, and I was the defensive replacement in right field in the last innings. Hy Ettle had a rule that if one of your parents came to the game, you would get to play.

Leo was short like me. He was fat, while I was skinny, but he could still run faster and throw the ball farther than I could. But he still couldn’t throw the ball from home to second base if a runner was stealing the base. The plan was for him to throw the ball back to the pitcher, who would then turn and throw to the short-stop for the out. It never worked. The runner was always safe.

In one of our games, there was a pop-up behind home plate. Leo flipped his mask off and started running to catch the ball. Unfortunately, he stepped  into his mask and fell flat on his face.

Hy told Leo, “ Next time this happens, stand up and find where the ball is, then throw your mask the other way and go catch the ball.”

Luckily, Leo had another chance in the next game. He stood up, saw the ball, but in his haste he threw off his glove and stood there with his mask on.

We didn’t win a single game when Don Arlich was gone. When he came back for the last few games of the season. Mike O’Reilly had quit and another kid got his uniform. Leo was a permanent replacement as catcher. He came back to the bench after every inning with tears streaming down his cheeks, his left hand all red and swollen from catching Don’s fastball and curve.

In 1958, now in the eighth grade, I finally made the St. Peter’s baseball team. Leo Fortier never played baseball after seventh grade. He concentrated on golf and tennis. I haven’t seen him for over fifty years, but I understand that he is realtor, much like our coach, Hy Ettle.                                                         ~Bob Jones

Bob Jones is a retired dentist. He still plays softball in the Roseville Senior Softball League. He has played on a team every year since 1962. Bob is still short, but not skinny any more. He still roams in right field. He’s still a slow runner with a bad arm, but he catches most of the fly balls that are hit right to him. 

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Max Hein Scores Again!

My grandson’s name is Maxfield, but everyone calls him Max. Born six weeks premature, he is one tough dude. Max weighed just three pounds when he was born. He was determined to make it. And he did. 

I came home from Mexico soon after Max was born and rented an apartment close enough to walk to the hospital every day. I looked at him through the incubator and watched his skinny little chest rise and fall with every breath. I marveled at the number of tubes in his tiny body. I told him that I was proud of him. I always will be.

As a little boy, Max had asthma but that didn’t stop him. One day Jason was driving home from work and spotted a little boy up in a tree, where he obviously didn’t belong. As  he turned the corner, the boy fell out of the tree, dusted himself off and walked away. That’s Max.

When he was in elementary school, Max went to a week-long, sleep-away camp for children with asthma. The motto of the camp was” “No excuses, no adaptations, no whining” (or something like that.) Max, of course, loved it.

Up in the mountains, high above Denver, Max went hiking, kayaking and swimming. He tried archery and lacrosse for the first time. He played baseball, slept in a cabin and made friends with everyone. That’s Max.  

Max has so much athletic ability, I wonder if he really belongs in our family. He looks a lot like Jason did as a little boy, except with jet black hair and dark chocolate eyes.  Max is one of those children who learns a new sport just by watching.

In elementary school, he took gymnastic lessons and wowed both me and his instructor with his ability to do tricks the first time he tried. In middle school, he ran track and easily sprinted to the finish line at every meet. If Max were a race horse, he would come from behind in every race and win the Triple Crown.

Max has played baseball every summer since joining an Aurora Recreation team in third grade. He runs like the wind and easily slides into base. Max goes home from every game with the dirtiest white pants on his team. When he’s not covering first base or the outfield, he pitches.

In his free time, Max likes to go to Skate City and roller blade for hours. He’s also a great dancer. One time he tried to teach me to “floss” ~ the dance move, not my teeth. 

Max has boundless energy and a happy disposition. He loves his family and his friends. Max turns fourteen on June 1st. FOURTEEN! Next year he will be in high school. That tiny baby is now taller than I am. His hands and feet are bigger than Jason’s. 

I know Max misses his Mom. Kortnee died when Max was in third grade. I asked Max what he missed most about her. “Her hugs,” was his answer. I’m sure that’s true. Now Max, like his Mom, is a great “hugger.” A hug from Max feels like warm sun on a cold winter day.

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Doc ~ A Tribute To My Father

They called him “Doc.”  As a Pharmacist Mate 3, my father was the highest ranking medical officer on his ship ~ an LST (Tank Landing Ship) used during WWII.

Dad graduated from pharmacy college at the University of Minnesota in June, 1941. Pearl Harbor was attacked six months later. My father knew he didn’t want to be drafted into the Army, so he enlisted in the Navy in June, 1942. He was twenty-four years old.

Dad did not go through traditional “boot camp” but was sent, instead, for medical training at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital, north of Chicago. His first assignment was the Brooklyn Naval Hospital and my mother joined him there.

My father was transferred to Geneva, New York, where I was born in May. In June, 1943, Dad was sent to Maryland for amphibious training and my mother and I went to live with Dad’s family in St. Paul.

Dad was assigned to LST 492. It would be his home for the next two years. The ship was commissioned on December 8, 1943 and immediately sailed to England, to prepare for the first wave on Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944. 

The following is from an article written by David Chrisinger, published in the New York Times Magazine, June 5, 2019:

“Most of the men in the first wave never stood a chance. In the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, thousands of American soldiers crawled down swaying cargo nets and thudded into steel landing craft bound for the Normandy coast.”

My father’s ship was one of those landing crafts. When they reach Normandy, the doors to the LST swung open. Tanks, and soldiers rolled into the ocean. As a medical officer, my father stay on the ship with the other sailors, waiting to treat wounded American soldiers and German prisoners of war.

“Allied troops kept landing, wave after wave, and by midday they had crossed the 300 yards of sandy killing ground, scaled the bluffs and overpowered the German defenses. By the end of the day, the beaches had been secured and the heaviest fighting had moved at least a mile inland.

In the biggest and most complicated amphibious operation in military history, it wasn’t bombs, artillery or tanks that overwhelmed the Germans; it was men — many of them boys, really — slogging up the beaches and crawling over the corpses of their friends that won the Allies a toehold at the western edge of Europe.” ~ David Chrisinger

This week  I came across a letter, written by Lt. Commander, Ralph Newman, commander of the LST 492, to my mother on July 4, 1944:

“Dear Mrs. Jones, I would like to take this opportunity to write a few words about your husband, Robert. We point with some pride to the record of the good old 492. No one has so much as broken a little finger. And no one has more friends than Bob. The “doc” has the respect of his officers and shipmates, alike.’

From Normandy, the LST 492 traveled to North Africa, Italy and Sicily, with German POW’s still onboard. On August 15, 1944, the ship was part of the second D-Day invasion, Operation Dragoon, an assault against German forces in Southern France that eventually led to the liberation of Paris.

After leaving the  south of  France in September, 1944, the LST 492 was assigned to the Pacific fleet and traveled to Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines and the Wake Islands. The ship was based in Okinawa. Japan, as bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When asked about his feelings about the atom bomb, my father wrote, “I felt relieved that the war was going to be terminated and I could return to my family and my normal lifestyle. I was happy only for myself. I had no feelings for the eventual consequences of it. I suppose that was selfish. Now I don’t believe it was justified.”

After the war, my father returned to Minnesota and his family. He seldom spoke of his time in the Navy. He went to work at Swanson Drug in St. Paul, where he worked as a pharmacist for almost forty-five years. 

My father has always been a kind-hearted, quiet man. I can’t imagine how difficult war must have been for him. But he was also a man who always did what he was called upon to do. Later, reflecting back on his time in the Navy, my father commented that  he felt that WWII was necessary to defeat Hitler. But overall, he was opposed to all wars. He believed they were  “senseless.”

Every year, on Memorial Day, my father took his trumpet out of its case, stood outside in the dark, and played Taps. I know he was thinking of his days on the LST 492,  as those sweet sounds floated through the air for all the neighbors to hear. 

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Chance ~ A Boy With Magic In His Heart

Some children are born with a touch of magic . My oldest grandson, Connor, believed in leprechauns. My youngest one, Max,  believed in Elf on the Shelf. Chance, my middle grandson IS a leprechaun and the Christmas Elf, rolled into one.

Chance is cute and charming, with an incredibly kind heart and a vivid imagination. As an only child, Chance’s best friend has always been his creativity. An early, voracious reader, he devoured fantasy books. While other students were kicking a soccer ball around the playground at recess, Chance and his friends were playing elaborate games that involved dragons, heroes and villains. 

I once asked Chance what he wanted to be when he grew up. “A librarian and a spy,” was his answer. “That’s good,” I thought. I’ve met a number of librarians who had the same double major.

For a while, Chance wanted to be a pirate, after playing the part of the drunken sailor, Mr. Smee, in his preschool rendition of Peter Pan.

Some years later, Chance came to Mexico with his parents and met up with me and Neto in Sayulita. While his parents were swimming in the ocean, Chance stayed back with us. He put his hand on Neto’s knee and said, “Someday I’m going to build a pirate ship that flies through the sky. Only special people can get on board. But you two ~ you will definitely be part of my crew.”

The highlight of my summers, when Chance was little, were the weeks he spent with me while he attended camp at the Denver Zoo and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. One summer I told him I wanted to build a fairy garden, and he was “all-in.” We went to the local nursery to pick out a fairy castle. Chance dug through his stash of miniature cars and found a golf cart and a convertible to add to the mix. We installed a tiny bird bath, an outdoor table, and some benches. Every year, when I set up the fairy garden again, I think of Chance and smile. 

In middle school, Chance went to a week-long camp at UC-Boulder and again stayed with me. We spent a couple nights in Boulder, rather than make the drive to and from Aurora every day. What fun! Our apartment was designed to look like a tree-house, complete with a swing suspended from the ceiling. We felt like two birds, high up in the trees. It was a perfect get-away for a boy with a vivid imagination and his grandmother, who sometimes likes to pretend she’s a bird, too.  

Chance  lives in Fraser, with his parents, Garth and Bethany, and goes to Middle Park High School in Granby. He studies hard, operates the sound board for school plays, and volunteers  in his community. He holds down a job washing dishes at a local restaurant, skis in the winter and rides his mountain bike in the summer. In his spare time ~ meager that it is ~ he collects Magic Cards and goes to Magic Card game nights with his friends.

Next year, Chance will be a high school senior. I love our FaceTime calls. Chance reads my blog every week and he is my go-to person for computer help. He’s thinking about where he wants to go to college and may go somewhere far away. I will miss him.

Wherever the journey takes him, I know that Chance will thrive. He will work hard and maintain his kind, generous spirit. I hope he keeps his imagination alive. I hope that Neto and I will always be part of his pirate crew.

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The Woman Who Lived In a Little House

My mother, Marianne Jones, grew up in North St. Paul, Minnesota. Her father, my grandfather, was a huge, strong German man ~  the oldest of eight children. His parents were early pioneer farmers in St. Paul. When his father died at an early age, my grandfather was left in charge of the farm and the younger children. He valued hard-work and saving money. He was a distant, loud, often difficult man.

Grandpa and Grandma were married when he was twenty-six and she was eighteen. He started a successful sauerkraut and pickle factory that same year, but his heart wasn’t in it. After sixteen years of running the factory, he sold the business and bought a farm. By this time, he had six strong sons and two daughters, including my mother, who was the youngest.

My grandmother was the sixth oldest of ten children. Her brothers were fun-loving, charming, and often irresponsible with money, which infuriated my grandfather. My grandparents argued a lot of the time, usually about money and raising children.

My grandfather worried constantly and was a harsh disciplinarian. My grandmother was in poor health, and often worn-out from cooking, cleaning and raising eight children. Although there was always enough food and warm clothing, the children learned to look elsewhere for attention and affection.

My mother reported  that her early life was good, however, because she enjoyed being with her brothers and playing with all the animals on the farm. She liked to roam the fields and pretend she was running away from home.

When my mother was ten years old, her older brother, Frank, age sixteen, died of a ruptured  appendix. My mother wrote: After that everything seemed to change. Frank was a sensitive, intelligent boy whom everyone loved. My mother grieved a great deal and my father became morose. He seemed to feel that everything was against him.

As was typical at that time, my mother’s family never referred to this tragedy.  My mother felt especially guilty when she remembered that one time she took a nickel from Frank’s piggy bank. 

My mother was a good student. She loved being in school plays and had a beautiful singing voice. She was outgoing, with a good sense of humor, and she had a lot of friends.. She remarked that she could have done better, academically, but knew that college was out of the question for her, so she concentrated on having fun instead.

This is my mother’s memory of meeting my father: When I was seventeen, and a senior in high school, I met the man I was to marry. He was playing his trumpet in a three-piece combo in one of the local hangouts. I can picture him now as I saw him then ~ on a platform high above us, magnificent in his black tuxedo with a blue cumber bun, blowing his trumpet and setting the pace for the Saturday night celebrators. I was out with his best friend and we were making our last stop of the evening. Is there a fate that destines our future? I think so. Is there love at first sight? I know there is. This particularly beautiful human being was the answer to my prayers.”

My father’s family was very different from my mother’s. Dad was raised in a middle-class family, in which every child went to college. My mother’s family were farmers, often with dirt under their fingernails. My father’s family were gentle people, while my mother smoked cigarettes and swore like a sailor (but never in front of my grandparents!) Dad was emotional, and cried easily. My mother wouldn’t shed a tear.

My parents loved each other and never argued. My mother appreciated that my Dad worked hard and gave her a good life, filled with thoughtful gifts and trips to interesting places. But she knew that my father’s family never truly accepted her. The fact that my personality was more like my father’s and not much like hers, created friction between us.

My father died when he was seventy-nine and my mother was seventy-five. From that day forward, she considered herself old and frail. She went to the doctor and asked for handicapped license plates. When the doctor said, “Marianne, I don’t know what your handicap is,” she answered, “put down that I’m old.” She was younger than I am now!

Mom taught me a lot. She taught me to work hard, to cook and to sew. She had an exceedingly fine mind for politics. She loved watching the news, especially CNN and C-Span.

Mom was supportive when I told her I was moving to Denver. She came to visit me every year and my boys spent summers in Minnesota while they were were growing up. Mom was excited when I told her I was moving to Mexico, and twice she came to visit me while I was there.

My mother died of pneumonia at the age of 96. She knew she was dying. She told her doctors to take her off antibiotics and let her die in peace. By the time I reached her, she was already unconscious. I hope she was able to hear me when held her hand and told her I loved her. I always will.