(Sandy wrote most of this remembrance by herself at her computer before June 2008. During June 2008 Karen McDowell made final additions based on conversations with Sandy)
Grandparent’s Book
By Marcy Jackson
Dear Children and Grandchildren,
I own three grandparents’ books to choose among – one I filled out with my father, one with blanks to be filled in, and one that is just a list of questions with no space for answers. Since I like the questions in the first one best, I am going to use its questions and answer them on the computer. I hope you will learn a bit about me and what I value. So here goes:
ABOUT YOUR FAMILY
From what country or countries did your family emigrate? When was this and where did they arrive?
From my side of the family, the Mennonites on my mother’s side (Hershey, Eby) arrived in Pennsylvania from Switzerland in 1715 and 1725. There are books of their genealogies in the files. My mother’s father was Scotch-Irish and arrived at the age of 10 in Philadelphia in 1780 from Northern Ireland. On my father’s father’s side, the story is less clear, but on his mother’s side, his ancestors were Quakers who arrived in Pennsylvania in the latter 1600’s, some arriving soon after Penn established the colony in 1682. Those people came from England, Wales, and Scotland.
What were your grandparents’ names:
Wallis Bower Wheat – he died about 12 years before I was born from sepsis from a botched operation
Gertrude Peterson Yarnall Wheat – she was orphaned about the age of 8 and taken in by a minister, Rev. Bates, who preached in the area of Rock Hall, Maryland. She adored him. She died when I was 8.
Harry Girvin – he was orphaned at the age of 5 when the family lived in Winchester, Virginia and taken in by relatives back in Pennsylvania who used him as a hired hand while his older sisters were treated more kindly. He trained to be a school teacher (we have his thesis in the files) but ended up running greenhouses and raising carnations. He died before I was born.
Sarah Naomi Eby – she tolerated no fighting. I remember her as stern. Judy and I lived with her and Aunts Miriam and Betty for two months at the beginning of my fifth grade school year.
Do you remember names of family members before them? What do you know about your grandparents early years? Where did they grow up?
See the charts and files
What do you remember about your grandparents or what stories have you heard about them?
First some more ancient tales. Christian Eby, whose house and mill still stand in Lancaster County ,was smoking some hams. Only he knew how many he had and that one had been stolen. He carefully told no one about the theft. One day, giving a neighbor a ride home, Christian found that man asking him about his stolen ham. Christian replied “That is between you and the Lord.” I don’t know the rest of the story.
It is said that when Harry Girvin’s father was shot by his neighbor (articles are in the files), he asked that the authorities not go after the man because “I’ve had no enemies in my life and I want none in my death.” The man’s case was heard by a chancery judge who happened to be in town and the incident was declared to be an accident. People in Pennsylvania thought he’d been shot because he was a Northerner, taking care of his father-in-law’s farm in Virginia. The year was 1882.
My grandfather Wheat was a fisherman and farmer and manager of midways and carnivals. He worked for a Mr. Stein who owned Tollchester Beach. He would harass the Catholic boys who lived down the street (Catholic Avenue) on their way home from church. He also permitted his children to smoke and drink at the age of six as long as they came into the house to do it.
Grandfather Girvin seems to have been fun-loving if unaffectionate. When he went off to have an eye operation, he kissed all of his children and Aunt Miriam remembers that as the only kiss she ever got from him. He took Aunt Miriam to Niagara Falls when she graduated because he thought she ought to see some of the world. There is a sheet of memories from his children in the files.
Were there other relatives who were special to you or who played a role in your upbringing?
Aunt Betty and Aunt Miriam and Grandmother took us in when Mother was sick and we were moving from Ridley Park to Drexel Hill in Upper Darby. We were supposed to stay a week and stayed two months. The school let us stay. I guess it helped that Aunt Miriam taught there and our teachers were related. The Aunts took me to buy my first bra because they deemed it was time. I did see every movie that came to Lititz that fall.
What were your parents’ names?
William Yarnall Wheat Emily Amanda Girvin
When and where were they born?
Dad was born in Rock Hall, Maryland, the 8th of 9 children. I think he weighed 13 pounds when he was born.
Mother was born in Paradise, Pennsylvania. The house still stands next to the Zook’s tourist shops on Rt. 30. The forge behind the house was a site for making rifles. She remembered the creaking sound of a windmill.
How did they meet?
My mother was a public health nurse and one of her patients was a John Rolfe. He was also the husband Bessie Wheat Rolfe and my parents met when they both were at the house. On their first date, my mother was called to help a woman give birth to twins. Dad waited a bit and then gave up and went home.
What do you remember most about your mother from your childhood?
Her survival. When I was about five, she developed asthma which took her in and out of hospitals. There were no good treatments so she’d try new doctors and medications in our local area. But she worked hard to keep life normal for us.
What do you remember most about your father?
Talking with people. We had a garden at 313 Shaw Road in Ridley Park, PA. Dad would go out to work in the garden and end up talking to people who walked up and down the hill to the lake.
What special traits did you value most about your mother and father?
My mother was kind to people and my father valued honesty and hard work. He was elected a local Republican committee man but would not fix tickets that people legitimately got so did not stay long in that position.
What work did you parents do?
My father was a machinist at Westinghouse in Essington, PA, liking the work more when he got paid by the piece than by the hour.
My mother was a trained public health nurse but worked only occasionally as a school nurse during testing periods when we were young.
What is your birthday?
February 7, 1943
Where were you born?
In Fitzgerald Mercy Hospital in Darby, PA. My parents lived in Ridley Park
Was there anything unusual about the circumstances of your birth?
Not really except that my father got really sleepy and went home to bed, figuring there wasn’t anything he could do and he’d get the news in the morning. I was born at 4:35 in the morning. My mother once told me that she recited the 23rd psalm to get through the night.
What is your full name and how was it chosen. Does it have a special meaning?
I was going to be named Emily Kathleen after my mother and her favorite cousin and be called Kate. But my mother said that when she saw me she realized I was my own person and needed my own name. I don’t know where she found Sandra Jeanne, but that was the name I got.
Who in your family do you most look like?
Around my eyes I look like my mother’s sister, Betty, but the rest of my face is “Wheat.” At a recent reunion a cousin remarked at how much I looked like his grandfather, Dewey, and my father most resembled Dewey, too.
How many brothers and sisters did you have?
One younger sister – Judith Ann Wheat – who was born in 1946.
How did you spend your time together?
We played although three years is a big age gap. There were times I resented having to take her along when friends and I did things. I remember playing jacks when we lived at Grandmother’s and canasta on summer evenings when we lived in Drexel Hill.
Did you ever take trips or vacations with your family? Where did you go? Tell about a favorite one.
We relatively often visited grandmothers in Rock Hall and Lititz. As for family trips, we drove along the Skyline Drive, which had been where my parents took their honeymoon, down to the Smokey Mountains and even got to the top of Clingman’s Dome, I think the highest point in the Appalachian Chain. My mother took a box of pills with her and didn’t always keep up with us. One summer when I was a young teen we spent a few days with Aunt Bessie and her daughter, Marghuerite, and her husband Jack and their daughter Gail in a rental house near Rehoboth Beach. The men took a seine net out and hauled in all kinds of fish and crabs. We got to bash in the heads of a kind of fish called an oyster cracker. It was cloudy but I got a good sunburn anyway.
We took a trip to Florida to visit a nursing school friend of mother’s who husband was a minister in Clearwater. I remember the sudden rain squalls and the Gulf Coast beach. The friend had narcolepsy so would fall asleep in the middle of things.
The big trip happened when I was sixteen and able to drive. We went out west to Utah but the wheel fell off on the way out and Dad was not comfortable letting me drive so Judy and I argued in the back seat. On the way home Judy acquired the branch of a tumble weed so protecting it became her focus. On the trip we visited our missionaries who had converted us to Mormanism in Vernal, Utah, as well as the Millers and Smarts in Salt Lake. The Smarts took us out to the Sharp (Dorothea Smart’s father) ranch where we got to ride horses and see the Uinta Mountains. Quite an adventure for easterners.
Was another language besides English spoken in your home? No
Did you family attend a church or synagogue? Was religion an important part of your family life?
When we lived in Ridley Park we went to the Presbyterian Church with Reverend Guy the minister where both Judy and I were christened. I recall the Christmas rituals most – the setting up of the Nativity story in a giant sandbox in the nursery classroom where each child would get a statue of a person or animal to place in the scene and then the Christmas Eve Pageant. The choir loft was behind and above the altar so when the angels sang on high, they were up high. Then the three wise men came down the central aisle singing “We Three Kings of Orient Are” and one was Dr. Baker, our family doctor. My memory is that we went every Sunday and I also joined the Children’s Choir and attended Bible School in the summer. I can still recite the books of the Old Testament by heart. When we moved to Drexel Hill, the closest church was Methodist but we eventually found our way to the Presbyterian Church on Garrett Ave. I was confirmed a Presbyterian there. But around the same time Dad was on strike and working the graveyard shift. When Mormon lady missionaries showed up one afternoon, he invited them in. We started to attend the church, which was then just a branch, in West Philadelphia. (We were in a mission field then and the local churches were called branches)
What were the family rules in your household?
“Elbows off the table” was one. Another was to get chores done early. Judy and I did the dishwashing and drying up and we finally convinced Mother after we moved to Drexel Hill that we’d have a more peaceful family if we weren’t in the kitchen at the same time. So whoever was on drying got to go down later and put away the air-dried dishes. I came to enjoy the time alone. We always said our prayers at night.
Did your family have enough money? Was it ever a concern for you?
I remember being shocked in high school to realize that I came from a working class family. We had enough but not too much. For example, I had two sets of high heels – white for summer and black for winter. I made some of my own clothes and relied on babysitting and ironing money to stretch dollars.
There were times when Dad was on strike that money got to be an issue. The first was 1946 when Judy was born but I was too young to know what was going on. When I was eleven/twelve, Dad was out for ten months. He painted houses until it got too cold and then, lying that he did not work for Westinghouse, got a job on the midnight shift in a machine shop in Wilmington, Delaware. That’s why he was home when lady Mormon missionaries showed up late one afternoon.
What were one or two of the worst times in your family life?
When mother was sick and hospitalized and we’d be sent off to odd houses for the night or off to relatives for longer periods. We stayed with Uncle Harold and Aunt Mim for two weeks one summer maybe when I was between 6th and 7th grades. Since explanations to children were not high on the priority list, we were never sure what was going on.
What were one or two of the best times like?
Until my Grandmother Wheat died when I was eight, I used to enjoy her birthday parties. We’d get tables from the Presbyterian Church and set them up in the living and dining room at 313 Shaw Road and eat well, ending with homemade peach ice cream. Then we’d all gather around the piano and my mother would play hymns and we’d all sing along. I still know the words.
WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE…(2-12 YEARS)
Where did you live? What do you remember most about your home(s)?
We lived in two houses – 313 Shaw Road in Ridley Park and 1044 Bonsall Avenue in Drexel Hill, moving when I was ten. The house in Ridley Park was, I recall, dark brown shingles and on two lots with the second lot being undeveloped and having a pathway that sloped down to the lake. The house had an enclosed porch across the front of the house where we had a rocking chair where my father would sit and read or watch the world go by. The living room ran the width of the house and was where the television was placed when it showed up in my third grade year. The dining room and a day room shared with middle of the house with a kitchen and the dinette across the back. There was an exterior porch off the kitchen that was also over the garage. The second floor had four bedrooms that were not heated to save money so we wore our undershirts to bed under our pajamas. Our parents had the front room and for a while Judy and I shared a room. I don’t remember when we moved to separate rooms. The basement was under the house but took advantage of the slope to not have been totally excavated. There was coal room for the delivery of coal and Dad would stoke the fire in the boiler for the hot water heating system.
I remember the day room most vividly. There were blackout curtains over the window long after the war. When I’d be home sick with a childhood disease, that room was the infirmary. Mother would bring me fresh squeezed orange juice as I recuperated. It’s also the place where my grandmother and I would sit to listen to soap operas in the afternoons. Grandmother and Aunt Lillian, retarded as the result of a very high childhood fever, came to stay with us as some point some months before Grandmother died. It must have been hard on my mother to take care of all of us.
We moved to another town as a way of treating Mother’s asthma with the thought that house in Ridley Park contributed to the disease. We lived in the house of my violin teacher the summer before we moved and left our house empty. It was one block away. I would go over on Sundays and watch TV or read and eat pimento-stuffed olives. In September Judy and I were sent to Lititz to live with relatives until the closing on the new house so we’d not seen the house before we moved in November. Its exterior was brick and clapboard. The living room included an alcove on the front of the house; the dining room and kitchen shared the middle of the house and the laundry room and a back porch/powder room were across the back. The porch was where we ate daily meals and had a day bed.
Upstairs were three bedrooms. My parents got the master bedroom with air-conditioning and Judy and I each had a roughly 10x12 room. There was also an attic where I moved my bedroom at some point in high school even though it was beastly hot in the summer up there.
Describe what it was like where you grew up. How is that place different now?
It’s been so long since I’ve been in Ridley Park that I can’t imagine how it has changed. When we lived there, our area was a working class/middle class neighborhood. The tenant next door drove a taxi, a Baptist minister lived across the street, and there was a least another Westinghouse family on the block. The houses at the bottom of the hill where we lived had different designs but there was a development of brick houses at the top of the hill that went in when I was about five.
Did you have any nicknames? What were they and did you like or dislike them?
Sandy is a nickname for Sandra and I still have that name. I should have changed to Sandra when we moved to Illinois but realized that only on retrospect. As for other nicknames sometimes I was called “Wheaties” after the cereal. “Push in the pot” was attached to me at some point but it didn’t really stick and I don’t remember the circumstances except that I hated the name.
Did you have any pets? Tell about them.
Until I was around seven, we had an English setter named Peggy which Dad sometimes used when he went hunting. She was a bird dog. One day walking home from school I realized that I hadn’t seen her for a while and decided that she had gone to dog heaven. My parents had had her put to sleep and hadn’t told us about her cancer or her death. They protected us from death.
What did you do for fun? Describe your favorite toy or game.
I read books for fun. After every Brownie Club meeting at the library, I would take out another book or books which I would return at the next meeting.
In the absence of TV, the kids in the neighborhood would gather at my house to play games like Hide ‘N Seek. Being the youngest kid, it wasn’t fun for me because I remember always being “it.” But sometimes we’d play ”Red Rover” or games like that that were more fun for me.
What is your first memory going back as far as you can?
I was about three and I remember being on the front porch as Rosie Graf, my best friend, and her mother were on the sidewalk heading to her house. I called after her with the name “Judy.” My guess is that Judy had just been born.
Were you ever really sick?
In those days before shots, I had whooping cough when I was about six months old when it made its way around the neighborhood. My friend Rosie, who was six weeks older than I, developed convulsions from pus sacks inside the ear and had to have her eardrum punctured so grew up partially deaf. Sometimes I would ride with the family to take Rosie back to the special school at Mt. Airy that she attended. She did not want to go. I remember listening to the “Green Hornet” on the car radio as we drove.
I had measles(German and regular) and chicken pox but not the mumps.
What do you remember about the grammar school you attended? How did you get there?
For kindergarten and first grade we were bused from the neighborhood but after that we walked – down the hill to the park, over a bridge where boys put muskrat traps, past the lake, over another bridge and then up the hill past the high school and streets with houses to the school. The school took the whole block on the south and was raised behind a low wall that went around the school. I have memories of houses behind the school. The school itself was long ago torn down. There were two field-stone buildings – the small kindergarten building with a playground on the far side, near the Catholic school- and then the boys’ playground, the main school building, and the girls’ playground to the right. There was a no man’s land behind the building that boys and girls were forbidden to cross. The entrance to the school, which was a flight of stairs, separated the playgrounds in the front. The principal’s office was on the right of the entrance and my first grade class was on the left. Second grade was next first grade and third grade was in the back to the right. Upper classes were upstairs.
The cut-off date for entrance to school was February 1st and my birthday was a the 7th so I did not start school until a year later after my mother thought I was ready. The advantage was that I was a year older than some of my classmates and was grateful in later years from that bit of maturity.
Did you have any favorite books or stories?
The first book I read by myself was Heidi so that counts as a favorite although I ‘m not sure how much I really understood as a second grader. I read Bobbsey Twins books and later Louisa May Alcott’s books and Cherry Ames, student nurse, series. Then there were horse books like Misty of Chincoteague.
What did you want to be when you grew up? A teacher but a lawyer for the UN crossed my mind.
What did your parents want you to be?
They raised me to be independent and take care of myself but I don’t remember a push in any direction.
Do you remember how much things cost?
Clothes We learned to shop the after-Christmas sales
Food In grad school in the mid-1960’s, I could feed myself on $25-30 a week.
Movies Once we moved to Drexel Hill, we went to the local theater on Saturdays, at least until we turned 12. I recall ticket prices of a $.25 to $.50
Toys
Gasoline When I finally bought my own car, a VW bug, gas was $.29 a gallon
Stamps The price kept going up.
WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP (12-20 YEARS)
What household chores or jobs did you have to do?
We had to wash and dry the dishes. It took us a year or so after we moved to Drexel Hill to convince our mother that we did not have to be in the kitchen at the same time. The dishes could air dry and the “dryer” put them away later. For me, washing dishes then became a kind of quiet time for private thoughts. We also had to take trash out. Later there were ironing chores.
Did you get an allowance? How did you usually spend it?
We did get an allowance that got larger as we got older. Part of mine went to church, part went to savings for Christmas and other gifts, and part when for comics and candy.
What did you and your family use for transportation?
We had one car mostly. Judy and I could use the trolley to get to school and the trolley and el to get into the city. The trolley line was a few blocks away on Huey Avenue.
How many years of secondary school did you complete?
I attended Beverly Hills Junior High School for 7-9 and Upper Darby High School 10-12, graduating tenth in my class of roughly 719.
What parts of school did you like the best? What parts did you like the least?
I liked school although not some gym classes. Walking past large groups of guys hanging out near their cars outside the high school made me nervous, too.
Did you play any sports in school? No although I did help with the volleyball team in junior high.
Were you involved in any music or drama activities? Tell about them.
Having been in every play in junior high, I headed for the drama club, Thespian Troup #1000 at the high school. Miss Reed and Miss Weil, who had classrooms across from each other ran the group and we did three or four plays a year – the senior class play with a senior cast, the junior class play with a junior cast, and a show for children in the winter. Miss Reed did the acting part and Miss Weil the technical direction. For the children’s show, we got released time to go to grade schools to promote ticket sales. I was also in the orchestra in sophomore year but dropped it when stage craft classes and orchestra practices conflicted before school. Theater was more fun and made my mother a bit uneasy.
Did you receive any awards or prizes for achievements in athletics, scholarship, etc.?
The only award I remember was winning the spelling bee in 8th or 9th grade. But I’m sure there were other awards. I was voted Hardest Worker in the class “Who’s Who” list in the year book.
Were you a member of any clubs? What were they?
National Thespian Troupe #1000. Since I don’t seem to have my 1961 yearbook, I can’t check my memory that I was an officer on my senior year. In senior year I was in the Hi-Y Service group. At church I was in the Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association, sometimes serving as secretary and sending in monthly reports.
What songs and dances were popular?
So many rock and roll greats!!!!! I think the cha-cha was a fad.
What kind of clothing did you wear? How is it different from clothes worn by young people today?
Girls wore skirts, frequently plaid, with blouses and/or sweaters. Boys wore slacks and shirts. No one wore jeans or tee shirts.
Who most influenced your thinking during this time and why?
I was influenced by Miss Reed and Miss Weil as well as the people I met at the Mormon Church in Philadelphia.
As a teenager, how did you get along with your parents?
We got along better as I became more independent.
At what point did you move away from home? Why and where did you go?
The summer of my senior year in high school I worked as camp business manager at a Girl Scout camp outside of Philadelphia and then went to Pomona in the fall. The next two summers I came back home to Philadelphia to work as a clerk in the filing department of Acme markets. The next summer, between my junior and senior year I got a job on a dude ranch in Montana, the E-L in Greenough outside Missoula, and was pretty much gone from Pennsylvania by then. My stock answer to the question “Why did you go to California for college?” has been that three thousand miles seemed to be a reasonable distance from home when I was eighteen.
FAMILY TRADITIONS AND CELEBRATIONS…
Did you celebrate any special family or ethnic holidays at your house? Describe them.
We celebrated typical American holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Memorial Day (we decorated graves then) and Fourth of July. Until she died when I was eight, we had a big party for my grandmother Wheat’s birthday. And we went out to a restaurant twice a year to celebrate the anniversaries of my parents and their friends, the Wildricks. The restaurant of choice often was the Ingleneuk, a family-style restaurant in Swarthmore, PA.
As a child, how did you usually celebrate your birthday?
My memory is just ice cream and cake with the family but I’m sure there were occasional parties with guests.
What was the best gift you ever got when you were young?
The two gifts I remember are from Aunt Ada Wildrick - a copy of the book Heidi when I was in second grade and a rhinestone necklace when I was 12 or 13.
What was the best gift you ever gave?
That’s a hard question because I pride myself on selecting good gifts for people. No one best gift comes to mind.
Were there any traditional or favorite recipes that were usually prepared for family gatherings?
Not that I can remember.
What religious holidays were celebrated in your home? Describe the family traditions associated with each, special foods served, favorite music and readings, etc.
Christmas was the big deal. There was church at the Presbyterian Church’s Christmas Eve service, then Santa Clause stopped by to visit (played by my father who had not gone to church with us.) He visited all the children in Civic Association families and gave out candy canes. When I was four, I told my mother that Santa sounded like Daddy. Then we would go to bed. My mother and father would trim the tree and put gifts around and we weren’t allowed to go downstairs without their preceding us to turn on the lights. It was magical. Then we opened gifts on Christmas morning. Christmas day involved visits to neighbors and sometime over the holiday we’d visit family in Lititz and Rock Hall. In Lititz, Judy and I got to check out the loot that our school teacher aunts had gotten and select some for ourselves. As we got older, we got into making cookies and the like so Christmas music filled the house for several weeks and we got to decorate the tree. It was important that the tinsel, then made of real lead, be hung individually. Larry’s family was a tosser of tinsel so we decided that I would do the placement of tinsel since it mattered so much for me.
What family or holiday traditions have been the most meaningful to you?
I’ll mention in passing Memorial Day or Decoration Day as it was known when I was growing up. It was a day to visit cemeteries and decorate family graves. That custom has passed along with a link to the past. I remember decorating Grandfather Girvin’s tomb one year. Since he died before I was born, that event was a link to him for me.
WHEN YOU GOT MARRIED…
How did you meet grandpa?
We met at the Frary Dining Hall dinner served freshmen on our first day at Pomona. He sat across the table from me and there was just a spark of interest there.
How old were you when you met? We were both eighteen.
What attracted you to each other?
First was looks and then it turned out that we had a common interest in theater.
What kinds of things did you like to do together?
Our first date was to an orchestra concert, probably the LA Philharmonic. Mostly we worked on plays together with occasional dates. I would schedule Saturday night for studying – usually a quiet night in the dorm- especially second semester junior year. I was taking an extra course that semester since I’d been on Semester Abroad in Great Britain first semester. And we both dated other people.
What do you remember most about the courtship?
It took a long time. Larry got engaged after a summer working at a camp in New York before he started Harvard and his fiancé stayed with me when she visited Cambridge – such innocent days. When that engagement ended in the spring, it was clear to me that Larry was ready to be married but I wasn’t so we dated on and off for the next two years. Finally, over Spring Break we went with our friends the Newmans and Michael Davidson from Pomona. On the way home we both seemed ready to make a commitment to each other and over the summer decided to get engaged. No one proposed; we just decided. I meanwhile had decided to go into Vista and had quit my job at Oliver Ames High School in North Easton, MA so had to apply for jobs. One opened up at my old school so I went back in the fall.
When did you decide to get married? Describe the marriage proposal? See above
What did your parents say when you told them?
They were supportive. We decided to get married in Cambridge, MA so the families were just responsible for getting there.
When and where was the wedding?
We got married in the chapel of First Church, Unitarian, in Harvard Square on Friday, Nov. 29th, which that year was a day after Thanksgiving.
How old was each of you then? We were both 25.
What did you wear?
Larry wore a suit and I wore a blouse and skirt that I made of white crepe de chine. The bridesmaids were in matching blouses and green skirts and we used orange, yellow, and gold chrysanthemums in bouquets and circlets in our hair. The color of the flowers could be wrong because we hired a photographer who was a purist and worked only in black and white. The bridesmaids were my sister Judy and Larry’s sisters Peg and Sus. The groomsmen were Charles Newman, Larry’s brother Ken, and Jerry Johnson, a friend from Webb.
What do you remember most about your wedding day?
Larry was on time, but my father, who always wanted to be on time, was late, so the wedding started about 10 minutes late. He’d not been able to find a parking place. During the service, an uninvited guitarist placed himself on one of the tombs in the graveyard adjacent to the chapel and treated us all with a song. Larry and I memorized our vows and said them directly to each other but Larry reverted to the first version we had of the last phrase, so I had to do the same. All else went well. We had a catered reception in the library next to the chapel right after the service.
Who was there (in general)?
Our friends, other physics students, my school coworkers and family members were there.
Did you go on a honeymoon? Tell about it.
Larry had to take a shift on his experiment on Monday and I went back to teaching so we drove to Ogunquit, ME after the wedding and explored it on an overcast Saturday. Sunday we drove home along the coast and it was back to work. The next September we took a longer honeymoon, biking and camping on Prince Edward Island.
What was your adjustment to marriage like? Were they any surprises?
We seem to have adjusted relatively well. Friends noted that Larry seemed more relaxed. I found myself in tears more than normal, but in retrospect think that that was an effect of the birth control pills I was on because when we relied on other methods, the tears dried up.
Where did you first live after you got married?
We lived in a ground floor apartment in a three story apartment building on Tremont Street in Cambridge, MA, a street and building that were in both Somerville and Cambridge. The fact that it was in two towns was a problem since neither plowed after a snow storm. There was a living room, a kitchen with small bath attached and a bedroom.
What stands out in your memory about your first year of marriage?
The week-day commute. For my first two years at Oliver Ames High School commuting to school I commuted only on the week-end but once married drove everyday along the clogged “Central Artery” between Boston and North Easton. (I had rented a room in North Easton with Mrs. McConnell in one of the old worker’s cottages my first two years teaching but went to Cambridge on the week-end where I kept my room in our group apartment.) In the fall I lived with Sharon and Dick Wilsnack (when he was off-duty) and Cathy Hay in Somerville until I married and then moved in with Larry at Thanskgiving. (Cathy and Chuck Hay got married at Christmas.)
Tell a favorite story or two about grandpa.
Have you been married more than once? No
How times were different then
Computers had not moved into all facets of life yet.
Entertainment
There was a conflict between the VCR and Betamax formatting for videos. The former won. Videos were replaced by CD’s; local movie houses by cineplexes. We kept attending plays.
Toys
Plastic – lots of plastic toys in our house when the boys were young.
Chores or cleaning
Not much changed except we hired a cleaning crew that comes for an hour every other week. Ed Cleaning People has been with us for years.
Shopping
We watched the rise of the big box retailer and malls which made the US even more car centered.
Transportation
Having lived through the Arab oil embargo, we’ve paid attention to good gas mileage through the years, sort of. Dodge Caravan was my car of choice for about twenty years.
We have had a history of taking a long time to buy a new car, once we moved into the new rather than used car realm. Bu one day Jeff had an accident in the Spirit we’d given him. It seemed time to pass on his grandfather Wheat’s car to him but we would need a car. We checked out Toyota but still no map lights in the Corolla; looked at Subaru but hated the upholstery, and drove into Oak Park and bought a new Volvo that very afternoon. We still have it.
Money/economy - I was supporting us, teaching, while Larry worked on his Ph.D.
Working
Cooking
Raising a family - I was a fan of efficiency!
What do we have now that you didn’t have then? Flat screen TV, computers, cordless and cell phones, GPS, air conditioning, cassettes, CD's, DVD's, mp3's, photocopy machines,
What did you have then that we don’t have now? A world that was more trusting.
BIG EVENTS IN YOUR LIFE…
What is the funniest thing that ever happened to you?
What was your proudest moment? When Jeffery graduated from high school.
Most embarrassing moment? Standing before a judge at a hearing and swearing I was Jeff's mom after he had been in a fight with a cop and threw up on the cop's car..
Saddest or most painful time?
Where have you lived as an adult? Where have you most enjoyed living and why? Most challenging was the three years in France. Immersion, learning to live in a different culture and handle the language, the depth of their history, etc.
What was the biggest trip you have ever taken as an adult? Where, when, and with whom? Calcutta and Singapore..
Did you ever serve in the military or become involved in wartime service? No
What schools did you go to?
What kind of courses did you take?
What honors or educational degrees have you earned?
Apart from school, what have been you most important learning experiences? The world looked different after being in a different culture - Great Britain - for a semester. .
To what organizations have you belonged? (List the most important.)
Have you ever been hospitalized? What for?
Are there any illnesses or medical conditions that seem to run in your family?
What was your first full-time job? How much did you earn and what responsibilities did you have?
What kinds of work have you done?
For pay:
For summer jobs during college I worked as business manager for a Girl Scout Camp, for two summers as a file clerk at Acme Markets, and as an assistant cook on the E-L Dude Ranch in Greenough, Montana. Then, once I’d earned my Master of Arts in Teaching degree, I taught for three years in North Easton, MA., while Larry finished his Ph.D.
The Women’s Movement had made the notion of part-time work more common. So once Matthew was born, I decided to work part-time as a visual editor for Guidance Associates in Pleasantville, NY, where I’d worked full-time before he was born. I got up early and nursed Matthew and Larry took him to the baby sitter’s, a wonderful woman who’d raised six children. I would arrive in time for the afternoon feeding. When I was pregnant, we moved to White Plains from Ardsley, NY where we’d bought a duplex house on Fisher Hill so I quit my job.
When Jeff was about 18 months old, a former colleague at GA called with an offer to do a free-lance visual editing job so that began my free-lance career. When we moved to Illinois when the boys were starting kindergarten and second grade, I opted not to work for a year while we got settled. It was a brutal winter – 89 inches of snow and below zero temperatures for week-long stretches. Since we had the only single garage in our alley, people piled extra snow in the empty space, so much so that the snow reached the roof of the garage. The kids could go sledding in the back yard, much to their delight. They called the “hill” “cock-a-doddle mountain.”
By the next fall I’d applied for and gotten a job as the religious education director at the Oak Park Unitarian Universalist Church where over the next two years I learned about how to do the job and how to work with a succession of four ministers. Finally I settled in for a year with the new minister, Scot Giles, but Larry had a site transfer to Stanford Linear Accelerator the following year and the church gave me a year’s leave of absence. It turned out that the Palo Alto UU Church needed a religious education director so I worked part-time while we were in CA. I worked for another year at Oak Park when it became evident that the minister wanted someone else so I started to substitute teach at Oak Park and River Forest High School. That ultimately worked into a full-time job and the advisorship of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Club. I’m a great fan of SF/Fantasy Club students, not necessarily the genres.
As a volunteer:
White Plains – Neighborhood We lived in an interracial neighborhood that we worked to keep mixed. I did various jobs like edit and deliver the newsletter with the help of my sons and their neighborhood friends.
White Plains – Ridgeview Congregational Church I was active on the Christian Education Committee and taught in the Wednesday early dismissal religious program (set up for Catholics but we used it). We were members of the food coop and chaperoned dances and took teens on trips.
White Plains – City The City chose to use some federal money to educate some citizens about urban planning and that program helped keep me sane and in an adult world while home with small children. I saw it all as a piece of who I was and wanted the boys to know that and to be encouraged to do volunteer work, too.
What have been your favorite hobbies or pastimes?
Do you have any collections (e.g. stamps, coins, rocks?) a very small collection of crane pictures mostly from Asia. I tried to buy one each trip.
Are there any family heirlooms that have been passed from one generation to another?
My Grandmother Wheat's gold-tipped pen is in the safe-deposit box. Her metal “bank” in the shape of a bank is in the living room. I spent hours assembling and resassembling that as a child.
Have you ever met anyone famous? In high school I went to American Bandstand twice, and once was in the spotlight dance. I met Dick Clark! There's a postcard somewhere from that event. In 2004 I met Wen Jiaboa, the Premier of China.
What major inventions have been developed in your lifetime? The computer.
What scientific or medical discovery in your lifetime has impressed you most? Brain imaging
Have you been actively involved in politics, either as a candidate or campaign supporter?
As you look back do you have any favorite years? What made them so special?
When I was 10 or 12. It was a time of a lot of learning. I knew I was smart, and I sought the privacy of the downstairs bathroom to read.
Is there a time in your life you would like to live over?
YOUR VIEWS AND FEELINGS…
What are some of the best books you have ever read? Middlemarch (George Elliot), Bleak House (Charles Dickens)
What is one of your favorite sayings?
Want what you have; do what you can; be what you are.
What do you think is special or unique about our family?
What do you value most in a friend?
Who are or were your closest friends? How long have you known them and what makes them so special?
Judy and Noel
In times of trouble who or what has helped pull you through?
What issues or causes have you felt strongly about?
What values or religious beliefs do you hold dear?
What major happenings in the world have affected your life most?
What are your feelings about the world today? What concerns you most?
What are your views of our political system?
What is your best advice for you grandchildren?
What are your hopes and dreams for the future?
ABOUT YOUR CHILDREN…
What are your children’s names and when were they born?
Matthew was born March 23, 1971, in North Tarrytown, N.Y at Phelps Memorial Hospital. Jeffrey Yarnall was born on December 19, 1971 in White Plains Hospital.
How did you choose their names? Have any of them been passed down through the family?
Edward was a given middle name for Matthew. For a first name we wanted something distinctive yet traditional and came up with the Biblical name Matthew. Yarnall was my father’s middle name and Grandmother Wheat’s maiden name and an one important in the Wheat genealogy but I learned that he was not fond of the name, even though my mother called him “Yarnall.” He preferred “Bill.” For Jeff’s first name, we’d selected Stephen, Eric, and Jeffrey and tried each one out day after day until we settled on Jeffrey in the end.
What are some of your favorite recollections of your family like when your children were young?
How were your children different from each other when they were little?
In what ways did you raise your children like your parents raised you?
Dad was a “connector”, and so am I, so the boys are, too.
In what ways did you raise them differently? With honesty.
What parts of being a parent have been the difficult or trying for you?
What parts were easiest or most rewarding?
How did you find out that you’d become a grandparent for the first time? How did you feel? Matt phoned me. I was not surprised. I had been hoping they were “trying!
By what names have you been called by your grandchildren?
What have you liked most about being a grandparent?
What are your wishes for your grandchildren? Courage and love.
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS
I recall when Matt and Jeff were both in soccer. I wanted them to be on the same team - it would mean fewer games for me to attend (the efficiency thing!), but Jeff declared that he wanted to "versus" Matt.