 |
| Dad with our snowwoman 1965? (Franklin, Massachusetts) |
 |
| smiling for his granddaughter, Hannah, about 2017 (Brookings, Oregon) |
 |
| Dad, Beth, Kyle, Denise, mom (Brookings) just our brother Scott is missing |
 |
| 80th birthday 14 October 2012 (Brookings) |
 |
| December 2019 (Las Vegas, Nevada) |
Charles Miller JERVIS, Jr
(much of the following is from an interview with him on 4 August 2013 in Harbor, Curry, Oregon)
Mom and dad, technically speaking, lived in Harbor, Oregon, but the post office was Brookings, so we just always called their town Brookings.
Charles “Charlie” Miller JERVIS, Jr is the 2nd son of 2 born to Charles “Curly” Miller JERVIS and Carolie MEIGS
b. 14 October 1932, in Jacksonville, Duval, Florida (which was his father's 47th birthday)
m. 20 December 1956 in Lakeland, Polk, Florida to Barbara Ann MOMINEE/RIDLEBAUGH
d. 9 January 2020 in Las Vegas, Clark, Nevada
Dad had one sibling, an older brother, Joel Russ JERVIS. Dad called his father “Pop” and his mother was “Mom.” Joel's nickname was “Sonny.” Dad said his mom never called him by his only nickname, Charlie, but was the only one to call him Charles—especially when she was mad at him.
When Dad was born, his father, Charles, Sr, was the manager of the Alto Cedro sugar plantation owned by the West Indies Sugar Company, which was the rival company to the United Fruit Company...which company Dad later had a career with in their Chiquita Banana division.
Since grandpa worked on a plantation in Cuba, Dad spent the first 8 years of his life in Cuba. However, Dad was born in Jacksonville because his mother went up there to give birth, but soon they returned to Marcané, Oriente, Cuba (in 1978 the area was split and Marcané is now in Holguin). Soon after Dad was born, his brother, Joel, was sent away to military school at age 8, because "that was the way things were done back then." Therefore, Dad didn't really know Uncle Joel very well while growing up as they spent very little time together. It wasn’t until they were adults that they began to form a relationship.
*************************************************************************
birth announcement for Charles M. JERVIS, Jr, this was probably from an Amityville or Copiague, New York newspaper: An announcement has been received of the birth at Jacksonville, Fla., last Friday, October 14, of a son, to Mr. and Mrs. Charles M. Jervis of Marcane, Cuba. Mr. Jervis is a brother of Mrs. William W. Smith, Union avenue.
*************************************************************************
Memories of Cuba
Dad didn't remember much about Cuba, but said they lived a privileged life with a cook and servants. They often entertained and had formal dinners and rode their horses to have picnics at the river. Dad remembered the Haitian cook, Richard, who made meringue cookies that Dad loved. He said the cook and servants were very nice.
It was so hot during the summer in Cuba that Dad and his mom would spend the 3 summer months in Florida with relatives. For about 4 weeks of those 3 months, Pop would be able to be with them. Dad said he didn't have a nanny while in Cuba, but while in Florida he had a "mammy" named Daisy whom he loved.
I mentioned to Dad that his mom had told me that Dr. Benjamin STRONG (her brother-in-law) had delivered Fidel CASTRO and his brother Raul as their mother worked on a plantation there. Dad wasn't aware of that, but he did know that his father knew Fidel's father, Ángel CASTRO, who was a big land baron in Cuba and Pop hunted on his land. Fidel was illegitimate and ran around naked—that's how Pop remembered him.
Some other memories for my dad were riding horses to the river to swim in the summer. Dad's horse was named Red. Red had thrown dad a few times, so dad didn't really want to ride him...but that would make Pop mad, so Dad rode him anyway. Dad also had a goat cart and goat...and the goat was a mean one. They also had two hunting dogs, Katie and Spot.
As far as schooling went, Dad did start school in Cuba, but he says it wasn't a great education as he only learned to count from 1-100 in Spanish. When he was young, Dad was very proficient in the Spanish language—so much so that his English suffered and he said when he first went to school in the states, he would often answer the teacher in Spanish because it was so much easier for him to speak; however, after living in the states for so many years, he lost most of his Spanish.
Moving to New York
His father became very ill around the time that Dad turned 8, so they left Cuba and went back to the ancestral home in Copiague, Suffolk, New York, which is on the southern side of Long Island. According to Dad, Copiague was a great place to grow up. Back then, it was not built up and they could play after dark with no worries. There was boating, sailing, camping, the bay, and good friends.
Since Dad didn't really have a good start with his schooling in Cuba, when he went to New York, they started him off in kindergarten. He was almost 8, which meant with that late start, he didn't graduate from high school until he was 19.
He said they used to play “Kick the Can” where they would capture people and in order to free the captives, a can had to be kicked...and sometimes they filled the can with rocks so that it would hurt whoever would kick it.
He also played something called “ringolevio” which, it turns out, is a variation of the game tag. He said it got rough.
In his last year of grammar school, he had a chance to play a bit of soccer when a coach found soccer shoes in the equipment room. She formed a soccer team and they played other teams. This only lasted for a few games. Dad wanted to play goalie and in his first game he didn't start out as goalie, but was later put in. He made 4-5 great stops and he even got written up in a Copiague newspaper for his saves. If I remember correctly, he said the first game ended in a tie.
Dad also liked to play baseball. This was back in the day before Little League, so teams would just go around challenging other teams. However, he said the games usually wound up in a fist fight before they were done. No one had enough players to have a right fielder, so if you hit your ball to the right field, it was considered an out. Dad played baseball in high school as well as on the streets.
He played baseball everyday, but football was his favorite to listen to, to watch, and to play. Even when he was very young, he listened to all the football games he could on the radio. When they played, he said they did have helmets and shoulder pads to use and sometimes they would play on the grass strip at the side of their house.
In the Newsday newspaper, Suffolk edition (Melville, New York), dated 8 September 1951, Tuesday, page 68, there is an article about the Amityville High School football team. One part says this:
Likely prospects in the line are the McClure brothers form Ohio, Major and Wendell, weight 175 each; Frank Weisbecker, Skip Miller, Charles Jervis, Dick Huff, Joe Crews, Sharon Foster, and Joe Maclusco.
I found this article about softball leagues in the Nassau Edition (Hempstead, New York) of the Newsday newspaper dated 11 June 1953, Thursday, page 86. He played for the Chatterbox team and, in looking at other articles, his friend Frank Weisbecker was also on his team:
Nash's Cop Pennant
Nash's Tavern (8-1) clinched the first half pennant in the Islip Town League, routing Brentwood legion, 13-4. Manager Jack Cassidy led the home team with three singles in four trips. At Sayville, the Old Stars came from behind to trounce National Dairy, 5-1. Joe Mulderig, who poked a home run and a triple, sent three runs across for the Old Stars.
Charlie Jervis and Jim Conlon both scored three-run homers in a seven-run sixth frame as Chatterbox roared back to dump Amity Service Center, 9-4. ...
He was going to be on the school baseball team in 8th grade, but he wound up breaking his foot, so he couldn’t play. This is when he started taking pictures with his little Brownie camera. Photography was a hobby that would last throughout his life. He said he took a great photo of his friend, Frankie WEISBECKER, sliding into home.
Dad said that in the winter of 1947 there was a terrible snow storm. The snow on the west side of the house was so high that it reached the porch roof. He would jump off the roof into the snow bank.
His parents were very liberal and he didn't have an allowance, but they would give him money for things. He says that system didn't do him much good. He earned money by mowing their lawn. They had a push mower (as everyone did) and he said it was difficult and took hours. He would earn $4-5 each time.
Besides mowing the lawn, he had a few other ways to earn money. He used to go hunting/fishing with an ax for female horseshoe crabs who had eggs. He needed those eggs because he had 100 eel pots that needed bait. He would sell the eels he caught to the Italian Catholics in the area to eat on Fridays since, in those days, Catholics didn't eat meat on Fridays, but ate fish. Dad would sell the eels live or, for more money, already cleaned and ready to cook. He said he had all the business he could handle. He later regretted killing all those horseshoe crabs.
Sometimes he and Frankie would go clamming to get some pocket money for the movies. The little neck clams were harder to find and so they would have earned maybe $4 a bushel for those, but they mostly found what he called chowder clams, which earned them maybe $2.50 a bushel.
Pop's sister, Grace SMITH, lived in Amityville near where the movie theater was located, so when he went to the movies in Amityville, he would bike to his Aunt Grace's house and leave his bike there while he went to the movies.
Dad said they didn't need a lot of money as they made most of their entertainment (instead of buying it). Because of the war, they didn't want to use gas in their boats’ outboard motors, so they mostly sailed or rowed around. They had a little rowboat named “Pepito.” Besides the movies, he did spend some money on baseball and football cards.
High School
The way schooling worked when Dad was a boy was that grammar school went through 8th grade and then it was on to high school—unless you were in Amityville. They actually had a Junior High. Copiague had a grammar school, but they didn't have a high school. You got to choose if you went to Amityville High School or Lindenhurst High School. Since his dad and his brother Joel had gone to Amityville High, Dad chose to go there, too. Uncle Joel and Grandpa had both played football at Amityville High, by the way.
Dad was on what he called the January track. This meant he started his new school year in January. They were actually called A and B and they graduated in January—in 1948 at age 16 from grammar school and in 1952 at age 19 for high school.
Dad really liked high school. He said he wasn't the Big Man on Campus, but just below that status. He was on several sports teams, went to the dances, and dated the cheerleaders.
Despite his small size (only 130 pounds and around 5' 8”), he played football all four years. He was on the freshman baseball team with a 300 batting average, but didn't try out the other years because his friend was on the other team and was 10 times better than dad was. As far as he knew, his father never attended any of his baseball or football games, but his mother did.
He had trouble reading and thought he was dyslexic, though he was never tested. He would put books and articles away waiting for the day when he could read. He couldn't do math in his head, so in class he would figure out ahead which problem would be his so he could solve it before he had to show the class. He said Pop and Joel were readers, but not his mom.
Because of the January start, Dad couldn't wrestle his freshman year as wrestling was a fall sport. He wrestled the other 3 years, though. He often told us that wrestling was the one true sport. In his first varsity match, he had the fastest pin at 1 minute and 17 seconds. He didn't know until after his father died many years later that his father had attended that match.
Dad's best friends in high school were Joe ANDREWS, Johnny WANDELL, and Frank WEISBECKER. Uncle Frankie (and his wife Duane) were lifelong friends and are my sister Denise's godparents.
Dad liked to hunt, fish, and camp. The family owned some land at Gilgo, which is a barrier island on the southern edge of Long Island. It was just 2 or so miles across the bay, and they often went camping there. He hunted ducks for Pop, who liked duck, but Dad didn't like the flavor of duck himself. He later said that he was sorry for every duck he killed.
As far as Gilgo Island goes, Joel inherited the island. The State eventually took over the island...they said back taxes were due, but there weren't any taxes in that day. Dad said the state just wanted it as a wetlands or something, so Joel didn't get anything for it.
Dad had gotten his Life Saver and was able to be a lifeguard at Avalon Beach in between 9th and 10th grades and also was a lifeguard on Gilgo Beach as well. His senior year, he worked at a golf course in Bethpage. They used to have a refreshment stand after the 9th hole and he was able to work there since he was over 18 and therefore was old enough to serve beer to the golfers.
Dad did not get his driver's license until he was 18, even though he could have at age 16. I asked him who taught him to drive and he said no one...you just drove even if you didn't have a license, and every vehicle had a 3-speed manual transmission. He started driving a tractor in Florida on his Uncle Shaw BUCK's lily field at around the age of 12-14. Shaw was married to Dad’s Aunt Lillian “Pickles” (MEIGS) BUCK. Dot MANNING, a good neighbor, took him to take his driving test.
His heroes in high school were the West Point football players Doc Blanchard (the first ever college Junior to win the Heisman trophy) and Glenn Davis, who played during World War II. Dad wanted to go to West Point and play football, too.
He says that his brother Joel, who was a B-51 pilot at the end of World War II, was also a hero of his. Dad wanted to enlist, but his parents wouldn't allow him to. So, while in high school, Dad joined the National Guard in 1950, hoping that they would be federalized and go on active duty. That did not happen, so he spent 3 years 3 months and 16 days in the National Guard driving tanks.
Each summer they drove to upstate New York for an intense few weeks of training. Dad doesn't sound like he liked the experience at all. He wanted out, but if you didn't re-enlist, your name would be sent to the draft board since while you were in the National Guard, you had an exemption from being drafted. They finally released him to go to an out-of-state college. Apparently many guardsmen did that--attend an out-of-state college so they could get out of the National Guard.
Dad was in the ROTC in college, as all men were. It was mandatory the first 2 years, and then after that, it was voluntary if you wanted to be an officer while in college.
When asked what he had wanted to be when he grew up, he answered that he had wanted to be a forest ranger and live in the deep woods in Maine. He also wanted to be a pilot. And in college, he was a journalism major because he wanted to be a sports writer.
After High School
Dad really liked high school, but he didn't want to go to college. He got a job with Republic Aviation. They built P-47 fighter jets during World War II in Farmingdale, New York. Dad's job there was to drill holes for the bolts in the wings of thunder jets. This was frustrating for him as he had to slow down his work and take lots of smoking breaks in order not to work too fast (and make the others look bad). He did that for a year and saw men that were making it their career and decided he didn't want that.
That's when he decided to apply to college, but he decided too late in the year. He wanted to go to the University of Maryland, but by the time he applied, they had already filled all their out-of-state places. He had friends going to Florida Southern College who encouraged him to apply there, so he did. It was July, but he was able to be accepted for the fall term.
Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Polk, Florida
Dad loved high school, but hated college. He says he didn't like it, didn't do well, and didn't care. His fraternity brothers were one thing he liked, however. His fraternity was TKE (Teek), which was the same fraternity (though not chapter, of course) as Ronald Reagan and the original members of the Four Freshmen singing group.
One of the favorite places for the TKE brothers to hang out was Dick's News Bar. Behind the building was a large water tower. Dad said some would get half lit on beer and climb the water tower. One time dad gave it a try, and he got half way up the tower when he realized he didn't want to go up... and he didn't want to go down either. Eventually, somehow, he made it back down without incident.
He was a lifeguard while at FSC. He was not paid a salary, but the money he earned on this job was applied toward his tuition fees.
During college, while home at Christmastime, Dad got a job delivering the mail because the post office hired extra workers for the holiday rush. His mom knew the post mistress and got him the job there. It was dad's first experience with unions. He would be back at noon with what took the other men all day. He even stopped in at his house for lunch since it was near his route, but he still made the others look bad. Just like when he worked at Republic Aviation, he found it frustrating to not be allowed to be efficient. He says he lasted maybe a week before he quit.
Dad asked his mom if he could take flying lessons. He was a bit surprised that she agreed and even paid for the lessons. His teacher was Woody BAXTER. He got his private pilot's license at that time. He was a bit daring with it, too. One of his favorite things to do was to buzz the TKE house early Sunday mornings...his fraternity brothers would have hangovers and he would dive down. People complained to the airport, but that didn't stop him. He also once flew under telephone wires with John PERRINI in the plane with him. He says they were in the county and so it wasn't as dangerous as it might sound. Hmm.
For his commercial pilot's license, Dad first attended classes at Embry Riddle in Miami. He took the classes there, but finished up earning his commercial license by doing the flying portion in Lakeland, Florida.
In the summer of 1953, he taught water skiing on Long Island for Bruce PARKER, a famous water skier.
How My Parents Met
My mom was also attending Florida State College and she worked at the desk at the girl's dorm. In the spring of 1953, when dad went to the girls' dorm because he was dating a redhead named Betsy, he met Mom. He thought she was attractive, but she was going out with someone else. When she broke up with the guy, she went looking for Dad. They had one or two dates, and then Mom got back together with her other boyfriend.
Then on Thanksgiving Day, TKE went to Dick's News Bar in the morning. They then went to have lunch in the cafeteria. Mom went looking for dad at the frat house and wound up going back to Dick's News Bar with him. They started going out. They had an on-again-off-again dating relationship.
At one of the points where it was in the “off again” stage, my mom was living in Mt. Dora, Lake, Florida with her parents. She went back to FSC to visit. At the time my dad was working as a surveyor, but had recently chopped himself in the leg with his machete, so when Mom showed up on campus, he actually was home in his apartment recuperating instead of working. They went out for a drink...and 10 days later on December 20, 1956, they were married. Dad's Best Man was his roommate, Ed LaRue. Mom's Maid of Honor was Winnie Ebertino.
After they married, Dad hoped to get a job as a pilot, but they wouldn't hire a pilot that hadn't been in military service (and of course, he had wanted to be in the military, but his parents hadn't let him join).
The Military (Nov 1957-14 Oct 1959)
Dad was drafted into the Army on November 13, 1957 at Fort Benning, Georgia and was in the 3rd Infantry where he was going to do land surveying for the artillery. He and Mom had been married almost a year at that point. He was at Fort Dix, New Jersey for the first week or two to do paper work and then went to Fort Benning. At first, he was disappointed because he wanted to stay at Fort Dix since it was so close to Copiague, but then it turned out to be a very good thing that he wound up at Fort Benning. Those at Fort Dix wound up going to Korea and if that had been the case, my mom would not have been able to go with him. No wives and families were allowed in Korea. But the group at Fort Benning were going to Germany, which meant Mom could go with him. So what looked bad at first, turned out to be a blessing.
While in Germany, Mom and Dad lived in a little apartment off base. Mom preceded Dad back to the states when she was about 8 months pregnant with my sister, Denise. She stayed with her parents in Florida. When Denise was born on May 28th, 1959, a telegram was sent to him announcing the birth, only he didn't know if he had a daughter or a son as the telegram congratulated him on his new daughter, Dennis.
While mom was in the states and Dad was still in Germany, he won a few marksman awards with his outfit. We still have the medals he was given.
Apparently, after his first stint in the army, he was prepared to sign up again because they had told him that he could be a pilot. The paperwork was in the works and he was going to re-enlist when they told him that he would not be able to fly. He was very disappointed and did not re-enlist.
Back in the States
After Dad got back from Germany, they moved to Paradise Island in New York where dad pumped gas at a marina. I don't think he got paid much, but they got to live on the island and dad could water ski whenever he was free. He also said he wasn't too far from his parents, so he liked that.
When dad was working on Paradise Island, he unexpectedly had to go home to Copiague for something. He talked to Pop that Sunday, January 22nd, 1961, for just a few minutes. It was a nice, brief visit. Then, the next day, on Monday January 23rd, 1961, they got the call on the CB radio (since Paradise Island didn't have any phones, they used a radio to communicate) saying that his father had just passed away. He was glad that he had been able to see his dad one last time.
That October, Dad got a job with Chiquita Bananas, a division of the United Fruit Company. I was born two months later on December 7th, while they were still living in Copiague with Dad's mother. Dad worked his way up in the sales division (selling bananas to produce managers at different stores) until he retired in 1993 as an assistant Vice President in charge of sales.
In the beginning, he was often transferred. Dad said he was told that he could stay where he was or be promoted and be transferred to another office. He would take the transfer. At first, they lived in Copiague. His job then took him to Buffalo, New York (where Scott was born March 7th, 1963), followed by Columbus, Ohio, and then somewhere near Baltimore, Maryland, followed by Marlton, New Jersey.
Next we lived in Franklin, Massachusetts with Dad commuting to Boston. Denise and I used to love going with Mom to pick Dad up from the train station after work. After 5 years in Franklin, Dad said that it looked like he was going to be staying in the Boston office for a while, so, my parents chose to move again--this time to the coast of Massachusetts, and we wound up in Scituate, Massachusetts in 1971. Kyle was born there on June 8th, 1974, just before we moved again.
Metairie, Jefferson, Louisiana was next (1974-1980), and then they went up to New City, New York, where he was working in the Montvale, New Jersey office. This is where he was working and living when he retired on 1 December 1992. They paid him partial pay for 2 years till social security kicked in. His income went from $90,000 when working to $55,000 on partial pay.
His memories of other family members
“Pop”
Dad said the best year with his dad was his last year when he was ill and not well. He had stopped drinking in the last year of his life, which might be why Dad thought it was his best year. When he was drinking, he was not nice. Dad said Pop was a great father before he got sick, so Joel had a “different” father than Dad did.
Pop loved my mother, Barbara, and my sister, Denise.
Pop taught Dad how to sail, fish, and shoot clay pigeons (though Dad said he wasn't very good at it). Pop was very intelligent. His parents taught him how to read when he was 4 so he would have something to do.
Pop was old school. He believed that if you gave your word, you'd better do it. He was very honest and highly principled. “He was special, but difficult.” He was very stern and didn't give love. He didn't hug and dad doesn't think his dad ever told him that he loved him.
“Mom”
Dad's mom was the buffer between my dad and my grandfather. He remembers that when he was about 10, he had airplanes on the wallpaper in his bedroom and someone had given him some darts. Well, he somehow came up with the thought that it would be a good idea to throw darts at the planes. This was in the days before drywall and walls were plaster. He wound up with a bunch of holes in his wall with the plaster hanging down. His mom saw that and, in order to “save” his life, got a bunch of posters and banners and covered the holes, so grandpa didn't see it.
My grandmother LOVED Christmas and was really into traditions, like lighting a bayberry candle on Christmas Eve at sunset and letting it burn all the way down to bring good luck in the coming year (a New England tradition). My sister and I still carry on this tradition. Grandma was a very good ukulele player and Dad thought she had a pretty good singing voice, too. (I do remember her singing to us a lot when we were little and barely remember her playing the ukulele for us once or twice). One of her friends was even a professional ukulele player.
She was very intelligent. She played bridge and was so good at it that she was a “master” and taught it. She was also an excellent golfer. She was wonderful and tough, though not perfect. She went to all of Dad's football games.
His Grandma and Grandpa Jervis (Joshua Purdy and Mary Jane (MILLER) JERVIS)
Dad had fond memories of the bungalow on a creek in Copiague that his Grandma (Mary Jane MILLER) and Grandpa (Joshua Purdy JERVIS) owned. He said it had screened porches and when the wind really blew it made quite a sound. It was left to his dad and his dad's cousin, Scudder SMITH. They later sold it. Joshua used to poke my dad and Mary would tell him to stop bugging dad. Dad loved it.
Aunts and Uncles
At the time of Dad's birth, his Aunt Edna Marie (MEIGS) STRONG and his Uncle, Dr. Benjamin STRONG, worked nearby at the Preston Sugar Plant in Cuba which was owned by the United Fruit Company. Dad liked their daughters, his cousins, little Edna and Betty STRONG.
Shaw BUCK was married to one of dad's favorite aunts, Aunt Pickles (Lillian Russ (MEIGS) SHAW). Shaw was in the baseball minor leagues playing for a AA team and also on C and D teams (I didn't even know they had those levels). Then he coached high school football and baseball. He was an excellent coach and there were coaches that tried to recruit him to coach for them, but he would never leave Groveland. He was also very religious and was a Sunday School teacher at his church.
Dad was close to “Mommy Dot” in Florida (his Aunt Dorothy (MEIGS) PERRY) and liked his Uncle Tom ALSOBROOK (married to his aunt Kate--Catherine Clyde (MEIGS) ALSOBROOK).
Likes, Dislikes, and Miscellaneous
Dad liked a lot of different kinds of books. He called his taste in books "eclectic." He had too many favorites to really mention, but he loved Mark Twain and Jane Austen especially. He also liked Maeve Binchy and Joseph Conrad. He liked the poems of Robert Service (“The Shooting of Dan McGrew”), too.
His favorite car was a Porsche Speedster or Spider...the old 54, the bathtub Porsche. He also really liked the Mercedes Benz 300 SL where the doors open up.
He loved veal scallopini and veal marsala and also fried scallops (but they had to be sea scallops and not bay scallops as sea scallops were so much larger). For dessert, he loved lemon meringue pie. Whenever Mrs. Dorman, who was their neighbor Dot Manning's mother, would make lemon meringue pies, she would make an extra one and bring it to Dad. He also really loved key lime pie and flan. He learned to love key lime pie when he was working as a busboy/waiter/dishwasher in a seafood restaurant near Miami when he was going to Embry Riddle for his commercial pilot's license.
He hated green beans of all varieties and recipes. That would be his worst food. He also hated liver (but his mom loved liver).
The craziest thing he says he's eaten is escargot. When he worked on Paradise Island, the owner of the island, Bruno Rasputi (who had 2 partners Harold Manning and ?), took him out to dinner and Bruno ordered escargot and my dad tried it and loved it.
Dad's favorite place was "where salt water is." He missed it when he was away from it. He liked water of any kind, however, and enjoyed rivers, lakes, streams, and mountains, but the ocean was his favorite. He really liked solitude.
He had traveled all across Canada and really loved it there (Montreal, Toronto, Quebec, British Columbia, and the Klondike). As part of his job for Chiquita, he traveled to Honduras and to Belize—back when it was called British Honduras. While stationed in Germany, he traveled to Austria and Italy. He loved skiing in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. He had been to all but about 8 states.
Dad's dream vacation would have been to go to New Zealand. He would also have liked to have returned to Germany or Alaska.
At age 80, he said his hobbies were reading, flying radio controlled airplanes, and photography. In the past he had also enjoyed golfing, playing softball, fishing, hunting, camping, flying, and gliding.
He wanted to try paragliding and parachuting. He was able to parachute once, on his 70th birthday, and really enjoyed it.
Other things on his bucket list included seeing the Grand Canyon, taking a sleeper train across Canada, and taking a cruise.
The superpower he wanted to possess was the ability to fly. His second choice would have been to be invisible.
He said if he could be any famous person for a day, he would have chosen someone who was a famous singer, like Elvis or Frank Sinatra. Singing would have been his first choice, but he said being an entertainer or musician would be OK, too.
In the months before his death, he had been practicing the ukulele hoping to someday play a duet with his only granddaughter, Hannah PERAZZO.
Some of my memories of dad while I was growing up:
After work, he would sit in his recliner with his white-socked feet up, reading the newspaper, eating Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies out of the package while watching tv.
Another great memory for me was when Deni and I would watch football and hockey with him (NY Giants and NY Rangers were his teams, of course). He would patiently explain the rules to us. We did not watch baseball with him, but Denise tells me that he was a Yankees fan and even knew the manager, Billy Martin. In Franklin, dad took a bed sheet and hung it out the window after the Rangers had won a game. He had written on it something like "The Bruins are done. The Rangers are #1." While we were away from home one day, someone came and ... took it down or damaged it or something. Dad was quite angry.
Besides watching some sports with him, there are also some tv shows that I would watch with him. Ellery Queen (with Jim Hutton) only lasted one season, but I really associate that with dad. We also watched some Star Trek: The Original Series, M*A*S*H, and some of the "Saturday Night Mystery" series on NBC which included Columbo, McMillan and Wife, and Banacek.
He didn't like to play games much. He played some Trivial Pursuit and Pente and Yahtzee when we were teenagers. In later years, when we would visit with our kids, we would be able to force him to play Yahtzee one time each visit. That was later replaced by the card game 3 to 13, which he really seemed to enjoy playing as he would actually play it more than just once a visit.
No comments:
Post a Comment