Chapter Eighteen

 

BROTHERS

 

Ed and Rich, A Summary

 

 

          Brothers Edward and Richard were senior to me by nearly three years and by eighteen months respectively, which does not signify much at the present time but it made a whale of a difference back on the farm in 1927.  Sometimes the youngest boy felt much put upon by being denied activities that they enjoyed.  On the other hand he was supported and rescued from trouble on enough occasions to recognize the advantages of having older, stronger siblings.

 

          The difference in ages between Edward and me was significant; having skipped a year, he had already graduated from high school by the time I entered, a circumstance that prevailed during our years at the University of Vermont.

 

          Our intimate contacts were on the farm, infrequent family visits, and meetings during the wars at various Army installations.  We met occasionally in Vermont when our visits to relatives coincided.  Edward visited us several times while I was stationed in Pennsylvania and again in Yokohama and the Pentagon.

 

          We did share a common interest while together on the farm: baseball.  We used to throw the ball back and forth in the yard and he taught me to throw a curve.  Essentially, though, he had his own older crowd and girlfriends and I felt very much his junior.

 

          Ed graduated from the University of Vermont in 1937.  His first job was as an investigator for Metropolitan Life Insurance.

 

          Ed enlisted for World War II, was commissioned and served in the Artillery Corps.  After the war he was employed in Boston where he met his future wife, a librarian, and they were married there in 1948.

 

          Edward and his wife bought property in Tavares, Florida, and started a restaurant there.  My father and mother joined them to help manage the restaurant while Edward taught school in the area for several years.

 

          Later they would move to Charlemont, Massachusetts, where again he taught high school classes.

 

          Edward kept his National Guard affiliation and was active during the Korean conflict and visited us in Yokohama en route to Korea after my stint there.

 

          He bought property in the village of Johnson, Vermont, during the time he was principal there.  He sold a portion of it and retained eight acres intending to build a summer home and raise Christmas trees.  During this period he purchased a home in Essex, Vermont, while employed as Dean of Academic Affairs, Champlain College in Burlington.

 

          It was during this period that I really became reacquainted with my oldest brother and his family.  We had both taken up the game of golf in mid-life and would play at every opportunity.  As our families became reacquainted we played different courses and developed a camaraderie that was joyful to us both.

 

          Edward had two problems that affected his health.  He smoked cigarettes incessantly and he drank -- not excessively -- but to a degree that could not have been helpful to his physical being.

 

          Clearing land one day on his Johnson property, he apparently felt tired and sat to rest with his back against a tree.  A fisherman walked by, saw Edward, and thought little of it.  When he returned, Edward was still there so he examined him and found his heart had stopped.     He was fifty-eight.    He left his wife, Marian, and three sons. 

 

          As a youngster, I had thought Ed the quickest and brightest of us all.  His success in the Academic world as high school principal and college administrator -- and as a wartime military officer -- seemed to confirm our expectations.  But I sometimes think they did not meet his.

 

          I was far away when told of his sudden death and have wished many times to have been in Vermont, for he was my big brother who gave me protection and kind words long ago, now gone prematurely, and I would have wanted to say thanks and goodbye.

 

~ * ~

 

          Brother Richard is very much with us and living in Vermont.  His voice and activities are represented in "Life on the Farm" (Chapter Eight), "The Model T" (Chapter Ten), and "Ol' Mitch" (Chapter Fifteen).  Also, his help has made it possible for me to complete the short summary on brother Edward and others representing the New Haven scene.  A reader knows quite a bit about him already.

 

          Being nearer in age than with Edward, I remember that Rich and I were closer in spirit.  We ate and slept together, rode the school cart together, worked and played and shared friends.  We experienced a greater empathy, I believe, than with Edward.  Not forgetting, of course, that I was still the younger brother and kept mindful of that.

 

          At the end of our school days and the breaking up of the farm family, we were individually separated, and circumstances and career paths thereafter made reunions and renewal of brotherly affections difficult.

 

          Rich had from the first a passion for the automotive and the mechanical for which he had exceptional talents.  Though he would gain expertise in other things during his life and augment his income thereby, his lasting affections have been for things automotive.

 

          I, on the other hand, pursued interests and passions in music and education which took me on a different course, as did my military tours.  The result has been that though we visited with him from time to time in Vermont, we did not really regain brotherly insights until after his move to Charlotte and his building of the homes there.

 

          During our high school years Rich worked part-time for the Shermans, on the next farm, and for the Enos above Brown's Hill.  At sixteen he obtained his driver's license and went down to Dummerston, Vermont to help out his grandfather Goulette on the Bunker estate.

 

          At eighteen, feeling he saw an opportunity to earn better money, he got a job in Bellows Falls hauling freight for Gay's Express Co.

 

          He married Lina White in 1949, a marriage that endured for 47 years until she died of cancer in 1996.

 

          Rich worked at other interim jobs but his true love and talent was automotive so he returned to Burlington in 1937 and enrolled in an auto body school, followed by several years in that trade until enlisting in the U.S. Army Artillery in 1941.

 

          Rich was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked and his unit fired on Japanese aircraft.  As a member of the armed forces there on that day he is identified by a special Pearl Harbor number plate on his car, awarded by the Vermont legislature.

 

          On his return after the war and between stints in familiar Florida territory, he opened up body shops for Ford and Studebaker agencies in Burlington.

 

          In 1949 Rich bought property in Charlotte and over the course of years has built three dwellings there, two of which he subsequently sold.

 

          In the early 50s the body shop was taking its physical toll and Rich bought a school bus which he drove for the school district for 26 years.  Feeling too much idle time, he went to barber school and set up a shop in one of his properties in Charlotte, eventually hiring an assistant to keep the shop open while running the school bus.

 

          He sold the school bus but could not tolerate idleness for long and went to work for the Middlebury School District where he remained for seven years.  I accompanied him there on several occasions and perceived their real affection for him and heard their praise for the economies he had provided for their automotive fleet.

 

          In between other activities Richard and Edna Hicks, his current wife, responded to the needs of the Shelburne Museum for seasonal help and have worked part-time there for over seven years.  This summer in the year 2003, Rich, at 86 years, spent two or three days a week there.  It is my personal belief that he is valued there for tourist appeal and verbal expressions and, like his father, telling stories to unsuspecting strangers that are almost true.

 

          My wife Betty and I have returned to Vermont annually the last few years.  Rich and I sometimes take a little jaunt down to New Haven, look over "The Street" and Beech Hill and reminisce.    He and Edna have come to California and toured the wineries, the mountains and "gold country" with us while we conversationally fill a communication gap of over thirty years.

 

          He has been of inestimable help in this writing venture.  His memory for detail is phenomenal and I am constantly on the phone to confirm things I think I remember.    Tomorrow I shall undoubtedly be on the phone again.