Category Archives: memories

books, memories, miscellaneous, Mom

Library Memories, Part 1: childhood and teen years

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The Elmwood Ave. Branch of the Providence Public Library, in a recent picture on Google Earth. Just as I remember it.

Right now, say for the last three years, I’ve spent a fair amount of time in libraries. I met our pastor for coffee from time to time in the Bentonville Public Library. The writing groups I’m in meet in libraries, either the Rogers Public Library or the Bella Vista Public Library. So four times a month on average I’m in a library. That’s not a lot, but it got me to thinking about libraries I’ve been in and memories I have with them.

Growing up in Cranston, Rhode Island, you would expect me to have memories of libraries there, but I have none. I don’t think we ever went to public libraries in Cranston. They were a little too far to walk, there were no convenient bus routes, Mom didn’t drive much, and Dad didn’t take us, so for whatever reason we weren’t library patrons in our hometown. In my adult years, when visiting the hometown, we took our kids to Cranston Public Library—in a building that wasn’t there when I grew up—when we were home visiting Dad.

I don’t think our elementary school had a library, and I have almost no memories of a library at my junior high school. I know there was one there, and I used it, but don’t remember it. But I remember our high school library. I wasn’t in it too often, but was some. One main memory I have was a date in the library. I was talking with my sister’s best friend, two years older than me, about how I had never had matzoh (she’s Jewish). So she said she would bring some to school and share it with me. This was my sophomore, her senior year. We agreed to meet in the library a half hour before school on a certain day. We sat at one of the tables off in a corner, ate matzoh and shared pleasant conversation.

A recent photo of the main branch of Providence Public Library. Again, just as I remember it from the outside, though its neighborhood looks a little different.

You say that’s not much of a date, and you’re right. But, hey, went you had as few dates as I did (4 total in 9th through 12th grades, only 3 if you don’t count the matzoh date), you count everything you can as a date.

But, strangely enough, I have many more memories of public libraries in Providence, Rhode Island. I remember it was in 8th grade, after Mom had died. I had a history research and report assignment. Whatever library was in junior high didn’t have books that helped me. So I got Dad’s permission to hop on the bus and ride to the Elmwood Ave. Branch of PPL. We lived four house lots off of Reservoir Ave., right on a bus stop. The bus also stopped right in front of the Elmwood branch. You had to cross Reservoir twice on foot, but I think we had some traffic signals not far away.

So I did that. It must have been around wintertime, because I remember it was dark. I crossed Reservoir, caught the bus, rode it toward downtown Providence, got off at Elmwood branch, crossed Reservoir again, and entered a world of books. I still have some idea of the layout, of going to the history books and finding ten books that were suitable for the report. I spent an hour or more reading and taking notes (I didn’t have check-out privileges at PPL). I listed all ten books. Then I went home by bus. This probably happened from around 7 to 9 p.m. If memory serves me correctly, I did this a second time for this report.

As a side note, I listed all ten books in the bibliography of my report, even though I really only used two of them in writing the report. I remember I got an A on the report, and the teacher wrote, “Great bibliography!”

I may be unclear about one part of this. When Mom died in August 1965, Dad’s shift at ProJo ran from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m, usually with an hour or two of overtime. At some point they moved him to a 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. shift, usually with two hours of overtime. If his change of shift happened after my 8th grade year, it’s possible that Dad drove me to the library as he went to work, and I took the bus home. No matter.

When I got to high school, the Elmwood branch seemed inadequate, I guess, because I took the bus to the main PPL in downtown Providence and did research there. I remember it was closed stack when I first started doing this and open stack by the time I graduated high school. You wasted a lot of time waiting for someone to find the books you needed and bring them to you. The open stack shifted the searching function to you. It still took time, but at least you could look at other, nearby books once you found the one you wanted.

I probably went to PPL Main Branch between five and ten times per school year. I kind of remember the layout. In fact, I remembered where both the Main branch and Elmwood branch were and found them easily on Google Earth. They are still in the same buildings and look the same as I remember them. I suspect, of course, that the insides are much changed, as technology updates have surely been made. No more card catalogue. Yes, that’s how I found those history books at Elmwood: looking in the card catalogue, finding one book that sounded good, finding that shelf, and see a great treasure before me spread out left and right, up and down.

I hope my grandchildren will have equally fond memories of libraries. I try to take them our ours whenever they visit, and to theirs whenever I visit them. We have a sizable library of books in our own home—as they do in theirs—but it’s not quite the same.

And, before some of you express being aghast at a 13 or 14 year old boy taking the bus in Providence, Rhode Island unaccompanied by an adult, after dark, all I can say is it was a different world and a different city then. And greatly different family circumstances that required it.

memories, miscellaneous

Changes in the Old Neighborhood

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This was our house. Note the magnolia tree on the left. It’s twice as big as it was when we lived there. It seems to be marked for preservation.

One day a couple of weeks ago, Lynda and I were in Bentonville, we decided to drive out by our old home on NE “J” Street. A ranch home on 7 acres, we sold that in 2002 and moved to Bella Vista. We have rarely driven by the old house over the years, and it had been several years since the last time. So we were ready to see how it had changed.

To our surprise, we saw it had been demolished! Yes, the home we lived in from 1991 to early 2002 was a pile of rubble. We were so shocked that we didn’t think to pull off and stop. Plus, it was starting to get dark.  Therefore, we went by it again a day ago. A trackhoe was in the process of loading the rubble into a dump truck. What we hadn’t seen before, the house to the south of ours was also gone. The house to the north of us was still there, but appeared to be vacant. What was going on?

We pulled into the driveway to the back five acres the owners after us had put in. We also drove back to the house on the back acreage and discovered that the house back there was gone. Four houses on 21 acres of land. What was going on?

Another house used to be across the field behind the row of pine trees, which were planted just before we moved to this house in 1991.

Looking at the County GIS site, 14 of those acres are owned by what appears to be a land developer. It appears it’s going to become a subdivision. Or could it be going to condominiums or townhouses? A sign for a public hearing was laying on the ground. Possibly I’ll contact the City and see what it’s going to be. Or, perhaps I can just go to a website.

But do I really care that much? Well, this was the house our children spent the most time at before they hit adulthood. They both went on to college while living at this house. They’ll get to see it when they are here before the end of the year. So yes, I do care. The house was built in 1970. So it’s only a little over 50 years old. The house I grew up in in Cranston RI was built in 1919, and it’s still there, still occupied and, last time I saw it, in 2015, was changed only in color and loss of the front evergreens.

But that was a stable neighborhood whereas Bentonville is a rapidly growing city. The property backs up to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The 5 acre parcel two lots to the north is now owned by Crystal Bridges, and the large house at the back of it appears to be an office of some kind.

Not only is the neighborhood changing, the world is changing very fast around me. The culture is changing. I’ve kind of purposely absented myself from the current culture, such things as the music. Nowhere is that more evident than the music sung in church for Christmas. So different than what we sang until just a few years ago.

There’s not much about modern music I like, though I suppose without partaking of it I have no basis for saying that.

I think I’m rambling now. The house is gone, and the culture I loved is mostly gone. The world moves on and changes just like the neighborhood did.

Forgive my ramblings. It’s kind of hard to see the house you used to live in now being a pile of rubble being loaded onto a dump truck.

Christmas, memories

A Christmas Memory: When our kids were young

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I don’t think this was a Christmas photo of Dad and his four grandkids, but it’s a good one.

Most of the Christmas memories I’ve posted had to do with my childhood years and how the family I grew up in celebrated Christmas. A day or two ago, I came upon another memory, but from the time when our children were young.

It was either 1983 or 1984. In ’83, we were newly home from Saudi Arabia. We flew into the US around Dec 15, left our kids with my dad in Cranston, RI, and flew to Asheboro, NC to house hunt in advance of our move there. Lynda flew back to RI Dec 23, and me on Dec 24, if I remember correctly. Christmas that year was celebrated at my brother’s house in Snug Harbor. Our sister, Norma, flew in Christmas morning, surprising all but my brother.

Or, it might have been in 1984. That year we drove from NC to RI for Christmas. I don’t remember if Norma came that year, but the rest of the party and the location was the same. Looking back at the age of the kids, it’s hard to tell which year it was. I believe that beginning in 1985 we stayed in NC for Christmas, so it had to have been 83 or 84.

Our two kids and my brother’s two boys put on a “pageant” for the adults, I think before Christmas supper, which would have been early evening. As I recall, our son Charles was the instigator/organizer of it. The pageant was merely singing Christmas songs, the more common ones that the kids knew. But the highlight was the opening. The children came out, oldest to youngest, and introduced themselves. It went like this.

Edward said, “I’m Mr. Todd.”

Charles said, “I’m Mr. Todd.”

Christopher said, “I’m Mr. Todd.”

Sara said, “I’m Mrs. Todd.”

I remember Dad looking in anticipation as to how Sara would introduce herself, and she said Mrs. instead of Miss, causing great laughter in the adults.

The pageant was good. The kids forgot the words to the songs, or sang the wrong song, or the wrong combination of kids came out from the bedroom—which served as the offstage—to the living room to sing. At one point Charles became frustrated with something that went wrong, or someone who didn’t come on stage when they were supposed to, and Charles blurted out, “We can’t get a d——d thing done!” Again, causing much laughter.

Later in the evening, after dinner, the kids got a little boisterous. I remember my nephews’ older cousin, John, was also there. Dad got tired of the noise, or pretended to get tired of the noise. My dad was a naturally kind-hearted soul who put on a pretense of being gruff most of the time, especially with his four grandkids. The noise got to the point where he said, loudly and gruffly, “All right, you boys. Out to the sun porch for ten minutes of silence!”

The four boys dutifully followed Dad from the kitchen, where they had been cutting up, through the living room to the sunroom. The boys showed no excitement. But there, behind the boys, was little Sara, also going out to the sunroom for “ten minutes of silence.” She had an excited look on her face and was obviously looking forward to what she thought would be a fun time.

As I recall, silence reigned in the house for the next ten minutes, excepting for whatever conversation the other adults were engaged in. The kids obeyed their grandfather (the cousin also obeying).

Anyhow, that’s the memory. Nothing special in a way, but very special in other ways. I tried to get my grandkids to do five minutes of silence out in the sunroom one year. It didn’t work. But Dad got the job done.

letters, memories, Writing

Losing Track of Days

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As an exercise, I gathered all my 2011 outgoing and incoming letters (most were via e-mail) into a correspondence book and “published” it to Amazon. Here’s a photo of it. 559 pages. Of course, it can never be truly published like this because I don’t own the copyright of the incoming letters.

It’s Friday, my normal blog posting day. I try to write my blog posts the day before and schedule them to post on Friday and Monday at 7:30 a.m. Yet here it is, 10:45 a.m., and I just realized I hadn’t yet done a blog post. This one was to have been another in the climate change series, but I’m not ready for it. So I’ll have to settle with a fill-in post.

Today, my time has been taken up by busyness. I was up around 6:30 a.m. and out working in the woodlot by 6:45. I began moving cut branches and deadfall down the hill to a brush pile closer to the back of the lot. I also did more work on breaking down the brush pile near the front of the lot and moving it to the two piles near the rear. Lynda asked me to do this since the front pile was an eyesore from the street. She is right. Working on and off on it since spring, a 7-foot pile is now down to a foot and a half. The end is in sight.

After the brush pile, I did a little trimming of blackberry bushes and removal of weeds I sprayed a couple of days ago.

Back in the house, I took coffee and computer to The Dungeon. Devotionals complete, I was ready to begin my work shortly before 8:00 a.m. Friday is my biggest day for stock trading, so I had work to do to get ready for the market open at 8:30. I made seven trades and updated my spreadsheet and charts to reflect the trades.

Then it was on to writing, except my writing is somewhat shoved aside of late. Instead, I’m scanning old letters, converting them into Word files, then discarding the originals. Perhaps I need to explain.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I got into the habit of printing off e-mails and discarding the originals. What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking ahead to the day when I would want to reduce the amount of my physical possessions, looking further ahead to the need to downsize as age took hold. Now here I am, with notebooks of printed e-mails (and a few handwritten or typed letters received in snail mail). Since I want to keep a record of my correspondence, I don’t want to throw them out.

I was transcribing some letters, mainly those in my genealogy research notebooks. I save each letter as a Word document in a nice and neat filing system with consistent document names. Then I throw away the printout.

My current goal is to get rid of 10 letters a day. I’m making progress at that rate. One more day and I’m done with 2002. Only three days more and I’ll be done with 2003. Most of what I’m doing now is with the scanner function on my printer. Scan the doc, pull it into Word, save it as a .docx file in the right place with the right name, correct formatting and scanner errors, and move on to the next one.

At this rate, I have no idea how long this will take. And I’m not sure I can sustain this rate and write too. The scanning and formatting of 10 printouts takes close to an hour. By that time, my mind is not on writing, and I’ve not been able to do much of that. Perhaps I need to reverse the order: get an hour or two of writing in then switch to scanning/transcribing. I’ll have to think about that.

I also did this with e-mails on my computer. I had emails saved going back to 2005, ever since I switched to Yahoo as my e-mail program. In the evening, while watching TV, I multi-tasked by saving the emails to Word files in the right place. At first I didn’t name them as well as I should have, and may have to go back—also as an evening, multi-tasking activity—and rename a number of files. All in good time.

Why this obsession with my correspondence? My love of reading letters has, I supposed, caused me to have the illusion that someone, someday, will want to read my correspondence. I realize the chances of that happening are pretty slim. But, if anyone ever wants to collect my correspondence and read it, they will find I’ve done most of the work for them.

How long will I do this? I don’t know. The notebook I’m currently working on covered 2001-2004. I finished 2001, and in less than a week will be done with the next two years. 2004 will take a little longer, probably to the end of August or even into September. After that, I may take a break from this work and get back to productive writing. The letter notebooks will be there for a later time.

Now, maybe I can keep track of the weekend days ahead, and have a better blog post on Monday.

America, family, History, memories

Disaccumulation Is Hard: Finding a Home for the “Stars & Stripes”

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Dad’s headline in the VE edition, Marseilles, France.

Dateline 26 July 2022

The day is surely coming when we will sell this big house and downsize into something smaller. Dis-accumulation is in progress. The next big item to go will be my collection of Stars & Stripes newspapers from World War 2.

It’s a lot of newspapers. Maybe as many as 200-300. I haven’t yet counted them.

The collection is mainly newspapers that my dad, Norman V. Todd, set type on as a G.I. during WW2 in Africa and Europe. Dad gave them to be in 1990 and I brought them home in 1997. There they sat. Twenty-five years and I’ve done nothing with them. I had such plans to read them, research them, and come to a better understanding of that war from the perspective of the men fighting it. Alas, that never happened.

I always thought these would be good to research the “fog of war”. How much printed as the war was in progress would be found to be inaccurate or untrue under the scrutiny of history?

Seven years ago I arranged to donate them to the World War 2 museum in Natick, Massachusetts. My first trip to RI since making that arrangement is coming up next month. I e-mailed the museum to confirm they still wanted them. Not receiving an e-mail in response, I called them this morning. The phone was not in service. A quick check on-line revealed that the museum closed in 2019. Bummer.

A wartime portrait, probably 1944. HIs “Stars & Stripes” insignia shows.

I’ll make this story a short one. Where could I donate them? Or was this a sign I should keep them, do that research that eluded me? I had already checked with the big WW2 museum in New Orleans, and they said they didn’t want any S&S. I checked with the S&S seven years ago, and it seems they didn’t need them.

I thought of three possible places: the University of Rhode Island, which has a special collections center at the university library; the University of Chicago, where our son works; and the Newberry Library in Chicago, an independent research library.  This morning I reached out to all three.

The University of Rhode Island got back to me first, and said they would be happy to take the collection. They often have students researching WW2, and this seems to be of value to them.

The trunk is a family heirloom. At least it will stay in the family for another generation, maybe two.

So the deal is complete. Next month these newspapers will find a new home. From 1943 to 1945, they went from Africa, Italy, and France to East Providence, then to Providence. Then in 1950 to Cranston. Then in 1997 to Bentonville Arkansas. Then in 2002 to Bella Vista Arkansas. All this time they have been in a steamer trunk that my grandfather, Oscar Todd, brought with him when he emigrated to the USA in 1910. The trunk will soon be at a different home in a cousin’s family, and the newspapers will be in Kingston RI.

In some ways, this feels like a betrayal, not to keep them in the family. I’m trying to look at it as solidifying Dad’s legacy in a permanent way, but it’s hard to do, and I’ve shed more than a few tears this afternoon on the realization that this piece of Dad will soon be gone.

Ah, well, when Dad first showed me them in 1990 (I had wondered, as a kid, what those trunks in the basement held; I learned then what filled one of them), he said he hadn’t looked at them since that trunk went into the basement in 1950. If they will now be in a place where maybe someone will make good use of them, where they will be protected and preserved, I guess that’s a better outcome. And my children won’t need to make a hard decision one day.

Christianity, family, memories

100 Years of Life-Giving Community

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A century of life-giving community completed, ready and looking ahead to the next.

Last weekend, over a year and a half of work came to fruition as our church celebrated its Centennial. Actually, it was our 101st anniversary on July 8. We delayed the celebration a year due to a combination of the pandemic and adjacent construction.

We didn’t sell out of the book, but we sold a lot.

I joined the centennial committee in November 2020 at the request of our pastor, mainly to write the church history. But I got involved in other activities. Brainstorming. Planning. Seeking people whose ancestors had roots in the church. The history was written, printed, and issued for sale on May 22nd.

We did the setup for the Sunday banquet on Thursday. I found out then that the special choir for the Sunday service had some people drop out, and the director asked if I had choir experience. I decided I had just enough experience to help them out. One more thing added.

It’s always good to catch your daughter in a candid shot.

The activities started midday Friday with a ribbon cutting ceremony for our re-established food insecurity ministry, reopened in recently constructed quarters and now called the Community Table. The Chamber of Commerce ran this event. I enjoyed finally seeing the building and how the ministry is stocked and managed.

Friday afternoon our daughter, son-in-law, and four grandkids came for the weekend. By that time I was more or less exhausted, so we had a nice meal out for supper. Meetings and events remained.

Good worship with music mostly unfamiliar to me. Lots of energy.

Saturday morning was choir rehearsal. It was kind of nice to sing after a 25-year hiatus from choir. Saturday afternoon was a concert by Remedy, a band from Southern Nazarene University that included two college students from our congregation. It wasn’t my type of music, but the Holy Spirit was present, and worship happened. This took place in our newly constructed space for youth and Hispanic ministries.

David and Pranathi, among the many who helped out.

Sunday was the big day. Choir rehearsal at 9 a.m. To help with transportation (transporting 8 people in two vehicles, our daughter volunteered to sing with the choir and came with me. We were done by 9:45. That gave me time to greet visitors, signed books and helped direct people, especially to Centennial Hall.

Many visited the diorama in “Centennial Hall”.

The service was magnificent. It included special music from the Mitchell family, the choir number with two soloists and great live backing music. We *nailed* the choir special. I was thankful for the strong tenor from the Mitchell family being next to me. There was a time for introducing some out-of-town visitors who attended because of their family connection to the church. And we had a wonderful, apt message from Dr. Jesse Middendorf, former General Superintendent of the denomination.

Dr. Mark Lindstrom, our former pastor/now district superintendent, brings greetings.

Immediately after the service, we had a congregational photo taken in our new sanctuary. Then it was to the gymnasium for a BBQ lunch, with the Mitchell family. We had nearly 300 people for that.

Dr. Middendorf brought the Centennial message.

The final event of the weekend was the dedication of the youth/Hispanic worship space. It turned out to be a 45 minute service, with music in Spanish, responsive readings, scripture readings, the actual dedication, and brief messages from our pastor, district superintendent, and Dr. Middendorf.

They opened the Community Table for anyone who wanted to go through it, and our daughter and granddaughter did (the rest of the family having gone home). We got away at 2:45 pm, a full day.

The final congregational song.

All in all it was a great weekend. Bentonville Community Church of the Nazarene is 101 years old. We actually spent more time looking forward rather than backwards. That was an emphasis I tried to put in the history book as well, making it a Centennial book rather than a strictly history book.

Some of the family had gone home before we thought of the photo booth. And don’t give me grief about not smiling—that IS me smiling.

It’s now time to unwind a little. This week I don’t have to attend any special events. No weekly history post to write. No committee meeting to attend. Instead, we have the three youngest grandchildren with us this week and the oldest grandkid and his friend next week. Time to get back to writing. Ezra and I began work on The Key To Time Travel today.

family, memories

Puzzling, a Blood Sport

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All is serene as Elise and Ezra work with me on the puzzle. In the background, Nitwit is perched on the highchair to avoid Nuisance as she passes by.

On our recent trip to babysit grandkids and visit a few extra days, we brought gifts. No, not new games or nicely wrapped packages. We brought children’s stuff from our house to theirs: puzzles, and a few books (we brought two boxes of books the last trip).

They have no shortage of books of puzzles at their house, but, due to garage sale over-buying, we definitely have a surplus here. Lynda went through the children’s puzzles and selected a number—two boxes worth—to take. Needless to say, the parents at the other end of the gift weren’t exactly thrilled with more stuff in the house.

Do I sense a little aggressiveness here?

But, they have a good place to donate them if they turn out to be truly surplus, which they undoubtedly will.

When you have new puzzles in the house, you do them, right? We got little Elijah, 5 years old, to do a number of the puzzles at the younger end of his age range, and maybe one at the older range. We also got Elise, 8, and Ezra, 10 to work on larger puzzles. In the course of doing one, which I’m calling “puzzling”, I was reminded how in our family puzzling has always been a blood sport.

Elise has moved on to other things while Ezra and I get into the end-of-puzzle frenzy.

By that I mean that people get aggressive in trying to find pieces in a certain area of the board. They hoard the pieces for that area and try to keep anyone else from working the area. If someone does try to put a piece in, the speed of the puzzling picks up. You’ve got to go fast before someone else does what you want to do. If you see someone reaching for a piece you might need, you quickly grab it and try to put it in place ahead of them. This gets worse the closer you get to the end of the puzzle, when fewer pieces are easier to find and put in place. This is really when puzzling becomes a blood sport.

I first saw this puzzling behavior in our daughter when, as an adult on visits, we would do puzzles and the aggressiveness came out. Our son, not quite so much. Neither my wife or I are truly like that, though I don’t mind twisting people’s tails a little by pretending to go after their pieces, just to get them going.

So, Ezra and Elise began a 300 piece puzzle. Not all that big, as they have both done bigger on their own, but flat surface space was at a premium. They abandoned the puzzle. Then I, bored with reading the books I’d brought with me, began working on it. That brought them back, first Elise, later Ezra. Ezra and I finished it, him hiding a piece to be sure that he would be the one to put the last piece in. That is aggressive puzzling. Of course, I had threatened to do the same thing but then didn’t. I suppose I gave him the idea.

It was a good time. We didn’t get out another puzzle, but set the stage for future family puzzling on other trips. And when they next come here, I foresee the card table going up and a 500 piece puzzle coming out. Maybe two.

Christmas, memories

A Christmas Memory About A Song

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Christmas music has been filling the airwaves for a month now, though becoming progressively louder and more ubiquitous with each day. I enjoy it, both the sacred and the secular. The Christmas music we had growing up is still pleasant to me. We had the Gene Autry album, the Arthur Godfrey album, and a couple of others I sort of remember. We had primarily albums of secular holiday music. For Christmas hymns we went to church. I don’t believe there was any all-Christian radio in the 50s and 60s, so we didn’t get a steady diet of the songs of the season.

But this memory is about one particular song. I first heard it in 1964 at the Christmas program in our weekly assembly in junior high. I was in 7th grade then. At this assembly, Faith Farnum, a 9th-grader, sang “The Birthday of a King”. Faith was a wonderful singer and regularly sang at assemblies. It was the first time I had ever heard the song, and I’ve never forgotten it. It doesn’t get a lot of airtime at Christmas, and I don’t know why. In fact, I have never, in the 57 Christmases that have passed (including the one that is rapidly passing) since that first time, heard it sung live again.

As beautiful as the song is, and as simple yet rich as the lyrics are, I don’t understand how it remains so obscure. Whenever I mention it to someone, they have never heard it or heard of it. When I do a search for it, I find recordings of it by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, Judy Garland, Kelli O’Hara, and a number of others. It was once in the Baptist hymnal and, for all I know, may still be.

“The Birthday Of A King” was written in 1918 by William Harold Neidlinger. His biography at hymnary.org is as follows.

William Harold Neidlinger USA 1863-1924. Born at New York, NY, he studied with organists Dudley Buck and C C Muller (1880-90) …. He played the organ at St Michael’s Church in New York City. He also conducted the Amphion Male Chorus and the Cecilia Women’s Chorus in Brooklyn, and the Treble Clef Club and Mannheim Glee Club in Philadelphia, PA. He taught in the music department of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts & Sciences. He went on to study with E Dannreuther in London (1896-98) then worked in Paris as a singing teacher until 1901. In 1897 he married Alice Adelaide Maxwell Sypher, and they had a son, Harold. Returning to American in 1901, he settled in Chicago, IL, where for several years he was one of the prominent singing teachers. He wrote music for a religious mass…published a comic opera…another opera…a cantata…two song books,..[etc.] …He became interested in child psychology and nearly abandoned music. He even established a school for handicapped children in East Orange, NJ, where he taught his theories of musical pedagogy and speech and vocal therapy. He wrote several secular songs and edited a number of vocal songbooks, especially for children. He was a theorist on musical methods and education. He died at Orange, NJ. He was an author, composer, and lyricist.

Quite impressive.

Once I learned that so much music was available on Youtube for just the cost of listening to a few ads, I went looking for this one Christmas, and every Christmas since. I haven’t so far this year but will do so today as I go about my work in The Dungeon. I’m anxious to once again hear that beautiful refrain:

Alleluia, O how the angels sang. Alleluia, how it rang. And the sky was bright with a holy light. ‘Twas the birthday of a King.

Here’s a link to the performance by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. It’s a little different than the arrangement Faith sang to, but still good. Happy listening.

Christianity, memories, miscellaneous

R.I.P. Steve Skaggs

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Some weeks are more difficult than others, and for different reasons. The older I get the more those difficulties seem to be matters of life and death. That’s been especially true this week. This weekend, a police officer was killed in nearby Pea Ridge. He had stopped someone and they took off and ran over him, killing him. Then there was the collapse of the apartment building in Miami. They are still trying to figure out how many died in that.

A good friend, gone unexpectedly and too soon.

Another death, however, closer to home, happened Wednesday, the news coming by e-mail Thursday morning. A friend from church, Steve Skaggs, died unexpectedly. He was only 57. He leaves his wife, Sharon, and two sons. Here’s a link to his obituary.

I had been at our church a couple of years when I met Steve in the 1990s, most likely in the summer of 1991. It was a Wednesday night service, and I saw him sitting near the rear of the church. I’m not big on introducing myself to strangers. I have to flip a switch inside of me to be able to do so. That night I flipped the switch and introduced myself to him. He and I had a brief conversation as I welcomed him as a visitor to the church. Some years later he mentioned that the brief conversation made an impression on him.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Steve grew up in the church. His parents, Bob and Thelma Skaggs, had taken their family to help the new Pea Ridge Church of the Nazarene get started. They had worshiped and worked there for a number of years and were about to return to their home church. Whether Steve told me that that evening or not I don’t remember. It may have been later that he told me that.

Steve soon married Sharon, a young woman in the church who was part of the music ministry. It was maybe a year or so after they were married that we had them over for dinner one Sunday. He said it was the first invite such as that that he and Sharon had after their marriage. I remember that day as a good time of getting to know them better.

Steve and I had many interactions over the years. For a while we served together on the church board until I rotated off, deciding not to return. Steve continued in that service. He was church treasurer in the 1990s, bringing order to what was, at that time, something that was a bit unorderly. Eventually he was chosen for the position of secretary of the Church Board. This was a position of significant trust and responsibility. Steve served in this position for many years, still holding it when he died.

I was the coach of our teen Bible quizzing team beginning in 1991. Our second (or maybe third or fourth) year we had an explosion of teens joining, and it was more than one person could handle. Either I asked Steve to help or he volunteered. For two years we coached the Bible quiz team together. We made trips to Oklahoma City, Dallas, maybe Olathe Kansas. We planned together and worked together.

Years later, we were together on the Church Building Committee for the Family Life Center. Those were busy times, as there was much to do. That was in 1998-2001, and it was a lot of work. Then, a few years later, we worked together as leaders of Financial Peace at our church. I think we worked through two rounds of the classes, or maybe it was three. I think I was in the lead and he assisted me. But that was close to fifteen years ago, and right now I don’t remember who led and who assisted. Maybe we switched off.

After that, the interactions between us were fewer. We saw each other at church and chatted from time to time. Both of us led busy lives, leaving little time for building or maintaining friendships. Most recently we have both been on the 100th anniversary committee of the church. Since our committee meetings were strictly via Zoom, these points of contact seemed, in a way, not real.

Steve was what I would call a quiet worker. He didn’t seek the limelight, or to publicize what he did. Those times when he spoke to the congregation, such as when he represented the Church Board during pastor appreciation month, I could tell he didn’t do it to seek attention, but because it was part of the responsibilities he had. But he did it well. No discomfort at speaking in public, just quiet competence.

Steve’s death was sudden. Normal activity on Sunday; gone into the arms of the Lord on Wednesday. Today we will gather to celebrate his life, as well as to mourn his death. There was a hole in the church yesterday, but Steve is now singing with the angels, and has heard his Lord and Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come share in your master’s happiness.”

memories, miscellaneous

R.I.P. Victor Turnage

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The corona virus pandemic may be in its waning moments (can’t be sure yet), but it has claimed the life of a good friend, Vic Turnage.

About five months or so into the corona virus pandemic I began seeing social media posts to the effect “Do you know anyone who has had covid? Do you know anyone who has died from covid?” The implication, of course, was that this disease wasn’t so bad and was being blown way out of proportion by individuals in the government who wanted more control over our lives. The longer we got into the pandemic you saw fewer of such posts as more as more people caught it and more and more died. Yes, it was then and still is a serious disease, worthy of being treated seriously.

For Lynda and me, an acquaintance in our daughter’s church died from it last spring/summer. Then, on Saturday a second person we know, Victor Turnage, died from it after a long battle in the hospital. He leaves his wife, Joyce, two sons, and four grandchildren.

They came to the Northwest Arkansas around 1995 or 96 from central Missouri. Vic worked then for Contractor Supply. They lived in Bentonville and began attending our church. Within the first week or two we had them over for dinner after church and we hit it off as good friends. Vic is about my age, was involved in construction, was interested in serving in the church, and so we had much in common. We went out for lunch often after church and were frequently in each other’s homes in evenings to play table games.

Such good people and hard workers. Vic will never be replaced as a husband, father, grandfather, and servant of God through the church.

When the church put together a building committee to construct a new family life center, Vic and I were both on it. We worked together on closing out things in the old church, on working with the architect as he developed concepts. Once construction started, Vic was our eyes and ears in daily dealing with the contractor. His knowledge of how construction took place was invaluable during that time. He and I and some others conducted the final inspection of the new building. Together we looked for those nicks and dings and bigger items that the contractor might have overlooked.

Later, he came to work where I worked, CEI Engineering, as a construction observer. He and I worked together on getting contractors to do the right thing on various development and public works projects. Vic wasn’t much on paperwork. which drove me nuts. I had to keep after him to fill out daily reports. But he sure knew construction, knew his way around a job site, knew how to handle contractors, make them follow the construction plans. The local business slowdown hit NW Arkansas in 2006, ahead of the rest of the country, and Vic was laid off by our company the next year.

After that, we kind of drifted apart. Life circumstances resulted in our having different goals and going in different directions in life. We saw each other at church, but Lynda and I stopped going out to eat due to salary cuts. Eventually we quit the evening get-togethers.  Whenever we did get together it was good times as always. During these later years, Vic was heavily involved in physical needs at the church. He ran cables, worked the sound booth, maintained just about anything and everything inside the buildings and on the grounds. He was the guy you would see bring a new microphone to the platform in the middle of a church service when the pastor’s mic died. When someone needed to climb a ladder to push the reset button on the ceiling-mounted projector, Vic would be the one to climb, as five of us down below would steady the ladder and encourage him.

The last paragraph really understates all that Vic did for the church. He truly had a servant’s heart and followed that up with action. If he saw a need he moved to fulfill it. He didn’t need to be asked. Yet, if you did ask him for anything he would do it. He had the gifts of both serving and helping.

Vic will be much missed by many people. We mourn, along with his family. What will help all who do mourn him is knowing that Vic has now heard those words from his heavenly Father that we all long to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter now into the joy of the Lord.”