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I
can’t really call myself a long-time member of First
Presbyterian Church of Clarkston, nor am I a newcomer. My husband Dick
and I with our five children, Russell, Richard, Peggy, Chuck, and Dean,
arrived here from California in 1963. Dick had just retired from the
Air Force and was persuaded to join his two sisters and their families
who were living here at that time. They had come from Montana some
years earlier.
My home state was Massachusetts and both
my maternal
and paternal ancestors had come from England in the early 1640s. They
settled in Springfield and Deerfield, Massachusetts, the latter being
nearly wiped out by Indians in the late 1660s. Though I was born in
Springfield, where my mother and father had a neighborhood grocery
store, when I was about four, our parents, my four sisters and one
brother moved to my grandmother’s farm in Charlemont, a small
town in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, to escape the diseases
that were rampant in large cities during World War I. My parents
started a small “truck garden” farm and sold peas, beans,
corn, and other vegetables during the growing season to hotels and
restaurants in nearby towns.
During the depression, when no work was
available
for my father in the winter, we were packed into two automobiles (a
Maxwell and a Velee) and headed for Florida. There my father and
brother picked citrus fruit for local packing companies. We three
younger children attended the Umatilla schools until early
spring when
we headed back to Massachusetts.
After I graduated from Charlemont High
School, I
completed two years of college work in New York at Albany Collegiate
Center. The institution was similar to the community colleges of today.
I lived with and worked for a family for room and board, and was given
$1.00 per week for transportation (though I usually walked to save
money). My last two years of undergraduate work was done at American
International College in Springfield, Massachusetts where I lived with
friends of the family. Since teaching jobs especially were hard to come
by in 1939, I was advised to go on for a Master’s degree, which I
did at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I managed to find a job
in a very small high school in Warren, Michigan, where I taught 9th and
10th grade English, Latin, and French—all for the princely sum of
$900/year. In the middle of my second year, I had the opportunity to
move to a larger high school in West Branch, Michigan, where I taught
only English classes. My pay was about $1400/year then.
After WW II started, a higher paying job
lured me to
Detroit and work with the Army Signal Corps. Within two years, I went
to the Recruiting Office and signed up for the WAVES (Women Accepted
for Volunteer Emergency Service), going first to Officer’s
Candidate School at Smith College in Northampton, MA, and then after
three months, commissioned an ensign, I reported to wartime
Washington
DC. There I edited engineers’ reports. Eventually, I wangled a
transfer to a Naval Air Station in San Diego. The war being over, I was
discharged after two and a half years in the service.
After teaching, editing, and military
service, I
thought I would try the business world and spent about a year as an
assistant buyer in the “Foundation Garments Department” of
the J. L. Hudson Department Store in Detroit before deciding that
wasn’t my field. About that time, I was talked into applying for
a job with the Air Force Special Services, as a service club hostess,
then as director in the clubs for enlisted personnel in Germany. My
first assignment was at Rhein Main Air Force Base, near Frankfurt, then
Kaufbeuren Air Force Base in Bavaria, near Munich, and finally at
Templehof Air Force Base in Berlin. The work required planning
sightseeing trips, card tournaments, dances, Barbeques, German language
lessons, crafts, and other activities.
I met Richard Barnes in Berlin and
married him in
1950 (first by the Burgermeister, and then by the Base Chaplain). Dick
had worked with Ground Control Approach at Templehoff, which meant that
during foul weather or in the dark when the control tower did not have
visual sight of planes during the Berlin Blockade Airlift, he would
talk pilots down through congested buildings onto
the runway. We
honeymooned through Switzerland, Italy, and the Isle of Capri. Our
first child, Russell, was born in Berlin, and was just five months old
when Dick got orders to return to the USA. After that, the Air Force
moved us frequently: California, Illinois, Virginia, Maine, and back to
California again. During this period of continuous relocation, I had
four more children.
We moved into our house on Highland
Avenue in 1963.
I taught English to Juniors and Seniors full-time at Clarkston High
School from 1965 until 1980 when I retired. We started attending First
Presbyterian soon after we arrived. I taught 4th grade Sunday School
for a few years and have helped with Vacation Bible School off and on.
Dick was a trustee, and later an Elder, in the early 1970s. We both
enjoyed the Mariners, a social group of married couples that met at the
church or at people’s homes. George Hendrick was the pastor when
we joined. Older children attended Sunday School in a wooden building
(previously located in the present church parking lot) and the younger
ones attended classes in the basement. Attendance was up in those years
in Sunday School and Worship services where folding chairs were often
set up for the overflow.
Our family has been well served by this church. Two
of our children, Russell and Peggy, were married in the sanctuary, Dick
and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary here in 2000, and
Dick’s memorial service was held in 2002. Our grown children live
in several western states: Russell in Libby, Montana; Richard in
Pacheco, California; Peggy in Wallace, Idaho; Chuck in Clarkston with
me; and Dean in Tempe, Arizona.
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