My Worst Birthday Ever

Earlier, I wrote about my best birthday. Today I will write about my worst birthday ever. Nothing could ever be worse than this.

It was my 14th birthday and I was a freshman at Utica Catholic Academy. We were waiting for an assembly to begin in our auditorium; we were all sitting together with our little blue freshmen ties and navy uniforms and white shirts. The assemble was late in starting, which was very unusual as everything usually started right on time. It was a little after 1 p.m. Suddenly, Father Donavan, our principal, stepped onto the stage and up to the podium. He told us that we should all return to our homerooms and pray because the president (President Kennedy) had just been shot. We were in shock. How could this happen in America? Lincoln was murdered but that was over 100 years ago because a deranged man was upset because the South had lost the Civil War. Why would anyone kill our president?

We returned to our homerooms and each of us prayed silently and some of us cried. The radio played classical music over the louspeakers in each classroom, until around 2 p.m. the announcer broke in to announce that President Kennedy had died at a Dallas hospital. Vice-President Johnson was taking the oath of office as the President's body was being flown back to Washington, D.C. We were all devastated. All of us were crying and hugging each other. The principal came on the loudspeaker and asked us to pray for the repose of President Kennedy's soul and for his family. We struggled to pray through our tears until it was time to leave school.

I don't remember how I got home, if I rode with my father or if I rode the bus home. But I know I was still crying when I got home. My mother was not sympathetic to my crying. She told me to cheer up, because it was my birthday. How could I possibly cheer up when the president of our country had just been murdered!?

We had my favorite dinner of steak and french fries been I barely touched it. I felt sick to my stomach and had an empty feeling inside, I felt as if my world had been torn apart. I didn't realize it then, but I was experiencing what many people all across the country were experiencing at that time--disbelief that this could happen in our country, questions about why this man Lee Harvey Oswald would do such a thing, what would happen to us as a country now. Camelot had died. Poor Jackie. The poor children. How could they understand what had happened? He wasn't the president to them; he was their father.

A while later my grandparents and Uncle Donald came up for ice cream and cake, as they always did on our birthdays. I remember the gift my grandparents gave me. It was a Norwegian-style royal blue sweater with white and red embellishments at the top. I put it on; it was lovely. And I went to see alone in the cold on my back porch to cry. And I cried and cried. As I remember this, tears well up in my eyes because I remember this so vividly. My grandmother came out to sit with me and comfort me. I didn't care that it was my birthday. I didn't care that my mother had made my favorite dinner nor that she had baked my favorite cake--chocolate with chocolate icing. I only cared that this day had forever changed my life and the lives of everyone in our country. We were a country of violence. It had been easy to ignore the violence of the civil rights movement that had happened in the South. "They" were different, ignorant and stuck in the past history of slavery and injustice toward African-American people. This was different. How and why would this man shoot and kill our president?

I remember that a boy I had met and liked called me for my birthday. I took the call but didn't talk for long. We mostly talked about the events of the day. My aunt and uncle called to with me a happy birthday, and while I appreciated their call, I was more focused on what had happened.

The next few days brought even more shock, for as the country prepared for President Kennedy's funeral, Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald on live television. Oswald was being transferred to another jail in Dallas, and somehow Ruby got close enough to shoot Oswald and kill him. We would never know why Oswald had killed Kennedy or even if he had done so. Conspiracy theories began to abound, and later the Warren Commission was appointed to investigate the events and issue findings about the president's murder. They concluded that Oswald worked alone and had killed the president with the help of no other persons. Few people believed that and there was much conflicting information that supported other theories. The Warren Commission files were sealed for 75 years, so at some point people may know why they came to that conclusion and have access to the information they had, and maybe the truth will be known.

All I know is that my innocence of the world and the way it operates died that day, on my 14th birthday.

My Father, Floyd, aka Pops

I decided that I'd like to write about one of the best men in the world--my father. From my earliest years, I remember my father as a loving, gentle person who was devoted to his family. He married my mother at about 36. At that time he was a Building Construction teacher at Utica Free Academy (UFA), where he was an alumnus. When he graduated in 1930 my Father;s dream was to become an architect, so go to the University of Michigan. But the Great Depression had just begun so money was very tight. Fortunately, my grandfather continued his job as a carpenter, but there was not money for my father to go to college. He had greatd drawing talent and taught himself the basics of architecture. He used his self-taught knowledge to design and build our family home on Valley View Road and some other buildings or rooms. (For example, he drew up the plans for the room Jim and I built at the house on Darmouth Street.

He became a carpenter just like his father and often they worked on jobs together. They were very similar in nature and personality. They were honorable men, some of the nest men I have every know. The saying goes, 'A girl marries her father," but in my case, I married one man who was everything my family was not. The other husband had some of my father's traits but he had a very cruel, mean streak, something I never saw in my father.

My father was also interested in airplanes and aviation. He build and flew gliders with his friends. There was an incident that made the Herkimer papers, when one of their gliders landed in a corn field and did some damage to the corn. He became the principal of the Utica School of Aviation. He held that position until World War II started and all the teachers and students were drafted into the Army Aircorps. He taught people how to put the airplanes taht had been damaged in the war back together. He was stationed in South Carolina and in Cuba during the war.

My father and my brother did not have the best of relationships. I think my father felt my brother did just enough to get by in school. Pat was so brilliant but put in the minimum work in school. He could have been at the top of his class, had he wanted to. And my father wanted my brother to do his best at everything did he, but Pat was a social butterfly and studies came easy to him, so although he did well in school, he could have done much better. But my mother loved my brother's outgoing personality. In her eye, he could do no wrong. That, I know caused friction in my home. My sister Joanne was my father's baby and he did so many things for her through his life, things my mother did not always approve of.

 I adored my father. We had similar personalities. We were both great readers, although our tastes in reading where rather distinctive, It was from my father that I developed a love of wood--any kind of wood. I remember that I even did a school project on wood. He loved the outdoors and making things. He often went hunting, fishing, and snowshoeing with my grandfather and my brother. We ate whatever they brought home; nothing was wasted. He loved deer hunting and fishing for trout on the land owned by cousins and his Uncle Howard. His hobby was making furniture for our home; he developed that skill in high school.

My father recognized that I had artistic talents and enrolled me in a children's art class at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Museum Art Achool when I was in kindergarten. I loved art class. I loved the studio and the pain splatters, the smell of the paint. My art teacher believed in letting children explore the arts to see what they liked. I loved to draw and paint and that is what I did, This did not make my mother happy. I said I could draw and paint at home. She didn't see that the teacher was guiding us. My mother's statement, "Why don't you make an astray, something useful." She was always looking toward the practical side of everything. She didn't really appreciate anything that didn't have a use. For example, when she took ceramics classes later, she made countless ashtrays. There were ashtrays everywhere in our house. 

My father made furniture and decorations for the year--Adirondack chairs, a picnic table, a slide for our jungle gym, a play fort, a play house, a shrine to the Blessed Mother, and arbors for the grapes we grew. He also planted a large garden which was the source of most of our fresh vegetables. My mother canned the vegetables for use during the winter months. He could never plant corn, however, one of his favorite vegetables, which was always eaten by the deer. They never touched the other vegetables, only the corn. So we purchased corn from the many roadside stands in the summer, as well as peaches and pears and apples to can for the winter.

My father never seemed to get angry, though he had the right to be many times. But he would never cross my mother. He placated her at every turn. She was a angry and moody person, and I remember many night lying in my bed while she screamed and cried in their bedroom below mine, threatening to leave my father and us children. She often packed a suitcase so she could "go home." My father would talk in a soothing voice to her and eventually she calmed down. But my father was constantly telling us children to do what your mother says and don't upset her. But it was a lose-lose situation, because of my mother's mood swings. There were days that we could do nothing right. But my father would try to persuade us to be more considerate to my mother.We knew that with my mother present, he would always take my mother's side. But when we were alone, he was gentler, begging us to be good to our mother so she would be happy. But my mother's unhappiness cane from inside her, not from what we di or did not do.

When grandchildren came along, my father was thrilled. He loved to read stories to the children (Sabrina, Danielle, and Greg) and he would take them for a ride around the property in a little wagon attached to the riding lawn mower. He entertained them with his hearing aid; he would cup his had over it and make it produce feedback. However, when he had had enough of the children's yelling, he would subtly reach up and turn the hearing aid off. It was really funny. Then he could read in peace.

When I bought my house and it needed some repair, my father came down to help with the repairs. He helped lay the vinyl tile on my back porch and installed new handles for the jalousie windows. If it was terribly cold in the winter, he would call to remind me to run the car to warm it up so it would survive the bitterly cold days.

My father had emphysema and a heart condition. The emphysema most probably came from working at school with the saw dust and no face masks (now required) and my mother's smoking. She was a very heavy smoker and smoked in all rooms of our house We know now that second-hand smoke is dangerous. was inherited frim his mother. His mother, my father, and both his brothers had angina. His brother Bob, who is now 90 years old, was had numerous heart bypasses. My father died of a heart attack in late September 1981, 6 1/2 years after his first heart attack. That attack forced him to retire from teaching, which was very stressful. My father died less than 48 hours after his second heart attack. He had just tuned 69 years old. His heart condition

At my father's funeral, the priest described my father in perfect terms. "He was a gentle, kind man.)

No Trip To Italy and Losing a Good Friend

This is one of the sad stories of my life. This one comes from high school, when I was a senior. My school planned the mother of all senior trips: a trip to Rome and Florence, Italy in January 1967. The trip was announced in November so we would have time to prepare for the trip. The cost was very reasonable for those day--$300. That included airfare, meals, transportation on the ground in Italy--everything. I was so excited about going on this trip which would also visit Florence to see the amazing artwork in that city. In fact, most of the trip was centered around art in Italy. The nuns and priests from school were chaperones as well as parents.


I remember coming home and telling my parents with the letter that the school sent to them. I was so sure they would be happy and think that it was an amazing opportunity for a 17 year old. But I was wrong. My mother thought it was not a good idea. She felt teenagers should not be going off to Italy because they wouldn't appreciate it. And it was a lot of money for my family. I tried the approach of telling my mother I would look for a job to help pay for the trip, but she did not approve of the trip and said so. A job to pay my way would not matter. My father said nothing. Raising children was my mother's business, not his. Especially not expressing his opinions about his daughters.

When I went to my grandparents' house for dinner the next week, I told my grandmother about the trip and my mother's reaction. My grandmother was horrified that my mother had reacted that way. That weekend, we were summoned to my grandparents' house and my Aunt Elsie and Uncle Bob were there too. My grandmother wanted to talk to my parents about the trip to Italy. She, my Aunt Elsie, and my Uncle Donald (Elsie and Donald were my godparents) attempted to talk to my mother about the trip, pointing out the benefits to me of the trip and saying that it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go on such a trip. They all offered to pay for my way on the trip, they felt that strongly about it.

But my mother also felt strongly, in the negative, about the trip. She didn't want to accept money from my grandmother, my aunt and uncle, I think, because she would feel beholding to them. But more important, she did not feel that 17-year-olds should be going to Italy. We wouldn't appreciate it; we would not obey the chaperones, And, I will never forget this, she said, "I've never been to Europe; no daughter of mine is going off to Europe when I've never even been there."

I had always thought that parents wanted their children to have opportunities that they never had, but apparently that was not my mother's philosophy. My grandmother begged my father to talk to my mother and explain how important it was that I take this wonderful opportunity, but he would not go against my mother's decision. And it was HER decision. My parents did not discuss it--pros and cons. My mother had decided and that was that. My Aunt Elsie tried to talk to my mother about it and was basically told to stay out of our family business. This she said to her best friend; she didn't want my Aunt Elsie to look like a savior in my eyes, when my mother and I did not get along well. It was a case of my mother asserting her authority over me and what I did or did not do, So I was not allowed to go on the trip (which everyone said was the most amazing time of their lives).

My second best friend Bridget, whom I had been spending a lot of time with since Nancy and her boyfriend were preoccupied with each other. Bridget's mother, a very good friend of my grandmother, invited me to go to New York City for a long weekend while the rest of our class was in Italy. I was thrilled to be asked, and Mrs. Green was paying for everything. My mother said that I could go (she had been to NYC so I guess that's why it was all right). Bridget said something to someone at school about our mini-trip. And my best friend Nancy became jealous. She snubbed me at school and when I asked her what was the matter, she told me to be friends with Bridget but I had betrayed her by agreeing to go with Bridget. Apparently Nancy wanted to go too, but Mrs. Green did not really know Nancy and Bridget was not her close friend the way Bridget and I were. Nancy never spoke to me after she heard I was going to NYC with Bridget. She was cold and aloof and snubbed me and spread rumors about me the whole year after that. I was so sad and crushed that Nancy would do that to me. I couldn't make Mrs. Green take her on the trip, and why shouldn't I go if I was asked and my mother had said yes. It was a terrible thing to lose my best friend over something so silly. It was petty jealousy.

My grandmother, my aunt, and my mother did not have a very good relationship after the offer of the trip was turned down and Grandma and Aunt Elsie were told to stay out of our business. There was always hostility and tension amongst them after that. I still harbor anger with my mother for not letting me go for such a senseless reason. And I only grew closer to my grandmother and my aunt and my mother knew it, and was jealous. I also was angry with my father that he would not intercede and at least discuss it with my mother, or overrule her decision. But he never wanted cross my mother or make her upset, because then she would get extremely angry and out of control. But I was angry with him for not standing up to her, and telling her that she was wrong in this case.

This trip and the fall-out haunted me until I was 50 years old, nearly 51. I decided to take a 12-day cruise in the Mediterranean which visited Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, and Croatia. It was a wonderful experience and made up for the trip for which I had been denied all those years ago.

Punished for Doing the Right Thing

We all loved my grandmother. Even though my grandmother wouldn't taken my sister to visit with her overnight, my sister loved her very much. I remember one time when she and my mother had had some terrible fight. My sister must have been about 8 or 9. I remember that she packed a few things in her little suitcase and started walking to Grandma's. She got all the way to the intersection of Valley View and Higby Road before my mother caught up with her in the car and brought her back home. She got spanked for that, which I don't think was right because she was upset and instead of fighting with my mother, tried to remove herself from the situation, which was the right thing to do. My mother should have brought her back but talked to her instead to hitting her for doing the right thing. But that's the type of person my mother was. You didn't cross her or you got punished for it.

When I was in high school, I got a notion in my head that I wanted to go into radio. I told this to my guidance counselor Sister Mary Joseph, and then I told my parents, who were understandably upset since they wanted me to go to college. Sister Mary Joseph explained that I could go to college for communications and go into radio from there. I think my parents were shocked that she acknowledged my desire as legitimate but worked out a solution.

Later I wanted to take art classes as my electives in my senior year, or else go to the public school where I would be able to arrange courses better in order to take art courses. I sat down to talk to my parents about what I wanted to do. My mother became very angry with me, and I must have said something that set her off because she started hitting me and slapping me about my head. She hit me so hard that I couldn't think. She just kept hitting me and hitting me. Finally my father pulled her off of me. I still couldn't think straight for a while and my father tended to me, while my mother said he was babying me. He talked some sense into me about why it would not be a good idea to change schools in my senior year, and that I could do my art even without taking it as an elective. I calmed down eventually, but my mother never apologized for her abuse of me. My father never hit me in all my life, but when I was young, I had been deathly afraid of her spankings with the ping-pong paddle (I guess so she wouldn't hurt her hand); it stung so badly. This was the one time I remember that she had beat me with her hands--fists and slaps. Later in life when I told my therapist about this situation, he had me get a CT scan and an MRI to see if any damage had been done. My head hurt for a long time; I had a headache, and bruises that I tried to cover when I went back to school. Back then, the school did not have to report signs of abuse. There was no agency to handle it. But I did tell my counselor Sister Mary Joseph what had happened. I was so glad I had someone to tell about it. I know I told my grandmother, too, when I went to her house for dinner. But unfortunately there was nothing anyone could do. Thank God that my father pulled my mother off me before she did any permanent damage. I will never forget it. 

That's one reason I only swatted Sabrina when she was little only one or two times when she wouldn't listen. I smacked her hand and I remember spanking her once. But I never physically hit her because I knew what a detrimental effect it had on me. My mother's beatings only served to increase my anger at her for not listening to me nor caring to hearing what I had to say about anything. And most of the beatings came from something I said that my mother didn't like. I will never forget how she looked when she was about to "lose it." She would grit her teeth and growl and hold back her hand getting ready to strike you. She sometimes broke things instead of hitting you. My drawers in my bedroom were broken where she slammed them so hard, and my dad had to glue them back together.

But as I said, especially when we were little, my sister bore the brunt of her anger, when she wouldn't listen as a small child. We also got hit for fighting with one another. Anything that annoyed my mother could set her off. But the beating I got about the art classes and senior year was the only time I remember her hitting us when we were older.

The Best Birthday Ever

My 4th birthday was the most memorable birthday for me. At the time, I was obsessed with Hopalong Cassidy, a cowboy on the television. “Hoppy” wore a dark cowboy shirt with a  bandana tie with a silver slide, black pants, and a large black hat with a wide brim. Wearing black was unusual for a “good” cowboy, since in the 1950s, people usually associated white with good and black with bad. For example, another cowboy of the time, the Lone Ranger, wore all white clothing (he also wore an mask around his eyes to shield his identity).

I had a Hopalong Cassidy outfit. A black hat, a black skirt, a black shirt and a black vest was my outfit. I know my parents must have bought it for me; I don’t think that my mother could have made such an outfit. I also had cowboy boots which were black. In a pinch, I wore white anklet socks and black patent leather shoes. I was totally obsessed with cowboys and Hoppy was my favorite.

For my birthday, I received a wonderful present. It was a 45 rpm record that was Hoppy singing one of his cowboy songs, and at the end of the song, Hoppy sang “Happy Birthday” and said that my cousins John, Mikey, and Tom wished me a happy birthday. How thrilled I was that Hoppy was singing to ME, and he said that my cousins wished me a happy birthday, too. It was like my cousins and Hoppy were friends and they all cared about me.

Usually on birthdays, my cousins would come to the house for ice cream and birthday cake, and on their birthdays, we would go to their house to celebrate. So on my 4th birthday, John, Mikey, and Tom came to our house for my party. (Tom was a baby, so he didn’t really participate much in the festivities.) John was 6 1/2, Mikey was 4 1/2, and at the time, my brother Pat was 2 years old and my sister Joanne was a little over a year old. We played the record over and over. When it came time for ice cream and cake, we had chocolate ice cream (my favorite) and my birthday cake was shaped just like Hoppy’s hat! It wasn’t black, however; the cake was chocolate (my favorite) and it was iced with light blue frosting, because blue was my favorite color at that time. We all sat around the little table that my father had built for us, with four small chairs for John, Mikey, Pat, and me (Joanne was usually crawling around somewhere and Tom was only 6 months old). We have a picture of the four of us with the cake as we were eating the cake and ice cream.

That was the most memorable birthday I ever had and probably my favorite. The best birthday EVER!

Winter Sports and Activities

When I was growing up in chilly, wintery upstate New York. there were many winter activities for us to do. Since there were always heavy snowfalls since we lived south east of Lake Ontario and Oneida Lake, after my father had finished plowing, there was plenty of snow for us to make snow forts and castles from the snowbanks that my father had created with the Doodlebug snowplow. We made castles and forts, with tunnels and pathways through the snow banks. Our dog Sissy liked to play in the snow banks, too. We would have snowball fight and pretend that we lived in an icy faery land.

Back in the woods that belonged to us, my father would often go with us and help us shovel off the snow from a small pond. There we could skate and play hockey on various ponds. Some ponds were good for hockey because they were rather regular in shape. Other ponds were very irregularly shaped and were better for just skating, doing turned and jumps and pretending we were skaters.

One or two years. my father built a skating rink in our back year. He put two-by-fours all around a rectangular layout and then sprayed water on it over and over again until it was the right thickness and level and without pits so that we could skate.

We also had snowshoes and learned how to walk on them on the snow. One year, my parents bought us little skies and we learned a little about skiing--very little. My school had a ski club but I never joined it because it was expensive to go on the ski trips, especially if you didn’t have your own equipment. I would have had to take a couple of lessons, as well. So I was not in the ski club.


Often we would go sledding and tobogganing at the Valley View Gold Course, which had rather steep hells. Sledding and riding on the toboggan was a lot of fun. We always got lots of snow down our boots and snowsuits. My mother would have hot chocolate ready for us when we came home from these outdoor activities.

We often went skating at the Clinton skating rink. It was the home of the Clinton Comets minor league hockey team, and every weekend, they offered low cost skating in the afternoons at the skating rink. Everyone from Utica went out to the Clinton skating rink to skate and meet people. We all had our own skates; I guess our parents bought them because we used our skates so often.

When I lived in Albany, Sabrina and I also went skating quite a bit. There were many skating rinks where we could go to skate. We also liked to go cross-country skiing at the Colonie Gold Course. They made trails and you could rent skis rather cheaply and you could learn to cross-country ski quite quickly. I loved to go cross-country skiing on the Gold Course. You don’t need a lot of equipment or snowsuits. You could ski in just slacks and sweaters.

Those were some of the winter sports we enjoyed.