Ruth Shire, Emily Shire, and Seth Shire

00:00 I'm Emily Shire. I'm 15 years old. Today is January 30th 2005. I'm at Grand Central Terminal and I'm interviewing my grandmother.

00:12 My name is Ruth Shire. I am 80 years old. Today is Sunday, January 30th 2005 and I'm in the storycorps booth in Grand Central terminal.

00:28 And oh, I am in Lee's grandmother.

00:31 Okay, so, where did you grow up?

00:35 I grew up in in Boston. I was born in Roxbury, which is a section of Boston and I lived there until I was 16 years old. My parents were immigrants at a very young age. My mother was five. I thought it was 15 when they came from Russia to America.

00:57 They had their parents here and when I was 16.

01:04 My family moved to another section of Boston called Brighton with my parents had bought a house.

01:12 And I did mostly like I lived in that house in Brighton until I got married.

01:18 How was your house like our house? It was a nice big house. It had four bedrooms one and a half bathrooms. It had a nice den and living room into dining room.

01:32 And one thing made me fall in love with that house. I went with my mother when she was looking at houses to buy and they had a list of work to be done in that house and they mentioned that one they called one room, which I referred to as a den. They called it the library and I was maybe about 15 maybe I was about your age at the time and I said to myself and just so that was all my growing up until I got married.

02:01 What was the neighborhood like it was a quiet residential neighborhood? It was about 1 long block to walk to get to a trolley car in those days. There were these old-fashioned trolley cars that went from the most Suburban areas of Boston into the city of Boston.

02:19 And

02:21 It was you do nothing special just a nice quiet neighborhood.

02:26 And we had a lot of good times in that house. My mother was a very very wonderful Hostess and she all made parties at the drop of a hat.

02:36 Oh, and how was your relationship with your parents? It was good. I was a very obedient child. I really was my mother would tell the story of she would get me dressed if you wanted to go out and she was taking me along with her. She would sit knee on the front porch and say now wait there for me, and she said she doesn't think I moved a muscle until she came back to get me.

03:01 And describe your siblings. I had I was the oldest and have to be there was a brother who was two years younger and then two years younger than him four years younger than me was a sister whom you know is on your knee and then our youngest my youngest sibling was my brother Elliot next to me with my brother's phone. Unfortunately, both my brothers died of cancer in the early fifties.

03:30 But I still have close contact with my sister who still lives in the Boston area.

03:37 And what kind of relationship did you have with your brothers?

03:41 Pretty good, the brother who's next to me was sort of a pest. I might say he was kind of like like anybody would consider a younger brother to be a pest. But with the the youngest brother, I was eight years older than he was and I I just loved myself very motherly told him. I would tell him stories to get him to go to sleep and we had a very very nice relationship always.

04:12 And how would you describe yourself as a child? Maybe I was very shy I was very quiet and shy as a child.

04:23 It's hard to say I think my shyness.

04:28 Determined a lot of what I did or didn't do.

04:33 Like what like how would the shyness affect you?

04:36 Well in school I was too shy to get involved if other girls were having a conversation and I thought maybe I shouldn't go in and bother them.

04:49 It was I think it was something that I wished. I didn't have and I grew out of it starting with college. I I grew out of the shyness.

04:59 And what did you look like? What did you wear in school?

05:03 Well, I had long straight hair these days where the most glamorous looks seems to be this long straight hair of I would have been very stylish but in the days when I was a little kid and growing curly hair was what you needed and I did not have that so I begged and begged my mother for a permanent which would make my hair curly. And in those days Shirley Temple was all arranged and styles for little girls and everybody wanted to look like Shirley Temple with all the girls all over the head and my mother finally relented and let me have a prominent.

05:38 Weekly's masonry much

05:41 And for your best friends in school, what were they like?

05:45 Well in elementary school, we had a neighborhood with a lot of different.

05:54 Immigrant families the children of the families were first generation American but the parents will largely immigrants. So I had one friend from an Irish immigrant family. I had another friend from an Italian immigrant family and we were very close to a parochial school and a very large church. And so it was a very mixed neighborhood.

06:20 And we lived in the three family house that my grandfather owned.

06:26 And the house was like one big one family house because on the ground floor. There was one married on 20 of my mother's sister's my grandparents lived on the middle floor and my family lives on the top floor.

06:41 So I could I have free access to any apartment. I wanted to and I used to come home for lunch every day in elementary school. And if I rang the bell and my mother was not home. I just rang the Nextel which was my grandmother's house and I went in there to have lunch didn't make any difference to me whether my mother was home or not because there was another family that would take care of me.

07:10 And what would you do with your friends? What would you guys play?

07:14 We stand when I was while he was still living in Roxbury. That was something to a time. I was about 16.

07:21 We spent a lot of time in a lot of imaginative plays there was no television in those days. There was radio where you could listen to soap operas during the day, but my family had a large back porch and on that back porch. That was a swing there was a setup with a

07:41 You know, what what box is trained on you know, the the punching bag hanging from the ceiling and my father got a punching punching gloves and we would practice on that and there was a big closet on that porch where we kept games and things and I remember one of our favorite games was making a funhouse.

08:02 We would tip Furniture upside down whenever she is on the porch. We tip them upside down weave make sort of a route that you had to take you had to start here and end up there and you had to climb over furniture or jump off something and do a lot of things that we thought were difficult at the time until you got to the end and that was our game called Fun House. We play that a lot a lot of times. We we played card games 2

08:27 And what did you think your life would be like when you were older?

08:31 Well, I always hope that when I grew up I would get married and have children and in those days which was probably the third 1930s 1940s. The best thing for women to do with that time was to stay home and raise a family and that was that was the things that I thought I might do.

08:55 And in school what kind of student were you I always got good marks. I never particularly liked school, but I I worked hard and I got to I usually got very good marks in school.

09:09 And how far did you go in school? I graduated from high school when I graduated from college and then later on in life after I had children. In fact, I took some graduate courses also to qualify because I became a librarian specializing in children's books, and I wanted to qualify as a school library. So I took all the courses that were necessary to get that certificate when you're in high school and college, what would you do for fun?

09:41 I was very family-oriented our family always did things we would take day trips in the car go out to Cape Cod very off and on weekends and

09:55 Fun of

09:57 And I used to love to read that was one of my favorite things to do and I went Faithfully every Saturday morning to the local library to choose some books. And in those days children were only allowed to take two books at a time and I would be sitting there with four books and I wanted to take out and I would take the side on to take the other two and hide them on the shelves behind the other books. Not that I would ever remember where they were when I came back and

10:27 And I guess that was it. I never learn to ride a bike because I saw my brother learn to ride and he turned black and blue from all the Falls he had and I if I had to fall in order to learn to ride a bike. I wasn't going to ride a bike. I was pretty feminine. What were some of your favorite books to read the books. I read a lot of books and basically I can't remember any particular titles that I used to love to read books about children with adversity. I do remember one title of the book that probably doesn't exist anymore was called Polly of the hospital staff A Little Orphan girl who had to go into the hospital. I don't remember the reasons, but the whole staff of the hospital took care of her. She was not treated well at her home and she's literally lived at the hospital and it was kind of a

11:18 You could tell what was coming in the story. There was a doctor who loved her and the nurse Who Loved when the doctor in the nurse got married and they adopted her which was very nice at the ending for me to read.

11:30 And in school, who is your favorite teacher and why?

11:35 I can remember my high school teachers very well. I remember my kindergarten teachers I had on the whole I had pretty good teachers one very strict teacher that I was just scared of she was the music teacher and I got her is a homeroom teacher one year and that year I had the highest was a very small school so that the total population of the ninth grade. We stayed in elementary school till 9th grade in those days and

12:03 I had I think I had the highest average in a particular mocking. And on the this embarrass me on the board at the front of the classroom. She wrote my name and the average that I had gotten and mentioned that it was the highest average in the whole 9th grader. That's cool. And it was so embarrassed every time I looked at that sign up there and otherwise I had I had a wonderful history teacher in high school. I love my Spanish teacher only if the math teacher I had a problem with it because 7th 8th and 9th will consider Junior High School in those days. You didn't actually attended high school until 10th grade in Boston.

12:43 And I had avoided as much money as I could because I hated math. So I did not take algebra until my second year of high school and the first matching. I got a D. It was the only day I ever had in my whole life and I went to speak to the teacher about it because his method was to give a short quiz every morning based on the homework the night before and I had taken the quizzes and gotten a hundred on your request and I asked him why I had to be as it turned out. There were some Jewish holidays where I didn't attend school and this teacher counted the fact that I had missed any quiz that I had missed he counted as zero which brought down my whole level and that explains why I got a D, but and I was really very upset about it, but I was probably too. Shy to do anything about it and I told my family about it and that's in those days families really respected the schools and the teachers a lot more than they do today and whatever.

13:43 Teacher did or said must be rice. So that was his method of knocking which was really very unfair.

13:51 And that was my only funky Moffitt I ever gotten my whole career.

13:56 And how would your classmates remember you?

14:00 I don't know. Maybe it's very quiet with things that didn't really.

14:06 And too much into activities

14:08 Are you still friends with anyone from that time in your life?

14:12 Not from high school know although I did very recently meet someone who was in the same graduating classes. I was in high school and I met her by accident because we were at an elder hostel and as I was walking past two women, I heard one of them mentioned the name of my school and so I stopped and I said, you know that high school and and she said yes, I went there. I asked her what class and it turned out to be the same class that I had been in and we knew some of the same people just save me but I really was not in touch with anyone from my high school class.

14:51 And what were some of the extracurricular activities that you didn't High School?

14:58 I've belonged to a music appreciation class that met after school. I belong to the Spanish club. I was in the what did they call it's different now, they don't have the same terminology for them. But I was in the honors club which was for people who achieved a certain a certain.

15:20 Certain average on their report cards and I was part of the Latin club.

15:27 And can you listen to jobs you had After High School College? Well after college I started working as a children's librarian for the Boston Public Library and I loved it. I remember the first payday. I was in those days the paymaster came around they didn't pay you by check. The paymaster came around with an armored car walked into the library into the office and Chrissy went to be paid with called into the office separately. We had to sign for our pay and we were given the pay in cash and I remember thinking when I collected this my first pay I said she I love this job and I get paid for it too. So it was it was a nice experience and it was sort of a revelation and then I work the Boston Public Library until I got married and after I married I moved to

16:19 New York because my husband your grandfather's 80 was from New York and he wanted to stay there and he had graduated from Harvard Law School and was headed jobs in New York City. And so when I knew I was going to move to New York. I replied to various libraries in New York. One of them was the Brooklyn Public Library and I worked there for a couple of years until we moved away from Brooklyn. And when we were moving from Brooklyn to Westchester to the city of Malvern and I applied to the Mount Vernon public library for a job and I got it and we're there until your father. My oldest son was born.

16:59 And then I stopped working for many years. I did go back to it later when your father was in college and I always all I can say is I enjoy being a librarian very much especially working with the kids.

17:16 I like the personal one-on-one and never wanted to be a teacher. I never wanted to face the whole classroom of kids, but I love being able to help each person on a one-to-one weather was just walking around and fucking books off the shelves that I thought they might enjoy reading or how can you find the answers to reference questions. And once I was given a question, I sort of took it on as my own and I wanted to find the answer to and I enjoy doing that. I enjoyed it very much.

17:47 How did you meet your husband said he when he was just out of the army. This was immediately after World War II ended. He had just been released to the Army. He had been accepted at Harvard Law School as a student and he needed a place to live while he was going to school in Cambridge and his family knew someone who happened to be a cousin of my fathers and they contacted this woman whom they knew and asked her if she knew of a family where a Murray Could I could rent a room we had this big house. We had two unused bedrooms up on the third floor and my mother got a call from this cousin of my fathers and she sort of agree. My mother was very soft-hearted very hospitable. And she said well, alright, let him come over and see the room and you know, if he likes it it might be. All right. Well when we kids heard about it if they were four of us.

18:47 And I was the oldest I was about 20 or 21 at the time and we were very annoyed. We just sent why do you want to invite somebody that we don't even know to come and live here?

19:01 And anyway, my mother calmed us and he did come and he bites the room. He like the facility where he's going to live and he had he could get easily to Cambridge by a bus. There was a bus that stopped not far from our house that went on to Cambridge and so he took the room and that is how I met my husband.

19:26 And how did that progressed after the after the first meeting to go the first meeting? I was very annoyed to him because he was coming out to look at the room at a time when I worked at the library where to evenings a week and on those days you didn't you weren't doing until 1 you work from 1 to 9.

19:44 And that was a morning. I have plan to go in town to do some shopping and here I had to stop change all my plans cuz this guy was coming to look at my mother wanted me to be there.

19:54 So we did and things were very different in those days Emily because the first time we went I forget where we were going we had to use the streetcar and we're going someplace and that's with a crossing the street. He was so bold as to hold my hand.

20:14 And I was a little bit shocked as employee these people from New York a very Bowl but I think was very very different in those days. It was completely different than going out with somebody today. Did you like him? I did like him? Yes. Yeah. I like him and he was sort of

20:32 He seemed very mature to me. I think I like the mature part of it and

20:40 We

20:42 Procedures in the evening he could get no sit around the house with the rest of the family. He became almost like a member of the family and we would talk and have discussions and

20:55 It was and then we began going out on dates. Sometimes he didn't have much money. He was going to school on the

21:04 Do the G the GI Bill of Rights, which I paid tuition books and books for the people who had been in World War II in any capacity. And so that was how he got through Harvard Law School and when he finished law school, he went back to New York to live for a while. And then I'm one of his visits back to Boston. He proposed to me.

21:36 I was waiting for it in law school, which was free in those days. They went right through the summer to there was no summer break. They started in September and the school year just continued until they had finished.

22:04 And could you describe the process of planning a wedding planning the wedding? I guess that was fund. My mother probably took care of most of it. We had a nice traditional wedding. What worried me about the wedding was I was wearing a long white gown, of course and at the place where the wedding took place the bride had to walk down a staircase to the actual place where the ceremony was to take place and that bothered me terribly, but I made it alright with alcohol or tripping on anything.

22:38 And what were some problems what problems did you encounter in the early years of your marriage?

22:43 Give me the biggest problem was living so far away from my family. I used to like to go back to Boston to visit Andrew until we had children we used to do it regularly once a month. We would drive up to Boston spend a weekend and come back. There were no particular problems. But a zipper II was a so-so cook I guess and I remember one night that I was making something in advance for the next day. I think it may have been a roast was something that was made on top of the stove. I put it in a pot with water and then my husband suggested but let's go to a movie. That was nearby so I said, okay, I just love with the life and we went off to the movie when we came back. There was smoke coming out of the window in the car or apartment. It was the second floor of a two-family house and ran upstairs. And of course all the water head run out.

23:36 The the meat was burned the pot was burned and I sell terrible and if I hadn't said don't worry, I'm going to clean it up. I said you just throw that pot away. You never going to be able to clean it up and he did he worked on it and he cleans it up.

23:56 And what advice do you have for young couples? You just have dude.

24:03 Kind of make sure that you like each other as well as well as each other and make allowances for behaviors don't think that the other person has to live up to every standard you ever wanted.

24:18 Because you probably won't live up to every standard that that person wanted either and just have a lot of tolerance for for people with.

24:30 Wealth of people's failings, I guess or maybe sometimes not getting up and doing what you want them to do.

24:38 And just have patience.

24:41 And when did you first find out you were going to be a parent? And how did you feel before your father was born? We were very excited about it. We were delighted about it. And I was just a wonderful feeling and it was especially wonderful when your father was born cuz he was the first grandchild on either side of the family and everybody just adored him.

25:06 And how is being a parent change you what did you have to adjust? What did you have to get used to the baby schedule?

25:18 And actually probably even though now will my sons of growing up and adults. I still have to get used to this schedules when they can come when they can come when I can come to visit them or when when something comes up. It's so it's a constant adjusting really and trying to raise your kids so that they have a certain amount of

25:45 Of Independence and knowledge about who they are in the fact that they are they have a family and back of them to support them and

25:56 Just again I said it takes a lot of patients who can't fly off the handle with your kids you can but it won't do any good.

26:05 Do you have any special stories are anecdotes that you remember from raising my dad or his brothers? Yes. I remember once your father the time he was about maybe four or five years old. He would always walk his father your grandfather to the corner just as far as to the corner. He wouldn't cross the street but are used to walk to the station every morning and how old would go with him as far as the corner and then wave goodbye and come home one day how it came home and I was upstairs making the beds and he comes in and he said Mom I want to show you something I said, okay bring it in and show it to me know I can't are you'll have to come downstairs to see it. So I was a little annoyed that I went downstairs and they're on the back step just outside the back door. They lay a dead mouse. He had found it on the sidewalk when he was walking back and he picked it up by the tail and carried it home to show it to me.

27:01 And I'm Trevor. Well when you first saw your grandchild if I doubt you're going to be a grandmother. Oh, I saw you for the first time when you were about 20 minutes old. We have been waiting in the hospital for you to be born and you look so wide awake and you were nice big baby too wide awake and your mouth was open and he kept sticking your tongue out. I remember that part of it, but we were all just thrilled to have you.

27:28 And what is your ethnic background ethnic background? My family is Jewish my parents and grandparents came from Russia as immigrants.

27:41 And have you ever been to Russian been our family came from?

27:47 And how was your family's ethnic background incorporated into your life growing up?

27:52 Well, we always celebrated the Jewish holidays. My grandfather went Faithfully to synagogue everyday. We when I was a kid, we went to a synagogue that was probably about 10 or 15 minute walk from our house.

28:11 And my grandparents who's when I was a young head to unmarried. Is living with them.

28:19 And of

28:21 We all I can say is mainly many of the holidays were home centered. I did not go to synagogue regularly as a child. My parents asked if I would like to go to Hebrew school when my the brother next to me started by that time. I was in the third grade and I did not like the idea of starting in the first grade and he was school. I felt like I was being demoted something. So I said no, I didn't send my parents accepted that and I've always felt sorry that I didn't because as an adult I have gone to Hebrew lessons and I can barely read the Hebrew letters. But if I was to do it over again, or if I had a child who said she didn't want to go to Hebrew school. I would tell her she has to do I wouldn't give her the choice.

29:06 Is there any point in your life that's very important to you and that you have a lot of memories of and it really affected your life. I can't think of one point there were a lot of points. You know highlight you mean you are. Like squirrels were too much because of my brother the brother next to me was in the Navy during World War II.

29:35 But there were certain things that happened on important days in my life. For example when I was in high school.

29:43 I walked into my English class one morning. I think it was in September which was right at the very beginning of the year and the English teacher said to us. How would you feel if you were a school girl in Poland today? And that was the day that Hitler started World War II by marching into Poland and on the day I graduated from high school, which was in June of 1940.

30:11 Hitler marched into Paris by that time he had conquered practically all of yours and I saved the newspaper from that day. I believe it was June 14th, 1940 the headlines of the Boston Globe which was the paper. We met at home talked about Hitler marching into Paris show me pictures of the Stormtroopers marching in and I save that newspaper until this very day. It must be somewhere because I gave it to your father a couple of years ago, and he was very very interested in having it.

30:47 And he's still like to do that himself. He would save important issues of newspapers.

30:52 Things that were important to him and then during World War II we had rationing but it was almost unavailable and that had to be rationed meat was rationed gasoline was rationed and my father needed his car for business and so he was able to get more he got more gas coupons gas rationing coupons, then people who just use that car for pleasure and then everybody in the family had a ration book, which was filled with little coupons.

31:21 And sometimes I would help my mother and go shopping with her.

31:26 And we would practically be in hysterics finding trying to figure out how much butter we can buy because I don't remember what the amounts where would say it was an eighth of a pound of butter per person. How much body can you buy if you have 5 People's coupons with you racing coupon and it was the same with me meet was rationed nylon stockings were absolutely unobtainable because now I was being used to make parachutes for the Army and if you what we had to use as substitute with rayon stockings, which we not very good at all and now it's talking to so precious in those days that if you got a rip in your stocking there were places where you could take it with somebody would knit up the rip you would get your I want stockings repaired because they were so bad you evolve to you and if we have a saw a line outside of store we would get in line not knowing what it was but hoping they would selling nylons.

32:29 And or what who are what have been the biggest influences in your life?

32:37 My family influences

32:41 In my growing up years was very important. I think my husband had a big influence on me one very important thing. I was never on time normally before I got married. If I arrive within 20 minutes of the time I supposed to be someplace I can sit in my cell phone time and would make people angry especially if they waiting on the street corner for me, but Mary was always on time. I don't think he was ever late for anything in his life and promptness was very important to him. And so that changed me I got to be a person who came on time.

33:18 That's about it.

33:26 And before you start, will you identify yourself from the table?

33:37 Seth Shire age 42, it's January January 30th, 2005 or Grand Central Station to storycorps booth and I'm interviewing my mother.

33:48 What's the Emily Cowboys you covered a lot of stuff that I was going to ask what part has work played in your life and your level of happiness. I've always enjoyed my work as a children's librarian. It was it was always a pleasure for me to go to work. I I really genuinely loved it. And then after Howard was born and only father I stopped working.

34:16 And I would visit the library. I used to work at the local library in Mount for any way we lived and every time I walk into the children's Department the woman who was the head of the department would say when are you going to be ready to come back to her? And I said, I don't know and then one day I walked in and I told her that my second son. Larry was on the way and she said all you'll never come back to work. But anyway, I did come back to work when how it was in high school. And when your father and I were faced with the expenses of college and ice in my mind, I was thinking oh boy, all things are going to go to college. We can't let that happen and then I decided to go back to work part-time. So I applied to a few of the local libraries in Westchester and I got a job working for the Yonkers Public Library.

35:03 As someone who was running there.

35:08 Daycare center Services. They had a service under a Federal grant. Whereby they would send out a librarian a driver movie projector to various daycare centers in the neighborhood and I would go everywhere each morning. I went to three different day care centers. I told told stories showed picture books read to the kids and until I had that experience of visiting day care centers. I used to think daycare centers were a great idea. But after I went there I realized that they would not I felt sorry for the kids daycare center because they would they was so hungry for individual attention. No matter how many attendants were there.

35:55 For this group of children. It was thought they would too much on their own for the very young age. Is he swerved 3 4 year olds and told to put their coats on and hurry up. It's time to go outside after I had read the picture books to them. I had individual stories. I had the children pick out the books that they would like to have read to them and they would line up and it seems like such a special thing for them to do to sit on my lap and have me read a story just to them, you know not to the group.

36:27 And after that experience, I didn't think daycare was such a wonderful thing.

36:33 I know you work at the library. I mean it and I worked.

36:40 Yes, I worked at Mount Vernon on the bookmobile and that was a fun job because we went to different neighborhoods everyday and we brought books to people who lived at a distance from the library to schools that went too far for their children to walk to the library. Every stop was different. It had a different personality and that was fun. And one thing that I always remarked on this bookmobile was a very small area about the size of a small bus.

37:09 And the doors would open in the winter time in the cold would come in and the kids would come and we stopped at a school and we'd be crowded with children who might have had the sniffles or cough so cold or anything and nobody on the staff of the bookmobile ever caught anything from the children that amazed me we were out in all kinds of weather with the door constantly opening and nobody ever got sick from it when I worked for a while at the Scarsdale Public Library as a part-time children's Library.

37:41 I know, nothing. I want to ask you was.

37:45 Let's say I mean, I see so many people in life are always want more things are. Happy. You're not satisfied with their jobs yet. You seem to live a life of gracefulness Simplicity and contentment and I want to ask you when I'm 21. I want to know what what is the secret?

38:03 I guess it's a secret of maybe loving the things you have. I had a happy marriage. I loved my kids I think to this day as grown man. They're wonderful people.

38:15 Only one thing I find recently that I envy and I have never envied anyone anything cuz I've always been perfectly satisfied with the way. My life is going always had everything I needed whether it was food clothing entertainment, whatever we traveled a lot and we did a lot of things but since your father has died and I see older people a husband and wife together. That's when I get envious that I don't have that anymore and then I talk to myself and I say what are you talkin about? You had 54 years of marriage, but it's if that's not the only thing that ever in my life that I have NC.

38:58 Which brings me to another question which stays about questions question people ask me all the time people who don't even know you they say to me. I was your mother doing I got that yesterday, but when I go into the dented a principle, I think people say that because they know that your father died three months ago and they want to know how I'm getting along cuz people ask me that too when I haven't seen him for awhile. How are you doing? How are you doing? Well, I think I'm doing all right, I do.

39:27 I do a fair amount of things. I have exercise class twice a week when else am I doing anyway, if something is there something interesting going on that? I think I would enjoy I usually do that. I have friends have a group of friends who meet as you know every Friday night for Friday night dinner, and we rotate going to different houses each week each Friday night instead of different person's house.

39:56 And I guess I just been going along with my life. I haven't made any big changes know maybe that's why I'm doing okay, cuz I I'm just continuing with all the things that I have done before.

40:11 Tell us with the legacy of your husband has been in your life in the life of your family and how

40:17 I think he I think he and Rich the family and I'm appreciate you more and more almost everyday. I'm going through.

40:28 Things that I'm trying to find space in our Dan which is a whole wall of bookshelves looking through books thinking about maybe I'll give this away that away and I find it. I find it very hard to give books away is like giving people away, but I'm slowly going through in trying to do that. He had very high standards for everybody for behavior and job.

40:56 I guess it was the fact that he had high standards. He was a very loving and generous husband.

41:02 And he now people SF can tell you or any of my son's can tell you he helped people to a pretty high standing and he let them know when there was something going on that. He did not like

41:16 He was pretty open about that.

41:20 It was very impatient. He could not wait there were times when he had taken the kids to the the pediatrician's office and there was a wait there and finally he left them. He came home. He said you going ways I can't wait anymore. So I went over to the preachers his office. And as soon as I walked into the waiting room one of the women who was also waiting there such me. He's very impatient just in case yes, he was

41:49 What did you?

41:51 Can you tell us a story?

41:53 Stories

41:56 I'm trying to think they would not.

42:01 Nothing special stands out. We went for many many years for about 35 years. We rented the same Cottage on the shore of a lake in Maine.

42:11 And it was in the southern part of Maine on the North Shore of Long Lake and we used to go there every year and every time we went everybody enjoyed it more and more and more then they had the time before if she wants it was the ideal place as our kids got older they got interested in horseback riding. They was a nearby place where we could take them for horseback riding lessons when they got interested in golfing they was a golf club not far away. It was was just fine and Mary himself who love to play tennis play tennis every morning. There was a group of people who play tennis regularly and the first thing we did when

42:53 We came back to town every August. We were there every August when we entered the little town first thing we did was stop at the little grocery store and reserve the New York Times for every day during the time. We were going to be there and

43:09 Then we would stop at one of the tennis partner has houses and say what's the schedule for tennis and he would get all his tennis game setup. We would we had a boat. We would rent a boat while we were there and take trips along the lake. It was just a place where all of us love to go and we had many many happy happy years there. It had to stop when the owners sold all the property and we felt that we could not buy the cottage because we lived 350 miles away and could not you could only use it when we could have an extended time there.

43:49 So that's when that part came, but we were my husband and I went on trips. We did a lot of traveling in Europe. We went to Israel.

44:02 Oh into lots of places Hawaii and we always enjoyed it. Every time we have a trip. We enjoyed it very much.

44:13 A one thing outstanding about Mary he was very good at math. I have always been terrible at math. So during all my yet and they're EG is I never had to do math if I was shopping and there was a sale and it was 20% off would turn to marry and say how much will this cost me with 20% off and he always you know, he was just

44:38 Try to ask you that she's doing about that. You're very first phone conversation with him when he called that day to come by and look and you were giving him directions. Oye-oye-kudiya telephoned my parents house because he had been given the phone number and the address to come and see if he would be interested in renting this room.

44:59 Tell my mother put me on the phone to tell him how to get to our house from wherever he was. I guess he must have been at South Station in Boston, which is in downtown Boston and I started giving him the directions telling him what what subway to use and what stop to get off at and I guess I was talking too fast cuz he said hold the phone Junior and catch up with you.

45:25 And I thought that was so funny being called Junior.

45:32 Wake up covered it.

45:37 Thank you very much. Oh, thank you very much. It's been a nice experience.