Thanks for Your Thoughts

I want to thank everyone for their helpful comments to my last entry. I had lunch with my mom yesterday and managed not to say anything that upset her (for a change). We had a pleasant meal, and I asked her if she knew what became of any of her former students.

My mom was a Montessori nursery school director and teacher for many years. She has several Master's Degrees and is probably one of only a small handful of "real and actual" Maria Montessori Method experts in this county.

She knew offhand the "what became of them" stories of a couple of her former pupils - One is a massage therapist in San Diego, California (who'd of thunk it?) and another is a lawyer working in the Philadelphia District Attorney's office (eew!) My thinking was, let's try to get forward thinking and off the "ancestors" for a little bit.

She smiled for the first time in a while. I asked her to make a list of those she remembered best. I plan to "track 'em down" and find out what they are up to these days. Perhaps some of them will want to re-connect with my mom and give her a "hello."

Over lunch, I gained some insight on her. My mom married young (her 55th wedding anniversary is comping up this June) and moved from Boston to Philadelphia - and soon had her hands full with three little boys. I discovered she lost touch with her various aunts and uncles when she did this... she in essence "traded" her family for my dad's "contentious, argumentative" lot. Her family (and roots) dropped away as she tried to fit in with (and make peace among) my dad's family.

My dad's family was a small one - he was an only child. Those family members that were "around" were put off by my grandfather - the heart of the issue was the "family business" and arguments over how it should be run. Further exasperating the "splits" was my grandfather's opinionated (read: bigoted) ideas on "the proper place for a woman" and the mark of a successful (proper) man being a "captain of industry" and most definitely not in Government or Military service.

As this photo shows - many of my grandfather's uncles and cousins where in the Navy (remember Commodore Franklin?) and therefore in my grandfather's eyes, they were all "worthless bums."


This is my dad - he is about 3 years old with Phil Hallworth and an unknown (likely a family member) companion. Philip Lewis Hallworth was a neighbor and worked in the engine room on the ships he served on while in the Navy. He eventually went deaf from the noise and died at a very young age of 44 from cancer. He is buried in Beverly National Cemetery in Beverly, Burlington County, New Jersey. He was my honorary "Aunt Bea's" first husband.

I need to write another entry sometime - showing another side of my grandfather - one that took in a young girl whose mother could not take care of her - just because she was family and it was "the right thing to do."

At any rate, I babble on... I wanted to thank you all for your thoughts. They were most helpful and most appreciated - as are each of you.

Mom's Been Thinking

Recently my mom's been doing some thinking, and it doesn't take much, if any, reading between the lines to determine what she's thinking about. The other day she handed me this obituary about an amazing woman, who worked up until the day she died at the age of 102 as a airplane flight instructor. I post the obituary for one and all - it's a fascinating story.

My mom, I think, is trying to express her feelings about, well, questions like, "Is my life pretty much over now and do I have anything more to offer anyone?"

She has been dredging up materials on old people that were doing wonderful things well into their 90 and 100 years of age. My mom is an amazing woman. She's been really sick the past couple weeks from some sort of cold/flu. On the days when she feels better, my dad has been sick. The illness has been seesaw ride. They both seem to be feeling better today so hopefully they will feel really good come this Memorial Day weekend (the houseboat is calling!)

In the meantime, if anyone has something I can tell her, that would ease her mind about getting old(er), I'd be most appreciative. I too, find the subject very hard to bring up in a direct manner - I will be lost without her (my dad is already lost when she's not feeling well).

Please (control-)click to make this big enough to read.

Welcome Flora and Fauna

The Morris Arboretum, the setting of more than a few of the photographs I've taken and uploaded into Flickr, has a Swan Pond. I took this photograph on Mother's Day, May 9, 2010. You can see the sole swan swimming, rather forlornly in the pond.



The pond was designed and installed in 1905 by John Morris. The idea may have come from the popular 18th-century landscape design style of the English romantic landscape which often included a classical temple reflected at water’s edge.

"Files from that time period indicate the Morrises purchased a pair of swans in 1923, for $82.50. Mute Swans mature at four years and usually mate for life. Females lay an average of six eggs in the spring at two-day intervals. Cygnets, or baby swans, hatch after 35 days and can swim after one day. Adults share rearing duties and are extremely protective – they may even injure a person if provoked."


This photograph was taken on October 10, 2011 and I was saddened to learn that the old swan had gotten ill and died. She was badly missed.

This spring, the Arboretum had a pair of female mute swans donated to them by Nicholas and Athena Karabots. The one-year-old swans, who are sisters, were in need of some names, so the Arboretum had a "Name the Swans" contest. I hoped someone I knew would enter the winning names.


Photograph from the Arboretum's website.

Over 600 names were submitted - and the winning names are Flora and Fauna entered by Steph Cohen! If the weather "behaves" this weekend, I plan to go to the Arboretum and take my own photographs of them.

As to the names, "Meh." :)

The Great Annual Chilifest Fly-in!

Last Saturday my dad and I went to the Massey Air Museum even if the weather was overcast and cool.


Beautiful paint jobs abounded... They had over 90 planes arrive! And 150 cars, including mine!


As well as the statements of the obvious! This photograph was taken of the instrument panel of a $160,000 Russian-made YAK 50 war bird, out of production since 1985, so there is absolutely no room for error!


My dad and I looked at this one and both said at once, "Broccoli!"


Yep, right there on it's teeth.


I think this paint job was my favorite. Look at it gleam!


This odd plane caught both my dad's and my eye. It was hand-built from wood. Awesome interior - it would put most cabinet makers to shame. It was called a "Supercat".


It had quite a standout cockpit. When I got closer, I was delighted to hear this plane's sparkling personality.


"Hello, let me introduce myself, I'm a Supercat and if you have a few minutes I will tell you my story. If I can be honest with you right now I'm a little jealous, because my owner is off somewhere looking at other planes. He is probably looking for a Vagabond because he is building a Wagabond or a Vagabond or some kind of tramp."

I hope you will read on, it's attitude is infectious! :)


Another eye-popping paint job! I saw a young man about 17-18 years old climb into it and take off - he was most careful and concientious. Just as he rose and cleared the runway, he zoomed straight up and did a couple acrobatic rolls. I was amazed, it was so unexpected!


The Pride of Massey Areodrome. A Stearman Model 75 built in 1934.


This little guy was the fly-in mascot. He roamed the field and got to take several flights! (Lucky dog!)

There were plenty of hotdogs and chili (over 40 pots - each brought in by different people) and all the ones I sampled were yummy!

Searching for Roots

When I stop to think about "why" I am looking at the family tree, several thoughts come into my head. Being alone, and in a family that is quite small, I am searching for some relatives that, for the lack of a better choice of words, want to be relatives, for the time when my immediate family ... becomes smaller.

I also would like to understand how I got to where I am today - and in part - the answer to that extends back in time, even before I was here. After all, my place in the world was determined by where my folks were when they had me. So in part, to me, this means needing to understand why some my predecessors moved from where they were, to where they ended up.

Lastly, I'm helping my mom with her Daughters of the American Revolution application. In the process, I've been learning how to find things I never expected to find on-line.

My dad's family never moved once it came to the United States. They arrived in Philadelphia and in the seven intervening generations, never moved to a place further than fifty miles from the William Penn statue on City Hall.

My mom's family on the other hand...

One of the links to "where I've come from" is a tangled one.


Meet my great-grandmother "Maggie" and the "Reverend", shown here sitting on the running board of an old Ford four-door sedan somewhere in Texas.

Maggie, or more formally, Margaret Jane Shipman, came to Honey Grove, Fannin county, Texas with her parents, John Madison Shipman and Paratine Avary in the autumn of 1880. Her mother's parents and her younger brother Daniel Perry Shipman, also moved at that time, from Mount Pleasant, Wayne county, Tennessee. Maggie was but 11 years old.

Why did this family uproot from Tennessee-Alabama border and move to Texas? I've a couple theories and no answers. One thought is that they moved to escape the carpetbaggers that made life miserable for folks in those parts after the Civil War. Apparently, this family of rather poor dirt farmers without pre-war slaveholdings, had no part in the "Lost Cause of the Confederacy", and just wanted to be left alone. Several of Paratine's family were hung after the Civil War by northerners who simply didn't like them.

Another theory is that they moved to Texas to settle on one of the Texas Land Grants given to distant cousins, Edward and Moses Shipman. They apparently had some role in the Texas Revolution and were offered land in Fannin, Red River, and Bexar (San Antonio) counties. I've not had the time to sort this possibility out yet.

At any rate, Maggie married a mysterious William Deary in November of 1891. She quickly had a little girl named Grace, and in February 2, 1893, she has a little boy named George (soon to always be called Bubbie). She is left a widow by November 1893.


In the meantime, Reverend Joseph Black Bush has moved to Texas with his wife Mary and two girls, Lizzie and Virgie, from Fountain Run, Monroe county, Kentucky shortly after 1880. Again, the "in-law" parents also make the long move.

In 1883, the Reverend and Mary have a third girl, who they name Tommie, and Mary dies in 1890.

Why did they uproot from the third or fourth generation family home in Fountain Run, Kentucky and go to Texas? Again, I don't know. My great-grandfather was a fire and brimstone preacher in the very southern baptist, "Churches of Christ". One of the leading and founding members of that church was in Texas. Perhaps my great-grandfather was "given orders from the church" to go there. Subsequently, he served as a teacher and minister in Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations, Indian Territory. Maybe he was a "missionary" in a sense?

With five children between them from prior marriages, they soon have six more.


The first child the Reverend and Maggie Bush had, was my grandfather, shown here in his full "Masonic Lodge" regalia, in Boston, circa 1955.