I ended up writing this “Before Maryann and Clovis” chapter to provide a bit of for-public-reading narrative of my family growing up, and the story of how I met Clovis, our courtship and marriage, then the chapters about all the houses we lived in together will make more sense.
This is the “Autobiography” I wrote a few year ago:
- Born 10/23/31 in Queens, New York City, New York.
- 1931 Lived in row house, St Albans, Queens, NY. Started kindergarten at a Catholic school nearby.
- 1937 Move to Manhasset, New house on Dogwood Lane. Attended Saint Mary’s School 1st grade through 5th. (And later Clovis and I were married in the same place, Saint Mary’s Church.)
- 1940 Munsey Park School
- 1943 Plandome Road School, junior high
- 1944?5? Manhasset High School
- 1949-1953 Bryn Mawr College
- 1953-54 Yale, completed my Master’s degree in Microbiology
- 1954-55 Taught at Hofstra College
- 1955-56 Yale
- Fall 1955 met Clovis
- Spring 1956 engaged to Clovis
- June 5, 1956 Married to Clovis
- June 30, 1957 Mary Elizabeth
- Sept 1957 Moved to Brooklyn Heights
- Sept. 8, 1958 Catherine
- November 1959 Fulbright to Rome
- June 1960 leave Rome
- Sept. 1960 Lived in Manhasset
- Nov. 1960 mover\d back to Brooklyn Heights
- Jan. 1961 Moved to 2 Water Lane
- Feb 25, 1961 Ben
- August 1962 moved to Houston, 410 Emerson St.
- June 1964 moved to 14 Courtland Place
- Aug. 16, 1965 John
- June 1968 bought 201 Westmoreland
- April 30 1970 Virginia
- March 1973 bought house with the Macdaniels
- 1973 bought Zapalac farm
This chapter is an overview that will help me explain how we got to Fayetteville, where I live today.
Christmas in Florida
I was at Bryn Mawr, Nancy was in high school. My parents and Nancy drove to Bryn Mawr to pick me up, and the whole family drove to Florida to visit my Aunt May. We had the opportunity to drive all around Florida — it was so exciting. I remember the coconuts, and the palm trees. This would have been in January, after Christmas, before classes started for the Spring Semester. I think my parents stayed in a hotel and Nancy and I both stayed in Aunt May’s guest room. Aunt May was a school teacher, and she never married. When American Airlines started flying, she found out she could take a tour. We took her to the airport and I remember watching her get on a plane (there are pictures of this – put them here), and she left for a two-week vacation, and flew to Florida. She lived in Queens and then moved to a little town called Stuart, Florida. Aunt May could fly to Florida in an airplane, but our family drove to Florida for our vacation because flying was very expensive, and once you got to Florida, if you flew, you would not have a car to drive around in. I don’t think Aunt May even owned a car. All these people from New York came to Florida for their Christmas vacation so there were cars you could rent, and a lot of things going on. We would drive around to go sightseeing. My Aunt May could tell us where to go because she lived there. At the beach in Florida there are sand crabs. They would wash up on the beach and I found them fascinating because they are in sections and I would collect them in buckets. They were not edible, after a few days they were very smelly and we would just throw them out.
After the Florida trip, my parents dropped me back off at Bryn Mawr, and I completed my bachelor’s degree in microbiology.
In high school I had not only taken all the biology courses, but my teacher liked me, and I was always doing special projects, so that is how I ended up majoring in biology at Bryn Mawr. Microbiology was the latest thing and there was a lot of research going on. They had only just thought about DNA, and cell structure, and living cells, and everything just exploded, so there was a lot of research being done, but this was all just starting, and it was very exciting.
After Bryn Mawr, I went to Yale for graduate school, because I wanted to keep studying microbiology there. The professor I had worked with at Bryn Mawr had taught at Yale for years, so as far he was concerned, Yale was the place to go.
After I completed my master’s at Yale, it was time get a job.
I moved back home with my parents and got a job teaching biology at Hofstra College. I taught the beginning biology course. We did very simple things. These kids did not have any idea of how living things worked, and I was so excited about things that were living, I think I got them excited about it, too. I remember one class, after we had had a great discussion, they brought in all kinds of living things to show me: grass, insects, whatever was alive. I was trying to convince them that there is a difference between things that are alive, and things that are not. It was very boring for me because my students were mainly football players, and they wanted to take me out on dates, and I wasn’t interested in any of them. So I decided to go back to Yale to study microbiology in the PhD program.
During my PhD studies at Yale, I lived in a small apartment in a high rise building very close to the Yale labs in downtown New Haven. I will try to find the address and see if I have any pictures from that time
My parents owned a couple of cars, and I was able to drive the station wagon back and forth between Manhasset and New Haven, about a 90-minute trip. I always went home on weekends, and sometimes I would go shopping with my mother. The summer before I went to Yale, my mother had suggested that I consider a sideline as a photographer’s model. I met a lot of people Many of the photographers I met were just getting started, and they needed someone they could photograph, to build their portfolios.
The Miracle Mile was Northern Boulevard in Manhasset and the major retailers – Bon Matela, Lord & Taylor’s and other places on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan would open their Long Island location on the Miracle Mile, so that is where you could go shopping. That is where I probably bought the ski outfit I wore to the ski weekend trip Clovis invited me on. We were very proper, of course, we stayed in a hotel downtown in New Haven, in separate rooms. Clovis had a car and he would drive us out to the ski slopes. I have to dig through my pictures to find some from this time because I have to show you the car.
If you go to New Haven during the ski season then have a lot of really good restaurants, so that is where we would have eaten.
Our engagement was announced to our parents first, and then it was in the Manhasset papers, somewhere I have those around, we’ll have to dig that up.
My engagement ring had a diamond from the stick pin that belonged to one of the Macdaniel or Heimsath gentleman ancestors. The stick pin had several diamonds, and my engagement ring had one, and Leda, Chuck’s wife, had one for her engagement ring, and then there was one for Virgie when she and Jack Pancoast got married.
- Fall 1955 met Clovis
- Spring 1956 engaged to Clovis
- June 5, 1956 Married to Clovis