Heritage

 

See that fellow on the right? He's my maternal grandfather who was just 29 years old then. My memories of him are as a very old man, with a wrinkled face and enormous ears. 

But lately, he's been close by, much closer than in his lifetime, as I mine the papers and photographs he left behind when he departed this realm in 1969.

My grandfather - known as Grand-daddy to his grandchildren - died while I was a student nurse at Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre. I was not happy in nurse's training and was determined to complete the term in order to harvest my college credits, and then leave the program. It was December just before the holiday break and my mother chose not to tell me my grandfather had died.  I came home to the news that he was gone and the bedroom he had occupied just off the dining room at our home on North East Street was back to being my parents' bedroom. 

He wasn't at his big rolltop desk in the front office of The Potter Enterprise when I went to work there, writing 'society' news to give Mary Domaleski a break. Obituaries, births, meeting recaps were all handed to me and I worked from a ramshackle office on the second floor of that drafty old building, typing copy on an old Underwood manual typewriter.

Access was gained through the office of the new editor - Del Kerr - who taught me a lesson that I still use today. A cigarette guttering in an overflowing ashtray on his broad desk, he handed me a slip of paper. He instructed me to write one word on that paper - it was simple. THE. He reached out his hand, took it and I watched as he crumpled it and connected with one toss into a nearby wastebasket. "When you write, throw that word away!"

The time working at The Potter Enterprise between nursing school and beginning at Penn State Behrend one year later brought me many things - a love for small town newspapering, journalism, writing and the love that has shared my life. It was in that old front office on a wintry Saturday morning that I first made eye contact with Arthur as his grandmother sent him into the office to pick up her tax collector notices. 

The October issue of Potter County Historical Society's Quarterly Bulletin features some excerpts of Grand-daddy's unpublished memoir recounting his time in Cross Fork during the lumber boom. I have been transcribing from that old yellowed sheaf of newsprint, held together by a row of corroded staples and rusted paper clips.

There are more stories to mine and more pictures to copy but I look at this picture and am immediately drawn to notice his posture with his hand on his hip. That's a look many of his descendants have inherited.