So today we went up to Mary’s grave site to put some flowers on her grave. The site has a beautiful view. It is so peaceful to stand there and watch the world flow by.
We never could get Mary to give us any input on where she would like to be buried. So we were left with figuring it out for her. We could not get any input on what she would have liked to have for a funeral service. The only thing that she asked was to have Harold’s ashes interred with her, which we did.
We will be spending Mother’s Day here with our D-I-L and our grandkids. We will be doing a Mother’s Day brunch. Always nice to see the kids.
So, as I reflect on my brother’s passing this week, I was thinking about our time together. When we were all teenagers, we lived on 109 Anawan Ave in West Roxbury. With the help of Zillow I was able to see pictures of the house where we spent our teenage years.
We went from a house in Brighton that seemed to be getting more crowded by the day. So in our new house we all had our own bedrooms. We had a den upstairs where we could watch TV. There was a large dining room and formal living room on the first floor.
So here is the picture that I found on Zillow:
109 Anawan Ave, West Roxbury, MA
It looks remarkably well renovated. The listing says 4 bathrooms. When we lived there, there was but 1.5 baths. In my minds eye I tried to figure out where the new owners put all the new bathrooms.
My Mom and Dad’s room was on the second floor on the right-front. My room was in the back on the right side. Stan’s bedroom was on the third floor. His benefit was that my Mom and Dad didn’t want to go up there very much. The down side was the third floor got pretty hot in the summer. No AC in those days.
Stan had a pretty much private domain on the third floor. But, I used a room on the third floor for my ham radio station. My Mom wouldn’t there either for fear of getting electrocuted. She wouldn’t go in my room either, same reason.
Stan would stash cans of beer up there with no fear of getting caught. Downside was it was warm beer. Having a refrigerator up there would have been a huge tell.
On the first floor, left-front was the formal living room. We had a grand piano there. Eventually, we inherited a second upright piano that was stashed in the entry-way on the right.
I think that my Mom eventually sold the place circa 1975. My Dad died in 1968 and all the kids had moved on. Too much house for one person.
Our neighbors to the left were the O’Briens. Frank O’Brien was a mechanical engineering professor at MIT. He was the person who persuaded me to study electrical engineering.
The neighbors to our right were Dr and Mrs Wood. Anne Wood was a speech therapist like my mother. Nice people.
Another benefit was the house was on a bus route that ran to Green St. Station on the Orange Line (MBTA). We could all walk out of the house in the morning and get on the MBTA bus to school in Dorchester.
So Zillow says the value is set at $1.5 million. It recently sold in 2021 for about $1.3 mil. I don’t remember how much Mom and Dad paid for it but it wasn’t anywhere close to six figures. Unfortunately, Zillow doesn’t have any interior pictures. Click here for the Zillow link:
Stanley A. Bowker Jr., 75, late of Longboat Key, Florida, died Sunday March 6th. A Brighton native, Mr. Bowker lived in New York City since his 20’s. He graduated from BC High and Boston College, where he earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English. Mr, Bowker subsequently graduated from Fordham School of Law and practiced law for over 20 years specializing in trademark law.
He completed the NYC Marathon three times. He was an accomplished pianist and possessed encyclopedic knowledge of classical music and opera. With his first wife, Louise Galt of Pittsburgh, he travelled extensively in Greece and Italy until her death in 2003. He is survived by close friend Anna Kudlash, by his brothers Joseph of San Pedro, CA and Richard of Hingham, MA, and four nephews.
Friends are warmly invited to a memorial service at Parnell’s Pub and Restaurant, corner of 53rd Street and First Avenue in Manhattan, on Saturday March 19th from 1-4 p.m.
So it has been one week since I learned of my brother Stan’s passing. So many emotions. I was never very close to Stan but I am still very saddened to hear of his death. I had heard on March 2nd that he was very sick. Rich & Mary were going to try to get him moved up to MA for his final days. Alas, that was not to be.
So the memorial service will be on Saturday from 1-3 pm in NYC (see the obit for details). Rich and Mary and her boyos will attend. I will not be attending. I figured it would cost about $1000 to fly from LAX to NYC and add a couple nights of hotel. We are watching the grandkids this weekend. I have other reasons that I don’t feel the need to share.
The planning was particularly difficult because we were all separated by 1000’s of miles. CA, FL, MA, and NY all figure into the mix
His death made be feel about my own mortality and that my death might be closer than I ever thought. It reminded me that I need to do a better job of communication with my wife to prepare her for the time that she might need to manage on her own.
So here’s my advice to men out there. Listen to you wife. If she suggests that you go see your doctor about some pain that you are feeling. Go see the doctor, it might save your life.
Well, I had a great day. First, I got a call from our son Neil and his wife Laura. We talked for about half an hour. Nice to hear from them.
Then we watched our church’s Sunday online service.
Finally, we headed down to the Pacific Diner to have brunch with our son Mike and his family. Jonathan did the drawing on the top of the post. The drawing goes up on the refrigerator. As usual, I had my bacon and eggs.
Finally, a quiet afternoon. I did a few more Sunday crossword puzzles. It was a wonderful day.
Wednesday we do a Zoom Senior Bible study. We finished up our work on Nehemiah. Didn’t go anywhere. No beach for us. I don’t particularly care for going to the beach. Too much sun, too much sand, too hot.
Today, I will be sharing some pictures from our deep dive into the Stanley archives.
Harold Stanley c 1926
The note on the back says Harold, age 7 after recovering from scarlet fever. What a nice looking young lad.
Mabel & Paul Stanley (Paula’s grandparents) c 1918
Wait, there’s more. Paula’s dad was always in the kitchen at Los Angeles Harbor Lodge. Harold was the person who got me interested in Freemasonry.
(L-R) Gus Olguin, Harold, Kyle Pascal cooking for lodge
Well tomorrow is Father’s Day. So, I thought I would write about my Dad. My Dad died in early 1968 at the age of 6o something. He died of cardiac arrest.
I have often thought of how far we have come on heart health issues. My dad suffered a heart attack in the mid fifties. Back then, they didn’t have much treatment for heart disease. I don’t know much about what happened seeing as I was 7 or 8.
But I do remember this. My dad asked the doctor how he was going to make upstairs into our home. We lived in two family house in Brighton, MA and we occupied the second floor portion.
So the doctor’s answer was he should take it slow. Say one Hail Mary on each step. That would do it.
So fast forward ten years. He was scheduled for gall bladder surgery. He had excessive bleeding from the surgery and surgeons scheduled him for a return visit to the OR to try to find the source of the bleed. So he arrested on the table in OR. The surgeons revived him but he never regained consciousness and died about eight weeks later. Sigh.
He was a great father and I have always missed him.
In honor of Father’s Day here are a couple of my favorite photos of him.
During the past few weeks, Paula has been cleaning out her Mom’s bedroom of the many things that have been saved for many years. One of the more interesting artifacts was an article clipped out of a magazine about a pine marten named Henry Jones.
So when Paula was a young girl, her father would work as a park ranger up in Lassen National Park for each summer. During the rest of the year, Harold would work as a science teacher at a high school in Long Beach. On the day after school closed in June, her family would pack up and head north to Lassen.
So every year they would stay in a log cabin in the park. When Paula was about 8, they befriended a pine marten that her Dad named Henry Jones. Henry Jones would come back every summer for several years.
So there was a tree stump outside their kitchen window of the cabin at Summit Lake where the Stanley family would sit at their kitchen table and watch Henry eat the food that they had left. They also left some watermelon rinds that were popular with the deer in the area.
Why Henry Jones, you might ask? Well, the name Henry Jones came from a popular song from the 1940’s titled “Feed the Bones to Henry Jones, because Henry don’t eat no meat”. Here are the lyrics:
Tonight I’ll serve a supper, We’ll eat some food that’s rare. And at the head of the table, I’ll place brother Henry’s chair- Invite all the local big dogs, We’ll laugh and talk and eat, But we’ll’ save the bones for Henry Jones, ‘cause he don’t eat no meat-
Today I’ll go to market-
and buy a lot of fish,
That will thrill Brother Henry,
Because that’s his special dish.-
Get a large can of molasses,
so we’ll have something sweet,
But save the bones for Henry Jones,
“cause he don’t eat no meat.
Henry is not a drinker,
he rarely takes a nip,
He don’t need a napkin,
‘cause the things he eats don’t drip.
One day we had a banquet,
It really was a bake,
They started off with some short ribs,
they finished off with a steak.
But when the feat was over,
brother henry just kept his seat,
and we served the bones to Henry Jones,
‘cause he don’t eat no meat.
To- he don’t eat no meat.
Songwriters: Daniel Barker / Henry Mccoy Jones / Michael H. Goldsen
The song was performed by Nat King Cole and Johnny Mercer in 1947. Click here to listen to the song on YouTube.
And finally, here is the copy of the article that we found in the bottom of one of Mary’s dresser drawers:
Click the following URL to read the article: Henry Jones
We have decided to start the search for a facility to care for Mary. Paula and I are just running out of gas. We are running out of patience.
We need to be constantly vigilant as to what she is doing and needs to do. She remembers our name (most of the time). For instance, if we were to ask her to do two things. eg. brush teeth, come back out and sit at the table, she would only remember the first task.
With our trip planned to Boston in May and my knee surgery in June, we felt that now was the time to get her into skilled nursing facility that specializes in “memory care”.
We found a placement service aptly named “A Place for Mom” that has been helping us find such a place. The service is free to us. The placement fees are paid by the skilled nursing facilities. There is also an iPhone app. Search for “A Place for Mom” in the app store. BTW, it gets good grades from YELP.
So far we have visited a couple of sites for our consideration. The first one was nice but had a couple of problems. First, it was too far. It is located in Hermosa Beach, which is a 30-40 minute drive up the 110 freeway for us. Price was also a bit high for our taste. It starts with a base price of about $5000 and then adds on fees for meds and other related services.
We figured that our bottom line would be around $7500.
Second one we visited is in Long Beach. This is a bit closer. Probably about 15 minutes. The building was once an office building that had been refurbished into a nursing facility. They made an offer that we might not be able to refuse. They offered first two months for $95 (Mary’s age). The fee is normally a flat fee of $6100. No add-ons. We had lunch with the Memory Care director. Food was very tasty.
Here are a few pictures:
We put a $500 deposit on this place. We have one more place to visit on Tuesday. We’ll see. We should know our path forward by end of next week. We still need to tell Mary about our plans and take her for a tour. Then schedule moving people to move her stuff.
calherewecome 