We were married July 16, 1955. I was in the army at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  We lived in Lawton, OK until mid November 1955. We then moved to Wadsworth, Ohio where we lived until May 2004.  Trappe, PA,  a small town not far from Philadelphia is now our home.

When we first moved to Wadsworth, I worked at McDFord and Kathleen taught at Wadsworth City Schools. 

Our health insurance for a child's birth kicked in December 5th 1956. Kay was due about that time. I told her that if the birth came on December 7^th I wanted the name Pearl regardless of its gender.  For some strange reason Kathleen objected. Alan David McDowell was born at Akron City Hospital the morning of December 8^th 1956.  I had asked for his name to be David Alan McDowell but she objected to the resulting initials and reversed the first and middle names.

This was back in the old days, so even though he was born fairly early in the morning it was well in the afternoon before I got the see her and our first child. All kinds of reasons were put forth for the delay, feeding time and a variety of other reasons none of which made a lot of sense to me as in my opinion what could be more important than seeing mother and child. But I waited maybe 7-8 hours.  The first meeting was a joyous time as have countless other meetings since.

Alan came home and blended into our family.  My brother, Robert, was scheduled to be married on December 22^nd two weeks after Alan's birth.  I was scheduled to leave for the wedding in the middle of a treacherous show storm, thus blinding snow and icy roads lay between our home and Lafayette, IN.  Kathleen wisely made the decision not to attend the wedding.  Her brother Al helped her while I was away. Even though it was the obvious choice every now and then I jokingly bring up that she refused to attend my brother's wedding.

On January 22, 1959. the tenth anniversary of our first date, Susan Kay McDowell was born in Wadsworth Hospital.  We arrived at the hospital well before daylight.  Her doctor had three other women ready but for some reason, probably money, did not call another doctor to help with the deliveries.  Since our child was in a position where it could not be born but was fully able to give extreme pain to her sweet loving mother to be, Kathleen was left for last.  We were very frustrated and upset as Kay was getting no pain relief.  This added to the worries that we had endured for almost eight months.  When she was about six weeks pregnant the doctor told us that she needed an emergency operation for a tubule pregnancy. He basically said we were free to get another opinion but if he was correct it was likely that Kathleen would die before the second opinion could be rendered.  What choice did we have?  He did the operation and found nothing wrong. He did take out her appendix since he was there, maybe to make sure he got paid. In his follow up conference he said it was possible that the surgery could have caused the baby harm and we would just have to wait and see. Later we found out that there was a simple in office test that could have been performed with no danger to either.

I stayed with Kathleen during the painful wait except I did wheel a couple women in and out of the delivery room as no one else was available.

When her turn came I stood at the open door of the delivery room, and knew at once that our child was both female and was endowed with the ability to lustily cry.

Susan was born in a heavy rain storm and the roads were flooded between Wadsworth and Akron thus I could not get her sister Donna to help.

W had a few names picked out for a girl; Mary, Margaret, Janet, Susan and others. Susan Kay McDowell was the final decision and has turned out well.

Susan's problems were more dramatic.  Two things were obvious to me.  One I kept saying that her head was lopsided. The other she seemed behind in motor skills, sitting and standing for example.  We belatedly went to another doctor, Dr Nafzinger and he agreed about her head.  He at once sent us to a prominent surgeon and he quickly made the diagnosis that bones in one side of her head were growing together too early.  He cut her from ear to ear over her scalp and placed aluminum foil between the guilty bones. Yes, the scar is still visible. In six weeks she was sitting, standing and walking.

Her other crisis came when she was about six.  She woke up one morning coughing and had difficulty breathing.  Dr. Nafziger made a house call and told us to take her to highly respected Akron Children's Hospital.. He thought there was no big hurry so I shaved and dressed for work.  On the way her breathing became dramatically worse and we both thought she would die on the way. We got her in the hospital and then the extreme frustration mounted.  The doctors kept coming by asking questions about possible causes throwing out all kinds of scary theories.  Kay and I keep saying, “Regardless of the cause she has to be able to breathe”.  They did nothing but talk.  Finally they did call, at our request, Dr Nafzigerr who was the medical head of Children's Hospital. He told them that he was on the way in and if a tracheotomy had not been performed before he got there they would never work another day at that hospital.  He got better action than we did.  He had  diagnosed her with croup during the home visit.

Susan had croup, even though the hospital doctors had said that she was too old for that.  A six year old Cincinnati girl died of croup during this same time period. While she never got very good at talking with the open air path she could print well enough to get her points across. It was a very dangerous time.

Our challenge and privilege was to help our children survive childhood and become happy, productive adults.  This was complicated by the influence of our different family backgrounds.  Kathleen grew up in a family of six children, her parents and generally two grandparents.  It was normally a genial free living environment with only the normal give and take family joys and sorrows. They had few different residences, a typical family.  I had only one brother who was three plus year older and we never had a mutual friend.  We moved constantly living in Chicago for two plus years, Iowa two plus years before moving to Ohio in 1935. The first ten years in Ohio we moved every year.

I believer that the biggest difference relating to our child rearing ideas was found in our prior family life.   While Kay's family was large and closely knit, ours was small and less cohesive. Father was not a major factor in child rearing.  Mother believed in law and order. Very firm rules were always in force.  No excuse was ever permitted.  It was 'did you or did you not do what you were supposed to do'. If I did, all was fine, if I did not, I suffered the consequences. I only got in trouble when I disobeyed a rule not for doing a careless or kids thing.  For example I once mailed about 200 Christmas card envelopes for her.  The only problem was the envelopes neither had return addresses or the cards included.   We worked together to no avail to get the envelopes back.  She thought it was interesting  when she would get a call from someone who figured out who set the mailing.  There was no problem.

Gradually, maybe very gradually, I came to temper my  approach to being more reasonable.  That does not say that I ever came close to the ideal.  I was recently reminded that when there was a disagreement and I thought the child was being rude I refused to continue the discussion regardless of any apology. This was frustrating to the child as well as  nonproductive. There were disputes over things like Alan's hair and Susan's school clothing. Things that I placed far to much importance on at the time.  I  obviously had some difficulty in picking what battles to fight. What makes this clear is that the children and Kathleen remember these things much clearer than I.

Alan was a year ahead of Susan in school.  Susan learned to read well before she entered kindergarten.  Her early reading was helped by Alan reading to her almost daily and teaching her to read for herself, her desire to learn,  and of course her mother was a teacher.  Thus after about three weeks she was transferred to first grade. That is why she was only a year behind Alan.  My memory is that either the kindergarten or more likely the first grade teacher was not in favor of the transfer.

Even though we had little money we always set some aside so that we could hire a baby sitter maybe as often as once a week.  I think this was good for us and the children.

I remember one stage of Susan's early eating routine. It seemed like this stage went on for several years, but was probably only a couple of weeks.  She seemed to do all her feeding in a six hour span and spent the other eighteen crying. 

We had many informal good times while the children were still children.  I remember eating and playing games.  One of us would start a story then would stop! the next person then would continue it and then stop until it got to the last in line who brought the story to its conclusion. Obviously it never ended even close to what the originator had in mind. It was a fun game requiring use of our imaginations.  Also at the table picking a letter and then naming objects in the house or room started with that letter. Not easy for young kids but fun.

We took many car trips and played the usual games.  One would name a state/animal, and the next in line had to name another that started with the last letter of the previously named state/animal.  That got hard after a while even for the adults.  We tried to find license plates from all the states and many other forgotten games.

Over the years and continuing as late as 2012 we have played zillions of card games, we stated early and never quit.  there might be 2,3, or 4 of us playing at a time.  This has continued to our grandchildren.

Alan and Susan are both curious children who like to learn new things and new approaches.  They like to solve problems real or imagined, as do I.  From birth to now there has always been a lot of conversation in our family either as a group or one on one.  This was not planned, just seems to happen.  This also has continued with our grandchildren.

It seemed like our house was the neighborhood play center and we loved it.  Someone was often there with one or the other of our children. We had a table tennis table, lots of books and evidently a good atmosphere.

Both did well in school.  Even back in elementary school Alan was something of a history and geography buff.  He read from sources other than the assigned texts. There were occasions where he corrected his teachers when they had 'facts' wrong or they would teach the sanitized version. Of course he would offer a correction that was not always accepted with praise. They both were active in extracurricular activities with one or the other in sports, music, clubs, band, chorus etc. and ended up ranked high in their classes.

Let us not forget that each has a spouse that they love and cherish and have given us as a special present, four grandchildren. What better present could we have.  We get to often see, talk to and enjoy both families. Kathleen and I are fortunate beyond words.
Revised: 7/5/2013