A Little History of Kathleen and Richard Together

1932-1955: Kathleen was born in her Akron, Ohio home.  She grew up in a family of six children, her parents, and two grandparents.  She lived in about three houses in Akron over the years. She also lived in Kent, Ohio while not commuting to Kent State University.

1931-1955 Richard:  I was born in Chicago, Illinois, and lived there about two years. Then w moved to Iowa, most likely Cedar Rapids and Des Moines for about two years.  In 1935 I moved to Cleveland, Ohio. 

I lived in Cleveland or East Cleveland until 1946.  My parents moved so often that I never went to the same school two years in a row until grades six through eight.  In 2011 I learned the reason for the frequent moves. There was a family cottage in Muskegon, Michigan that was shared with my aunt's family.  The cottage was built in the 1920’s.  For many years Mother, brother and I would spend summers at the cottage and father would stay in Cleveland to work. Since money was short during the great depression, the family would give up our rented house while we were at the cottage and rent another house before our return.  This saved two or three months rent. Father would live in a group home with several other men during this period. I wonder why I was unaware of this while growing up.

We moved to Akron, Ohio In 1946  after father acquired a Nash auto franchise .  At first just father and I moved there in rented rooms until our apartment was available on Westgay Drive.  Then the East Cleveland house was sold and mother joined us.

I went to Buchtel High school for the last three years. The most memorable event at Buchtel H.S. was meeting Kathleen. That is detailed in another story. “How Kathleen and Richard Met and Got Married”.

51 Westgay Drive was my permanent home until I left for the army in November 1953.  I did live in Columbus, Ohio during the school years while attending The Ohio State University.

July, 16. 1955 Kathleen and I got married and moved to 29^th Street in Lawton, Oklahoma.  Lawton is just outside of Fort Sill where I was stationed.  We lived there until November 1955. I continued my army duties and Kathleen quickly got involved in activities at Fort Sill.  A couple weeks before we got married I had rented this new duplex.  It was a nice little house and handy to my Fort Sill office.  We think there were advantages in starting our new life far away from our previous life.  we had four months away from both families and this gave us plenty of time to really get to know each other.  Between meeting and enjoying my friends and the activities she got involved in it was a wonderful time.  Marrying Kathleen was the best move I have made in my life.

 I left the army in late November 1955 and resumed civilian life. It was tempting to stay in the army but obviously the decision was made to leave.  We returned to Ohio by way of San Antonio, Texas, then across the southern border to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We spent a few happy days there then headed back north.  This was our delayed honeymoon. 

In Wadsworth, father had arranged for us to rent a new duplex at 297 Simcox Street.  The rent was $85.00 a month. It was a very nice place to live. The family in the other half turned out to be friends.  We quickly made other friends in Wadsworth.  We were one of the founding members in Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church. It originally met in the Senior Citizen’s building.  Eventually the church bought the Mennonite church building that was built in the 1840s. St. Marks and the church building are still flourishing.

Kathleen quickly got a substitute teaching job and did tutoring in Wadsworth. In December 1956 Alan was born. Susan followed in January 1959. While the children were small Kathleen stayed home and did the bulk of the child rearing. She started teaching full time at Wadsworth City Schools when they both were in school.

Kathleen knew when she finished High School that she wanted to be an elementary school teacher and she worked hard to get her teaching certificate. Early in her education at Kent State she was one of fifteen chosen by Akron Public Schools to participate in a new paid program. She went to Fairlawn Elementary School to be a teacher's assistant in kindergarten. This was before she had student teaching. From March to June she split the day, in the AM kindergarten student teaching and the PM kindergarten  as a paid assistant.  This was very valuable experience.

After graduation she taught full time for one year at Robinson School Annex in Barberton, Ohio.  The annex was a separate building about a quarter mile from the main school.  It had three second grade classrooms, a kitchen and an office.  Due to the heavy traffic if there was a program at the main school the principal would arrange an escort to help protect the students during the walk. This was in a low income area which added to both the joys and difficulties of helping the children get an education. This was a very valuable year for her, she got great experience as well as the opportunity to pay back her parents for the financial sacrifices they made helping her through Kent State University. Yes, she did work while going to school. One of her main jobs was at the Kent State library.  She earned retirement years which proved valuable in retirement.

When the service manager left I was offered the job.  I had never actually repaired a car. This was a wonderful experience.  There were six mechanics, two body men and a lubrication man. My lubrication man directly contributed a lot to my success in the job and I have told him so very clearly over the years. I worked very hard at the job reading every bulletin from Ford. By supervising the men, attending district service manager meetings, driving every car with the owner if there was an unusual problem usually both before and after the repairs and all went well.  The mechanics were understandable originally dubious of my ability at the start but fairly quickly realized that even though I could not fix a car I did know what needed to be fixed.  The time I was manager was the best time the service department ever had.  I was the first service manager that I knew of who boxed every part taken from a car and held them for the customer to see. This greatly helped customer relations. Several other operational changes were made. Eventually after about 15 months I had to give up the job.  This was back in the days of very poor ventilation and I was breathing the carbon monoxide air all day.  I would go home every evening with a violent headache that would not go away without aspirin.  I liked the duties but not the headaches.

I then switched to new and used car sales.  I was a good salesman after I learned that I had a lot to learn.  Two moments stand out in my learning process. Very early a friend asked me in the showroom “Why should I buy a car here and from you.” This question opened my eyes.  Another day I let two customers walk from the showroom without buying. McD went out in the sales lot, brought them back in and sold them. That opened my eyes even wider. I was not a super, super salesman but was better than average. 

Father died January 15, 1961.  There was not sufficient money to keep the dealership.  I ran the dealership for about three months during the closing process. With the help of Ford Motor company the dealership was sold. I always wished there had been money to keep the business. There is no way now to know if that would have been good or bad but would have been nice to have had the opportunity. Several years later the building was sold to the dealer at that time. 

Mother wanted to move back to Akron so we moved into her house at 136 Brouse Drive.  There was little equity in the house so we took over the payments and paid her the equity.  After the final payment the house was ours. It was a small house but we managed with the two children. 

I went to work for American Motors traveling to help improve the existing dealers and to find new ones. American Motors gradually got into more and more trouble.  It looked like the usual problem, not enough money to properly run the company. Eventually they got new management and the new manager replaced all but one of the nine travelers.

I then went to work for a large wholesale and retail awning company as the sales and service manager of the retail division.    After the kids grew up and moved away we moved to a larger house at 426 Westwood. Yes, we had a larger house with fewer living there. We liked the neighborhood and the house.  We decided to sell the Brouse house ourselves. We borrowed money from the local bank for part of the payment for the new house, planning on using the proceeds of the other house to complete the payment.  The house sold slowly and when we got the money we were down to our last $5.00.  I left the awning company after about ten years. I significantly increased the sales while I was there and mostly enjoyed the work.  There were areas of conflict in procedures, policies and direction of the retail division that made effective staying difficult for me.

By now I knew I was not enjoying my prospects and not sure that being in sales was my future. With full support from Kathleen I went to the University of Akron Orville branch, and got a minor in Computer science.  Half way through a FORTRAN programming course I overheard the heads of Computer Science and Mathematics discussing who they could get to teach the next FORTRAN class. I interrupted them and said that I would teach it. I knew the Computer Science head as he was my teacher.  I was surprised when they said fine, you have the job. I taught several classes there part-time while going to classes myself.

Just about the time I earned the minor, an opening came up on main campus for an Senior Academic  Programmer/Analyst.  Another part-time teacher told me about it and I applied.  The Dean at Orville and the Computer Science head volunteered to write a letter of recommendation without my asking and I got the job. During the interviews there were several comments about my being a lot older than my boss and everyone else in my department.

I worked there until I retired at age 64.  It was an ideal job for me, great variety doing things I was good at and enjoyed. What did I do there? Our group wore many hats thus the many duties.  I will just try and list some of the major items.  I set up and managed two teaching computer labs for the Community & Technology College.  One was a drafting lab with 30 separate computers. The other was a networked lab of 32 computers half terminals and half MACs. I set The terminals up so that the professor could teach, give and grade tests, control and fix problems from the lab or his office.  We created and printed user IDs and passwords in the lab.  Our back up and restore system to correct any problems that would come up was always several months ahead of the main campus computer labs. I was very proud of that lab.  I installed and maintained software on the campus IBM mainframe computer.  Updated the procedures students and faculty used to access the IBM mainframe.  We were available to students and faculty anywhere on campus for any computer related problems. We took turns manning a help desk for walk-ins. Most walk-ins wanted help for writing computer programs in one of the many computer languages, or on their research.  I wrote the university manuals on using Job Control Language that was used to access the main frame and the specialized version for the SPSS statistical program. Many other things were done to make the computer system university wide secure and effective for student, faculty and staff. Every day was different.

I retired in June 1994 to take advantage of a buy-out plan plus at that time as I was not feeling all that peppy and with Kathleen’s pension and my university pension, Social Security and do not forget my $58.60 pension from American Motors, we knew we would be OK financially. On July 4, 1994 I had my first confirmed heart problem.

While we were living on Westwood Kathleen broke a bone in her knee while white water rafting. This was a vacation that I organized.  Alan was with us on that part of the trip.   I was thrown from the raft at the same time she broke her leg.. Our house was totally unsuited for one floor living and that was sharply brought to our attention at this point.  We started thinking of getting another house and when Susan and family moved to Pennsylvania and after thinking of moving to several other places we found a place in Trappe, PA.  We again decided to sell the house on our own.  Our friends the Beardens were doing the same thing. While we were at the Bearden’s house a man was there looking at their house but did not want it. Marlene suggested he look at ours, and he bought it. We moved to Pennsylvania and they moved to West Virginia a day apart.  Everyone was happy.

What did we do in our free time for enjoyment and to hopefully help others? Kathleen tended to mostly get involved in group volunteer activities while I leaned toward individual activities.

When she joined a group she always moved up the ranks to become an officer in the organization.  No matter where we lived Kathleen got involved.  At Fort Sill, OK she was a hospital volunteer.  In Wadsworth, Ohio she was involved in many activities including Kappa Phi, St. Marks and The Children's Concert Society (C.C.S).  She and I were founding members of St. Marks.  She was a leader in the Episcopal Church Women. She was a leader getting St. Marks involved in the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen. Between the two of us we were the church treasurer for about 14 years, I kept the books on the computer for all of that time and for most of the time she was the one who attended the vestry meetings. The C.C.S is a major organization that did many activities in Summit County for promoting the arts for the children.  She served as president during a very critical time in the organizations history and got them back on the correct track.

She and I together ushered at the Akron Civic Theater and E. J. Thomas Concert Hall for a combined near 25 years.  We got to see and hear a great variety of plays, concerts, and lectures. It was a great experience.

 In Trappe, Pa she attends council meetings, is on the Open space committee, member of the zoning and hearing board, co-chairman of the Trappe Community Day, active in the Collegeville Community Club and St. James Episcopal Church Outreach program.

My outside activities largely included getting into competition. I played golf but not very well.  I bowled in a bowling league for about 10 years. I was competitive in tennis and table tennis playing in a lot of tournaments and league matches as well as the fun matches often at Durling Park in Wadsworth.  With help I organized and ran a table tennis tournament in Wadsworth for a few years. There were as many as 127 entries in several events. This took a lot of time and required a lot of help from family and friends. Probably my best sport accomplishment was representing Ohio in the National Senior Olympics in St. Louis Missouri in both tennis and table tennis. Eye problems eventually called a halt to competing.

For St. Marks in Wadsworth besides serving as treasurer, I created and maintained their web site. After moving to Pennsylvania I created and maintained a web site for The Historical Society of Trappe, Collegeville and Perkiomen Valley. http://www.trappehistoricalsociety.org.   I also helped maintain the web site for the Philadelphia chapter of the Ohio State alumni group.  Kathleen and I supported each other's activities.

 In September 2008 Jim, my bridge partner, and I took over a duplicate bridge club. This club had been open for many years but was in danger of closing. It has been a very interesting experience for us. We normally have about 28 players every Monday morning.

Kathleen and I traveled a lot both in and out of the country. We have been to about 20 countries and 40 states. A few of our travels are described elsewhere on this web site.

A lot more could be written and perhaps less but his is it for now.

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