A FEW MEMORIES FROM A BIG SISTER to her little brother...

My life was changed when you were born. I was no longer the main focus of Mother and Daddy's attention, and though you were cute you weren't that much fun for me, because after all, I was four years old. I don't remember too much interaction with you until you were two. You stole my very own little red chair. Of course I grabbed it, but the parents intervened and --most unjustly it seemed at the time --they made me give it back!

As we got older it was easier. Your toys were very different from mine. I had no particular use for trains or trucks, and you didn't pay much attention to dolls. Except once, when Santa brought me this wonderful baby doll with a very fragile china head, of which I was extremely protective and more than maternally proud. Don't know why you picked her up out of her crib, but her soft-stuffed body just collapsed and that beautiful china head smashed to smithereens. Fortunately Mother was close by and your head was spared the same fate.

Then, when brother Dave joined the family, I was eight and had my own life with school and playmates down the block. But you and Dave became buddies. You were the one who first introduced him to the world of trains and trucks, then to whole armies of toy soldiers who battled daily on the living room rug. And the excitement of the first electric train! (Alas, that was a sad Christmas for me, because my faith in Santa was shattered when Daddy came home from work and I saw him take a section of switch track out of his overcoat pocket.) But Christmas was a magic time at our house, Santa notwithstanding.

Of course there were the vacations, carefully included in the family budget every year. Perhaps at a Wisconsin resort where Mother could forget kitchen chores; always on a lake with a rowboat in which to explore it; always with country roads or trails for hiking and exploring. Then the big trip in 1929 (before the stock market crashed!) when the four of us rode to Denver on a streamliner (oh ecstasy!) and saw the mountains gradually grow before our very eyes as we rode westward. Of course Dave didn't see them, he was just a lump in Mother's tummy,, but I'm sure he had a good time, too.

Growing up we tended to grow farther apart, still interested in one another's activities but not often a part of them. I remember your boy soprano years, when you sang solos at Christ Lutheran Church and "The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers" at school (I think it was Reinberg). Then when your vice began to deepen you started violin lessons. I can still remember coming home from school and lying on the sofa to read a favorite book and you would start to practice, which meant I had to drop my story and cover both ears with pillows....But your diligence produced results, because in high school you were one of Mr. Groom's special students and played often for various programs. I fully expected you to become the member of the Chicago Symphony, or maybe a famous conductor, but that was not to be.

After high school you went off to Northwestern, I was married, and then came the war. You needed a car to get to Evanston, and husband Bob helped you select what proved to be one of the worst models ever to come off the assembly line. I remember it standing forlornly at the curb out front for what seemed like months before we found a way to get rid of it. (Thank you for forgiving Bob, but machines of any kind were never his forte.)

Anyway, a short time later you, too, were in the Navy. One of Bob's great memories is of you coming aboard the battleship West Virginia when they were anchored somewhere for supplies. It was a real surprise. Am I mistaken, or was that the Thanksgiving Day that he bit so eagerly into a turkey leg that he broke a front tooth and there was fear that the war effort might be endangered without his trumpet -- that is, until a valiant dentist on ship gave him a new tooth?

After the war, after college, you went to work where you met Nancy and were married. I remember the wedding was on the day after Christmas. Our youngest, Ginny, had come downstairs to play with all the wonderful things Santa had brought, but I pulled her away, bundled her up and -- along with older siblings Binky and Rick and Mother -- we headed for Portage. (This was in the days when a bank employee like Bob couldn't ask for a day off to attend anything as unimportant as a wedding.) Those of us who went had a great time and I'm sure everyone there remembers Ginny, age 3, loudly stating that if we didn't eat soon she was "going to be missable!" When we were enjoying festivities at the hotel she further distinguished herself by locking herself into a cubicle in the washroom, then crawling out under the door. Ginny is still able to make her presence known.

Next there were our families -- we had our three children, you had SIX! Mother was appalled at our having three; after number two, Rick, was born she sent Bob a V-mail announcing the birth and ending with "Consider your family complete!" ... I never heard what she may have said to you and Nancy.

There were many good visits back and forth, Arlington Heights to Portage, then Whitewater, then Fort A., and, of course, from those places to AH and Palatine, where Mother, as well as Dave and Pat and family, then lived. Years after, when our brood had grown and flown, we moved to California, but visits continued. We had such good times when you and Nancy came to visit us. We saw as much in the San Francisco area as we could cover in any given visit, and one memorable time joined forces with English cousins Peggy and Peter, rented a van and drove south along the coast to Santa Barbara and eventually to Ginny's. (Think that was when she lived in Toluca Lake.)

The good times were repeated when we came to Wisconsin, becoming reacquainted with the family, now expanded to include grandchildren. We visited their homes, took trips to places like the Milwaukee Zoo, places of historical interest, a park on Lake Michigan where I remember enjoying a long walk along the shoreline. Another fond memory is attending a church service at the Presbyterian Church in Fort, with our Nancy in the pulpit.....It has been good.

So, Paul, Bob and I send congratulations on attaining the ripe and wise old age of 80, and we wish we could be there to celebrate with you. At 87 and 84 we don't do much traveling these days, but as a kid of 80 you could probably make it one more time. Whether or not that is possible, want you to know how much we have enjoyed our times with you and Nancy through the years. I'm so glad you're my brother!