May 4, 2012

• For Unk

  Hopefully we all have someone who was there for us and made our childhoods
   a better place, this is a little history about one such person in my life.
  This is a lot to read but I wanted to write it out for family
  while I still remember it the way Unk shared it.
  This is the first post in a series of posts I would like to write about Unk.

  My Grandmother Elizabeth Keffer Forney was born in 1890
  (we called her Mem-mem, Mem is Pennsylvania Dutch for Mom)
  was unpleasant to say the least. She was not blessed with a good personality
  or kindness but she was an excellent worker and very thorough.
  When she was young she was so obnoxious that her family could not stand her.
  Her older sister Mary was an artist (and a wealthy man's mistress)
  who lived in NYC, Mary sent Elizabeth to live at St Mary's in Peekskill NY
  which was a convent and boarding school.
  St Mary's is the oldest indigenous Anglican order in the United States,
  it was founded in New York City in 1865,
  she would have went there in the early1900's.
  She finished school there and stayed on to help take care of the aging, ailing sisters who lived in the convent.
  By the time she left St Mary's she was skilled at nursing the infirm
  and she started her own convalescent home
  in the Leesport area of Berks County PA where her family was from.
  She took in her widowed step mother  Louisa who helped her in the home.
  (we knew of her as "Ah-ha" because she played
  peek-a-boo with my dad and his brother
  and that is what they called her from the time they were babies)
  Louisa was from New Ringgold PA, she had worked at the New Ringgold Hotel ,
  they sent her to a swanky cooking school and she was
  an exceptional cook and baker.
  .
  Elizabeth worked hard and saved money and when she was almost 30
  she caught the eye of a single farmer named Howard M. Forney
  who thought she would make a good farm wife and they were married.
  She sold the convalescent home and bought a farm and they had two boys
  Vernon (Unk) born in 1929 and my dad John born in 1932.
  Tragedy struck one night and changed the course of their lives forever.
  The story as my grandmother told me goes:
  It was 1934 ,during the depression someone was poaching wood
  from their land and when Howard went to check on it,
  someone murdered him, hitting him in the back of his head with an axe.
  My dad was 18 months old and Uncle Vernon was 4,
  their fathers brother Reuben wanted the boys ,
  it was no secret that Elizabeth had a nasty disposition
  and I suppose Reuben wanted to spare the boys some misery.
  There was a huge fight , Elizabeth kept the boys
  and she never spoke to Reuben again.
  Elizabeth sold the farm and moved to a row home in the town of Leesport
  to a street that was nicknamed Potpie Alley, because they were all
  Pennsylvania Dutch families and they made a lot of  Chicken Potpie ,
  it was said you could smell it up and down the street at suppertime.
  The boys lived there with with her until they were old enough to go
  to Girard College in Philadelphia, back then it was a private school
  for fatherless boys, they lived on campus and went home in the summer.
  The school was constructed and endowed
  from the fortune of Stephen Girard (1750 - 1831), a French immigrant
  who was probably the richest man in America at the time of his death.
  The money he left to create Girard College was the largest private
  charitable donation up to that time in American history.
  They spent summers in Leesport with Mem-mem and Ah-ha,
  Mem-mem had a very dark side and did unspeakable things to the boys
  but Ah-ha was kind and sweet and loved the boys dearly.
  At Girard they received a good education and learned a skilled trade,
  both boys enlisted in the army afterwards and
  were veterans of the Korean Conflict.
  My dad married my mom ,a sweet Mennonite girl from Lancaster county
  and my uncle built a home for himself and his aging mother.
  Unk was a bachelor for many years,
  he married a good woman (Aunt Barbara) later in life
  and never moved from the little home he built
    with the same phone number that I memorized as a little girl.

  Every single week of my life growing up Unk and Mem-mem came to visit
  on Sunday evenings for supper, then we all played 500 Rummy
  (I learned how to play that when I was 6 because
  my younger sister Sally had learned before me,
  I was not all that interested in playing grownup games
  but I couldn't be left out since Sally was already playing!)
  After the game we ate ice cream and warm raisin bread with icing
  that Unk brought and my mom made, it was so good!
  Unk is the one who got us our "big" gifts on birthdays and Christmas,
  he got us whatever we asked for.
  He took us places in his little VW Beetle, he took Mem-mem
  and all five of us kids all over the place in that little car.
  He made a yearly trek to take Mem-mem back to the convent
  in Peekskill NY to see the sisters. Sally and I sat behind the back seat
  and going over over the Hudson River Bridge was so exciting sitting
  way in the back of the bug, we could see far and wide!
   
  My dad seemed to have a lot more issues than Unk and our home life
  was not easy, my father was explosive and abusive at times
  and was kind at other times, we just never knew what was what.
  Unk knew that and did all he could to make our lives better,
  he showed us what family ties were and loved us unconditionally.
  We loved our dad because
  he was our dad and we were supposed to love him ,
  he left a lot to be desired as a father,
  but Unk...
  we loved him just because.

  All throughout my life one of my worst fears was of losing Unk,
  because I knew it would be like losing a father.

  Today we buried Unk,
  
  I miss you so much Unk, especially your voice.
  Thank you for the good life you gave us.

  • 9:46 am
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