So, this is Cate’s Aunt Anne.  On a recent trip to visit Cate and her family, she said to me, “Aunt Anne, can I ask you a favor?”  Well, if you know Cate, you know two things.  First, there’s no predicting what she might be going to ask, and second the answer will be “yes”.  She asked me if I’d write a blog about growing up with her Dad, my oldest brother, who we all called Willy.  So here it is. 

In order to have this make sense, I feel as though I need to give a little background.   Willy was the oldest of five children.  I was next to the youngest.  He was 2 years older than Arthur, four years older than Julia, 8 years older than me, and 14 years older than my youngest brother, Henry.  We grew up in Englewood, New Jersey – a city just across the George Washington Bridge from New York City.  Our father worked in New York – taking the bus from the end of our street every morning to go to work.  He was a volunteer fireman and also the mayor of Englewood.  We had an enormous vegetable garden, and at one point, had lots of chickens.  Both my older brothers played football, and were big guys, with big necks and huge appetites.  Full second helpings happened at every meal.  Because Willy was so much older than I was, we didn’t do much together when we were young.  Some of what I know of that time came from stories told around the dinner table as recollections, other memories were just that remarkable, so as not to be forgotten. 

One of these events happened during the summer after Willy’s freshman year at Harvard.  He had gone to work with a local tree service.  While working with them, he fell out of a tree and broke his leg badly. He had to spend most of the rest of that summer in bed with a full leg cast – with no television or cell phone, if you can believe it!  That was when he played with a labyrinth game – a lot. So much that he could make the little ball go from beginning to end and back repeatedly with ease –never missing.  He also learned how to knit.  As time went on, he was able to get out of bed and move around the house on crutches. This is when the fun began.  Someone (probably Willy), dared us all to stand on our heads in the living room.  Well, of course, I couldn’t do that, but Willy could – until he couldn’t!  Over he went, 200+ pounds, 17 ½- inch neck, full leg cast and all, onto the antique table at the end of the room!  Talk about scary!  That table still wobbles!  I think it was a while before my Mom realized that there was no glass in the picture that was on the table, and maybe a glass elephant was missing!

A story  that was told many times on family occasions was the one about ice cream.  We all love ice cream and were brought up to love ice cream.  Typically the ice cream truck came to our house every Sunday morning to make a delivery.  For some reason there was one time  that didn’t happen, and my brothers were sent up to the local restaurant/ice cream shop to pick up ice cream to go with Sunday dinner.  It happened that they had been there the night before for dinner.  They had each had a full dinner, and then each of them had another full dinner.  (They had huge appetites).  The same waitress was there to help them the next day.  So when they asked for two half gallons of ice cream, she asked them, “If they were going to take it with them or eat it there.” 

And then there was the hurricane!  It was 1954, and I was fourteen years old.  As I recall, Willy and Shirley had just recently gotten married, and brought a number of family members (I think Shirley’s parents and her sister and me) to the cabin in the  woods called Fourway at our summer camp (Camp Merryweather.)  It was a very rustic camping experience, and we’d had a wonderful time.  When it came time to leave, it was raining pretty hard and the wind was blowing.  Willy put all our luggage in a big row boat and started down the shore to the main camp where the car was.  The rest of us walked on a path through the woods to our camp.  As we were walking the wind was blowing so hard –we could hardly hear what we were saying to each other.  Willy, in the boat, was calling to us but we couldn’t hear him.  How he managed to get the boat to Camp and get our luggage up to the main cabin, I’ll never know, except that he was very, very strong.  It turned out he’d been yelling to us that he could see trees falling around us as we were walking down the path– another miracle that we made it!  Well, in those days we had no cell phones, and there was no electricity or telephone service at Camp.  Because a number of huge trees had fallen across our road out to the main road, we couldn’t get out for a number of days.  There was no way to let people know we were OK. But, because of Willy, we were not only OK, we were absolutely fine!  He managed to keep us all calm and comfortable through the whole adventure. 

Willy was a truly wonderful older brother, and even though he is no longer with us, I will always look up to him!