Hershey Farms

Avenue of the Flags,Hermitage,Pennsylvania

Seann & Mom at Wayne's House 2005

Mom & Dad, Santa Rosa, California 1975

MEMORIAL DAY 2008

On this Memorial Day 2008, Rita and I traveled to Mercer County and Sharon to visit Mom and Dad's burial sites at Oakwood Cemetery. As always this cemetery is a beautiful and peaceful area, well maintained and obvious a lot of family participation in the honoring of their loved ones. You can see the flowers everywhere on the burial sites, special areas for the deceased veterans and visitors. I don't remember the interest in these places of burial of families and individuals, living in the West. I saw so many cemeteries that were overgrown and poorly taken care of but I have not seen one in the East coast. I would guess that it is primarily the fact of history here and the long period of settlement and civil and military conflicts that create the desire to maintain. Families go back a long way and they don't forget those they loved so easy and they reflect it in one way through loving care of their burial sites. You will find small cemeteries behind many of the churches, farms and hidden behind small groups of trees and roadways. They are always clean and the grass is well cut. Often it is only a few who maintain many of them and often unpaid. You will find families, as we did on Saturday sitting by the tombstones or on the grass, some in thought and some just talking over the graves. I saw one family sitting on the grass having their lunch with children and flowers next to them ready to plant or put in place. They seem confortable with the setting and not grim. Homes are built around these places and in fact on the street in Sharon where Mom and Dad are buried you will find Oakwood the best looking area in comparison with the homes around this place of rest. It would seem sometimes that folks take better care of their family resting places then their own homes.

We wanted to take this time to reflect and as Rita and I placed a few memorials and cleaned up the flower areas around Mom and Dad's graves I remembered Mom saying to me years ago, "Will you remember my grave and place flowers there" I said to her at the time that I thought I would be a long way away living in California. Little did I know that I would be again in Pennsylvania when she passed away. I now had this time a few years later to come, visit and leave some memorial there for my parents on behalf of all of us who loved them. One brother said they were "good people" and I guess that is a one way to remember them but most important they were my parents first and last and "good people" they were leaving us with the many loving memories to cherish in our own way.

I am giving you a reflection that I read one day and you may have heard it before but I liked it and maybe someday it can be read at my passing but I thought of Mom and I think she would have liked it.

I'M FREE

Don't grieve for me, for now I am free
I'm following the path God laid for me.
I took His hand when I heard Him call,
I turned My Back and left it all.
I could not stay another day,
To Laugh,To Love, To Work or Play.
Tasks left undone must stay that way,
I found the peace at the close of the day.

If my parting has left a void,
Then fill it with remembered joy.
A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss,
Ah, yes these things I too will miss.

Be not burdened with times of sorrow
I wish you the sunshine of tomorrow.
My life's been so full, I've savored much.
Good friends and family, good times, a loved one's touch.

Perhaps my time seemed to you all to brief.
Don't lengthen it now with continued grief.
Life up your hearts and share with me.
God wanted me then and now, He has set me free...

Author Unknown

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Traveling is fun and sometimes it seems like work. Rita and me get quite excited each time we plan a trip(perhaps a lot more me than her)and we are always glad to come back home where everything goes back to somewhat normal. I am considering going back to work full time so we thought we should be off again before I get tied up with work hours and not be able to travel so much. Rita has always talked about someday moving to the Carolina's which she likes so much so... We took off on the 16th of April and drove down to the Raleigh area of North Carolina. I know, I know, the price of gas and all but we decided to go anyway. Heck! Raleigh is only about 475 miles from our home so that shouldn't break the bank right? We had earned two free night at Hampton Inns with the use of our Hilton Honors card. My brother Ron turned me on to the the use of this card where you earn points for everything you buy and the points convert to hotel stays at Hilton properties. We use the card for everything each month, gas, food, paying bills etc and it really adds up. The key is to pay it off each month, because you have to pay those costs anyway so you might as well get points for them. Rita even figured that we buy gift cards for places that we go each month, charge them on our card(to get the points)and then we also get 10 cents off on gas for each $50.00 we spend, at our Giant Eagle Food store here where we get the gift cards. If you keep this up you are getting free rooms each month and saving quite a few dollars on the gas bill. Put this together with the coupons and life can get better. Gosh! you have to do something to get ahead these days... Anyway we used two free nights for our Raleigh stay and checked out the area. Duke university and the University of North Carolina are there and that excited Rita. Beautiful area but a lot of traffic around the University. We also looked at property, which is a little bit cheaper than here in Pennsylvania and a lot cheaper for property taxes. The weather was very pleasant in the high 70-80 degrees and it was an enjoyable visit. After leaving Raleigh we moved on to Richmond, Virginia and had a nice lunch downtown and drove through the city. We than set up camp at Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia and spent a week there and used our time share points to enjoy a two bedroom condo on the golf course(don't golf but the green looks good) What made it so nice was that we had a chance to visit with Patty Gaeto, my niece and her daughter Lizzy, who attends school at William and Mary College in Williamsburg. Lizzy brought along her new boyfriend Nick and we had a nice Sunday brunch before Patty had to return to Peoria, Illinois. The sad part was that my nephew Dan and his wife Judy were coming to Washington D.C. during our stay but we were not able to coordinate their travel and ours to have dinner together or visit, maybe next time. During our stay we relaxed at our time share, enjoyed Williamsburg and took a day trip out to Virginia Beach for some beach walking. On our way home on Saturday the 26th of April we stopped for about three hours in the historic town of Fredericksburg, Virginia and toured the city and some of the homes there including Mary Washington's home, the mother of George Washington. After an enjoyable lunch we got back on the road and made it to Pennsylvania in the evening. We got caught up in the worse rain storm I have ever been in. We had so much rain on the road home we had to pull off the road for about 20 minutes until we could see enought to move on and drive out of the torrent. Rita and I definitely were a little scared, not because of our car but because of all the crazy people who tried to keep driving and almost went off the road near our parked car and others. God protected us and we made it home to find we ended up going into a closed part of the freeway and had to take another detour which got us home about 9pm, a few hours later than we expected. Anyway it was a great trip all in all and I went to work at UPMC for a few weeks as a temp when I returned. I have accepted a new position as a Senior Ultrasonographer(everything I do is senior these days) at the Veterans Hospital here in Pittsburgh and I expect to start sometime later in May when they get all the paper work completed. It takes so long for them to check me out but we are getting there and I am looking forward to a new challenge of doing some new types of procedures and getting out of bed every morning to a regular work day. I have been spoiled since I retired having the time to do pretty much what I want around the house and taking Rita to work each day. The nice thing is that the Veterans Hospital is almost right next to where Rita works at the University and we can travel together to work, which we have done so much in our work life so far. Time will tell if I like the work and how long I might continue, at least for a year or so, maybe two. It's quite nice when you can work for pleasure and do it or not, takes away a lot of the stress. I have enjoyed doing temp work because I get to work at different places and acquaint myself with the City and hospitals, but I am looking forward to staying at one place for awhile. The VA will give me credit for my military service and maybe I can get another small retirement before Rita is ready to quit again and we can travel more. I have included some pictures of the trip, hope you enjoy them. Sign off for now.

A BIT MORE TRAVELING

Rita and I took our vacation in December for two weeks to Hilton Head island, South Carolina. It was our first stay in that area and we left with great impressions of a very beautiful and restful area to spend a few weeks during the winter. I would suspect that the conditions would have been much hotter and crowded during the summer but the weather was fantastic when we were there. The first week we saw temperatures in the high 70-mid 80 degrees and although the temperatures dropped to the low 70 degrees the next week it was so pleasant. We stayed at a time share connection we have just a few blocks through the trees from the beach. Our condo was a three bedroom so we had a lot of room and it was deep in the beautiful live oak trees that are everywhere. Since we had a lot of time our routine was to hit the beach early in the morning for our daily walk, move on to our "mochas" at one of the "Books and Borders" type locations. After we recovered from those experiences we explored every location we could. Hilton Head does not have good visibility of the shops, beaches,stores etc. Most everything is hidden in the trees and you have to learn where to go by just driving into a clump of trees and tropical vegetation. They do not want the signs and look of a tourist community, which is great during the day but sometimes challenging at night. Anyway we found many beach areas, and it was always a surprise to drive into a forest area and find a large shopping area and sheltered coves and harbors. We spent some time in Savannah, Georgia(we had been there before and wanted to eat at a restaurant we enjoyed the last visit)and Dan, my nephew reminded me of going to Beaufort, SC. Beaufort was certainly one of our favorite small places to visit and we went there several times during our stay. There are over 90 restored homes in Beaufort and it is small city on the coastal waterways with those fine large southern plantation homes all throughout the location. We found a beautiful beach a few miles along the island waterways that was secluded and a wonderful State Park to park our motorhome someday on our next trip back. Well anyway look at the pictures and who knows, maybe someday we might be writing you from our home in Beaufort or Hilton Head....

SOUTH CAROLINA

BEAUFORT, SOUTH CAROLINA