AxN was an Internet-based product developed and marketed by TSI. It allowed advertisers to send insertion orders (reservations for advertising space) to newspapers. It also managed communication between the two parties that culminated in the newspaper rep confirming the order. The process that Denise Bessette and I employed in designing and creating AxN, including the division of labor, was described here. Details of the system design are posted here.
Part 1 of the marketing of AxN is posted here. The narrative concludes with the signing of a contract by representatives of Belk1, the department store chain based in Charlotte, NC, to purchase AdDept, TSI’s administrative system for advertising departments of large retailers. Part of the plan for the installation was to use AxN for insertion orders. At the time none of the other AdDept retailers were using AxN yet.
In the previous thirty or so AdDept installations the scheduling of newspaper advertising in AdDept had almost never been very difficult. It was always the first part of the project that we got to work smoothly.
I encountered an unexpected problem in that area at Belk. The company had recently consolidated the administration of four of its divisions into the office in Charlotte. Each of the four previous newspaper coordinators was now working in the office there and managed the advertising for the same papers that they had before. Usually, I trained the manager of the coordinators or just the AdDept liaison about how the programs worked. He or she trained the individual coordinators. In this case there was, at least initially, no manager. I was expected to train each of the coordinators separately. Most of them had been scheduling ads manually and ordering them over the phone. Some had never even worked on a computer before. Worst of all, all four soon realized that there was no way that Belk would need four coordinators when AdDept was up and running. There was not much incentive to cooperate.
Eventually these issues were all resolved, but the delays that the process caused meant that the rollout of AxN would be postponed for a month or two. That was a headache, but it actually proved to be something of a blessing for TSI. It gave Denise and me some time to develop a plan for getting the newspapers aboard. Here is a list of the most important items:
TSI’s accounting system would needed to be changed to accommodate the newspapers as customers. Because the client file used a three-digit number as the identifying field, this task involved a significant amount of programming.
Belk would provide TSI with a list of its newspapers. For each we needed the contact name, phone, email, and address. These would be entered into TSI’s accounting system as (potential) customers. The three-character codes organized them by state. We also needed the name and contact information of the advertising rep at the paper.
I wrote a letter to be sent to the newspapers. It would be signed by someone at Belk but mailed by TSI. The purpose was to ask them to participate in a three-month test period of AxN with no charge. Afterwards they would be asked to continue to use the system with a monthly fee roughly equal to the price of one column inch of advertising. One full-page ad in a broadsheet contained over 120 column inches.
Each newspaper would be sent the AxN: Handbook for Newspaper Users, a copy of which is posted here. TSI would also provide telephone support, but we hoped that it would seldom be needed. We knew how to make systems that were easy to use.
At the same time the newspapers would be sent a contract for the test period. It emphasized that there was no charge for three months and that TSI was not acting as an agent for Belk. It also limited TSI’s responsibility to making a good-faith effort to address all reported problems in an expeditious manner.
After a week or so someone representing TSI would need to call the newspapers that had not returned contracts.
As soon as signed contracts were received, a TSI employee would activate the papers on the company’s accounting system and on the AxN database. Then he/she would notify the appropriate coordinator at Belk to change the field on each variation of the newspaper’s record on the pub table in AdDept.
I would carefully monitor the processing of the first batch of orders. The system had never been stress-tested.
A second letter (from me) and a permanent contract would be sent to the paper after two months. It emphasized that either side could cancel the contract at any time with one month’s notice. The language about agency and responsibility was the same as in the contract for the test period. The starting date was at the end of the test period. There was no ending date.
When the contracts were returned the client records in TSI’s accounts receivable system were marked as active, and the newspapers were billed for the first month or quarter (their choice).
After a week or so someone representing TSI would need to call the newspapers that had not yet returned contracts.
This was by and large a good plan, but it had one rather obvious flaw. None of TSI’s current employees was suitable to play the role of “someone representing TSI” in steps 6 and 11. The programmers, including Denise, were far too busy with request for custom work in AdDept. The slot of marketing director at TSI was empty. I did not trust the administrative person to do this. That left only me, and I was notoriously bad at interactions by telephone. I have always hated talking on the phone, and people can often sense my discomfort. Besides, I wrote all of the new code. It was unquestionably a bad idea for the developer and the sales rep to be the same person. The sales person needs to know how to work with the potential customers, not the machine.
Denise devised a great solution to this problem. She informed me that one of her husband Ray’s cousins, Bob Wroblewski, sometimes did similar work for companies on a commission-only basis. She also came up with a sliding scale of commission rates. It was high in the first year and decreased in subsequent years. After three (or maybe five—I am not certain) years, there would be no commission.
We invited Bob, who lived in Rhode Island, to come to TSI’s office in East Windsor to discuss the matter with us. He liked what he heard, and I was favorably impressed with his experience and communication skills. He agreed to take on the job for Belk’s papers. After that we would assess how well the arrangement worked for both parties.
In reality it worked very well indeed for all of us. Bob was able to persuade all of the papers to agree to the test period. On that fateful day that Belk sent its first batch of insertion orders to TSI my recollection is that more than one hundred papers were involved. The AxN programs flawlessly handled the orders and wrote the appropriate records on the data files. Emails were then sent to all of the newspaper reps. Very little time lapsed between the sending of the emails and the reps signing on to look at the orders. That surprised me a little.
Then a terrible thing happened. TSI’s trusty AS/400 locked up! No one—not even TSI employees—could do anything. I signed on to the system console, for which the operating system always reserved the highest priority. I was able to examine several job logs, and I determined that one of the steps that was being executed as soon as a rep looked at an order was performing an unexpectedly high amount of disk processing and using an inordinate amount of memory. I killed the interactive jobs for all of the newspaper and made sure that no one else could start a new session until the problem was addressed.
This was one of the tensest situations that I had faced in my career. I had to fix this problem, and fast. The step that I had determined was jamming the system would not be necessary until the rep decided to print the order or maybe it was the option to download the order as a csv file. I changed the code on the fly so that the onerous step was postponed until it was necessary. I hoped that that would spread out the activity so that the system was not overwhelmed right after a new order was processed.
There was no time to test what I had done. I removed the routine from the initial opening of the order and installed it in the routine that might be executed later. We then sent an email to the papers with an apology and a request that they try to sign in again. This worked much better, and, in fact, AxN never had any notable performance problems again.
After Belk had been running successfully on AxN for a few months, we decided to take our show on the road. Bob and I flew to California to meet with employees from two AdDept clients, Robinsons-May2 and Gottschalks3. We enjoyed a pretty good relationship with both of them, and I wanted them to feel comfortable about working with Bob. I think that we spent only one afternoon at each location.
I don’t remember the details of the travel arrangements. We must have rented a car and driven from the L.A. area to Fresno. I don’t remember where we stayed or what we ate. I only remember that I was limping when I got off the plane, and I explained to Bob that I had tendinitis in my IT band. He said something like, “Don’t we all?”
Robinsons-May was quite interested in what we were doing with AxN, but they did not go crazy over it. When I later asked them to let us approach their papers, however, they quickly agreed, and Bob was eventually able to sign up almost all of their papers, including the L.A. Times and the Los Angeles News Group, which included the Daily News and a group of suburban papers.
Some IT guys attended our demo at Gottschalks. They uniformly thought that our approach was great. However, the newspaper manager in the advertising department, whose name was Stephanie Medlock, had never used the faxing feature, and I never persuaded her to use AxN either.
The trip was worthwhile. The people in both advertising departments had an opportunity to meet Bob, and he had a chance to see what it was like in an advertising department. Bob I got to know each other a little better, and Bob got a better idea about how AxN fit into the process. However, I don’t think that he ever comprehended why it would be very difficult for us to approach advertising departments at places like Home Depot or Walmart—who did not have AdDept—about using AxN.
Jenifer, Ali, Denise, and Bob at L&T’s office in Manhattan. This was the only photo of Bob that I could find.
Bob also accompanied Denise and me on a trip to Lord & Taylor4, the May Company division with headquarters in New York City. We took Amtrak and a taxi. I did not have any recollection of that trip at all until I found the photo that Bob appeared in. I don’t know when we went, but it must have been before 2005, the year in which I purchased my Cascio point-and-shoot camera for our second trip to Italy and stopped purchasing disposable cameras.
We met with Jennifer Hoke and Ali Flack, the two newspaper coordinators. I know this because I wrote their names on the reverse side of the photo that I found.
On the morning of October 14, 2003, I served as a pall bearer at a funeral in Passumpsic, VT, for Phil Graziose, the husband of my wife Sue’s good friend, Diane Robinson. After the funeral I drove to Providence, RI, for the wake of Bob’s wife. I have only attended perhaps a dozen wakes and funerals in my adult life. It was stunning to do it twice in one day.
Bob continued to represent us in dealings with newspapers until we ran out of prospects. From the beginning it was a mutually beneficial relationship. Bob earned a good amount of money in commissions, and the AxN product complemented AdDept very well right to the end.
Over the years Bob and I had very few interactions other than the ones that I have described. Neither Denise nor I ever monitored his conversations with the newspapers. I always suspected that he may have overstated how important AxN was to the retailers who paid for the newspaper ads, but what do you want? He was a salesman.
1. The people and events involved in the installation of AdDept at Belk and TSI’s relationship with the company are described here.
2. Robinsons-May was the May Company division based in North Hollywood, CA. My adventures in Tinsel Town are recounted here.
3. Gottschalks was an independent chain of department stores based in Fresno, CA. The company’s AdDept installation—including one of the worst experiences of my life—is discussed in some detail here.
4. The twenty-year relationship between TSI and L&T is explored in the blog entry posted here.
In 1988 Rocky and Jake, the two cats that had adopted us as caretakers a couple of years earlier, made the move with Sue and me from Rockville to Enfield. After spending their first winter indoors in Rockville, they had been allowed to roam in the neighborhood of the Elks Club. They always came back to one of our doors when they wanted food, shelter, or a massage. They seemed to have learned what was dangerous, although for Rocky earning the knowledge probably knocked him down to eight lives, as explained here.
Neither seemed to have much difficult adjusting to the change of scenery. There was so much more for them to explore, both inside and out. Rocky particularly liked the fact that when he was outside he could leap up to the windowsill near the dining area and gaze through the window at the activity going on inside. After we started opening the window for him when he did so, this became his preferred form of ingress. Rocky was a real leaper. None of our other cats ever attempted this feat.
Rocky and I watched football games. Popcorn was one of the few human foods he did not like.
Rocky loved to be petted. His favorite technique was the full-body massage, but he would accept any kind of petting by just about anyone whom he knew well.
Jake was a much more private cat. He always seemed to pick a corner and sit there silently analyzing the situation. He tolerated a little petting as the price to be paid for a constantly full bowl of Purina Cat Chow.
The night of October 31, 1988, was a sad one. Sue and I went out for supper, as I remember, and when we came back we found Jake’s dead body on the street. I buried him in the yard, but I don’t remember where.
Sue and I did not feel devastated at Jake’s demise. We had lost quite a few pets by that time. We liked Jake, and we missed him, but neither of us had formed a strong attachment to him.
I don’t remember where our next pet, Buck Bunny, a very large grey and white rabbit with long floppy ears, came from. I am quite certain that I had nothing to do with the acquisition, but Sue had no recollection of us even having a rabbit during this era until I showed her his photo. Buck’s home was a large wire cage in the westernmost small bedroom. The barnboard bookshelves were also in that room. It was a sort of library, but it held as many games as books.
We kept Buck in his cage most of the time because, like most rabbits, he had an instinct to gnaw on things. Before we released him from the cage, we placed all electrical cables up out of his reach. That was possible because, unlike Slippers (described here), he was not much of a leaper.
Sue visited her friends Diane and Phil Graziose in St. Johnsbury, VT, pretty regularly. Sometimes I joined her, but just as often she went by herself. On one of those solo trips she brought home a tiny tan and white kitten. It was so small that it fit in the breast pocket of her flannel shirt. the mandatory state uniform of Vermont.
The kitten was one of many feline denizens of the trailer park in which the Grazioses lived. It probably should have been allowed to nurse for another week or so. However, this was probably the best chance that it would ever get to avoid spending a Vermont winter outdoors. The situation worked out well. We gave him milk for a few days, and then he found the bowl of Cat Chow and the water bowl on his own.
Rocky enjoyed exploring the big yard.
Rocky had little use for the pipsqueak, but the kitten immediately made friends with Buck Bunny. They really hit it off. The kitten liked to sit near Buck’s cage, and when Buck came out they played together or just snuggled.
When the kittne was more mature we got it fixed, of course. By then it had become rather obnoxious, and so we were not a bit surprised when we learned that it was a tom. I named him Woodrow1 after Woodrow F. Call, one of the protagonists of my favorite novel of all time, Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry.
After his medical procedure Woodrow decided that I was his buddy. He loved to take naps next to me. Almost any time that I went into the bedroom and got into bed, Woodrow climbed up to join me.
Meanwhile, Rocky had claimed Sue as his BFF. When Sue and I sat in the living room chairs (purchased used from Harland-Tine Advertising, which is described here, and draped with white cloth) Woodrow sat on my lap and Rocky found Sue’s. The two cats were totally different.
A very young Woodrow.
Woodrow liked all people. Whenever anyone visited us, Woodrow greeted them immediately. Rocky usually hid.
Rocky loved almost any kind of human food; Woodrow liked only Cat Chow and ice cream.
Woodrow was a hunter; Rocky preferred to snuggle. He exalted in his full-body massages.
Woodrow liked to be carried with his back down and all four legs up. Rocky did not mind being picked up, but he insisted on the chest-to-chest method.
Woodrow liked the top of his head to be rubbed hard, but any other style of petting annoyed him.
Woodrow climbed trees (although he usually waited to be helped down); Rocky never did.
Rocky was mostly silent. In his later years Woodrow gave off all manner of soft sounds as he walked around. I called them his “play-by-play”. Except for that one time in the flea bath he preferred not to speak English.
Woodrow and Rocky eventually became buddies. When I returned home after work, they were almost always together on the lawn next to the driveway waiting for me. The sight of them always cheered up, no matter how rough the day had been. I often sang to myself, “with two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard.” Our house was indeed a very fine house.
However, Woodrow did not abandon his first friend, the lagomorph. He still like to lie or sit next to Buck’s cage, and when we let Buck out, the two still socialized.
Actually, they socialized too much. Buck tried to hump the fully grown Woodrow whenever they were together, and Woodrow put up with it. It wasn’t just a phase, either.
Sue and I decided that we needed to get Buck Bunny fixed. I loaded him inside his cage into Sue’s car, and she drove him to the vet. She explained the problem to the doctor. He examined Buck and reported to Sue that “Buck” was actually a female.
Sue asked him why the rabbit was engaging in these activities if he was not even a male. The vet replied that he was only a veterinarian, not a psychiatrist. So, we still let the two buddies hang out together. If the rabbit (who was by then officially renamed Clara, after my mother’s mother, Clara Cernech, who had died in 1980) got too amorous, we just put her back in her cage.
I don’t remember the circumstance of Clara’s death. She was a French Lop, a breed with a lifespan of only five years. She was fully grown when we adopted her.
My favorite moments with Woodrow and Rocky were when I came home for lunch in the summertime. Both cats napped under bushes. Rocky customarily slept in the cluster of forsythia bushes in the northeast corner of our lot. Woodrow favored the burning bush halfway between the house and the driveway to Hazard Memorial School.
The one-piece table in the background was repurposed as a place to pile dead branches when we got the red one.
I liked to eat my lunch while sitting at the picnic table in the yard and reading a book.When I brought my food (no matter what was on the menu) out to the picnic table, Rocky stumbled groggily out from his resting spot. He sat on the ground next to me for a while and looked up hopefully. Then he raised his front paws up to the bench and nudged my elbow with his snout. Eventually he often leapt up on the table. He knew it was not allowed, but he could not help himself.
I always broke down and gave him a tiny piece of meat. No matter how small the morsel was, he purred loudly while he ate it, got down, and retreated back to his bush to finish his nap.
A mole’s-eye view of Woodrow.
After lunch I usually took a short nap in the yard on a mat or blanket. As soon as I had made myself comfortable, Woodrow emerged from his bush to check out what I was doing. I always slept on my side. After I had assumed the sleeping position, Woodrow walked up so that he was about a foot from my chest. He then flopped over toward me, and we both stacked a few z’s.
In inclement weather they repeated their tag-team act. Rocky begged for food at the table in the dining area, and Woodrow climbed up on the bed to join me for a nap.
The boudoir with the modesty curtain held open by the hamper.
When he was not napping with me, Woodrow moved from place to place in search of the best locations for sleeping. One of his favorite places was on a towel in the small storage area in the bathroom. He arrived there by jumping up on the clothes hamper. He then moved aside the curtain with one of his front paws and sprang into the niche. I called this obscure hidey-hole “Woodrow’s boudoir”. Occasionally when someone used the toilet or the shower, he startled people when he stuck out his head from behind the curtain to look at them with sleepy eyes.
Woodrow preferred Cat Chow to all other forms of food except ice cream. The only time that he paid much attention to Sue was when she sat down with a bowl of ice cream. Then he became more of a beggar than Rocky.
Although Woodrow loved to hunt, he was not possessive about his catches and kills. He often was seen parading around the house with a mouse in his mouth. Sometimes he dropped one at my feet or Sue’s. I had to pick them up quickly. There was a fifty-fifty chance that the poor crittur was still alive. I released many outside; after that they were on their own.
Two were distinctive. One day I was taking my daily postprandial nap in the bed. Unbeknownst to me Woodrow brought into the bedroom his latest prey, a small bird. He silently entered, crawled under the bed with his catch in his mouth, positioned himself directly below my head, and commenced to crunch the bones between his jaws. It was a very disconcerting addition to my dreamscape. Needless to say he left the remains beneath the bed for me to clean up.
A dove only weighs about 4 oz. Woodrow could carry one easily.
On another day I came home for lunch to find that Woodrow had apparently brought home a guest, a full-grown mourning dove. Evidently Woodrow had lost his appetite, but the bird may have thought that he was on still on the menu. He flew about, crashing into one window after another in a panicked attempt to escape. I finally chased him into the library, where I opened the window and closed the door. When I came home after work there was no sign of him. We have never found a cadaver, and so I presume the dove found his way out.
Imagine him with 20 sharp claws.
Woodrow was the only pet that we ever had who clearly had multiple personality disorder. His was more like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde than The Three Faces of Eve.
I called Woodrow’s alter-ego Nutso Kitty. Whenever he entered this state his eyes glazed over, and he stalked and attacked anything that moved. One day Woodrow was placidly napping with me when, unbeknownst to me, he underwent the demonic transformation. I must have moved my hand a little. He pounced on it with all twenty of his switchblades extended. After literally throwing him out of the room, I rushed to the bathroom for first aid. My hand throbbed in pain for a few days. Fortunately it was my left hand, which has never been much good for anything except typing.
This even looks like Woodrow.
In 1992 or 1993 Sue and I made a trip to Dallas to pitch TSI’s AdDept software system to Neiman Marcus (described here). We then drove our rental car to Austin so that Sue could visit her high school friend Marlene Soul. Marlene exhibited a toy she used to keep her cats active. It was a long very limp stick with a feather on the end. With every slightest move of the hand the cat was drawn inexorably to the dancing feather.
As soon as I got home I purchased one so that I could torture Woodrow. He absolutely could not resist it. After he chased it for at least an hour he hid under a chair so that he could not see it. I pulled it out every time that I thought about that bloody left hand.
We had to take Woodrow to the vet twice to patch him up after fights. Both times he had abscesses that the vet had to drain and then sew up. After the first one, I tried to teach Woody to keep his left up, but he got tagged again a few months later. I never got to see how the other cat did in these scrapes, but I doubt that he escaped without some damage.
I don’t really have many good stories about Rocky. He was consistently a very sweet cat for all of the eighteen years that I knew him. He never got into a fight, or at least he never got seriously hurt. When we brought him to the vet for shots he went completely limp when we put him on the examination table. The vet called him “catatonic cat.”
Once, however, Rocky was missing for three days. Sue and were quite concerned. I had walked up and down the nearby streets looking for him several times. I also took the car and expanded the search area. Sue and I searched everywhere in the house. No luck. However, when I checked the garage for the third time Rocky came slowly out from behind some junk. He followed me inside and nonchalantly drank some water. Within a day he showed no sign of any problem.
How, you may ask, could the cat have hidden in the garage? Why not just pull out the car and search thoroughly? Well, there was no car in the garage. It was full of Sue’s junk, packed from floor to ceiling, as is her new garage as I write this. A thorough search of the garage would have entailed taking all of the junk out piece by piece and piling it somewhere on the yard. Then, whether I found him or not, I would have had to reassemble the mess in precisely the way that I found it.
I did call for Rocky each time that I opened the garage door, but he must have been asleep or just obstinate.
Show no mercy!
Both Rocky and Woodrow stayed outside a great deal during the summer. They both were tormented by fleas every year. I felt great sympathy for them. They were obviously suffering terribly. I tried to help them.
I tried to pick the fleas off. During each session, I slew several dozen by squeezing them between my fingernails. I could hear their shells crack, but a few days later there would be just as many.
I tried flea collars. Rocky, who must certainly have had a set of bolt-cutters secreted away in the bushes, always showed up without it within a few hours. The collar helped a little with Woodrow, but there was no guarantee that the fleas would cross it. He also hated the collar, but Rocky would not lend out his tools.
I tried flea powder. It helped a little for a short time.
Flea baths actually worked, but both cats hated them. After a short struggle Rocky submitted meekly, but he also gave me a look that asked what he had done to make me despise him so much. Woodrow, of course, fought me tooth and nail. I had to don gloves and my army field jacket to pick him up. One time—I swear that this is true—he clearly screamed out the word “NO!!!!” as I dipped him in the medicated water in the tub.
Advantage was even better than Frontline.
Of course, if we did not attack them quickly, the fleas got in the carpet, and, after we got them off of the cats we had to “bomb” the house. That was not a bit pleasant.
Fortunately, the flea problem was solved when our vet supplied us with Frontline2, the monthly drops on the back of the neck, at some point in the nineties. I don’t know if there were side effects, but the product sure worked on the fleas. It was great having flea-free cats and a flea-free house.
Not long after Woodrow established residency with us, I bought a cat door and installed it in a window that led to the top of the basement. It was located just below the bathroom window. Just below the window on the basement side was the top of some shelves that were there when we moved in. From the shelves I placed a spare door at a 45° angle to serve as a ramp down to the ping pong table. A box served as a step up to the table or down to the floor.
Rocky seldom used the cat door. He preferred for a human to let him out through one of the doors or in through his favorite window. When he did enter through the cat door, he did not use the ramp. Instead he jumped from the bookshelves to the washing machine and from there to the floor. He exited the house by jumping up on the picnic table and climbing the shelves.
Other cats occasionally tried to use the cat door. Brian Corcoran gave me his Super Soaker, which proved to be very effective at chasing them away. However, the felines were most active at night, and I was not. Occasionally one would get in and help himself to some Purina Cat Chow.
I often heard the distinctive caterwauling of two or more cats that were about to engage in that furious and bloody activity known as a catfight. Once I saw Woodrow in the basement on the bookshelf near the cat door loudly warning a cat not to poke his head through. He definitely meant business. His body was crouched and taut, ready to for action. His right paw was raised with all five claws drawn. He reminded me of Horatius at the bridge.
Ours was indoors, and I only saw him from the rear before he scurried away.
There were a couple of other uninvited guests. One night I heard some very loud munching coming from the hallway. I jumped out of bed, turned on the hall light, and beheld an opossum helping himself to the Cat Chow in a bowl at the other end of the hall. I assume that the opossum was a male since it did not have a dozen babies on its back.He had evidently found his way through the cat door, down to the basement, and up the stairs. My footsteps frightened him enough that he rushed down the stairs, never to be seen again.
The story of the other remarkable intruder can be read here.
Sue and I took quite a few long trips after Rocky and Woodrow moved in, and the cat door was installed. We also invested a few dollars in a gravity-fed Cat Chow dispenser. Whenever we took a trip we left Rocky and Woodrow “home alone”. We provided them with plenty of food and water, and Sue arranged for someone to check on them every few days. This arrangement worked well for our trip to Texas (described here), our cruising tour of Greece and Turkey (described here), our trip to Hawaii in 1997 (described here), our misbegotten adventure in Maine and Canada (described here), and our first tour of Italy in 2003 (described here).
Rocky died later in 2003 at the age of eighteen. I am pretty sure that he used up all nine of his allotted lives. Even though I was much closer to Woodrow for the many years that we had both of them, I cried when Rocky died. He was so tough and such a nice cat. I really missed him.
1. A better choice probably would have been “Augustus”. His personality was much more like the free-spirited Gus McCrae’s than the rigid Woodrow Call’s.
2. I later switched to Advantage II. It was cheaper and worked better.
The years that we spent in Rockville were mostly happy ones, but we had neither the time nor the money to take much in the way of vacations. The two that we took were for only a week each in 1985 and 1986. They are documented here.
We also made very few exciting or life-enhancing purchases. As in the other blogs about non-business events, the timeline is shaky. I am only certain of the dates of a few events.
The most exciting news of our first year in Rockville came in a phone call in the spring of 1981 from Gerry Cox. He announced that he and a group of Wayne State debaters wanted to pay us a visit in the summer. We looked at our schedules and told him that that would be fine, as long as they could come in June, July, or August. We quickly agreed upon a set of dates. The debaters were Nancy Legge, Al Acitelli, and Mark Buczko.
They drove from Detroit to Rockville. We gave them directions to our house. I think that we advised them to get off of I-91 and take Route 83. We told them that when they could smell the cows they would be in Ellington, the town just north of Rockville. At that point they needed to watch out for the turn. We told them that they should turn uphill (left) onto Upper Butcher Road and then downhill (right) onto Park St. Both of these hills are short, but quite steep.
They found the house. They parked in back, as we directed. We helped them move in. The guys stayed in the bedroom at the top of the stairs, where we had set up bunk beds. Their room was directly above the office. Nancy slept in the waterbed in the spare bedroom, which had not yet been converted into an office for Sue.
They stayed with us for a few days. Everyone had a splendid time throughout the visit. I remember three activities.
We all spent one day at Rocky Neck State Park. I don’ recall any specifics.
We devoted one day to Dungeons and Dragons. I am pretty sure that my friend from my insurance days, Tom Corcoran, joined us for that occasion. He played a dwarf fighter. I don’t remember what the other characters were, and, even though I designed it, I don’t remember the dungeon. I also have a vague recollection of creating an adventure for Mark’s assassin character, Cnir Edrum.
We enjoyed a communal supper, presumably after the D&D game. Al insisted on making pasta from scratch for us. It was definitely good, but I don’t think that he convinced anyone that it was worth all of the effort. He did not insist on making the sauce from scratch. It came from a jar.
Canada Post truck.
Nancy stayed with us for another week or two. We put her to work stuffing envelopes for one of our mailings. This is when I bestowed on her the title of Executive Vice President for International Marketing. We must have included one Canadian addressee.
Gerry came back to visit us a year or two later with a friend of his. I remember much less about that occasion. They stayed with us for a night or two. They probably made additional stops in the Northeast.
I also remember that Craig Kolbitz, a good friend from my army days in Albuquerque in 1971, evidently somehow found my telephone number and address. He called and then came over and visited us one evening. I don’t remember much about the occasion. I don’t think that he revealed much about what he had been doing in the interim. I have not heard from him again in the subsequent decades.
Sue’s sister Betty and her husband Shawn (or maybe Shaun or Sean) Arrowsmith came over for supper at least once. At the time he was a sous chef at the restaurant at Bradley International Airport. That restaurant, which has been closed for decades, was outside of the secured area in the old terminal. It had quite a good reputation.
Their visit to Rockville must have been in late fall or winter. Shawn and I went searching for firewood in the nearby woods. He was a big guy; he brought back a lot more than I did. I started a fire in the fireplace.
They invited us over to their place, too. Their house was surrounded by maple trees. I have a strong recollection of hearing the sounds of the droppings of gypsy moth caterpillars on the roof.
Shawn and Betty did not stay together very long. I don’t know what happened.
The Corcorans—Tom, Patti, Brian and Casey—also came over at least once. I fixed country-style ribs and sauerkraut for them. The meal was a big hit, especially for Brian who had understandably low expectations for such a foreign-sounding meal.
We might have had other visitors, but I don’t remember them.
We made the drive from Rockville to the Corcorans’ house many times. We usually came over for supper and then played games until well after midnight. We were especially appreciative of the suppers. Throughout this period we seldom had, in my dad’s words, “two nickles to rub together”. We almost never went to restaurants. The Corcorans almost always had a special meal for us, often steak. Of course, there was plenty of beer.
This is the good version.
Among the games Trivial Pursuit was a definite favorite. We played many different editions. Careers was also a favorite, but we soon discovered that the original version, which had uranium prospecting, Hollywood, expedition to the moon, and at sea as possible careers, was a much better game than the more recent versions. Clue (regular and its expanded versions) were pretty good. When everyone got tired we played Yahtzee.
I also remember enjoying a murder mystery game based on Clue that required playing a scene on a VHS tape. We tried dozens of other games as well. Our basement is full of games, and the Corcorans had more than we did.
We also often celebrated New Year’s and several other holidays with the Corcorans. We watched Brian and Casey grow up. Casey was an acrobat, and Brian excelled at taking things apart and putting them back together. He loved to play with go-bots and transformers.
I also remember showing Brian how to do both types of Indian wrestling—standing up and lying down, the way that Andy Burnett did on Walt Disney.
The closest thing that we had to a vacation during the “anything for a buck” days was a Murder Mystery Weekend near Lancaster, PA. It was staged by some actors in and around a fairly nice hotel in the countryside. The theme was a set of killings in a mob family. My character was one of the family members. He was named Dominic (called “Nicky”), and he was newly married.
I picked up a white fedora somewhere and rented a realistic stage pistol with a shoulder holster from a costume shop in Hartford. I was really ready to get into it. After all, even by that time I had read at least a hundred murder mysteries.
The organizers made me stow the pistol away. Didn’t they know that the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun? I should have quoted Charlton Heston to them: “I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.” I still wore the shoulder holster.
Could you stab him in the heart with a pocketknife?
The first murder occurred pretty much in full sight of everyone at the first gathering. A fairly large Italian guy wearing a three-piece suit was found dead. He had been stabbed in the heart with a pocketknife.
It is a thoroughly documented fact that all Italian mobsters wear sleeveless undershirts.So, the knife, even if it missed the broad lapels would have needed to penetrate the suit coat, the vest, the shirt, the undershirt, the skin, and the rib cage. Maybe Andre the Giant could kill someone who was wearing all this armor with one casual blow with a pocketknife, but I didn’t see anyone in our group who looked capable of such a feat. Even if sufficient thrust was employed, I would bet on the blade breaking or sliding to one side before it penetrated all of those layers of protection..
Several scenes that involved some or all of the actors were staged. One took place on the Strasburg Rail Road. I don’t remember the details.
We were allowed to submit written questions. Mine was about some flowers that a character had reportedly ordered for some reason. I was told that the answer, which I don’t remember at all, had important information, which I should share with the other guests. I dutifully disclosed it to everyone with whom I conversed.
At the end everyone was supposed to write up a solution. The best one, as judged by the organizers, won a prize. No one got the solution right. The person to whom the prize was awarded missed out on most of the clues entirely. She had spent most of her time shopping in Lancaster.
Deadly in the hand of a small woman.
The revealed murderer was the smallest member of the cast, perhaps 5’2″ and 100 pounds. She was absolutely incapable of committing the first murder. In fact, I don’t think she could have killed him with a pocket knife if he was already unconscious and wearing nothing but his sleeveless undershirt.
In addition, she had no motive for the other crimes attributed to her. That is, the personality that we knew had no motive. She supposedly had multiple personality disorder1, and the diminutive body that she shared with two other personalities committed the other two murders. Give me a break.
For Halloween of 1981 or 1982 Sue and I drove to Brooklyn for a costume party thrown for her friend Eddie Lancaster from Brothers Specifications in Detroit. Sue dressed as Peter Pan. I came disguised as a college professor who never got tenure. It was a long drive, but no drive was too long for Sue if friends were at the other end. She loved to sit and talk with old friends, and she made new ones very easily.
We also drove up to Vermont to see Sue’s friend Diane Robinson at least once or twice. I met her husband Phil Graziose, one of the Air Force guys from the Alaska adventure. He seemed like a nice guy. He set up a small business in the St. Johnsbury area as a locksmith. They lived in a trailer park, a new experience for me. There were things that I could talk about with Phil, even football! I had nothing in common with Diane and her myriad relatives, almost all of whom stayed close to home. Sue absolutely adored this family. I have never quite understood this. Maybe she appreciated the way that they all got along.
In 1981 or 1982 we were invited to Dave Tine’s house. His television had a huge rear-projection screen. It was the first “home entertainment center” we had ever seen. His sister (whose name I don’t remember) owned and operated a retail store name Video Land. It sold hardware as well as videos. We watched Nine to Five together. This was something of a real treat for us. We almost never went to movies. They were too expensive.
Sue’s family in Enfield held get-togethers pretty often. I usually accompanied her. I really struggled at these affairs. I had a hard time talking with most of her Enfield relations. The big exception was her youngest sister, Betty. She hosted a large party at her parents’ house most summers. She set up areas for volleyball and croquet. Also, Betty’s mother had a swimming pool. Tom Corcoran also attended most of these affairs.
Jack and his wife.
I think that it was at one of these parties that I met Jack LaPlante, the brother-in-law of Sue’s sister Karen. He worked and coached at Hartford Public High School, which over the years became a rough place. He has been inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame.
I always enjoyed talking with Jack. He was fascinated by the fact that we still played board games with other adults.
Jeffrey Campbell and our guide Jackson in Lake Manyara National Park in 2015.
Betty’s friends were much more approachable for me than the relatives on the Locke side. The lives of the latter seemed to center around trucks and cars. I liked all of Betty’s friends. Karen Shapiro, who worked with disadvantaged kids, ended up marrying Paul Locke, and so I saw her occasionally. Jeffrey Campbell, a pharmacist whom Betty has always called Pancho, was around from time to time. In 2015 he came with us on our epic trip to Tanzania, which is described in great detail here.
I also remember a friend of Betty’s named Harriet, but I don’t remember much about her.
I remember that we drove to Rhode Island once to visit Victor Barrett, with whom Sue worked at F.H. Chase, and his wife, Mary Codd2. They ran a small business called Coddbarrett Associates that developed computer-generated graphics for companies.
It was interesting to talk to another couple who were struggling as pioneers in an infant industry. Their work needed a lot more processing power than ours, and so their financial commitment was greater. On the other hand, they also had better credentials. Actually, everyone had better credentials than we did.
One thing that I remember vividly is that Victor and Mary almost never cooked. They either ate frozen dinners or something from a restaurant. Sue and I never did the first and almost never did the second.
Sue had an annual tradition of visiting her land in Monson, MA, on the weekend of Columbus Day when the foliage was at its peak, and the weather was to her liking. I accompanied her a few times. She actually built an outhouse and a tree platform up there. The outhouse was trashed by someone and the tools that she left up there were stolen.
She could sometimes talk her nephew, Travis LaPlante, and/or Brian Corcoran into making the pilgrimage with her.
Sue planned a weekend outing for us in Mt. Washington, NH. We stayed at the famous hotel5 in Bretton Woods. We took the cog railroad up to the top of the mountain, which is one of the windiest places on earth.
Sue planned on me playing golf on the links course that is adjacent to the hotel, but I did not feel like it.
I think that Tom and Patti Corcoran joined us for one day. I seem to recall that Sue and Patti played Tennis. Well, Patti played, and they both chased Sue’s errant shots.
I remember that the hotel hosted a Trivial Pursuit game in the evening. Sue and I played as a team. We really cleaned up. One of the other guests asked us if we had memorized all the answers.
Sandy Bailey, whom we knew from our installation at Harland-Tine, invited us to her house in Manchester, CT, for an evening of games. We were, as usual, late. A group of people were playing Dark Tower, the game advertised on TV by Orson Wells. It seemed like a very interesting game, but I never got around to playing it. I later tried to purchase a copy, but I could not find one.
We met Sandy’s housemate, a guy who worked for the Digital Equipment Corporation. Of course, he tried to convince me that we should convert our ad agency software to run on DEC machines. He even gave me a handbook for DEC’s version of the BASIC language.
In the fall of 1987 Sue and I decided to drive to Washington, DC, for the weekend. We left on Friday afternoon, October 9, and got as far as New Jersey. We stopped at a motel off of the Interstate. The person at the desk seemed surprised that we wanted to stay the whole night. When Sue asked for more towels, he went across the street to a store and bought some.
We laughed about it; it was not that sleazy-looking from the outside.
When we arrived in Washington we spent the day at the National Zoo. We got to see the baby pandas. A male orangutan effortlessly hurled his poop over the fence at the tourists. Overall it was a very pleasant experience, even though I was never able to spot the kiwi in its dark cage.
We stayed overnight at Howard Johnson’s. When we went to supper, the other people in the restaurant seemed somehow different. It wasn’t until later that we realized that we had chosen to come to Washington on the same day as about 200,000 gay people who were in town for “The Great March”.
On Sunday the parking was a nightmare, but the Smithsonian’s museums were not crowded at all.
In late 1985 my sister Jamie surprisingly reentered our lives She had recently married Joe Lisella. Joe, Jamie, and her daughters moved to Simsbury, CT. For the next fourteen years I spent as much time as I could with her and her family, which grew fairly rapidly after she came to New England. Those visits and trips are documented here.
1. This phenomenon is now known as dissociative identity disorder, which is a better name because of the vague nature of the word personality. I personally suspect that the kind postulated in this story occurs more often in the movies than in real life.
2. Mary Codd’s story can be read at her website, which is marycodd.com.
3. The Whalers’ last season was 1997. The Civic Center underwent drastic remodeling in 2004 and in 2021 it is called the XL Center.
4. My recollection of the event was faulty. When I have told this story to people I have claimed that neither of the teams made the playoffs that year. I apologize for the unintentional misinformation. The Whalers lost to Montreal in the first round of the playoffs.
5. Since 2015 it has been called the Omni Mt. Washington Resort.
I met a large number of people working at The Hartford. Here is an alphabetical list of the ones that I remember. At the end are a few people whom I remember only by first name. If no department is mentioned, the person worked in Life Actuarial. If no specific responsibility is mentioned, it is safe to assume that the individual was an actuary or actuarial student.
The only think that I remember about Larry Abbott is that he always came to work without a suit coat. He kept a sports coat near his desk to wear to meetings in other departments. I think that he worked in Group Actuarial.
I did not know Pat Adams very well. I remember criticizing her pitiful sneeze in the study room. I also remember that she took—and passed actuarial exams two at a time.
Lou Aiello was a clerk in Life Actuarial. He might have worked for Alan Gibb. He batted .500 (1 for 2) for the Mean Reserves, and his hit was the most legendary in the history of the team.
At some point I sat near Barb Bednarz. I think that it might have been when I came back for the summer of 1975. I remember talking to her about Monty Python and explicating my theory that a human being trained from birth to run on all fours could win Olympic medals.
Paul Campbell arrived after I did. He was a Variable Annuity actuary. He played once or twice for the Mean Reserves softball team.
Jim Cochran came to Hartford in 1973. He and his wife Ann were close friends. They taught me a subset of the rules to Sheepshead. Jim played on both Mean Reserves teams and took my place on the golf team. He was the outsider in the 345 Club carpool. I keep in touch with him via email. Some people called him “Crow”. I think it had something to do with the original spelling
Tom Corcoran has been my close friend for over forty-eight years. Having grown up in the Boston area, in the seventies he still pronounced his last name in almost exactly the same way that Jim Cochran pronounced his. Tom, who participated in nearly every aspect of my life at the Hartford, married Patti Lewonczyk on 1/07/77.
Sue Comparetto worked as a clerk for nearly every insurance company in Hartford. We got married on 12/08/12, when it finally made sense for tax purposes. She took the photos for the Mean Reserves softball album.
Carolyn DesRochers was a supervisor in the Individual Pensions Department. I worked with her while attempting to determine the source of the problems with the annual reports for the policyholders. She was married to Chris.
Chris DesRochers1 started, I think, a year before I did. I succeeded him in the role of preparing a monthly report for Jan Pollnow. He was married to Carolyn. I think that I helped them move.
Paul Engstrom played both years for the Mean Reserves softball team, but I don’t have any clear memories of him.
Wayne Foster ran the payday pool. He had been a communications specialist in Vietnam. He was awarded a Bronze Star for completing an international phone call.
Don Francis was the #2 man in the Life Actuarial Department. He played softball with us a few times, but I did not know him very well.
Tom Garabedian worked in the Group Actuarial Department. He was one of the best players in both basketball and softball.
Paul Gewirtz was the senior actuary in the Individual Pensions area. I think that he became a fellow of the Society of Actuaries while I was at the Hartford. He made a memorable contribution to the lore of the Mean Reserves softball team.
Alan Gibb was a supervisor in Life Actuarial. I did not have much interaction with him.
My only contact with Bob Goode, a top executive, was a very nerve-wracking phone call during my short period working for Mike Winterfield.
I am not sure where Les Gubkin worked. He somehow found out about the Mean Reserves and joined the softball team in 1973.
Jim Hawke began working at the Hartford in 1973. We soon became close friends, and we still stay in contact by email. He played a little softball for the team, but he is most famous for the picnic with Ethan, Sue, and me on Bunyan Mountain. He also took over my bedroom in the 345 Club and my spot in the carpool.
I remember Jim Housholder, but the only conversation that I recall clearly was when he explained about a new product he was working on—a whole life policy with a death-exclusion rider.
Kevin Kirk worked in Individual Pensions. He and his wife came over to have supper and watch The Wizard of Oz with Sue and me in East Hartford. Kevin played on both the basketball and softball teams.
Donna Kolakowski was one of the youngest clerks. She attended some of our events. I went to lunch with her and Jim Hawke a few times.
Jim Kreidler once called me a jock, one of the greatest compliments that I ever received. He wimped out in the epic tennis match of 8/18/73. He went to England to work there.
Patti Lewonczyk2 was a supervisor in Individual Pensions. We worked together on proposals. She married Tom Corcoran. They went on vacations with Sue and me in the twenty-first century.
Frank Lord3 played on the softball team. He might have also played basketball, but his best sport was tennis. He was the first person that I knew who drove a BMW. I saw him in 1988 at the Mark Twain House when I won the story contest.
I think that Mel Majocha worked at the Hartford somewhere. She went out with Tom Herget. I went to her parent’s house for a cookout once. I will never forget how she said goodbye to me.
Dave McDonald was Secretary (boss) of the Individual Pensions Department. He asked me to investigate the problem producing the annual statements for customers.
Gail Mertan went out with Tom Garabedian. I don’t know where (or if) she worked.
Marsha Monico went out with Tom Herget. I don’t know where (or if) she worked.
Bill Mustard played golf with John Sigler, Norm Newfield, and me. I think that he worked in IT at the Hartford.
Norm Newfield was a tremendous athlete. He worked in Human Resources. He played on a flag football team in New Britain, and he participated in my football pool. He was part of our foursome in golf and an opponent in the golf league.
Scott Otermat4 was my supervisor in the Individual Pensions Department. His favorite author was Ayn Rand. He had a dog named Cinders. I helped him move to Bristol. He liked to work on his MG. His full name was actually Scott C. Otermat, Jr. I tried to get him to promise to name his first-born Scott C. Otermat The Third so that his initials would be the same as his first name.
Damon Panels lived across the street from the tower building. He occasionally gave a soirée in his apartment. Sue and I went to see him years later in Bloomfield, CT.
Tony Piccerillo was a recent graduate of Trinity College who worked in Individual Pensions.
Jan Pollnow hired me. He was a star play on both athletic teams. He was my last boss before I moved to Plymouth.
Russ Pollnow was Jan’s brother. I don’t know where he worked but he played on the 1974 softball team.
Parker Prine worked with Norm Newfield in Human Rellations. He played in the football pool and won one week. Tom Herget accused me of making him up and keeping the winnings for myself.
Ann Randazzo was Don Sondergeld’s secretary and the unofficial office manager of the Life Actuarial Department.
I don’t know where Keith Reynolds worked. He played softball and went to bars with us.
Bob Riley was a supervisor in Life Actuarial. He was Sue’s boss and a first baseman on the 1974 team.
I don’t know where Charlie Robinson worked. He played on the softball team.
David Rowe was an exchange student from England who worked as an actuary in Life Actuarial. The four bases on a softball diamond confounded him. Traffic on roundabouts in England goes clockwise.
Gerry Schwartz, an employee of the Operations Research Department, had the dubious honor of managing the HP-3000 computer system.
John Sigler was my golf and tennis partner. He also played on all of the Mean Reserves teams.
Fred Smith played on the basketball teams. He was famous for being able to read paper tapes.
Don Sondergeld was VP and Actuary (big cheese). He never berated me publicly for insulting his wife. In 2021 he is still an active member of the Hartford Bridge Club.
Mike Swiecicki5 left the Hartford before I did. I remember him as being a phenomenal player at games that required hand-eye coordination.
Laurie Weisbrot (a guy) worked in Group Actuarial. When he passed the tenth exam he purchase a vanity plate: LRW-FSA.
Mike Wheeler played on the softball team both years.
Jo White was a senior clerk. She played a lot of golf, mostly at the Buena Vista Golf Course in West Hartford.
Ron Wittenwyler played third base on our softball team in 1973. His wife Jane came to some games.
First names only:
Bill: Norm Newfield’s partner in the golf league;
Jackie: Sue’s landlady in Rockville;
Lisa: who worked for Don Francis;
Paula: a clerk who worked for Patti Lewonczyk and whom I made cry;
Ray: a supervisor in Individual Pensions;
Ron: who married Jackie.
Tad: a clerk who worked for Alan Gibb.
Sue Comparetto had a million friends. I have undoubtedly forgotten more than I remember. Here are a few that I met during this two-year period.
Marlene Boulerice was with Gary Gudinkas at the time. Sue went to high school with her.
Diane DeFreitas was Sue’s roommate in East Haddam.
Gary Gudinkas was a short guy who was with Marlene. Sue knew him from high school.
Karen Peterson worked at Travelers Equity Sales with Sue and went on the trip to Alaska with her.
Diane Robinson6 worked at Travelers Equity Sales with Sue and went on the trip to Alaska with her. We visited Diane a few times at her home in Vermont.
Pat and Stan Slatt had a very large python and a boa constrictor.
Bob and Susan Thompson had a dachshund and a very old Plymouth.
Sue knew Evelyn Umgelter from high school.
It took me years to sort out Sue’s relatives on her mother’s side. I’m only listing first names. Except for Effy, their last name in 1972-74 was Locke. Almost all of them lived within a mile or two of Sue’s childhood home on North Maple in Enfield. Sue was older than all of her cousins and siblings, and I was older than she was. So, I am pretty sure that all of the people of Sue’s generation were living at home during this period.
Bob was the only one of Effy’s brother who left Enfield. He moved to western Michigan and worked as an engineer. Sue and I visited his family in the nineties.
Carol7 was Bob’s wife.
Charlie8 was Effy’s brother. He was an electrician who did work for Sue’s Father. He lived within a couple of miles.
Chet9 was also Effy’s brother. He was buried in his military uniform. He lived within a couple of miles.
Effy Slanetz10 was Sue’s mother.
Elsie11 was Chet’s wife.
Gene12 was Charlie’s wife.
Glenn was a son of Ted and Judy and therefore Sue’s first cousin. He lived a few miles away in a new house
Jimmy was a son of Ted and Judy and therefore Sue’s first cousin.
Judy was Ted’s wife. They lived across the street from the Slanetz home.
Molly13 was Sue’s Grandmother and Effy’s mother. She lived in a room attached to Ted and Judy’s house. She loved to play bingo.
Paul was Chet’s son. a grave-digger, and Sue’s first cousin.
Patti14 and Cathy were Charlie’s daughters and therefore Sue’s first cousins. I did not know them very well.
Susie was Ted and Judy’s daughter and Sue’s first cousin.
Ted was Effy’s youngest brother and therefore Sue’s uncle.
Timmy was Chet’s son and Sue’s first cousin.
In contrast, I am not sure that I met any of Sue’s uncles, aunts, and cousins on her father’s (Slanetz) side during this period. I got to meet a lot of them at a Slanetz family reunion that was held years later at Sue’s family house.
Art15 was Sue’s dad. He farmed when Sue was little. When I knew him, he had a corporation with several irons in the fire—construction, trash, water, and who knows what else.
Betty was Sue’s youngest sister.
Don was Sue’s only brother.
Karen was Sue’s younger sister. She was older than Betty and Don.
Margaret16Davis was Art’s sister. She had three children.
Mark was the brains of the family. I saw him once in Houston, and he has visited our house occasionally.
Robby still lives in Enfield in 2021.
I met Diane only briefly. I think that she in South Carolina in 2021.
Chris DesRochers died in 2013. His obituary can be read here.
Patti and Tom Corcoran married while I was coaching debate in Michigan in the late seventies. They had two children, Brian and Casey, who in 2021 both live in Burlington, VT, with their respective families. Patti died in 2011. My tribute to her can be read here.
Frank Lord died on July 3, 2020. His obituary is here.
Scott Otermat left the Hartford in 1980. He died in 2016. His obituary is here.
Mike Swiecicki left the Hartford before I did. He died in 2015 after a twenty-five year career as an actuary with CAL PERS. His obituary is here.
Could a relationship between a preppy lad from Kansas and a country lass from Connecticut last? Continue reading →
For the few weeks that I worked in the Variable Annuity area of the Life Actuarial Department at the Hartford, my desk was behind Sue Comparetto’s, and we shared a phone. She was the head clerk in Bob Riley’s section. This meant that she was the only person there entrusted with an electronic calculator. Those silent marvels would soon replace the gigantic noisy Fridens, but they still required an AC connection and cost about $1,000.
I am pretty sure that Sue’s first impression of me was negative. Our only noteworthy interaction was when I was called upon to talk with someone on the phone. My desk had no phone; I had to use hers. I never called anyone, and most of the calls that I received were nerve-wracking; I perspired all over the receiver. I wiped it off before I gave it back, but it was still rather gross.
I did not know Sue well, but what I heard about her was somewhat disconcerting. She lived in East Hampton, CT, with Diane DeFreitas and, I think, another young woman. She did not have a car. A “Cuban plumber” sometimes gave her a ride part of the way to the Hartford. She hitchhiked the rest of the way. She had picked up a black Labrador puppy at a flea market and named him Siddhartha. At some point she must have realized that this situation was not sustainable, and she took the dog to the pound. Someone else may have catalyzed the decision.
I remember that one day both she and Diane decided to dress slutty for work. Sue did not like dress codes. She told me that she had been suspended from high school for vigorously protesting the dress code. Her parents were not amused by this behavior.
Oh, yeah. One other thing—Sue smoked. My dad smoked, but hardly anyone else with whom I had ever spent much time did. John Sigler also spoke, but he hardly ever lit up in my presence.
The Shoreham has been gone for decades.
After I was assigned to the Individual Pensions area I only saw Sue in passing and at the Friday evening gatherings at the Shoreham Hotel’s bar, situated very conveniently between the Aetna and the Hartford. At some point one of the most important events of my life occurred, and yet I have no clear memory of the details. For some reason Tom Herget set me up with Sue for some event. I don’t remember when it was or even what we did. I have a vague recollection of the Aetna Diner (Sue liked their moussaka) on Farmington Avenue, but maybe that was on a different occasion. I am pretty sure that Sue told me on that occasion that I reminded her of her husband, and she was astonished to learn that my middle name was Dennis. She explained that her husband’s name was Dennis, and his middle name was Michael.
I don’t think that I previously knew that she had been married. This explained why she did not look even vaguely Italian. I certainly did not know that she was still legally married. I had to make a snap judgment whether being with her was a mortal sin or a venial sin. It was a tough call, but I was pretty sure that any further contact would move the needle over the line. For twelve years I had attended Catholic schools, and I had never missed going to mass on Sunday. Not once. I probably confessed more impure thoughts than I actually had. You have to confess something.
I somehow quieted my conscience and had a good time that night, and Sue and I started “seeing each other.” By this time she had moved to Rockville and rented a room in the basement of a house owned by a female employee of the Hartford named Jackie. She also had somehow persuaded a bank to finance her purchase of a 1972 Dodge Colt.
During this period Sue was also, at least in theory, studying for Part 1 of the actuarial exams. She was at a huge disadvantage compared with others taking the test in Hartford. Most of them got study time and took classes in the subject. She did not pass.
It must have been on an evening in October that Sue offered to fix a steak supper for John Sigler and me. Jackie must have let Sue use the kitchen; Sue’s apartment barely had room for a bed and a couple of chairs. We all sat around after dinner drinking Mateus, talking, and listening to Leonard Cohen records. Finally John departed. I spent the night with Sue on her small waterbed, a totally new experience for me.
Over the next few months Sue and I went to numerous places together. A bunch of us walked down to Constitution Plaza together to attend a noontime rally for George McGovern. 1972 was the first time that I was allowed to vote in a national election. In 1968 the voting age was twenty-one, and I was only twenty. Sue, who was born in 1951, was barely old enough to vote this time. I really hated Nixon. I suspected (correctly, as it was later revealed) that he had deliberately scuttled the peace talks in Paris about Vietnam. Never mind his secret war in Laos and his part in the overthrow of the democratic government in Chile. I never had to serve in Vietnam, but I blamed Nixon for stealing two years from me when I was in my prime.
Sue and I both voted for McGovern. I even put a McGovern-Shriver1 sticker on Greenie’s bumper. I felt as if I had gotten McGovern one more vote than he would have otherwise received. Of course, it made no difference. Most Americans believed Tricky Dick really had a “secret plan” to end the war, they were afraid of the godless communist menace, and for some reason they did not like McGovern.
Sue and I attended a couple of movies in theaters. I seem to remember that there was a theater in West Hartford that showed older movies. I am pretty sure that we saw Blow-up together and at least one Marx Brothers movie.
We ate at a few restaurants in Rockville. I am certain that we shared a ham and olive pizza a small restaurant on Main St. near Route 83. It must have been part of a chain. It had a number after its name. Sue liked to go to Friendly’s. At the time their menu consisted of overpriced hamburger, overpriced cheeseburgers, overpriced “Friendly Franks”, and ice cream. Sue focused on the ice cream.
Gone forever?
I cooked a few meals for us in my apartment. For example, I fixed a sirloin beef roast using McCormick’s Meat Marinade2, a trick that I learned from my mother. Sue was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted. She said that she had never liked beef roasts. She explained that when her mother cooked them she left them in the oven until they were grey, dried out, flavorless, and chewy. I tried to fry a chicken, but it did not work out too well. I had to put it in the oven before serving because some parts were not done. Microwave ovens existed, but I did not have one. After that we stuck to extra-crispy chicken from the colonel. However, I bought at least three cookbooks, and I developed a few very tasty specialties.
I took Christmas very seriously in 1972. It was only the second holiday season that I had spent away from my family, and this time I was really on my own. The feeling was much different from any previous Christmas. I spent a lot of time shopping for little gifts and writing personalized Christmas cards for my friends. Sue and I attended the Carol Sing at the Hartford Times Building in downtown Hartford. The Times3 published a half-page photo of the huge crowd that was assembled. My off-white cowboy hat and fleece-lined suede coat made it easy to spot us in the photo. We showed the clipping to all of our friends.
My first New Years in Connecticut was also memorable. I decided to roast Cornish game hens for supper, and we invited Tom Corcoran and Patti Lewonczyk to join us. The four of us were also invited by Tom Garabedian and Gail Mertan to a party at Tom’s house in East Hartford. The meal was a big success. I think that Sue cooked some kind of vegetables, maybe her famous carrots Lyonaise. Of course, we also served wine.
We all probably ate too much. No one felt like going to a party. However, it was less than a mile to the Garabedian house. So, we all piled into one of the cars and drove there.
The only two people in the house when we arrived were Tom and Gail. Evidently Tom had persuaded his parents to make themselves scarce. Tom and Gail had laid out a cornucopia of food and beverages—enough for several dozen people. No one else ever came. It was not much of a party, but if we had submitted to the lethargy induced by the supper, it would have been a disaster.
Over the holidays I got to meet some of Sue’s family. Her parents, Art and Effy Slanetz, and siblings all lived in a farm house on North Maple St. in Enfield. Sue was the oldest child; she had two sisters, Karen and Betty. They were nothing alike. She also had a brother Don. I met Effy’s dog, Queenie, and a bevy of Sue’s uncles, aunts, and cousins, all of whom lived within a few miles of the Slanetz’s house4. Many of them seemed to make a living by driving trucks in one way or another. Their favorite sport was NASCAR. I did not contribute much to the banter.
Behind the house was a fairly large field that was actively farmed by the Polek family that lived in the house that was between the Slanetz’s house and a warehouse in which Art stored all kinds of old mechanical junk. Sue told me that that the field was their family’s land at one time. When she was little they raised potatoes.
The winters in the seventies were brutal. Early in 1973 (I think) I was driving Greenie, and Sue was riding shotgun after a snowfall of a couple of inches. We were headed south on I-91 through Hartford. I was driving at a very reasonable speed in the right lane, and, thank God, there were no cars nearby. All of a sudden my car’s rear wheels began moving to the left, but the front wheels did not. The car performed a spin of about 315°, and my left front bumper whipped into the guardrail on the left, which brought us to a halt.. Neither of us was injured. We were both wearing seat belts—I never let anyone ride in my car without a seat belt. It was amazing that my car suffered only a negligibly small bump, and the vehicle was positioned so that I could quickly steer back onto the highway. This scary event made me realize that I had to be very careful with this car in dicey road conditions.
Sue had a very large number of friends. My favorites were Bob and Susan Thompson. Bob worked in a small factory. He complained about the smell of the chemicals there. His job might have had something to do with linoleum. I think that Susan was a teacher. They had a house in Coventry and an extremely amorous dachshund. Once he gained purchase on a pants leg he was difficult to detach. Bob owned a Plymouth that saw its best days in the Eisenhower administration, or maybe earlier. In snowy weather he liked to take it into an empty parking lot and make it spin donuts.
When we had not seen Bob and Susan for a few months, I asked Sue why. She said that she had loaned them some money, and she was pretty sure that they were avoiding her because they could not afford to repay her.
On Valentine’s Day 2013 I bought Sue a present and a card. She had forgotten about it, and therefore she did not reciprocate. I took it a little hard.
Eventually I learned that Sue and time just did not get along. She regularly forgot holidays, birthdays, and appointments. She also could not gauge the passage of time. She might think that events occurred a week ago actually happened two months earlier. If she said that something would take fifteen minutes, it usually took an hour or more. If any food (e.g., beef or lamb) needed to be cooked for a specific amount of time, I had to do it. In retrospect I marvel that she had chosen to grill steaks for John Sigler and me. I cannot remember how they turned out. I was not paying too much attention to the food that night.
Sue was always late. I adopted the habit of carrying a book around with me for the inevitable waiting periods.
The fridge that we moved wasn’t wrapped.
I recall that in February of 1973 Sue and I helped one of her many friends move to a new place. The woman who was moving might have been one of Sue’s roommates in East Hampton. I remember that I was one of the people assigned to get an old refrigerator up the staircase. We succeeded, but I could not describe what technique was employed beyond brute force. At one point the woman who was moving asked what day it was. I said that it was Saturday the 24th (or whatever it actually was). She said “No. I mean, what month?”
I decided that Sue’s twenty-second birthday on March 2 should be Sue Comparetto Day. I offered to buy her anything that she wanted. She wanted to shop for a camera. We drove to a camera shop of her choosing, and she selected a thirty-five-millimeter camera with a leather case. I would have inserted a photo of it here if I knew where it was. I guarantee that it is in the house somewhere. Sue would never have thrown it out. I did find the case, which still had one of her combs in it.
We went to two concerts together in March. The first was at the Bushnell Auditorium in Hartford on Tuesday March 6. The headliners were Loggins and Messina, whose only real hit “Your Mama Don’t Dance” was very popular at the time. Sue and I must have attended in hopes of seeing the advertised opening act, Jim Croce. Neither Sue nor I can remember him appearing. Apparently he canceled for some reason. Almost everyone in the audience was at least five years younger than we were, and they enjoyed the L&M performance a lot more than we did. By the end of the show we really felt like old fogeys.
The other concert was at the Palace Theater in Waterbury. Pink Floyd had just released “Dark Side of the Moon”, which is widely considered their masterpiece. There were huge speakers blasting out sound from all four corners of the theater, and there was an abundance of strobe lights and other dramatic flashes. The crowd went crazy, but I was definitely ready to leave after fifteen minutes. You can listen to the whole two-hour concert here.
On April 1, 1973, Sue’s husband Dennis committed suicide. Sue went to the funeral. He had attempted suicide at least once in the fall. Sue had visited him in the hospital on that occasion.
When the weather got warmer Sue and I enjoyed a very pleasant trip to Gillette Castle, a bizarre structure that overlooks the Connecticut River. It was built of local fieldstone by the actor William Gillette. He is most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes more than 1,300 times on the stage, once in a silent film feature, and twice on radio programs. The estate is now a state park. I found it to be a very interesting place. The grounds were very relaxing. There was even a small train that had been used by Gillette himself. We had a very nice picnic.
We also spent some time in the interior5 of the castle. The extremely ornate inside was at least as fabulous as the grounds and the view. This was one of my favorite days in my first trip to Connecticut.
At some point Sue decided to quit her job at the Hartford. She found a new line of work at Travelers Equity Sales. She had to take a test to become a registered rep. She passed on the first try and worked there through the spring and most of the summer. While she worked at the Travelers she became a close friend of Diane Robinson, who originally came from Passumpsic VT, and Karen Peterson.
Around the same time that she changed jobs Sue moved to an apartment on Jefferson St. (or maybe Washington St.) in Hartford. I don’t remember much about it. My only clear recollection is of the only time in my life that I ever ran out of gas. I was about two blocks from her house and perhaps one hundred feet from a gas station. Even though it was slightly uphill I was able to push Greenie up to the pump all by myself. I was only a little stronger then; Greenie was very light and easy to push.
During her time at T.E.S. Sue and I started to grow apart. She was a whirlwind of activity, and I often felt left out. She had a gazillion friends of both genders, and sometimes I became jealous. She probably started to think of me as too clingy.
This one is 18.9′ long.
When I met Sue, she already had a boa constrictor named Puca, but he was barely six feet long and skinny. She did not feed him much, and when she did, all that he got was a dead mouse heated over a light bulb to fool his heat-detecting senses. One evening we visited her friends Stan and Pat Slatt in Marlborough. They had a ten-foot boa constrictor that Stan fed live rats and a thirteen-foot python that regularly ate a full-grown rabbit. I had no fear of Puca, but these two monsters gave me pause.
In the summer of 1973 Sue moved to an apartment complex on Wales Rd. in Andover. Her apartment was right across the street from the one that Scott and Cindy Otermat lived with their huge dog Cinders. I saw her only a few times before her big trip.
Sue, Diane, and Karen decided to quit their jobs and drive to Alaska. I am not sure that their plans were any more specific than that. I don’t know what they used for money. Maybe they knocked over a bunch of banks in those states along the Canadian border, or they might have found a big nugget of gold in the Klondike. They did not take Sue’s car. She left it at her apartment, which she “sublet” to a guy who worked on roofs for a living. I am pretty sure that they were “involved” before she left. He also was supposed to take care of Puca, but the reptile escaped from his cage either just before Sue left or just after.
This was the greatest adventure in Sue’s young life, but I was absolutely miserable. I felt sorry for myself. It was hard for me to face all my friends. I took a lot of long walks.
During the trip the three ladies all hooked up with Air Force guys stationed in Alaska. Diane ended up marrying Phil Graziose. They lived in a trailer park in northern Vermont for a number of years and then bought an old house in St. Johnsbury with a storefront in which Phil ran a locksmithing business.
On the trip Sue became seriously involved with an Air Force guy name Randy, who came from, of all places, my home town of Kansas City. I refused to listen to the stories of her adventures, but I could not help overhearing that there was one incident in which someone nearly drowned.
This matchbook cover is the only trace of Fast Eddie’s that I could find on the Internet.
Meanwhile, back in the lower forty-eight Friday, August 17, 1973, was a memorable day. Since it was my twenty-fifth birthday, I invited everyone to help me celebrate. At least eight or ten of us went to Fast Eddie’s bar on the Berlin Turnpike. I had never been drunk in my life, and I had no intention of overindulging that evening. The problem was that we were drinking beer by the pitcher, and people kept refilling my glass without asking me. I never asked for a second glass. My mother had drilled into us that if there was food on our plate or beverage in our glass, we were expected to consume it. If there was a possibility that we might not want it later, we were not to put it on the plate. Once it was there, however, …
At any rate, this was the only time in my life that I have driven a car when I definitely should not have done so. Fortunately, Greenie pretty well knew the way back to my apartment, and there were no incidents. The next day I awoke with my first hangover and played my epic tennis match with Jim Kreidler. It is described here.
Tom Corcoran and Tom Herget had been living in a large old house at 345 Hartford Avenue in Wethersfield. The third housemate had been a guy named Monty. Herget had furnished the house from items he picked up at second-hand stores on Park St. in Hartford. In August of 1973 Monty had to leave for some reason. They asked me if I wanted to take Monty’s place. It was a no-brainer. The rent was less, and life would surely be more interesting. In addition, I would be rid of a lot of scenery that connected with memories that now seemed bitter to me.
In August of 1973 I bought and read the popular book I’m OK—You’re OK by Thomas Anthony Harris. It described the research on hemispheric separation in the brain that showed that under certain circumstances people clearly have two (or more) relatively independent decision-making mechanisms. We identify with only one of them, the one that can read and talk. When something happens that this portion of the brain did not order, we are likely to say “I don’t know why I did that.” Understanding that the first “I” and the second “I” in that sentence are largely independent agents really helped me to understand people, including myself, better.
During this period I was being paid to study for Part 5 of the actuarial exams. The subject matter was indescribably boring. Can you think of anything more tedious than studying the history of mortality tables? I liked my work, and I had made some great friends in Connecticut, but there was one aspect that I really missed—debate tournaments and the thrill of competing at the highest level. I began to think about going back to college to coach debate. I wrote to Bill Colburn at the University of Michigan to inquire if that was feasible. He replied that I needed to apply to graduate school. He thought that he could arrange for financial assistance for me. I also did a little bit of research on my veterans’ benefits.
I heard that Sue had come back from Alaska, but I did not see her for quite some time. Finally she came over to the “345 Club” one evening. For some reason I was up in my bedroom. I think that the two Toms tried to talk her out of it, but she came up to see me. I don’t exactly remember what happened, but she ended up staying the night with me.
The Little Aetna’s building on Elm St.
I learned that Sue had landed a new job at the “Little Aetna” section of Connecticut General. When she returned from Alaska she discovered that the roofer had not been paying the rent. My recollection is that her car was also repossessed. She eventually found Puca—alive—between two towels in a linen closet.
So, Sue and I began what I think of as the “toll bridge” section of our relationship. In those days the Charter Oak Bridge and the Bissell Bridge had toll booths in both directions. The fastest way from the 345 Club to Sue’s apartment was via the Charter Oak Bridge and I-846. One could save a little money by buying a book of prepaid tickets, and that is what both Sue and I did.
The worst ice storm that I have ever seen hit central Connecticut on December 16-17. More details are provided here. The storm affected Wethersfield much worse than it did Andover. So, like my housemates, I abandoned the 345 Club, brought some clothes to Sue’s apartment, and stayed there for a while.
One morning during that winter—I don’t remember if it was before or after Christmas—I was driving from Andover to Hartford. Greenie was headed westbound on the portion of I-84 between Manchester and Bolton. It was early in the morning; the sun had just come up. The road conditions did not seem too bad, and I was going a moderate speed in the right lane. This time my rear wheels decided to go to the right. My car did a 180° spin before coming to a stop in the breakdown lane on the right side of the highway. I waited for traffic to clear and then, taking advantage of Greenie’s extremely small turning radius, executed a tight U-turn. I then continued on my journey. My mantra was the same as that of every male in his twenties: “No harm; no foul.”
I had decided to fly to Kansas City at Christmas to visit my family. Sue was somewhat shocked when I asked her whether she wanted to come with me, but she said yes7. We were only there for a few days, but she got to meet a lot of my family, including Fr. Joe and my grandfather, John Cernech, who by then had become very nearly deaf. She must have slept on the roller bed in Jamie’s room. My recollection is that Jamie had a date on most of the evenings while we were staying there.
Mad Murphy’s was in this building on Union St.
Another event that I remember clearly during the subsequent few months was the night that Sue and I and a group of friends grabbed a table at Mad Murphy’s, a bar near the train station in Hartford. We came there to listen to Sue’s neighbor, Carl Shillo, and his band. We stayed until the closing time, and we had a great time. The highlight was when they played “Ob-la-di Ob-la-da” just before closing. Everyone marched around in a long conga line and sang along.
Passumpsic is an unincorporated village in the town of Barnet. The community is located 3 miles south of St. Johnsbury, the last civilized outpost on I-91.
By April or May I had arranged to coach debate at U-M. I asked Sue if she would come with me. She, who was in those days always ready for an adventure, agreed.
Sue and I drove up to Passumpsic to see Diane and her many siblings at least once. I don’t remember when. Tom Herget came with us. I don’t think that Phil had arrived yet. The Robinsons held a barn dance, which I cannot say that I enjoyed much; dancing is definitely not my thing. My favorite memory of this trip was when Diane’s father claimed that he had always wondered why he and his wife had so many more offspring than the other couples until someone explained to him what caused it.
I am pretty sure that Sue made other trips without me. She considered the three-hour drive an easy one, and she was enthralled by the simple lifestyle of Diane’s family.
In 1972 the Hartford recruited three single guys named Tom. The next year two married actuarial students named Jim were hired—Jim Cochran and Jim Hawke. Their wives were Ann and Lesley respectively. The Cochrans were from Wisconsin. The Hawkes were from Texas, although Jim had a bachelor’s degree in math from UConn. I don’t know how they ended up in the Land of Steady Habits.
I remember at least one evening spent at each of their houses, although I cannot say when either event happened. The Hawkes lived in a house in Manchester and a son named Ethan8. Sue and I had supper with the Hawkes and spent most of the evening enjoying Jim’s renditions of rags by Scott Joplin.
A short time after that Jim and Ethan joined Sue and me on an excursion to her property on “Bunyan Mountain”9 in Monson, MA. We parked well below Sue’s property and climbed up. I think that we had some sandwiches and toasted marshmallows.
Sue took photos of this occasion. If she can locate any of them, I will post something here.
Ann Cochran.
Jim and Ann Cochran lived in a house in Glastonbury. They invited us over to play the state card game of Wisconsin, Sheepshead. Neither Sue nor I had ever heard of it. I don’t think that anyone outside of the state of Wisconsin has ever played it more than once. Jim and Ann patiently explained all of the rules to us. Then on the first hand something—I don’t remember what—occurred. As a result both Jim and Ann triumphantly yelled out “It’s a leaster!” They then introduced a whole new set of rules as to how this particular hand would be played.
A brief glance at the Wikipedia page for this game lists some of the “variants” to the rules and hints at many others. Even though tournaments of games are allegedly held in Wisconsin, I suspect that the real purpose of this game is to lure unsuspecting non-cheeseheads into playing the game under a small subset of the rules. The Wisconsinites can then introduce new rules often enough to make the foreigners so confused and frustrated that they leave. Then the Wisconsonites can enjoy their fondue in peace.
Sue’s family played a trick-taking game called Setback or Auction Pitch, which has the benefit of far fewer rules. I played a few times, but there did not seem to be much to it. When someone in Sue’s family asked if anyone wanted to play cards, they meant Setback.
In June of 1974 I broke the patella (kneecap) on my right leg playing pickup basketball. The event itself is described here. I had to miss a few days of work, and I was unable to drive at least until the cast was removed. I decided to move in with Sue in Andover. This also seemed like the best time to tell my parents about that she would be taking care of me in her apartment. They were not thrilled by the idea, but at least they did not commandeer a plane and come to rescue me from her clutches. They weren’t too surprised when I told them that she was going to accompany me to Ann Arbor in a few months.
The rest of the summer was rather blissful for me. I could not play softball or golf, but I attended all of the Mean Reserves games and all the other get-togethers. I cannot remember any unpleasant occasions.
1. Senator Tom Eagleton was nominated for Vice President at the 1972 Democratic Convention. Shortly thereafter he resigned from the ticket when it was discovered that he received psychiatric treatment for chronic depression. The Republican Veep candidate, Spiro Agnew, was a crook, but his crimes did not come to light until after the election.
2. Sue and I returned to the castle in the summer of 2020, but because of the pandemic the interior was not open. We had another nice picnic, and I took some spectacular snapshots of the river beneath the castle.
3. For some reason McCormick’s discontinued this wonderful product in 2019 or 2020. Someone has started a “Bring Back McCormick’s Meat Marinade” Facebook page.
4. The Hartford Times was a moderately liberal paper owned by Gannett and published in the afternoon. In 1972, however, it endorsed Nixon. I wrote a letter to the editor in protest. They published one or two of the hundreds that they received about the endorsement, but not mine. The paper was sold in 1973. In 1976 it accepted the fate of most PM papers and ceased publication.
5. I did not realize at the time that I had only met the Lockes, Effy’s side of the family. The Slanetzes were not homebodies at all. They were widely dispersed. Only one Locke had moved away, Sue’s Uncle Bob, whose family lived in western Michigan.
6. Prior to 1984 the interstate highway that runs from Hartford to the Mass Pike just north of Sturbridge was called I-84 from Hartford to Manchester and I-86 east of Manchester. The never completed road that led from Manchester toward Providence was called I-84. Since 1984 the former highway has been called I-84, and the latter I-384.
7. Sue helped with the production of her high school’s musical Oklahoma. She strongly identified with the character of Ado Annie, the “girl who can’t say no”. I hereby affirm that I have hardly ever heard her turn down an invitation to do something, although she will sometimes cancel later when she realizes that it would be impossible for her to be in two places at once. This may be the biggest difference between Sue and me. I have almost never committed to anything unless I was certain that I was willing and able to do it.
Ethan Hawke and his daughter Maya.
8. The youngster grew up to be Ethan Hawke, the famous actor.
9. Evidently this “mountain” is actually part of Chicopee Mountain. Sue obtained this property as part of an agreement with her father-in-law, Chick Comparetto. There is a nice view of the valley from one spot that is either on or near her land.
