1948-1970 Dad and Me

Posted on August 29, 2024 by Mike

I have limited the period covered by this entry to the years before I left for the army in October of 1970. The few face-to-face contacts that I had with my parents from my arrival in Connecticut up to the last time that I saw my mom are listed in the “Mom and me” blog entry.

James E. Wavada was born on August 25, 1924, or at least that is what he has always claimed. For some reason he was never able to locate his birth certificate. I learned about this when he encountered difficulty in obtaining an official ID card in 2005 after he moved to Connecticut. He was the youngest of the three sons of Henry and Hazel Wavada. They lived in Holy Name parish in the Rosedale section of Kansas City, KS. His two brothers were named Victor and Henry Joseph (Uncle Vic and Fr. Joe to me).

The Wavadas: from the left Fr. Joe, dad, Uncle Vic, Grandmom Hazel, and Grandad Henry. My mom probably took this photo with her Brownie.

Hazel’s maiden name was Cox. My dad said that they were “Scotch Irish”, descended from the people whom the British government transplanted from Scotland to Northern Ireland. Hazel once confided to me that the Wade Hamptons¹, powerful figures in South Carolina in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were among her ancestors.

Henry was fifteen years older than Hazel. I think that they were both employed in the meat packing industry in some capacity. Henry’s ancestry is foggy to me.² My dad considered himself Irish, but the first Wavadas (or whatever the name was originally) reportedly set sail from Marseilles and lived in Alsace. They apparently settled in Fort Wayne, IN.

Jim was decidedly left-handed. Swinging a golf club was the only thing that he did right-handed^.3 His writing method involved curling his hand around so that he pulled the pen instead of pushing it. My understanding is that that meant that his right hemisphere was dominant and his cerebrum was contralaterally organized. The script that this produced was illegible to nearly everyone except for mom and his secretary.

As a youth dad reportedly had a temporary episode of alopecia totalis. It must have been very embarrassing for him, but all of his hair eventually grew back. I judged that the somewhat weird fact that his scalp hair was still dark when his eyebrows had turned white⁴ was probably related to that illness in his youth. I might be wrong.

For a while he called himself “Pibby”. Evidently he had difficulty saying “Jimmy”.

My dad never had anything good to say about his father, who was an alcoholic. He told me that Hazel had to pull him out of bars. Other anecdotes about Henry and his family have been posted here.

My dad and his two brothers grew up during the depression. It must have been extremely tough on Hazel, but she was up to it. She lived longer than all of my other known antecedents. She died in 1989 at the age of 90.

This, believe it or not, is the dormitory in which the three Wavada boys lived while they

Jim and his brothers all matriculated at Maur Hill, a boarding school run by the Benedictine monks. It was located in Atchison, KS, approximately fifty miles from KC KS. Hazel reportedly negotiated a deal with the Benedictines that one of the boys would become a priest if all three were given scholarships. I know only a few things about my dad’s time at Maur Hill:

The photo of Jim Wavada in the *Maurite* for 1942

His yearbook lists the following activities:
- Course: Classical
- Tatler (the student newspaper): 3
- Honor Roll: 2,3
- Sacristan: 2
- Pres. Servers’ Society: 4
- Student Manager Athletics: 3.
The fact that no activities were listed with a “1” leads me to think that he probably attended Ward High as a freshman and then transferred.
He won the school-wide oratory contest in 1942. This was not in his yearbook, but I learned about it when the school invited him back to judge the contest decades later, perhaps in 1962. I accompanied him to Atchison.
He confided to me that he had been terrible at math (especially geometry) and French. The French teacher reportedly said that he had the worst French accent he had ever heard. I suspect that he got through the other subjects using his incredible memory and his writing and speaking talent.
He learned to play back-handed ping pong. I played him once. He could not handle spin, but his reflexes were much better than mine.
He learned from other students that smoking was cool. He became addicted to cigarettes for more than forty years.
He learned to play golf, but the only clubs available were right-handed.
A man named Henry Etchegaray, who lived in Mexico City but was in dad’s class at Maur Hill (and lettered in football!), visited us one time. I remember no details.

At some point while he was in high school he evidently met my mom. Maybe it was shortly after he graduated and she was on summer break . They never told me the details, and I never asked. I am pretty sure that they communicated by mail while he was in the army, but I have not seen any of the letters.

The guy on the right is dad. The other gentleman is, I think, the man named Louis that we visited in Colorado.

Shortly after high school he enlisted. He told me that he was rejected (in World War II!) by the navy for “insufficient chest and shoulder development”. Maybe it was just as well; he could not swim. I never saw him in a swimming pool or pond, but he did take a motorboat out on Cass Lake in Minnesota a few times.

He was six feet tall and weighed 123 pounds when he first donned the olive drab. His performance on the mechanical aptitude test that the army required new enlistees to take was so bad that the guy running the test accused him of cheating on the other tests.

He served in the Pacific in WW II. He almost never talked about it except to say that he did well in ping pong. He ended as a sergeant, but something that he mentioned once seemed to indicate that he had been busted a rank or two at least once. He had little respect for most of the other grunts that he served with, but he made one life-long friend in Jake Jacobson.

I would love to know where dad and mom were when this photo was taken and who took it. Note that dad has his cigarette in his right hand, probably as a courtesy to mom.

Fighting for more than two years against the Japanese definitely had a permanent effect on his world view. Our family never had rice for supper when Jim was in town. If he ever ate any oriental food, it was not until late in his life. He firmly believed that the two nuclear attacks ended the war. I wondered what he would have thought when historians began to assert that the Japanese government and military leaders were more concerned about the Russians’ invasion of northern islands than the immolation of civilians.

Nearly all of my dad’s friends went to college on the G.I. bill. He did not. I am not sure that he even considered it.

This is my favorite photo from the wedding.

He married Dolores Cernech on September 1, 1947. His brother Joe, who had been ordained only three months earlier, officiated at the wedding in St. Peter’s cathedral in KC KS. What transpired in the year and a half between my dad’s discharge and the wedding? Decades later he disclosed two nuggets of information about that period: 1) Mom’s father was against the marriage, but Clara, her mother, somehow persuaded her husband that it was for the best; 2) He might have gotten into serious trouble if he did not get married. There were no more details, but he also mentioned something about pinball machines, which in those days were common in bars.

Life in KC KS 1948-54

The couple lived for seven and a half years in the house owned by Dolores’s parents, John and Clara Cernech. As far as I know, dad never worked anywhere except Business Men’s Assurance (BMA). I assume that he was employed there when he got married, but I could find no proof of it. As an employee he would have almost certainly received free health insurance. Otherwise, I cannot imagine how he could have afforded all of the medical bills my first few years on earth certainly generated.

Dad and J.K. Higdon, president of BMA, in 1951. I know only one other person with a head shaped like dad’s.

I can only imagine what my dad thought when he heard about my hare lip. He never talked about it later. In fact, I cannot remember him talking to me much at all in the years before I started school. The only memorable conversation was when he lightly reprimanded me for trading my Mickey Mantle baseball card to someone for a Vic Power card.

Dad was apparently pretty active at BMA. He started at the bottom, but by 1951 he was president of the KEO (“Know Each Other”) social club and one of four staff members on the company’s internal newspaper. In a short time he was transferred tp the sales department, where he eventually rose to the rank of Vice President. I think that he may have played a little baseball or softball there, too. The only equipment that he had was a first baseman’s glove. Although he sardonically referred to himself as “a natural athlete”, I never saw that side of him.

My only vivid memory of my dad in the house in KC KS involves the train set that he and Joey Keuchel set up “for me”⁵ in the basement. I am not sure how much my dad actually participated in that effort. I cannot remember ever seeing him use a tool as complicated as a screwdriver.

How dad got to work in the five years after my birth is unclear. Perhaps he took a bus or “street car” (trolly). In 1954 he bought a blue and white Ford. My recollection is that he had quite a bit of trouble with it. The word “lemon” was frequently employed.

I am pretty sure that Jake Jacobson visited us at least once before we moved to the suburbs. I remember that he had a big car, perhaps a convertible. He claimed that he could steer with his belly. When I got rambunctious he would cheerfully shout, “Michael, decorum!” I am pretty sure that the three of us rode with him to Swope Park for a picnic. A fair amount of beer was consumed. I remember a contest of pitching empty beer cans into the trash receptacle. In the fifties this was considered highly responsible behavior. People in those days thought nothing of hurling litter out of car windows. Let the prisoners clean it up.

I have a vague recollection of Fr. Joe taking me fishing at least once at Wyandotte County Lake. I don’t remember if mom or dad (very unlikely) was present. I seem to remember that there was a “gas war” going on. The going price was $.199 per gallon.

To my knowledge the only vacation that the three of us took was a long drive to Colorado to visit a man named Louis, who was one of Hazel’s relatives. I don’t remember his last name. This trip has been recounted here.

Prairie Village

In early 1955 the three of us moved to 7717 Maple, Prairie Village, KS, about twenty miles south of the house on N. Thorpe. My dad may have been in a car pool for work. Several BMA employees lived nearby.

I could hardly believe it when I found this picture. From left on the couch are Grandad John, me, Jamie, Clara, Hazel, Henry. On the far right is my dad. I don’t know who the person leaning in on the left is. I assume that the photographer was mom.

This was a big deal for me. We were in a new parish, which meant that I finished first grade at Queen of the Holy Rosary School instead of St. Peter’s. The Ursulines at QHRS seemed much nicer. Dad actually knew a few of them who had taught at his grade school in Holy Name parish in Rosedale.

When my sister Jamie arrived on the scene in January of 1956 dad must have been at least somewhat involved in picking her name. I don’t know how they came up with Jamesina. No St. Jamesina can be found in Wikipedia. They certainly did not ask my opinion. No one ever called her anything but Jamie.

Sometimes dad brought work home. On those occasions he sat at the kitchen table and filled up pads of paper with writing that reminded me of rain. Otherwise, he stretched out on our green sofa and read the newspapers (the Kansas City Star still had two editions), Time, Newsweek, or something about life insurance or marketing. He took no notes. He was not researching; he was absorbing.

If he read a book, it was non-fiction. I remember him reading only one novel ever, Mario Puzo’s The Godfather.. The salty language put him off.

He never watched movies. He said that he could not suspend disbelief. He saw people walking around furniture saying words that other people had written and feigning emotions. He attended one movie that I know of. It was a biopic, either Lust for Life, about Van Gogh, or The Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo. He said that the movie was good, but, as far as I know, he never saw another one while he was in Kansas.

The only things that he watched on television were sports, especially football, and news. Occasionally he would peak at something that Jamie and I were watching. Batman comes to mind.

Dad and I watched football games as soon as they started appearing on television. I remember that the pros used a white ball for night games, and runners who were knocked down could jump back up and continue running. His favorite team was the Chicago Bears; mine was the Cleveland Browns.

We did no projects together, mostly because the only project that I can remember him doing was working on the lawn. I did the mowing,_⁶ but he did some weeding, planting, fertilizing, and lots of watering. The results were mixed. I helped only when coerced. To me the weeds had the same esthetic value as his Kentucky bluegrass.

Dad took me to several games of the hapless Kansas City A’s, who played their games in Municipal Stadium, which was in a fairly rough neighborhood. My recollection is that we parked on the street for those games. These events have been described here. I don’t remember us talking about anything at the games except how pitiful the A’s were. We were definitely present for the legendary 29-6 loss to the Chicago White Sox on April 23, 1955.

We also took in one home game of Maur Hill football. I don’t remember who the opponent was, but they probably lost. I also have a vague recollection of attending a game at the University of Kansas. Since I remember no details of that event, I may have fantasized it.

Dad and I drove with our neighbor, Ed Leahy, to south-central Kansas one weekend. I don’t think that the Interstates were completed yet. We drove mostly at night. I remember sleeping in the back seat.

We spent one day hunting quail or pheasants and one day at the State Fair in Hutchinson. This adventure has been described here.

The family’s big vacation to the East Coast is detailed here. Dad did almost all of the driving.

I remember two other trips with my dad. I am not sure whether my mom was along. On the first one we visited dad’s Uncle Vic Wavada (Henry’s brother) in, I believe, Nevada, MO. I remember no details at all. Great-uncle Vic died in 1962. By the way, the town is pronounced locally as nuh VAY duh, miz URR uh.

On the other journey we visited an older man named Crispy Ward somewhere near Jefferson City, MO. He might have been a salesman for BMA. We went fishing together in a small boat. I doubt that my dad participated. I had trouble with my line getting caught up in the vegetation. Crispy nicknamed me “Snag.” Fortunately, it did not catch on.

Dad and I did not do very much together. He played catch with me occasionally. The only thing that I recall that he ever taught me was how to wash myself. My reaction was a silent “Well, duh.”

Did my dad have any friends in the area? He talked to a few of the neighbors. He and mom went to social occasions at the homes of some of the other BMA employees a few times. The only other friends that I can recall were Boots and Fay Hedrick. I seem to recall that dad, mom, or both knew them from KC KS. They had a son named John who was about my age.

You could probably do it with one hand in a pocket.

I started wearing glasses in 1958 or thereabouts. My dad also wore glasses when he drove the car. Otherwise, he shunned their use. He nagged me about the fact that I put mine on as soon as I woke up and wore them continually until I went to bed. I took them off when playing football and whenever large amounts of water were involved. He could not understand why I always wore them. I wanted to see, and my prescription was much stronger than his was. The year before I got them I batted .000 in 3&2 baseball. It was humiliating. Give a kid a break.

The other thing that he nagged me about was putting my hands in my pockets. Whenever I heard him say, “You can’t climb the ladder with your hands in your pockets” I would spin my head around to see which ladder he was referring to. I never saw it.

Leawood

At the end of the 1961-62 school year the Wavadas moved south and east a few miles to 8800 Fairway in Leawood, KS. This house was much nicer than either of our previous two residences. It had three bedrooms, a large living room, a dining room, a rec room, a two-car garage, a basement, and an attic. It also had central air conditioning and a large fan in the ceiling of the hallway by the bedrooms. Every summer evening my dad would order the air conditioning turned off and the fan turned on. All the windows were opened except for the ones in my bedroom. I left mine closed and shut my door when I went to bed in order to muffle the sound of the fan.

My dad joined a car pool to BMA. Its members included Malcolm Holzer, the company’s treasurer, and Mac Dolliver, an actuary whose family lived only a block away from us. There was at least one other person in the car pool. In inclement weather they would drive me to Rockhurst High School. On most other days I walked.

For one of my birthdays my parents got me a wooden basketball backboard and orange rim of iron. My dad and, I think, my grandfather, John Cernech, mounted it on the roof above the driveway. The backboard was not quite vertical, and the rim broke in one place, but I still played there extensively.

A later Christmas present was a six-foot pool table that dad and mom clandestinely set up in the basement. Its surface was wood covered by felt that quickly warped, but I did not care. I practiced on it many evenings, especially in cold weather. While I did so I listened to my records on a portable turntable that I acquired somewhere. Nobody could beat me on my table because I knew how to play the “break” in the southeast corner.

At the new house dad had a much larger front lawn to maintain. He cared not a lick about the bushes, the side lawns, or the much larger back yard. I think that he was secretly competitive about this hobby. Our neighbors to the north, the Westergrens, had a thick lawn, but the grass was fescue, not bluegrass. Dad considered fescue to be weeds. It completely took over the lawn on the north side of the driveway. My dad concentrated on the 90 percent of the lawn that was south of the driveway. He waged a war against any fescue that somehow crossed the driveway.

By this time we had a self-propelled lawnmower. I was an energetic teenager; mowing the lawn was actually somewhat pleasurable for me. However, once a year dad rented a heavy machine that sucked up loose vegetation from the lawn. It was not self-propelled, and it was a huge pain to push.

As before, dad spent nearly every summer evening listening to news, sports, or talk on his small transistor radio. Never music; he no appreciation of music. Once in a while a song would strike his fancy, but I could not name even one song that he liked that was released between “Oh, My Papa” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” Seriously.

Dad had two season tickets to the Chiefs’ home games, which took place at Municipal Stadium until Arrowhead Stadium opened in 1972. Sometimes he took mom. Once or twice a year he took me. In 1965 he let me bring two friends from Rockhurst, Ed Oakes⁷ and Dan Waters. Win or lose, I had a great time at these games. From 1966 to 1969 I could not attend because I was in Ann Arbor. After that I never lived in KC in the fall.

I cannot remember anything about our communication during the games. We talked mostly about the players and strategy.

Why so much responsibility for the pinkies, and only one fat key for one thumb?

Dad had little involvement with my schooling. I sometimes rode to Rockhurst with him and the other members of his car pool. The only other involvement with my high school years that I recall involved speech competitions. He let me have his old Time and Newsweek magazines. I used them in my competition in extemporaneous speaking. They were very helpful.

Dad worked on projects with a Benedictine named Roger Rumery. Fr. Roger somehow obtained a book that explained in detail the process of learning to type. I spent a lot of time with it and an old Royal machine that was, I think, my mom’s.⁸ I became quite proficient at the keyboard. I used my new skill to type evidentiary quotes on index cards, arguments, and entire speeches. Later this skill became even more useful. Only God knows how many millions of words I have typed over the last sixty years or so.

Health

My dad was almost never ill, but he had problems with his back. At some point I am pretty sure that he had an operation that only helped a little, if at all. I have a vague recollection that he occasionally suspended himself in a closet in order to stretch something in his back. I never saw this, and I may have just concocted it from stories. At some point it must have gotten better. I don’t remember him wincing or complaining about it after the early sixties.

The only exercise that dad got was on the golf course. BMA purchased a family membership for the Wavadas at Blue Hills Country Club. Dad played there on weekends. He seldom used an electric cart. He walked with his bag in a two-wheeled cart that he towed behind him.

I must mention that although dad loved the game of golf, he was not very good at it.⁹ He had a good excuse. He was left-handed, and he was using right-handed clubs. He never mentioned this, and he never tried to swing left-handed, at least not to my knowledge. He did experiment with left-handed putting.

Dad and I played together several times per year. Did I enjoy it? Not really. He made me very nervous. He was always watching the group in front of us and the group behind us to make sure that we were not holding anyone up. I was (and am) not a good loser. When I hit a bad shot, I beat myself up over it. I had made a pretty detailed study of the golf swing (described here). I knew how to correct a slice (often) or hook (almost never). It frustrated me enormously that the balls sometimes did not go where I planned.

Nevertheless, playing with him raised my game up to respectability. I did enjoy the competition when I was playing as part of a pair or a team. I played on my company’s team in the army (related in some detail here) and in the golf league at the Hartford. My partner John Sigler and I were in first place in the entire league when I broke my kneecap. Those adventures have been chronicled here.

Occasionally he asked me for evaluations of his swing. I never volunteered an opinion. If I had, it would have sounded something like, “Well, your grip is wrong, and your stance is wrong. It is hard for me to say anything until you change them.”

His reply to my silence would be something like, “I think that I am pushing the ball”, “Am I swaying?”, or “I need to swing through it more.” I had no idea what any of these meant in terms of body parts involved in a golf swing.

My dad played golf until he became lame and blind in his eighties. For decades after I left the Hartford I could afford neither the time nor the expense of the game. In my seventies I had absolutely no regrets about giving it up.

Friends

My parents seemed to have a lot more friends in Leawood than they did in Prairie Village, but not in the neighborhood. Most of them were parishioners at our new parish, Curé of Ars. The two that I remember the most were Mike Goral, a golfing buddy, and Phil Closius. They were both transplants from the New York area.

What I inherited from my dad:

Physical build
Hair color
Head shape
Speaking and writing abilities
Political tendencies
Love of travel, although I did not witness this much as a youngster.

1. The three Hamptons named Wade were very influential in South Carolina in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. If Hazel was a direct descendant (she might have said “related to”), I suspect that Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. would be able to tell me exactly how many slaves they had, but rest assured that there would be a comma in the answer.

2. A fairly large number of Wavadas lived in the Spokane, WA, area. One of them has done genealogical research. My dad had a copy of her findings, but, unfortunately, when he died Sue got her hands on it, and it entered the black hole of her existence. If I had to guess, I would place it in her garage, which has long been impenetrable.

3. Not quite true. I found one photo of him with a cigarette in his right hand.

4.Mine was just the opposite. My scalp was almost completely grey when the first white hairs appeared in my eyebrows.

5. I had no say in the design, and I only was allowed to handle the controls a few times under strict supervision.

6. I would have been too small to handle a lawnmower in the first few years in PV. Someone else must have done it. My money is on my mom.

7. My recollection is that Ed did not bring a jacket and was shivering by the second half.

8. It must have been. My dad certainly did not know how to type. He hunted and pecked.

9. For some reason he was pretty good at using a 3-wood from the fairway. Most people consider this one of the most difficult in the game. He was also a much better putter than I was.

1994 August: Jim Wavada’s 70th Birthday

Posted on August 15, 2023 by Mike

Fun and crisis. Continue reading →

My dad was born on August 25, 1924. His seventieth birthday was therefore in 1994. It was a Thursday. 1994 was a pivotal year for TSI and for my relationship with Sue, as explained here. I was up to my armpits in alligators. By then Jamie had five children. By my calculation Cadie was 16, Kelly was 14, Gina was 6, Anne was 5, and Joey was 3. I could be off by a year for any of them.

Although it was torn down decades earlier, the company that designed this building still featured it on its webpage in 2023.

A decision was made that my parents would come to New England to celebrate my dad’s epic birthday with his grandchildren. Jamie probably negotiated this with our mother. Her conversations with my dad seldom ended pleasantly, and I am pretty sure that neither Sue nor I had any input. The plan was for them to stay at a hotel that was near the Lisella’s house in West Springfield. I think that they stayed at Howard Johnson’s, but they might have chosen the Hampton Inn if it was open yet. I don’t think that they rented a car.

The party: Jamie reserved a large room at the Simsbury 1820 House for the gathering. My recollection is that on the big day Sue and I picked up mom and dad at HoJo’s and met the Lisellas at the restaurant. A total of eleven of us attended—three couples and Jamie’s five children.

The party did not get off to a great start. The chair reserved for the guest of honor, who certainly weighed less than 170 pounds, collapsed beneath him and left him on the floor. Fortunately, he was not seriously injured, and the event proceeded more or less as planned.¹ I had prepared an interactive presentation. I think that I took the floor for it after the meal. I hoped to involve Gina and Anne by asking each of them a question that I was pretty sure they could answer. They both let me down. Gina remonstrated me, “Uncle Mike, we are only children.”

I struggled through the rest of my little talk as well as I could. I think that I rescued the evening, however, by leading everyone in a non-traditional rendition of what all of us called the family song, “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” It was my dad’s favorite song of all time. So, we sang it all together, each of us singing the same words but using different melodies, keys, and tempos. My dad, who was completely tone-deaf², thought that it was great. That was all that I can recall about the evening.

The name was changed to Baystate Noble Hospital.

The basketball game:I am not positive that the following event occurred on this same trip. I did not keep track of when my parents came to New England for visits. They only did so on a few occasions.

Every meal that we consumed at the Lisella’s was a cook-out. Joe fired up the Weber and cooked hamburgers and/or hot dogs. The grill was placed near the garage, which was at the end of the driveway. On the side of the driveway was a basketball goal set at precisely the regulation height of ten feet.

Before and after every meal there was a basketball game of some sort. On the occasion in question some of Joe’s brothers competed. I had played with them a couple of times in the eighties, but by 1994 I was not in nearly good enough condition to compete. Instead I kicked a soccer ball around with the kids.

At that point I had known my dad for seven and a half decades. For a few of those years we had a basketball goal at the end of our driveway. I used it extensively. I have no recollection of him ever taking a basketball shot, much less playing one-on-one with me. On this occasion, however, some demonic spirit overcame his reason, and my dad decided to play.

I did not see how it happened, but my dad fell down and broke his arm. Joe had to drive him to the emergency room at Noble Hospital. He was admitted and stayed for a few days.

I am unfamiliar with the details concerning the next few days. I may have had to take a business trip. By 1994 my mom’s mental condition was not good, and she depended greatly on my dad. She was almost certainly under a great deal of stress.

Other memories: I am pretty sure that it was on this trip that the following exclamation burst forth from Gina, “Uncle Mike, you have the same hair as Grandma!” She was right. Our hair matched in color (both before and after aging), texture, and waviness. I don’t think that she previously had put two and two together to realize that her grandmother was her uncle’s mother.

One time my mom mentioned that the Lisella house did not have many books. I had noticed that myself. Joe’s reading was mostly confined to World War II. I don’t know what Jamie read. She might not have had time.

1. Jamie talked with me later about this incident. I understood her to say that she had refused to pay the bill provided to her by the Simsbury 1820 House. I may be wrong about this. I have remembered quite a few events incorrectly.

2. His favorite musical genre was Gregorian Chant. That was also the only kind of music that met the approval of Pope Pius X, who was also tone-deaf.

1985-1999 The Lisellas

Posted on May 28, 2021 by Mike

Jamie and her family in New England Continue reading →

Until I was almost forty years old I did not have much of a relationship with my sister Jamie¹. I remember being quite disappointed when I learned that the sibling that I knew was coming turned out to be a girl. I was in second grade at the time. The girls whom I knew there were all hopelessly stupid. THEY PLAYED HOP-SCOTCH AND PAT-A-CAKE AT RECESS!! I had no use for them at all.

I was nearly seven and a half years older than Jamie, and that half year was significant. I was a freshman in high school when Jamie was in first grade. I had graduated from college before she started high school. During her high school years I was in the Army and then working halfway across the country. We went to different kindergartens (both public), different grade schools (both parochial), different high schools (hers parochial, mine Jesuit), and different colleges (hers a small Benedictine near home, mine a huge state university over seven hundred miles away.

The Kinks on Shindig in 1965. Jamie was 9; I was 16.

So, the only times that we were together were before and after school and during the summers. I remember watching bits of Captain Kangaroo with Jamie before school and some TV shows in the evenings. Batman and Shindig in the evenings. We sat on the floor of the family room watching the tube while mom worked and dad lay on the couch reading a magazine or newspaper punctuated by an occasional “Mmm hmm”. However, I often withdrew to my bedroom to read or work on a project or to the basement to shoot pool and listen to records.

The time between returning from school and supper time was precious to me. I spent very little of it in the house. I either stayed after school to take part in some activity or came home, set down my books somewhere, and dashed back outside to play with my friends. I felt the same way about the summer. If I wasn’t earning money mowing lawns, I was probably out of the house.

So, I never really developed a close relationship with Jamie. We had no great family crises to create bonds of shared suffering. We also did not do that much together as a family. The whole immediate family went on summer vacations (as described here) together, but my only clear recollection of any interaction with Jamie on these trips was when I became very upset that our parents “could not find” the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. She tried to calm me down, which was nice (but ineffective).

SSG Barry Sadler would not have approved of our dance.

We did have a few moments. Perhaps the best was when we invented a dance to perform during the hit song “The Ballad of the Green Berets”. There were not many games that we could play together. War was no fun; Jamie always won Inspired by Sheepshead, I invented a gambling game called “Sevens and fives” and revealed the rules to her one at a time as they came up. I enjoyed that. Of course, I gave her back the money that she lost. Well, most of it.

I also remember spending an afternoon or two helping to teach Jamie how to drive my brand new Datsun in an empty parking lot. This must have been in 1972 after my own stint of heroically defending New Mexico against peace-crazed Ghandiists. Barry was two ranks higher than I was, but I never went to prison.

It was not anything about Jamie’s personality that made me limit our time together. I just enjoyed being with my friends and being by myself a lot more than being with family.

Maybe I was not a very good big brother. Decades later Jamie told me that she had been bullied (or worse) when she was on the way to kindergarten at a public school. I would have been in the eighth grade. If I had known about this, I would probably have tried to enforce the Law of the Jungle (“If you so much as touch my sister, I will …”). I would have, too. I was at least two years older than anyone at her school, and kids who attended public schools were presumably heathens. Also, I knew some moves. I watched a lot of wrestling in the eighth grade.

I don’t know how I missed this. Maybe I was just oblivious; I often am.

Jamie and I had similar senses of humor, and we were both rather tall and quite thin, but those were almost the only things that we had in common. She was always the cute one. When she was little, she had blonde hair that she evidently got from a relative that I had never met and her mother’s dark eyes. She was also a much better athlete and was tremendously more sociable than I was. I did better in school, and I was almost never in trouble.

This is Jamie on her prom night. I was long gone by then.

From 1966, when Jamie was ten and I had left for college, through 1985 I had minimal contact with Jamie. She made a mysterious visit to our apartment in Plymouth (described here), and Sue and I visited her and her husband, Mark Mapes², once in Iowa (described here).

Other than that, we might have talked on the telephone a few times, but that was it. Why didn’t I call her? It did not occur to me. I didn’t call anyone. I have always hated talking on the telephone, and in those days long-distance calls were expensive.

In late 1985 Jamie was living in the Chicago area with her two daughters, Cadie³ and Kelly⁴. How they got there is a long story, and I am ignorant of most of the details. Cadie was, by my calculation, eight years old, and Kelly was a couple of years younger. Jamie was working at O’Hare airport for American Airlines. There she met Joe Lisella Jr.⁵, a fellow employee. I think that they got married in 1985. Jamie has told me a few stories about the travails of working in baggage claim. She may have had other responsibilities there, too.

In 1985 the newlyweds moved to an apartment in Simsbury, CT. For a time both Joe and Jamie worked for American Airlines at Bradley Field in Windsor Locks, CT. Their family grew rather rapidly. Gina⁶ was born in 1988, Anne⁷ in 1989, and Joey⁸ (Joseph III) in 1991.

During the fourteen years that Jamie lived in New England I worked at least seventy hours per week. Sue and I found time to visit Jamie and Joe a few times in Simsbury. I remember that we ate supper with them at least once at Antonio’s Restaurant near their apartment.

Joe and I played golf together quite a few times, first at a course in Southwick, MA, called Edgewood and then, after they had moved to a house in West Springfield, at East Mountain Country Club in Westfield, MA.

I had a good time, but I still took golf too seriously to have many enjoyable conversations with Joe. Another problem was that we both sliced the ball. He was, however, left-handed. His ball was therefore usually in the rough to the left. Mine was usually pretty far to the right. Talking is, of course, discouraged on the greens and tees.

Joe’s brother played with us a few times. I have forgotten his name. Jamie was a very good golfer when she was a teenager, but she never played with Joe and me. It never occurred to ask her why not.

We always played very early in the morning. I sometimes stopped at McDonald’s on the way to the Lisellas’ house and bought Sausage Biscuit with Egg sandwiches for them. Once I evidently messed up about whether we were scheduled to play. They were sleeping in. Someone with bleary eyes came to the door. I apologized when the situation was explained to me, left the McDonald’s bag for them, and drove back home.

At left is a satellite view of the Lisellas’ house on Lancaster Ave. in West Springfield. In the nineties a basketball goal occupied the space where the big white truck in the photo is.

When we visited the Lisellas’ house, there was often a half-court basketball game there. I declined to participate. My skills at basketball were limited to running, jumping, disabling opponents with my sharp joints, and drawing fouls. My jumping days were behind me, running was of no value in a half-court game, and my other abilities were under-appreciated.

The most memorable of these game was the one in which my dad, who at the time was at least pushing seventy, tried to play. He lost his balance, fell down, and broke his arm. He had to be rushed to the emergency room.

The only photo that I could find of Joe Lisella is this one from 1973 on Gina’s sixth birthday.

The menu at the Lisella house was usually hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. Joe had a Weber “kettle” grill, and he used a lot of charcoal. I never asked him about this, but I have never understood how anyone could control the temperature of one of these grills. I have always strongly preferred the ones that allow either the fire pit or the grill to be raised and lowered.

Joe watched a lot of sports on television. In fact the TV always seemed to be on in their house, and it was always set to a sports broadcast. His favorite teams were the Red Sox, the Green Bay Packers, and Notre Dame. I am not sure which team he rooted for in basketball.

When I was at their house I spent most of my time playing with the kids. Jamie always seemed to be cooking, cleaning, or collapsed from exhaustion. Occasionally she took a break for a cigarette.

I did not talk much with Jamie. On the sidelines at the kids’ soccer games she would sometimes keep me apprised of the their progress. I seldom had much to contribute to these conversations. In those days TSI was definitely the focus of my life. Unless I could think of an amusing story, I did not say much.

I clearly remember doing one thing with Jamie. She had somehow scored some tickets for a WWE wrestling card at the Hartford Civic Center, and she invited me. This must have been in 1990. I think that Gina and Anne were there. I am not sure whether the other girls or Sue attended. The girls were really into it. They cheered and booed at all the right places.

The only match that I remember at all was between André the Giant⁹ and Jake the Snake Roberts¹⁰. Although André was way past his prime, he was still enormous and powerful. He could probably have defeated Jake from his hospital bed. However, every move he made seemed to cause him pain, and his back was bent over at a 45° angle when he lumbered from one place to another.He even had difficulty entering the ring. I found the performance rather sad, but I enjoyed the experience of being with the kids.

I marveled at how different this experience was from the other match that the high-school version of me had seen in person. It is described here. In the match in Hartford there was a lot of flash, but very little in the way of wrestling. Vince McMahon had not yet admitted that his events were scripted, but 90 percent of the people over five in the arena could predict the outcome (barring disqualification) of every match. It was kind of like a circus with trained over-developed humans.

In the fall of (I think) 1986 or 1987 Sue and I drove Cadie and Kelly to the Catskill Game Farm¹¹, a private zoo in New York state. This had always been one of our favorite day trips, and it was more fun with the kids. Fall was the best time to go there. The weather was ideal. The deer were in rut, and the cries of the stags could be heard all over the park.

We spent a fair amount of time in the petting area of the park, which was loaded with immature animals that had been handled by humans since birth. That did not in any way mean that they were tame. I had never noticed this in previous visits, but they formed a herd of six or seven species and walked around the petting area as a group.

An priceless trading card from her soccer days autographed by Kelly.

Kelly had been petting one of the fawns, and she did not notice a baby donkey behind her pitching forward on its front legs and aiming a two-legged kick at her back side. Fortunately, the hooves missed by an inch or two.

I also remember feeding the giraffes. The girls got a figurative kick out of that.

I attended at least one of Cadie’s softball games. I don’t remember too much about it. She was not a star. She was more of an intellectual than an athlete. More than anything else she has always been very artistic. I seem to recall that she studied art at Hampshire College for one year. I don’t know what happened after that.

For my mom’s seventieth birthday in October of 1995 Cadie flew with me to Kansas City. I gave a little speech to a gathering of my parents’ friends about my relationship with my mom. I am sure that my mom, who was already experiencing some dementia, appreciated that we both came. However, it was obvious that Cadie was uncomfortable throughout the entire trip.

My dad took Cadie with him on his trip to Ireland. They both enjoyed the trip, but my impression was that their personalities did not blend too well. No blood was spilled.

My most vivid memory of Kelly is from the day that she helped plant flowers around a tiny pine tree in our yard on Hamilton Court. The tree, which is now more than thirty feet high, was only a little taller than Kelly at the time.

Kelly was a good soccer player. I remember watching her in at least one game. She was a defender. I don’t know too much about soccer, but the other team never came close to scoring. Her team’s goalie need not have attended.

Kelly had trouble with math in high school. Jamie once asked me if I would be available to help her with it. I said that I would, but I never heard about this again.

Sue and I were invited to attend Kelly’s graduation at the horse show building at the Big E in Agawam. We went, but I don’t remember any details except that I was surprised that the students were mostly wearing casual garments (even shorts) under their graduation gowns. I also recall at the subsequent get-together at the Lisellas’ house. Gina and her classmates humiliated me on the basketball court.

Kelly left West Springfield shortly after finishing high school. I knew that she moved to a western state, but I did not know what she was doing there. I haven’t had any contact with her since then.

This is the oldest photo that I could find of Anne and Gina. If I had waited much longer to ask them to pose with me, I would not have been able to lift them.

I tried to see Gina and Anne as often as I could. One weekend day they stayed with us for a few hours in Enfield. They were delighted to discover that we lived right behind a school that had monkey bars and other athletic equipment.

I usually bought the kids some kind of board game at Christmas. When I was at the Lisellas’ house in West Springfield, I spent most of my time on the floor. In retrospect I wonder if the games were a good idea. Some of them had a lot of pieces.

I bought a Foosball table for them one Christmas. I probably should have asked if it was OK to do so. They seemed to enjoy playing it that day, but I noticed the next time that we went to their house that it was on the front porch and positioned so that it could not possibly be used. If I had been considerate enough to ask ahead of time, Joe or Jamie might have mentioned that there was no possible place to keep it.

This is the West Side girls’ soccer team for 1997. Anne is on the far right in the front row. Gina is second from the right in the back row.

In the team photo for 1998 Anne is second from the right in the front row. Gina is in the middle of the back row.

Sue took this excellent photo of Gina, Anne, Joey, and snow.

I watched Gina and Anne play soccer several times. Anne was a fast runner, but Gina made up for lack of speed with determination and grit. No one ever called Anne gritty. In fact, no one ever called her Anne either. It was always Annie, Princess, or Prinnie.

I also watched Gina play basketball once. The opposing team had one player who was much better that everyone else. Gina’s coach assigned her to guard her even though Gina gave up several inches to her. Gina hung tough with her throughout the game. Unfortunately, it was not enough. The West Siders came up short.

I bought three tickets for the Connecticut Opera’s production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the Bushnell Auditorium in Hartford. I made plans for them to attend with me. I was convinced that they had agreed to go, but somehow the plans got messed up. I ended up sitting between two empty seats for the evening. I should have called to confirm, but …

I have one memory of Gina as a teenager. She was on the computer with three or four chat windows open with her friends. She could move among them very rapidly. I was impressed.

My parents came up to visit the Lisellas occasionally. They stayed at the Howard Johnson’s on Route 5. I remember that the first time that Anne saw me beside my mom, she blurted out, “You two have the same hair!” I don’t think that she realized until I told her that her grandma was my mother.

From the time that Joey was old enough to walk, or maybe even before that, he was consumed with sports. He liked all sports, and he was quite good at them. Some of his peers caught up with him later, but I doubt that there was a more athletic four-year-old in all of New England than Joey Lisella.

Joey and I played one-on-one tackle football in the living and dining room when he was a toddler. As soon as I entered the house, he grabbed onto one of my legs and tried to bring me down. Then he picked up the football and tried to burst past me. He could not have known that that his opponent starred in 1961 as the wingback/defensive back of the Queen of the Holy Rosary Rockets, as documented here.

On August 6, 1995, Jamie brought Joey to a party at Betty Slanetz’s house in Enfield. He carried a Whiffle ball and a plastic bat around with him all afternoon. I volunteered to pitch to him. He was batting right handed. I stood about ten or fifteen feet away and threw the ball underhand to him. Rather than swing, he took his left hand off the bat, caught the pitch one-handed, threw it back, and announced, “Overhand!” My recollection, which may be faulty, is that he hit every pitch that he swung at. I was duly impressed. He was four years and zero days old.

I saw Joey play soccer several times. The first time he was on a mixed team. He was too young to play legally, or at least that was what Jamie told me. He was certainly the shortest participant on either team, but he was positioned as the striker on his team. After he scored his fourth goal in just a few minutes, the umpires (!) overruled the coach’s assignment and made him play defense for the rest of the game. The final score was 4-0.

I don’t remember this game. It is hard to believe that Anne is only two years older than Joey.

The last soccer game that I recall involved Joey’s high school team. Joey was still one of the smallest players, but he was still quite good. He did not dominate this game the way that he dominated as a youngster, but he was a force to be reckoned with.

I had the same impression the only time that I watched him play high school basketball game. His lack of size was a serious detriment in this game, but he was a good ball-handler and shooter, and he played tight, aggressive defense.

During these years Joey (and just about everyone else his age) was obsessed with sneakers. I am not sure how many he pairs he had, just for basketball.

Joey and I shared one great adventure. In the summer of 1998 (I think that it was) I drive him in my Saturn to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Sue and I also made this trip during most summers to attend operas at the Glimmerglass Festival.

It was a long drive. By the time that we reached our destination it was time for lunch. We stopped at the Doubleday Cafe because I knew from experience that it would be a waste of time to try to find a better place. Cooperstown is not known for its cuisine.

I had never been to the Hall, and I was a little bit disappointed. I think that Joey enjoyed it, however, and I definitely enjoyed the time with him.

On the way home I think that we stopped at Friendly’s near Albany. I have a vague recollection of a misadventure in the process, but I cannot recall the details.

Jamie arranged for a party in August of 1994 for our dad’s 70th birthday at Simsbury 1820 House. The celebration got off to a terrible start. When my dad went to sit down by the table, his chair collapsed beneath him, and he fell onto the floor. He wasn’t badly hurt, but Jamie was infuriated. She later told me that she had refused to pay the bill.

I tried something that was too clever by half. I asked a question of Anne that I thought that she could answer and a slightly more difficult one of Gina that I thought that she could answer. After the second failure, Anne rebuked me, “Uncle Mike, we’re just kids!”

So, I set that aside and instead led everyone in a rendition of my dad’s favorite song, “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”¹² I am sure that that buoyed everyone’s spirits.

In 2000 Joe drove Gina, Anne, and Joey to Kansas City for my dad’s seventy-sixth birthday. Sue and I were already there.Here is what I wrote in my notes about the occasion:

We had a good time on my dad’s birthday. I brought a wrestling card game that Sue gave me for my birthday. I played it twice with Gina, Annie, and Joey. They all enjoyed it. When Gina beat Joey in the first game, he got angry, accused her of cheating, made a mad dash at her and started pulling her hair. She just laughed, and Joe broke it up.
We went to an Italian restaurant for supper. It wasn’t very good, but Annie lit up as I have never seen her do. She was animated and talkative.

I continued to drive to Massachusetts to watch the kid’s play on sports teams after Jamie left (described here). Sue and I even went to Joe’s wedding with Jenna. It was a rather strange event, held on a boat, as I recall. Joe’s father was wearing shorts and buying everyone drinks. The highlight for me was when Jenna, Gina, and Anne sang along with “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

When my dad died in 2011 he left $18,000 to each of Jamie’s five kids. I administered the will and sent the checks to them.

In 2012, give or take a year or two, Sue and I drove up to have supper with Gina in a town north of Springfield. We tried to arrange a second get-together a few times, but it never seemed to work out.

1. I think that in 2021 Jamie still resides in Birmingham, AL. I am not sure what she is doing there. Her Facebook page is here. I am embarrassed to say that I could locate only one photo of Jamie in all of our junk.

2. All indications are that Mark Mapes lives in Davenport, IA.

3. Cadie Mapes still seems to live in Massachusetts, but I am not sure where. Her business website is here.

4. Kelly Mapes went off on her own at an early age. If I had to guess, I would say that she probably lives in Tucson in 2021.

5. Joe Lisella still lives in West Springfield. He works for McDonald’s. His LinkedIn page is here.

6. In 2021 Gina Lisella lives in the Westfield, MA, area. Her LinkedIn page is here. I think that she recently bought a new house.

7. Anne Lisella lives in San Antonio, TX. She is a nurse. Her LinkedIn page is here.

8. Joey Lisella lives somewhere in the Boston area. His LinkedIn page is here. I follow him on Twitter. He posts about nothing but sports.

9. André René Roussimoff died in January of 1991.

10. In 2021 Aurelian Smith, Jr., is retired from playing Jake the Snake Roberts, but I bet that he would listen to offers.

11. The Catskill Game Farm closed in 2006. It is now reopened as a historic tourist attraction in which one can camp or stay in a Bed and Breakfast inside the compound of the old zoo. The website is here.

12. My dad was tone-deaf. He was—bar none—the worst singer that I have ever heard. He agreed with Pope Pius X that Gregorian Chant was the best music ever produced by man. He could remember some of the words of songs, but the melody he produced bore no resemblance to the original.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: Leaving on a Jet Plane

1948-1970 Dad and Me

1994 August: Jim Wavada’s 70th Birthday

1985-1999 The Lisellas