Ride This Train

If I was going to compare life to anything, it’d be like riding a train on a long trip. You get born onboard and you don’t exactly know when you’ll get off. A train pulls a lot of cars and as you roll through the countryside of your existence, you change cars a lot. Every day you make switches. Maybe you start out in the domestic car, waking with your spouse, having breakfast together in the family dining car, but then you leap across the connector to the business world compartment where everyone is dressed for success and busy as can be trying to please the boss. It’s a constant game of train hopping, of wearing your different hats and fulfilling your varied rolls in life.

There are special days on the timetable of your calendar, anniversaries, birthdays and holidays. These are as important in your life as your job or anything else. You build traditions around these dates and as your family grows, so do these happy obilgations. Birthdays punctuated the year and in those years of childhood this meant some type of home party or outing for each child. Laurel’s was in March, which meant it was between the coming or going of Easter and another big dinner and get together at my parents, both for her birthday and for the holiday.

Noelle’s birthday was near the other great Christian holiday, Christmas. When someone is born that close to December 25 you must make certain you do not blend the two events. Each child deserves the distinct focus of her own birthday. 

My father and my wife both celebrated another year in October.
June was the big month, though. My Grandmother’s birthday was on the eleventh and then came my mother’s birthday on the 21^st. The 21^st was also my parents wedding anniversary and generally Father’s Day fell on or near this date as well. A week later my birthday came. Just to complicate things, my wife’s best friend’s birthday was on the 24^th and my longtime friend from childhood, Stuart’s fell on the 30^th. As far as all the family dates we always went out to some restaurant to celebrate, such as The Peddler’s Inn or The Black Angus. It was an extra special celebration for my Grandmother for she turned 85 that June.

Even Darryl’s birthday could add to the business of things. It fell on the 24^th of August, which put it on or near the Wilson Family Reunion we all attended every year on the last Sunday of August. Of course in 1984 Darryl was still a bit too young to grasp what was going on.
Unfortunately, Lois didn’t attend the reunion with us that summer as she was sick.  No, she wasn’t pregnant again, but she was getting sick a lot, especially when she was supposed to go to gatherings of people. She always came down with something that kept her away from other people. We didn’t take too much note of this at the time.

 We had big dinners each year on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Since the children had arrived we had Thanksgiving at my parents, where my Grandmother did most of the cooking, and we had Christmas at our place, where Lois did the meal. We went to this arrangement feeling it wasn’t right to drag the kids away from all the toys they received to rush up to grandma and grandpa’s. There was always a big feast at my parents on Easter Sunday as well.

Then you had the lesser holidays to content with, New Year’s, Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor day, plus Halloween and day trips to the beach or Dutch Country or where all. Every week was church. Every day was busy. Family life is a full time job of its own and except for Laurel, our kids weren’t even in school yet, let alone a lot of extra activities. Those things were yet to come.

What did come was my 25^th High School Class Reunion on the tenth of November. Twenty-five years, really? I don’t think we went to Lois’ class reunion that year, even though it was the 25-year milestone too.

Lois and I managed to get time off alone by dropping our brood off at my parents several times over the year. We weren’t getting any of those long vacation trips we used to take, though.  The longest we could squeeze in was a two-day church retreat to a camp in Maryland.

We also got another weekend together in New York beginning on December 15 as I attended another American Management Association seminar that coming week. The usual thing, we went up on Saturday morning and Lois stayed over until Monday before taking the train home. I remained the rest of the week to take classes in “Quality Control in the Service Industries”.

Riding the business compartment there was another big deal of a project I was heading up that summer. It was bigger than most of my past projects, at least in the sense it involved far more divisions throughout the bank making it more complicated. All projects generally require a team of players. This one was notable by the number of high level members. Here is a picture of the Team:

Projects of any magnitude required a sponsor at vice-president level or higher .Walt Whittaker sits at the head of the table. He was the vice-president over one of the largest divisions of the bank, Deposit Services and Data Preparation, and had been picked by Barney Taylor, then Chairman and President of Wilmington Trust as this project's sponsor. I was named as the Project Manager and that is me seated to Walt’s right. Seated from my right are Dale Haring, an intern at the time (more about the interns later), and Etta Harper, who was an Assistant Vice-President and Head of Data Preparation. Behind Walt, standing to his far right is John Behringer, Assistant Vice-President and Head of the Savings and Operation Section of Deposit Services. John was also the man everyone assumed would eventually more up into Walt’s position when Walt retired. Most of the others were from Information Technology (known in those days as just Operations). These included Chris Honorowski, a brilliant programmer who I worked on several projects with; France Shelton, who will talk about in a later chapter; Jean Byassee, at that time Chris Honorowski's boss; and Ed Newman, almost the stereotype of a computer nerd. Charles Stone was from Marketing and Tod Hughes, I believe was from Finance. I am not sure anymore what areas Thom Holden and Rick Tindall represented. The three absentees were Anne Freebery, Assistant Vice-president over the Deposit Operations Section; John Kipp, Vice-president in the Information Technology Division; and Rick Wilhide a vice-president in Retail.  A lot of bucks were represented here.

    What made this project so important to everyone was not just its uniqueness; it was the opportunity to show up all the other big banks and put them in their place, even thoughthis was another one of those “new-fangled” ideas that most were saying couldn’t be done, including some of those pictured as on the team. Wilmington Trust was going to introduce something called “Self-Service Banking” with totally free checking accounts. And, of course, despite the sceptics, we did it. We were not only the first bank to offer this service in Wilmington and Delaware, and the whole Philadelphia Region, we were the first in the good ol' USA to do it, perhaps the world.

There had been a couple of banks that tried offering free checking previously, but all these attempts had failed. The industry was convinced the whole idea was a big money loser. Now we thought we had the technology to make it work, even though a number of those inside The Bank were fighting it. However, at the same time, Congress was getting on the Banking Industries for not providing cheap services to those in the low income brackets. This helped our cause. This project would not only bring us the important youth market we believed it would, but would answer any criticism from Washington.

It was exactly what we claimed. There was no service charge, no minimum balance and no per check charges. The only actual restriction was you could not go to a live teller for any transaction an ATM could handle, which were the majority of transactions people used banks for anyway. You could do a deposit or a withdrawal of funds at an ATM. You could get your balance from the machine. These ATM would also print out a short bank statement if you requested one. Therefore, if a Self-Service Customer choose to go to a teller for any of these items they would be changed $2.50 per transaction. If a customer went to a live teller for a transaction the ATM could not provide, there would be no charge. This also applied if the ATM was out of service. Each new Self-Service Customer was issued a Bank Card to use in ATMs and a packet of checks. Checks were free as long as the customer ordered generic ones. If they wished a picture or fancy design on the checks they had to pay extra.

We promoted this new product heavily at the University of Delaware and other local colleges as the perfect account for a student. The theory was that as students graduated and became successful in life they would stay loyal customers of Wilmington Trust.
Checks once cleared were not returned to the customer with monthly statements. The cancelled checks were stored at the bank for 30 days (although in reality we kept them for at least 90), then were put on microfiche. If a customer needed a copy of a cancelled check, the bank would provide one at no charge. This storage of Self-Service items had implications for another product idea down the line, Check Safekeeping.

Also in 1984 Wilmington Trust’s CEO incorporated an Intern Program. Each year, going forward a

group of students would be picked from the Local colleges as interns. They would serve in this position for one year, during which they would be shifted throughout the bank departments, divisions and sections to learn everything in the operations. They received no pay for this and only the possibility that a job might be offered at the end of their one-year tour.
I was named to develop and conduct the training within our Divisions. One of the first things I did was write a booklet called A Guide to the Deposit Services Division. This contained a brief explanation of each unit by section. We would use the booklet as a handout to new employees and during some presentations the Bank did in the coming year.
My program was a combination of on-hands experience and lectures from several managers and myself about what we did and how we did it. The course was several weeks long. During the last days I gave a final exam. The program was designed to assure that no one would fail, not because it was easy, but because we attempted through clear language and repetition that everyone would get it.
There were 12 Interns in the initial group (and it pretty much stayed around a dozen each year thereafter). Most were from the University of Delaware and the vast majority were men. I can't even remember if we had any women in that first group.  There were only three who were hired at year end, and one of these left after only a few months. The two who stayed were Dale Haring and Fil Sherry.

This was interesting to me. Fil Sherry (pictured left) had scored the lowest on my final exam and he had been something of an annoying presents. He was always showing up late for training sessions and invariably got up to take phone calls, disrupting everyone else. He was lackadaisical and disinterested. If it had been in my power, I would have kicked him out of the program.
Remember this because Oil Sherry will play a major roll in my own career.

The train ride through 1984 ran pretty smoothly. We looked with great anticipation to the stations ahead. But when you ride this train of life you can't always be sure what is around the next bend.

On the Other Side of My Life

We have an identity in this world, a name. In reality, though, we are a multi-dimensional being and no one identity fits us. Our image is different within difference spheres and how one person sees us may be very different from another’s viewpoint. No one outside yourself except God, knows the whole you. Even your spouse only sees a part. And what is going well with this part of you may not be doing so good with another part.

While I was a Project Manager at Wilmington Trust, I was something else in other surroundings. I was a husband and a father, for instance. I was also a student. In 1980 I went back to evening college, this time enrolling at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. I was in the Business Administration School. I spent two to three nights a week traipsing to classes in the Leslie C. Quick Center.

Speaking of identities in different context, on trips to and from classes I walked by the Burton H. Mustin Theatre  and Lecture Hall. It piqued my curiosity because there was a character actor named Burt Mustin who popped up in many a TV show during the ‘50s and ’60. He always played some old codger, probably because he was an old codger. He didn’t get into film and TV until he was 67 years old and first appeared in the film, “Detective Story”, starring Kirk Douglas. Could there be a connection with this theater at Widener since it was an unusual name?

Indeed, there was. Burt Mustin had been a cadet graduating with a civil engineering degree in 1905 from the Pennsylvania Military College, later renamed Widener University. He received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 1972 and when the Alumni Auditorium was renovated in 1979, it was renamed in his honor. Burt died in 1977 at the age of 92.

I am not certain the University has retained his name as the theater. They refer now to The Lone Brick Theatre in their literature.

I did very well academically at Widener, carrying a higher average than I had at Temple and Camden County College. I left Temple (Sociology Major/English Minor) with an accumulative average of 3.00 and 45 cumulative hours and I left Camden County College (Computer Science Major/Accounting Minor) with 12 hours and a 3.50 average. I had attended 7 years from 1963 to 1972 (I hadn’t gone in 1966-67) at Temple and 2 years at Camden County in 1977 and 1978. I now began 3 years at Widener, 1980 through 1982, majoring in Accounting and minoring in Finance. Some might say I sold out to corporate America.

At Widener I accumulated another 38 hours reaching sometimes a semestra average of 3.67. I was named to the Dean’s List during several semesters, which meant I had scored a 3.50 or higher average. If you add it up I had 95 total credit hours of the 128 to graduate. I needed 33 more, which would have probably taken me two more years at the most, maybe only three more semesters. My overall average for the three universities was something like 3.32, enough to graduate with honors. I only needed a couple more required courses in accounting and maybe one in Finance to have a choice of several degrees: Sociology, English, Economics, Accounting or Finance. My grades had been getting better each semester, so I might have graduated with an even higher average, except I didn’t graduate. I dropped out. There were a number of reasons for this, which will come clearer as we go further into my life in the early 1980s.

My parents were displeased when I reenrolled in College. They had always been against my furthering my education, believing it was a waste of time and money. Since they were never paying any of my university expenses there wasn’t much they could do about it except gripe. I would have rather they had taken some pride in my accomplishments, but if they ever did, they did not show it, not in my academic grades, not in my writing career and not in my work related achievements. Increases in my income, they understood.

To repeat some history, both my grandfathers died relatively young, my paternal grandfather at age 37 (on right, I never knew the man, he died before my birth) and my maternal grandfather at 57 when I was 15. Oddly, both sets of my grandparents had to get married, as both grandmothers were pregnant with my father and my mother. Also, both my grandmothers were older than my grandfathers. My paternal grandmother (on left) by quite a bit. She was 26; he was 19.

My paternal grandmother died in 1946 while my father was still in the Navy. I was only 4 years-old when she passed and I hardly remember her. She is pictured on the left.

As a boy my maternal grandparents were like surrogate parents. My father was seldom home and my grandfather (right) became more my dad than my actual father. His later years as he slipped under the waves of booze were very traumatic for me, especially when he died from cirrhosis of the liver when I was 15.

My grandmother (left in 1957 with her brother Weber) suffered a heart attack when her husband died, but she pulled through. Her and I were very close. She then moved in with my parents and I. She was a strong woman, a farm girl,  and I loved her very much. All during those years from 1957 through 1979 she was healthy as a horse, having only those usual viruses and afflictions common to us all. In the summer of 1980 she turned 81.

On November 7 my mother and grandmother were attending a bazaar in Coatesville. My grandmother felt sick, like she had a big knot in her stomach and she was going to vomit and pass out. She couldn’t go to my cousin Kathy McCauley’s wedding on the 8^th because she was still sick, nor did she go to church the next day. On the tenth, my mother took her to the Phoenixville Hospital and she was placed in the coronary unit while they monitored her heart. The next couple of days my mother could visit her only twice a day for five minutes each time.

They moved her out of the coronary unit on the 14^th. Lois and I visited with her on the 16^th. She continued to feel bad and had trouble eating and sleeping. Lois and I visited again on the 26^th at the hospital, but on the 27^th they sent her home. That night she fell out of bed. On the 28^th, she attempted to walk, but collapsed. A nurse was supposed to come, but never showed up. On the 29^th she collapsed again. The nurse finally showed up on December 1^st and a therapist came on the 2^nd. (Right, my grandmother, 1980.)

She was in terrible pain and still couldn’t eat. We came up to visit on the 20^th with Laurel, but Laurel had fallen on the 12^th and hurt her foot and still couldn’t walk. We went to my parents on Christmas and Lois made and brought the dinner with us. My grandmother was still in misery.  On the 26^th she was feeling a bit better, but couldn’t sleep at night, even with a sleeping pill.

Lois and I were going through a crisis of our own at this time. On the first of November, Jim Schlief, my former boss at both Welded Tube and Mercy Catholic, threw a dinner party and we were invited. Walking from the car to his house, Lois told me she believed she was pregnant again. Still no tubes had been tied apparently. 

“How long,” I asked.

“I think two months, she said.”

She certainly wasn’t showing any baby bump. (Does she look pregnant in the photo of that night?) We put it out of mind at the party only saying she would have to see a doctor.

She never did.

The year before we had joined a new church since Laurel Hill was a bit distant from us over in New Jersey. Our new church was located at the Western end of Springfield along the Baltimore Pike (right as it looked in 1979). Its name was The Lownes Free Church, but everyone knew it better as “The Blue Church”. The basic structure had been erected in 1832 by George Bolton Lownes, who had come out of Quakerism and declared this chapel to be a place of worship“free for the use of any who would observe the doctrines of the Christian religion as set forth in the New Testament and especially the doctrine of the proper divinity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”.

It got the sobriquet “The Blue Church” because Lownes had constructed it with Pennsylvania Limestone, which turned pale blue in the rain. (Original Lownes Free Church Chapel on left.)

When we joined the church, the Pastor was William Saal, his last name pronounced “Soul”, which seemed appropriate. He had become Pastor in July 1975. At the beginning of 1981 he left the Blue Church to become U.S. Director for Arab World Ministries.

I had been baptized shortly after birth at the Grove Methodist Church. When I joined Bible Baptist I was simply asked to stand before the congregation and affirm my Baptism, but I grew to feel strongly that I should be dunked. I discussed this desire with Pastor Saal and on September 13, 1975, my wife and I were both Baptized by emersion at The Blue Church. So, I am well Baptized.

Lois had promised to see a gynecologist soon, but on December 12 she called me upstairs and declared she was about to miscarriage and asked to be taken to the hospital. We were kind of in a bind as what to do with Laurel, who was about 2 ¾ years old. I called the parsonage and Mrs. Saal agreed to come over and baby sit Laurel. (Left, Laurel in December 1980.)

Laurel was sitting on the living room sofa and babbling away, saying a bunch of one syllable nonsense sounds out loud. Just as Mrs. Saal entered the front doorway, Laurel said what to her was a nonsense word, but to all the world was the forbidden four-letter word beginning with F, and I don'tmean fudge. I was embarrassed, because we did not use such language in our home, or anywhere else for that matter. She was just babbling as toddlers will do. The Pastor’s Wife made it worst by asking, “What did you say dear?”

Lois had come downstairs and we hurried away to the hospital.

I dropped Lois off at Emergency, then I moved the car back to the parking lot. When I came back inside I couldn’t find her. They informed me she had been taken up to the Maternity Unit.  Upstairs I was told she was in a labor room. I took a seat in the waiting area.

Delaware County Memorial Hospital had been where Lois had worked back in the late 1960s. It was where she had an affair with an orderly that briefly broke our marriage apart with a separation. It did not carry pleasant thoughts for me.

Suddenly a Doctor burst through these swinging doors calling my name. He was a foreigner, an Indian or Pakistani. I stood, prepared for him telling me we had lost another baby. Instead he stuck out a hand, and in a heavy accent, said, “Congratulations, Mr. Meredith, you have a daughter.”

How could this be? Lois was only a little over two months pregnant, wasn't she? She certainly never looked pregnant. Apparently, her calculations had been off, but even so the girl had delivered much too soon. Soon I was brought more sobering news. The Medical staff informed me they did not expect this four-pound girl to survive the night. “Even if she survives,” the doctor was saying, “she will be blind and have serious mental retardation. We are having her transported to Fitzgerald Mercy. They have a special Neonatal ICU there.”

It now hit me on hearing Fitzgerald Mercy, I did not have medical insurance for pregnancies. When mercy Catholic had finally pushed me out the doors the past April, I lost my health insurance they provided. True, I got new coverage in September when I was hired by Wilmington Trust, but maternity coverage did not begin unless I was in the plan for at least six months. I had been in the plan less than four.

What kind of year finally was this to be then? My grandmother might be coming to the end of her life; my new daughter may not even get to begin hers. Happy New Year!