Jagged Bones and Yellow Eyes and becoming a Big Shortchanged

Back in 1992 something happened I haven't mentioned. That shows how impressed I was by it. In mid-October I was named an Officer of the Bank; Operations Officer to be exact. My title was now Bank Operations Officer, Operations, Methods and Project Manager, a bit overly long and redundant. My Officer designation would change over the years: Operations Officer, Retail Officer, Financial Officer and I finished out as a Marketing Officer.

Being named a Bank Officer was considered quite the honor. Personally I could never take it all that seriously. I told people the benefits of being an officer were:

I got to go to a boring quarterly meeting with all the other officers to hear announced what we usually already knew. This required going to the Gold Room at the Hotel Dupont in the late afternoon after normal hours. A cocktail party was held immediately after the meeting with plenty of free booze. I hated cocktail parties and avoided them like the plaque. I was not a particularly good schmoozer and I had no taste for standing about gulping down cocktails. I am surprised half our officer corps weren't wiped out in DUI accidents following these meetings.

I got my picture in a whole bunch of different newspapers.

I was able to sign certain transaction. This proved a real nuisance. People in the office were required

to obtain an officer's signature on many of the transactions they wrote. I became a prime signer for these clerks because I tended to be more available. There were a lot of these mundane slips, too many to read. Heaven knows what I was signing for. I just hoped no one was slipping their car payments in there.

This did give me the right to eat in the Officer's Dining Room, meaning I could pay more for basically the same meals served in the Cafeteria. I wasn't going to go to the Officer's Dining Room. It was located in downtown Wilmington, by Rodney Square, in the headquarters; my office (pictured right) was in the Wilmington Trust Plaza in the New Castle Corporate Commons. We were behind the Wilmington Airport and the Air National Guard. I would have hd to drive up I-95 and back to eat there and the drive would have cost me my lunch hour.







There is always a certain pattern to each year. On March 1, 1994 came Laurel's birthday.  It was hard to believe that this was the year she turned 16. This meant she might be riding horses today, but she might be driving cars tomorrow. In the picture, with her cake, is Laurel and her brother, Darryl. I stand between them, what shows of me. I really wasn't feeling well that day.

We had Easter dinner at the Spring City Hotel in 1994, my parents paying for us all.
April 20 was opening day of Little League season. Darryl had been drafted by the Orioles, which was the same name as his first team when he was in the instructional league. Mark Tracy was the manager. I was on the team as the bench coach and record keeper. One of the other coaches went out and bought everyone on the team an official Baltimore Orioles cap. Some of the league officials were upset with this, but we wore the caps all season. The coach on the left is the one who did this. Mark Tracy, Sr., the manager, is the second adult from the left. I'm the guy all in dark clothes on the far right. Darryl is the second boy standing to my right and I believe that is ark TracyJr., his right.

I believe that was the year started playing first base. He also pitched, but he didn't like that position.

He had come into his own batting the year before. Now he was up near the top not only on the team, but also in the league, for average. He was very fast, so could often stretch a hit into an extra base and was always a steal threat. He became our best power hitter, something Mark TracyJr., better known as.

Darryl gave me one of my biggest thrills this year. We were behind the Tigers by 2 runs in the ninth. They were contending for the playoffs. We had two outs and one of our players on base. MarkJr., at the plate. The Tiger manager told his pitcher to walk Mark to get to Darryl. You never saw this in Little League, any intentional walk. I never understood what that manager was thinking. Darryl not only had the top average on the team, he also led in homers, which is exactly what he did then, hit a homer to left field, driving in 3 runs. We won the game and that lose put the Tigers out of the playoffs.

Right after the season ended, one of the coaches held a swim party for the team at his home on June 17.  It was a Friday evening. We left the party and headed home later in the evening. I had the car radio on and we were startled by a strange story. The football player and actor, O. J. Simpson, was in a slow motion police chase on a Los Angeles Freeway.

We didn't live far from the swim party and were home in minutes. We rushed inside where the TV was following this very surreal slow-motion chase of a white Bronco, slike a scene from the "Twilight  Zone".


Speaking of surreal moments, back on April 21, the day after baseball season began, I was at the work when I received a phone call.

"Mr. Meredith?"

"Yes."

"This is the school nurse at Noelle's school. Don't panic."

Now when the nurse of your child's school calls and says, "Don't panic", you know it is time to panic.

"Noelle fell in Gym and broke her arm. We have sent her to the hospital in Wilmington. Everything is fine."

Really, everything is fine?  I told my boss, went home, picked up Lois and we went into the hospital.
Noelle had been taken back to a trauma room in the emergency center. The doctor and nurses were cleaning up her wound and Noelle was watching everything they did to her with rapt interest. At that time, she was 13, she talked about becoming a surgeon. She had a number of VHS tapes in her room of operations. She was a very stoic girl; although, I am sure the morphine they were giving her helped.

She hadn't actually fallen. They were doing fitness exercises in gym and were running from one end and back to the other. When she had reached the far wall she put her arms out to slow herself and when she hit the wall they said you could hear the bone snap clear on the other side. The impact broke both the ulna and the radius and the ragged bone ends were sticking out through her skin, which is what makes this a compound fracture.

It was a very serious break and she required a couple operations to piece the bones back together. She was put in a cast. She couldn't go to school as the Doctor had to keep checking her arm. She was finally alloed to return to classes on May 9. In the meantime she had a tutor who came to the house. Four months later, when we took a trip to Gettysburg in August, she was still forced to wear a brace on her arm.

At least it makes it easy to pick her out in the photograph. Laurel is to Noelle's left and Darryl traits along on her right.

The day after Noelle was told she could go back to school, I was at the eye doctor being informed I had cataracts. My right eye was the worse and needed surgery. The left could wait a while. It took a time to schedule the surgery. In-between life continued. On the 15 of May, Laurel (left) competed in an Ice Skating contest at the Wilmington Ice Rink. She was taking skating lessons that year. She did okay and didn't break anything.

In August we all went with my parents to the Rough & Tumble Museum in Kinder, Pa. This is a museum of antique farm machinery and once a year they have a big carnival-like affair called "Rough & Tumble Days" (right).


The Wilson Family Reunion was held the last Sunday of August, as usual, at Cousin Horace Wilson's Farm. There were 28 attending. Either the family is shrinking are people are losing interest. It was  more the latter. The patriarchs were dying off and the younger generation was that into it.

On Halloween I went to work as the "World's Ugliest Playboy Bunny".


I had my cataract surgery on November 14. I was quite nervous about it. I mean, this was my eye and they were going to cut it.

Preparation took much longer than the procedure. I was there a couple hours while nurses dripped drops in my right eye to numb it. It was also scary knowing I would be awake for this whole business. Finally they wheeled me to the operating room. I was placed face up on the table. There was a large bright light shining in my face.
The doctor, who I could not see, told me to relax and I would not feel anything but a pit of pressure. Not only was the doctor a disembodied voice, so were the nurses. I could see nothing but the bright light above. I saw nothing of the operation.

First the put a big metal clamp on me that held my eye wide open. The doctor made a small incision in my eyeball, went in and pulled out the cataract and my natural lens. He then put an artificial lens in. That was the only time I felt the pressure he had mentioned. There were stitches, but they were of the self-dissolving kind. The whole thing took about 15 minutes.

They slapped a pair of big, dark sunglasses on me and sent me home.

Wow! At home I was able to remove the sunglasses and what a difference. The colors seen with my right eye were so vibrant and also different. I walked about the house closing one eye, then the other to see the comparison. It was like when Dorothy walks out of the black and white scene into the technicolor of Oz. I looked at the dining room table and discovered the tablecloth was a pretty blue. I always thought it was green. You see, cause I sure did, the cataracts are yellowish and they give a dull yellow accent to the world. The yellow of the cataract had turned the blue tablecloth to green.

We went to a restaurant for Thanksgiving, not to my parents or with them. Christmas was at our house and my parents came down. I know they were disappointed me wanted to have a separate Thanksgiving. I think they were disappointed on Christmas as well. Lois had roast beef and Cornish Game Hens for dinner. My mom would have preferred the traditional turkey dinner.

Thinks were changing, and next year would see a lot.