Toward an End of Something

Leonard Quill, who had replaced Barney Taylor  when he retired in 1992, announced he would be retiring in 1995. Leonard died in 2002 of pneumonia. Sadly, his son, the actor Timothy Quill, died in Sepatember 2017 of Cancer. Tim is pictured on the left in a scene from Hamburger Hill.

His direct replacement wasn't named.  Quill remained as CEO and Chairman of the Board for another year while Ted Cecala and Robert Harra were named co_Presidents.

The Major (actor Peter Cellier - right) in "Keeping Up Appearances" had a striking resemblence to Leonard Quill (left).

Just for the record, I felt The Major bore a resemblence both in looks and behavior to Quagmire on "Family Guy". (Just below left) "Giggity, giggly, giggly!)





I knew both Ted and Bob. (In fact, I knew Leonard Quill as well. I had even been to a party at his home.)  Ted Cecala had started in the Finance Division about the same time I came to the bank in Deposit Services. He was a short man, who during the years I knew him, sported a mustache that gave him a sort of Mafia Don look. He eventually worked his way up to Sr, Vice-President of Finance.  Dave Gibson would replace him in that position. I also knew Dave, had worked with him for a while when he was still there in a lesser roll.  I always felt Ted had a certain sinister look, but in the years after I left WTC he shaved off the mustache and without it he had a ceratin comic appearance (right).

Bob Harra had been with the bank for decades. He had started, I believe, as a teller, but by the time I knew him he was a Vice-President and then became a Senior Vice-President of Retail. His was a kind of inspirational story about a local kid making good.

I always thought of Bob as the "good guy". He spoke to people and it didn't spook you out. He came to company social events and mingled right in so you felt comfortable with him. He never did the power plays other higher managers pulled. What would happen in the future was a bitter disappointment to me, but it isn't time for that yet.

When Quill eventually did step down the next year, Ted Cecala was named the Chairman of the Board and CEO, while Robert Harra became the Bank President and Chief Operations Officer (COO). They were a Mutt & Jeff pair, Bob being fairly tall while Ted was rather short. I chuckle when I think of a special presentation where they came out together to speak. Bob stood at the microphone just fine, but Ted had been provided with a box to stand upon so their heights matched. (On the left are Bob and Carol and Ted and...oh wait, that isn't Carol, maybe its Alice. No, actually it is a woman named Erika Bush. I don't really know who she is.)

In 1995 I was a star. My name was well known throughout the Bank and I got involved in a lot of things, including being borrowed in other divisions when they had a problem they couldn't fix. I was also the go-to guy on PCs, the local guru. Once upon a time I was cutting edge computer savvy; not now-a-days. I'm like brain death when it comes to technology anymore. People around me these days probably can't believe I could have ever accomplished what I write of in these autobiographical posts. I come across, I think, as rather dumb anymore.

Anyway, in 1995, I was a member of the Bank Pricing Committee and Chairman of the New Product Committee. I acted as an advisor to the Accounting Division on Cost and they borrowed my costing reports for our divisions. I was an Officer of the Bank. I was also in my 15th year as Operations, Methods and Project Manager for Deposit Services and Data Preparation. On the right I am about to receive my 15 year pin from Walt Whittiker. My and his secretaries are looking at the cake I got. These were Diane Warwick and Francine D'Ambrosio.

Most of the systems operating in our divisions had been brought in by me: the Digital Sperry UDS-2000 Data Entry System that replaced the keypunches; Automatic Lockbox, that had replaced a heavily intense manual labor division, Bulk Filing of Statements, Statement Insertion Machines, Upgraded Encoders, Personal Computer Support, Self-Service Checking, Action Concept Teams, Intern Training, MAC-ATM Deposit Sharing,  Costing System, Check Retention Safekeeping, and many other smaller projects, as well as Overseening the move of our divisions to the Plaza Operations Center. I had written several of the United Way Presentations, the Deposit Services Guidebook, and a Presentation given publically at the then Radisson Hotel in downtown Wilmington called, "This is Deposit Services". I was co-founder and editor of the divisional newspaper, as well as facilitator for much of the employee training for ACT. I had written several books on Quality, Productivity and Managements for the bank.

There were several projects I championed where I had to fight to get Senior Management to acknowledge, let alone approve; however, once approved I often found myself battling to keep Senior Management from ruining them. I had fought about the need for PCs in the beginning of the '80s, about doing a bulk filing conversion over a weekend instead of a month, having employee participation teams and Check Safekeeping. An example of the type of thing which happened is with Signature Verification.

Banks were required to do signature verification on checks, whether they still are I do not know. So much is don't electronically now and paper checks are less prevalent. In the eighties and nineties, however, there were a lot of checks. When a customer opened an account he or she would sign a signature card and this would be filed. As you know, you sign your check and you sign the back of any checks you want to deposit or cash. These checks went to the Signature Verification Unit where they were stored in files by account number. Theoretically, clerks would check the signature against the signature cards. This was pretty difficult, really, given the volume. Therefore, signatures were often verified randomly. Large items would be reviewed and then a certain number might be selected, something like catching a terrorist by pulling people randomly out of line at the airport. Verification was also done by eyeballing the signatures. It is pretty hard to say if a signature is not forged, especially since people's signatures tend to change over time due to age or diseases like arthritis. Go ahead, sign your own name over and over several times and see if it doesn't change.

I came across a company that did digitized signature verification. It wasn't a large company, because most places were not doing this kind of thing yet. It was new technology. The company was doing this for the Casinos and decided to try and expand into other areas, banks seeming like a logical choice. I put them on the Project List and it got approved. I brought them in for a demonstration and they had a very good stand-along workstation. Signature Cards would be scanned in and when sigatures needed to be compared the checks were fed across a screen and the account number entered. The software compared the signures on something like a hundred points and if a high percentage matched, then you could have some confidence it was legitimate.

We decided to go with this product and vendor and all was going fine until Senior Management stuck its thumb in the pie. It crossed their minds how great this would be if it could be networked across the branches so Tellers could check signatures on the fly, so to speak. Yes, probably would have been nice, but here is the rub. In those days this was fairly new technology, this whole imaging thing. The vendor had been very successful in the Casino businesses, but had no experience with networking a system to support multiple workstations. Our IT programmers didn't have a handle on imaging software, but it was decided to go for this marriage anyway. They were never able to pull it off and the ventor got sick of us and our people were frustrated and things just got lost when we could have had a nice start with the stand alone workstation.

I was still trying to push ahead with some kind of imaging, but no one saw the practicality, until the big equipment vendors came knocking on the door about imaging sorters and data capture. We had, as a matter of pride, contuned along with 1419 sorters, while most other bank had gone to the 3890s. We bragged about our ability to go on running this outdated equipment, but now IBM came with these new imaging beasts. I didn't know this would become my last large project.

IBM flew us by private jet down to a bank in Charlotte, SC for a demostraion of their latest sorters and data capture. Chris Honorowski was also on the team that flew down. Man, I wish I could travel this way all the time. A van picked us up at the WTC Plaza and took us basically across the street where the private aviation company was. (The blimps, such as the Goodyear, used to birth here and Air Force One would land at the airport just on practice runs.)

Thee van pulled right up to the waiting jet. There was even a red carpet rolled out for us. It was so

comfortable in the cabin. Our seats were plush and swiveled, plenty of leg room. (Left, I settle in for the flight.) We were served by young ladies on the trip. A stretch limo met us on the tarmac in Charlotte and drove us to the Bank. Ah, the life of luxury! On the right is our group about to fly down to Charlotte, along with two IBM Representatives. I am standing on the far left. The lady in the red outfit is Chris Honorowski, a software coder of great talent and one of my favorite people to work with.

Then came the changes. George Craig had already retired, some say he got out while the getting was good. Cecala was installed as the CEO and Bob Harra as the Bank President. I had noticed that Walt Whittaker was not his usual self. He seemed more disinterested in new idea or activities. It wasn't too long before he announced his retirement. This is the advice I pass along. If you have a boss you want to work for your career, make certain he isn't 11 years older than yourself.  Walt was turning 65 that year and decided to give up all the stresses of corporate life. I was 54 and had some time left to go.

I had opportunities over those 15 years. Other areas would have taken me, but I didn't want to work with anyone except Walt. I got along so well with him and I loved my job, probably too much.

I expected, we all expected, that John Behringer would be our new Vice-President. It was always that he was being groomed for the job. He had worked for Walt even longer than I, although he was younger. It was a shock when Walt's boss, the man who replaced George Craig, came down and introduced Walt's replacement. It was not John.  It was Fit Sherry, (right) who at that time was around 33 years old with no experience in Deposit Services.


Maybe I shouldn't say anything, but remember a few years earlier the Bank had started an intern program. I was put in charge of developing the training in our devisions. Fil had been in the first group of interns. He was the one who often showed up late, didn't show as much interest as the others, made phone calls during class and who got the lowest score on the final test I gave them. He was now our new boss. I think John was devastated by the turn of events. It had been considered by everyone that the job would be him, now he didn't get it and this effectively closed the door on any further advancement for him.

Sadly John passed away from Lung Cancer a few years later. He had been a heavy smoker, who tried, but couldn't quit. He had even tried hypnotism, but that failed as well. For years he was in a small group that took a lot of smoking brakes. One of those was Phyllis, who died of lung cancer while I still worked in that division. I do not know the fate of Teena, the third member of their little group. After John died it came out that he was a homosexual. He had definitely kept that in the closet, but it kind of explained a couple thing.

John came to most all the social events, which often included dancing and he would dance some with the other women in our party, but never his wife. He had been married, had a daughter in her 20s, but he never brought his wife to anything at the bank, even though spouses were generally invited.One day, through happenstance, I met his wife. I was taken back on meeting her, because I didn't expect her to look as she did. She had some form of Drawfism and was quite small, with disproportionate limbs and a hump on her back.

Fil was decent enough to me and I felt safe, but after Walt packed up his things and left I saw I wasn't as involved with projects as before. I was still Chairman of the New Product Committee and I was then named to the Security Committee as well, but most of the time I was working on my cost program. I wasn't even much involved with the new sorter project despite having kind of initiated it.

Then one day Fil called me into his office. There was another man sitting it there, who rose to shake my hand. Fil introduced him as Dave Ernst, Vice-President of Sales Support. (I will explain the picture of Dave in another chapter.) We all took a seat. This Dave didn't really say anything, Fil did all the talking.

"Dave has a problem," said Fil. "He is trying to institute a new program, one that has top priority. It is called Strong Points. He hopes to build it using Access (A MicroSoft Database application), but it has to be tried to an existing sales program on dBase. So far he hasn't been able to get the data out of dBase.

"Now we met with Ted and Bob Harra, and they felt you were the right fit to work on this new program. Therefore, you are being transferred to Sales Support. We think it may take a year and then you will be transferred to the Finance Division."

My opinion wasn't called for. This was a done deal. I went home that evening beleaving this was a case of "greasing the skids". If you are unfamiliar with that term, it is this. You have an employee you want to get rid of, but have no grounds to do so. You then give that employee a job where it is certain the employee will fail giving you a reason to say bye-bye. They felt I was a perfect fit, come on. I knew nothing about dBase, except the name, and I had never even heard of M/S Access. I had no experience in sales support. It sure sounded like a set up to me.

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.

Busy, Busy, Busy

As if my plate wasn’t full enough by 1987, I must have decided one more side dish couldn’t hurt. Back in early summer of 1986, my boss, Walt Whittaker, had conversations with a Mr. David Bakerian, who was the Executive Director AIB Delaware. AIB stood for the American Institute of Banking, an education arm of the American Bankers Association. Walt suggested the possibility of my teaching some courses for the AIB. Suggested subjects were Management Fundamentals, Deposit Operations, Quality Circles and Strategies for Pricing Bank Services. Mr. Bakerian requested my resume, which I duly sent him, and then I heard nothing the rest of that year.

But in early 1987 I was contacted by Mr. Bakerian, who asked if I could put together and teach a course on Quality Circles. I sent him an outline proposing my ideas and on March 19 received a Delaware AIB Instructor’s Application from the Chapter Secretary, Bette A. Pase. On March 23 I received a contract to sign, which I did.

I’d be teaching from 6:30 to 9:30 PM, May 21-28 at The First National Bank of the Maryland Complex (Pictured left) in Millsboro, Delaware.

Okay, that’s a bit of a trip. I’d have to leave directly from

work to make it there by six. Millsboro was in Lower Slower Sussex County, just at the far end of the Indian River Inlet, the area my dad and I used to put out to sea for Tuna Fishing in my youth. It was a drive of around 100 miles and two hours.

I don’t know how I squeezed everything into my life and survived. Ah, the energy of youth; although, I didn’t think of myself as so young at the time, I was 45 when I inked that contract.

By this time of my career I needed an assistant. This was my bosses listing of my "few" duties:

1.     Plan & schedule major project activities within the division and coordinate with other divisions.

2.     Review, recommend & coordinate Quality Control for each operational unit.

3.     Develop Employee training in areas of quality and productivity.

4.     Review and recommend new methods & procedures for more efficient operations.

5.     Conduct feasibility studies for new procedures in Deposit Services.

6.     Recommend and Justify major equipment acquisitions.

7.     Coordinate & process reporting on Divisional Tactical Planning.

8.     Work with WHYY in updating their operation in conjunction with lockbox work.

9.     Become coordinator of product Development & Chairman of the product Development Committee for Retail Banking.

10.  Work on Deposit Product Retail Banking Plan & Budget.

11.  Coordinate CSR & Corporate Intern Training for Divisions.

12.  Design, edit & co-write Division Newsletter.

There were seven more objectives, but I can’t read Walt’s handwriting well enough to list them anymore. Why didn’t he have Francine type the darn thing?

Besides my divisional duties I had also been named the Chairman of the product Development Committee (which I always called the “New Products Committee”.) The sponsor of this committee was Robert V. A. Harra, then Vice-president of Retail Banking and later to become the President of Wilmington Trust. I am very disappointed in Harra having always considered him one of the “good guys”. On the left is a photo of him entering Federal Court with his Lawyers as today he is under indictment for basically fraud. He is the second from the left.

I was also at this time serving as a member of the Pricing Committee. I would also later be a member of the Information and Data Security Committee.

Linda and I were busy putting together the manual for the Action Concept Team training. This program contained instruction not only on how to conduct the meetings, but on how to understand costs and put together reports to justify ideas.  Our plans were to raise the education of the employees rather than just show them how to cooperate as a team. In line with believing in the employees’ desires to learn and grow, I initialed volunteer management classes called “Lunchtime Videos in Management”. During the lunch hour I would show and discuss videos on management theory and technique with employees. There was no compulsion to attend. Anyone interested had to come of their own volition, meaning they gave up their own time to be there. We would all bring our lunches and eat during the videos. We did keep attendance and give out certificates. It actually drew quite a few employees and grew in attendance over the year.

Linda and I created a newsletter for the division, “ACTion News”.

The newsletter was not created in the office. It was down at a home location, but not mine. I had a state-of-the-art Hewlett Packer (HP) PC at this time. My first fully functional home computer had been an Apple, which I loved, but the bank, when it finally accepted the desktop machines, had went all PC with Compaqs I had then went to Compaq so I could work at home and match up files with those at work. (Apples and PCs didn’t play well together in those days; they wouldn’t even speak.)

The thing was, Linda had a MacIntosh II (left), which had just been introduced in March. The Mac had much better graphics than the PC and we could make a cleaner looking newsletter using it. We would get together at Linda’s Wilmington apartment to do our designs.

We then began spending more of our time working out of her digs.

At this time Linda was associated with Immanuel Highlands Episcopal Church. She kept

urging me to visit the church and I did and before you knew it Lois and the kids and I were attending there regularly. I hadn’t dropped my membership at Bethel Baptist, I just stopped going there. Soon I was fairly involved at Immanuel; in fact teaching Sunday School to the teenagers. In August all three of my children were Baptized there. Our former churches did not practice infant Baptism. It was expected a person must first come to a saving grace in Jesus Christ. They did have dedication service and we had been through dedication services for all three of our children. Immanuel, however, did practice infant Baptism. Our offspring were no longer infants, of course, but there isn’t an age limit on the ceremony.

At Immanuel it was required, not that the children make a profession of faith in Christ, but that they have Godparents. Two couples took the oath as Godparents, one couple for Noelle and one couple for Darryl. Linda became Laurel’s Godmother. Therefore, it was set, they could be Baptized, which was done by sprinkling.  It was a most impressive service, the kids all dressed up. They came down the aisle holding lit candles. Darryl tripped at the first row, tumbled forward with his candle and almost set a woman’s hair on fire, but we managed to upright him and smother out any ambers without using any Holy Waree from the Font, and get on with the service. The Baptisms were on August 2.

I am not overly impressed with this Godparent requirement. We were in a twilight zone here because we really knew no one at this church or had any family or friends of the Episcopal denomination. Godparents were supposed to fill a very important role in the child’s life, being spiritual mentors, praying for the child, helping to bring the child up in the faith and even fulfilling the role after the child was an adult. They were to be surrogate parents to the child if something should ever happen to the birth parents. Ideally, the parents would pick someone they trusted to fulfil the role. However, it was required the Godparents be of the same denomination and we had no one that met the requirements. Our children were treated almost as orphans or urchins and a hunt was on to supply them with foster Godparents, at least for Noelle and Darryl.

Linda was ready and able to be Laurel’s Godmother. Her Godfather was named Chris Simons, a friend of Linda’s from Rhode Island, a long distance Godfather, who basically disappeared from her life after the ceremony.

 After putting out a church wide plea we did recruit Godparents for the others. Noelle’s were Dave and Jeanne, a young couple, full of do-gooder energy. What Noelle remembers anymore of Jeanne is she couldn’t bake, but produced a terrible blueberry, chocolate crumb pie that made Noelle sick. Dave and Jeanne are pictured on the left, although, Noelle doesn’t appear in the photo. Laurel and Darryl both do. I don’t know where Noelle was, but she was so shy in those days she was probably hiding.  (Laurel is standing left of center wearing pink shorts; Darryl is the younger boy front and center.)

Darryl’s Godparents were named the Hoovers. I forget their first names. They were a bit

older than Dave and Jeanne and longer married. They were also a bit stiffer.

Yes, these Godparents did stand for the kids at their Baptism and sometimes they did activities with them. They gave them gifts at Christmas and on their birthdays, but the reality is it was an artificial relationship. As Godparents they should have remained in the kid’s lives as examples of Christians, but in reality after we left Immanuel and returned to Bethel Baptist they had nothing more to do with their respective Godchild, not even a Christmas Card, let along Lois and I. Of course, Chris had returned back to new England early on anyway.

Throughout the whole Immanuel term, which lasted over 5 years, Linda was the most faithful as a Godparent.

During 1987, the children began to branch out into activities beyond school. Laurel had already spent a year in Ballet Classes at the YMCA, although she just wasn’t coordinated enough for classical dance. She always seemed to be going in the opposite direction of her fellow classmates. She dropped out by 1987.

Noelle started dance classes that year and she showed some ability, especially in acrobatic dance. Noelle is the blond in the backrow on the left. This was taken at one of the Dance School’s recitals.  (We still have her costume.) After a year of tap she really leaned toward the acrobatic, so she put away her parasol and went to Gymnastic Classes. She did quite well at swinging on bars and walking narrow beams. She had athletic ability and daring.

Laurel was always the cautious one. As a toddler she had crawled to the bottom of the stairs. She looked them up and down, then carefully climbed on to the first step. She then reached back a leg until she could feel the floor with her toe, then climbed back down. She went up on the first step again, then carefully onto the second. Once more she paused, reached down with her toe and lowered herself down, then down again to the floor. She repeated this procedure with each step. When Noelle reached that age and crawled to the stairs, she took one look up the steps and zip – she scooted to the top without further hesitation.

Therefore, when Laurel was 9 years old and asked to try horseback riding I didn’t expect much. We took her to a teaching stable just over the Pennsylvania Line off Kennett Pike, not far from Winterthur. It was called Gateway Stables. I figured once she got up beside a horse and saw how tall it was she would decide against this adventure.

Boy was I wrong. Not only did she get up on a horse, she continued to go to Gateway weekly until well after she graduated high school. She loved everything about it. In the summer she went to Horse Camp. She was required to care for the beasts as well as such dirty tasks as mucking out the stalls. Over the years she competed in several Horse Shows and collected a number of ribbons, mostly First and Second. You could win a ribbon down to sixth place, but there was no participation ribbon. What you got you earned on merit and skill. In the picture she is holding the first ribbons she ever one.
She was 10 years old and I believe she took a second, fourth and fifth. By age 15 she was getting a nice ribbon collection, including several Blue First Place Ribbons.

You competed in categories, not by age group. These were things such as cantor, walk and trot. She was not

ready for jumping events yet. That would come. (Right, Laurel taking a jump. She took a Blue Ribbon in this event.)

Laurel may have had two left feet for dancing, but she had other musical skills. She was accepted into the Immanuel Choir. Now you have to realize they did not have a Children’s Choir, and their adult choir sang very difficult hymns and classical pieces. Laurel had to take a couple months of voice training by the choir director before she was accepted. Singing would remain something she did throughout school as well as performing in musical plays. On the left is the Mt. Pleasant Chorus when they competed at Epcot Center, Disney World. They finished second. Laurel is on the far left of the top row.

She did take up an instrument at Darley Road Grade School, when she was in the fourth grade. (Laurel had attended first and second grade at Wilmington Christian School, a place I was less than impressed with.) The instrument she chose was the French Horn.

I sometimes wonder about these teachers. When I was in fourth grade the school offered music lessons on instruments. I took up the trumpet. The school music program did ask me to switch to the French Horn, but not until I was about to enter tenth grade. The French horn was too large for laurel. She disappeared behind it. She finally dropped the lessons. A similar instant happened with Darryl when he reached fourth grade and Darryl does have musical ability. He went for the Violin, of all things. Again, they gave him an adult instrument way too big for his size. Even worse for him, they gave him a right handed fiddle and Darryl is left-handed. This did not succeed for him.

Things were going pretty good. I was extremely challenged at work, but thoroughly enjoying it. The kids were doing well. Everything seemed in control, but two small entries in my mother’s diary are telling. On May 22 one sentence appeared in her entry that said, “Lois went to doctors”. The next day an entry included this, “Lois acting up again.”

The second half of 1987 would see things get a bit weird.