Guy Fawkes

   In the year 1570 on April 13, at 2:27 AM, Edward and Edith Fawkes welcomed into this world a full term baby boy who, when laid beside Edith, reached out and pulled over the kerosene lamp, setting fire to the birthing room.  They would name the little rascal Guido but he was called Guy from then on.  Guy is known to history for his association with a group of Catholic insurrectionists who plotted to assassinate King George I by using 36 barrels of gunpowder to blow up the English Parliament.  Guy Fawkes was captured just as he was lighting the fuse.

So we celebrate Guido Fawkes for his guyness and being the only man who has ever lived to have his name attached to every man on planet Earth since November 5, 1605 when Guy was captured, charged and found guilty of treason which resulted in his being hanged, drawn and quartered. 

So let’s give a shoutout to Guy Fawkes who, if we could put him back together and have a team of shrinks wash his brain clean of doctrinaire nastiness,  might turn out to be a decent guy.

                                                  ***********************                                                                                         

I Enjoy Being A Guy   (Apologies to Richard Rogers)

I’m strictly a real male, real male

And my future I hope will be

Entwined in the arms of a female

Whose fulfilled with a guy like me.

When we go to a big State Fair

 I’m lost but I won’t complain

I never ask how to get there

Just circle again and again.

I’m a guy and by me that is great

I’m a guy, I don’t glow, I just sweat

I’m a guy, and I do hate to wait

I’m a guy, why aren’t you ready yet?                         

Russellville Lives. SM

 

                                                                                   Sharron Morita

My friend Vincenza Scarpaci told me I should meet her friend Sharron Morita because Vincenza knew of my mission to discover the most interesting residents of Russellville Park and share their stories with our other cabin-mates on this mysterious voyage. Those who know Vincenza are cognizant of the truth that Vin is never wrong.

Sharron and her husband, Paul, have lived at Russellville for the past six years of their 55-year marriage and it did not take long for Sharron to become immersed in the social life of the community by serving as treasurer of Russellville's Community Service Board. Life patterns of community service seldom change.

Raised in Auburn, NY, she moved to Bridgeton, NJ, to take a job on the local newspaper after graduating in Journalism from Syracuse University. Sharron's editor sent her to write a story about an anti-poverty agency in Bridgeton and it was just another assignment until she interviewed the CEO of the operation. His evasive responses when she started asking questions about the collection and disbursement of money set off warning bells in her reporter's mind and it would launch an investigation that became a two-year episodic series of articles. Interviewing hundreds of sources, her compelling search for facts about the agency resulted in Sharron being awarded the prestigious New Jersey Press Association's Lloyd P. Burns award for responsible journalism and public service.

Sharron's editor at the paper kept after her to meet this friend of his, Paul Morita, who had a dental practice in Bridgeton. They met and Sharron cleverly became Paul's patient because you can learn a lot about a man by the way he shoots novocaine into your gums.

Paul is a Japanese-American whose family was sent to an internment camp in Amache, CO, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. They were allowed to leave the camp toward the end of the war to move to a small farming community outside Bridgeton, where Paul's parents worked for a large food processing company, Seabrook Farms, that hired a diverse body of employees. They included refugees from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Germany and Poland, as well as some residents from Jamaica. Sharron would later submit a manuscript about that unusual community to a publisher and to her delight it was accepted. The title is Bridgeton, New Jersey: City on the Cohansey.

Paul went to high school in Bridgeton and then after graduating from the University of Maryland earned his dental degree from Baltimore Dental College. He practiced in Bridgeton for 45 years and was much loved by his patients. He retired when his dexterity no longer met his own high standards.

The Catholic Church has played an important role in Sharron's life, although she admits it's hard to be a woman in that institution. She supported the ordination of women in the '80s. In her parish in New Jersey she chaired the liturgy committee while serving as a Eucharistic minister and lector (a person chosen to read holy scripture in the church services). She is a lector at Russellville for Catholic Mass. In 2007 Sharron earned a Master's degree in Theology from LaSalle University.

Wow.

Tim Morita, one of their sons, moved to Portland and loved everything about the city; he was a principal factor in bringing his parents to the Pacific Northwest. When Paul experienced some medical issues, Tim urged them to make the move to Russellville. Sharron agrees that it was a wise choice.

Thanks, Vincenza. You're batting a thousand.

Jungle Jim Loscutoff

Anyone who followed professional basketball in the ‘60s will remember the small forward for the Boston Celtics, Jim Loscutoff.  At 6’5” and 220 lbs of solid muscle. he was an opposing player’s worst nightmare.  He learned the game on the streets of Palo Alto, California and became a legend playing at the University of Oregon.  Jim and I lived in the same fraternity and shared the same birthday (Feb.4, 1930) but he got all the good stuff.

The son of Russian immigrants, Loscutoff was a charismatic figure on the small campus of the university where he acquired admirers for his ability to find where the fun was, whether it was occurring, on or off the basketball court (He once left the bench when pulled from a game Oregon was winning big and went to a hallway hotdog stand and returned eating the weenie).

Jim was a master manipulator of yo-yos and would do pre-game exhibitions of amazing yo-yo tricks.  Those antics, of course, brought the house down in historic MacArthur Court.

And, oh my, was he a hit off the court as Jungle Jim and his entourage roamed the campus looking for the action.  If they didn’t find it, they created it.  One time at a charity auction fund-raiser, Loscutoff and Jack Faust (a talented musician and creative showman) were purchased by the Alpha Chi Omega sorority to do their act which involved Faust singing while strumming his banjo as Loscutoff flexed his muscles and did dance moves.  But shortly into their act, Loscutoff spontaneously leaped onto a chair next to Faust and started playing the zipper of his fly like a musical instrument, up and down in rhythm with Jack’s banjo.  Can you hear the shrieking, stomping, and clapping of the sisters of Alpha Chi Omega? Can you see the sorority house mother  powering her way to the performers, arms waving and screaming for them to leave immediately?

And so the legend of Jungle Jim Loscutoff grew and grew.  Some time later Loscutoff was expelled from the University for another incident, but that’s another story.

Rus'vil''Echo 12/18/'21

 As a resident in the Russellville Park retirement community,  I am privy to much of what’s happening in this remarkable encampment of citizens who have stepped back from playing the role of slave to the the dictates of a clock and now march (however slowly) to the  cadence of their own drum.

What a crew. Take Bob who once ran a maximum security state prison in New Jersey and once a week, in the evening, would walk alone among the inmates. These were not choir- boys. Or Rodney who spent his working life among archival treasures, including those of the New York Public Library.  Or Lou the one-time California state patrolman who would chase you down at 100 miles an hour and run you into the ditch if you didn’t pull over. Then smile and wish you a really nice day as he handed you your summons. Or Betty who is 102 and will sprinkle an expletive or two in telling you about her adventures in San Fransisco during WWII.

And on and on. This place is full of residents with great stories.  Which results, if you keep your ears open, in entertaining eavesdropping.

Lady seated at a table for lunch greeting her approaching friend: “ Hi, I see you found your teeth.”

“Oh, look, is that the new woman from the fifth floor?”

“Which woman?”

“That one, with the grey hair”

“Well, you’ve narrowed it down to 50.  Thanks.”

Diner to server who has just delivered a plate of food to him: “What’s that supposed to be?”

Server: “Not sure, but there’s a lot more of it in the kitchen.”

Mary Barrett greets a new resident: Hi,  my name’s Mary, welcome to Russellville.”

“Hello, Mary, my name is Ruth”

                       (They chat)

Ruth: “I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”

“My name is Mary, Ruth”

“Your name is Mary Ruth?”

“No, Ruth, my name is Mary.”

That’s the news from Russellville.

Russellville Lives J&B H

Joan and Bob Hatrak

Joan and Bob Hatrak are recent residents in the Russellville family of no-longer-young citizens and in addition to being a very nice couple, they have a terrific backstory.  One of these days you will be able to read all about it in a book the two of them are writing. They have a publisher and when it comes out it is going to get a lot of attention.

Between 1973 and 1979 Bob Hatrak was Superintendent (Warden) of the high security  Rahway State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey.  Two years prior to Hatrak’s arrival the convicts rioted causing horrific damage to the prison and almost killing its then warden.  Violence continued to be an issue as Bob Hatrak was sent in to clean it up.  The book will be the story of that restoration of order and the national attention it brought to that troubled institution.

At the time he became chief executive of Rahway he was the youngest prison warden in the nation and that complicated his mission as he introduced creative new programs that were not admired by many of the old boy administrators in other prisons.  Prophets of change are not universally loved

Bob’s a big guy, hard to miss (somewhere up his family’s genetic stream a grizzly bear might have been involved), and Joan the writer is alway by his side, ready to catch any slips in Bob’s memory. If you see them in the dining room, go over and say hello.  They are a welcome addition to our small village of former lives.

Dolores Taylor

 Missed the Saturday dance, heard they crowded the floor, couldn’t bear it without you, don’t get around much anymore.

Sometimes I think my life is dancing to the beat of old WW II songs.  Since losing Georgann in 2018 and moving to Russellville Park, I don’t get around much anymore.  But Dolores Taylor died a couple of weeks ago and the trip to Grants Pass from Portland for her memorial service was not given a second thought.

Dee was a member of the class of 1948 at Grants Pass High School.  As was I.  From that class of 300-plus in 1944, I know of only nine or ten who could answer, “Yo” to the roll call now. There may be a few others. But for us survivors,  Dee’s passing had a special sense of loss because among our classmates she was the central unifying force; the one who organized the reunions every five years and kept the trains running on time.

There were no students of color in our school because Grants Pass observed Sundown laws until the late ‘50s. One of the few beacons of light in our community was the Newman Methodist Church where the Reverend Ed Aschenbrenner preached sermons of racial enlightenment and where one of his sons, Lawrence Alden, was a classmate of Dee Braden and Bill Landers.  Who knows if Larry’s and Dee’s “going steady” in high school led to Dee’s lifelong membership in the church, but there is little doubt the preaching of Ed Aschenbrenner planted the seeds of social justice in the mind and soul of Dolores Braden. 

If you polled our class as to who the stars turned out to be, Dee and Larry would head the list. As a young lawyer in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Larry opened a law office in the belly of the beast, Jackson, Mississippi, at the height of the Civil Rights movement to defend African Americans. He ended his career in Anchorage, Alaska as an advocate for Native Alaskans (we called him Lawrence of Alaska).

In less dramatic fashion, Dee made public service the focus of her life. Standing tall in the shadow of the Reverend Ed Aschenbrenner, she lived her life in Grants Pass as a high school teacher of English, all the while taking active roles in a multitude of public service organizations.

So, on a warm autumn day in October, her friends and family gathered to celebrate her life well lived as a Christian soldier, marching as to war.  Dee and I were special friends with a bond that became closer over all those years. I will miss that girl a lot.

We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.

 

Russellville Lives. NP

                                                                                                  Nadine Patterson

There are probably few Russellville residents who lead lives as busy as that of Nadine Patterson.  Finding the time to honor her commitments is nothing new to Nadine because running on that hyper-speed treadmill has defined her life for as long as she can remember. Start with her childhood family where she had four brothers and three sisters.  That puts all the leaves in the dining room table and makes a social environment that is a powerful character builder.  The lessons learned from those interactions with her siblings translated easily to the social contract we have with our fellow citizens: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.  You know, the Golden Rule.

It’s interesting that Nadine chose nursing as a career path. She is a RN who used her medical training to make people’s lives better but took it beyond nursing to organize programs that brought in other volunteers to expand the impact of what she could accomplish working alone. After Hurricane Andrew devastated Florida in 1992, Nadine led a movement from her South Carolina home that gathered quantities of rescue supplies that she and her son transported to that stricken state.

We should note here that Nadine Patterson did not spend her life on the left coast. Her home base was in Ohio and South Carolina for her first 81 years.  Nadine’s marital scoreboard during that time read:  Husbands 2, Sons 1.  That one son is why Nadine is in Portland.  He brought her here so he could know she was living well.  That was seven years ago and we are pleased to report she is doing just fine.

Meanwhile, back on the right coast in 2005 there was Hurricane Katrina, a huge Category 5 storm that killed 1,800 people on America’s Gulf coast and, again, brought Nadine into full action mode. When her rescue plans met obstacles, she went around them by renting a big truck with a 15-foot bed which she piled high with survival supplies.  She and a fireman friend drove the truck to a small Mississippi town overflowing with storm refugees.  Between hurricanes, Nadine was a perpetual motion rescue machine. She used church affiliations to participate in setting up a medical clinic in a church in the Ukraine. Just as she did working with medical missions to remote villages in Mexico.  It is not surprising to learn that a Fraternal organization in Ohio, in 2008, recognized Nadine Patterson as Co-Worker of the year.

Since arriving in Russellville Park,  Nadine never slowed down. She became active in the Community Services Board for charitable actives that included getting school supplies for students and staff, as well as support for Raphael House, the shelter for abused women and family members.  Also, HomelessVeterans is one of the charities they  took on.

Someone needs to film the Nadine banana bread operation in her small kitchen (background music of an orchestra playing the William Tell Overture) as pounds of flour fly into mixing bowls and the power blender assaults ancient bananas,  See the cooling rack on the counter that will welcome the hundred little loaves that will go on sale for $3.00 each.  And guess who paid for all those ingredients?

Our world would be a poorer place without the occasional Nadine Patterson who separates from the pack to show us the way to a humane life of meaningful consequence.  Nadine would make the point that in celebrating the completion of large projects we must not overlook the thousands of small individual contributions made by other helpers that ultimately wins the day.