Saturday, May 23, 2009
Uncle Jack reaches 100
Uncle Jack is 100. My sister helped organize a party & flew down to North Carolina with her husband this weekend. Uncle Jack was married to my mom's older sister. Aunt Jean died last year, her final months made easier because my sister spent some time down there sorting out the difficult situation of two stubbornly independent, upper middle class, elderly people who had unnecessarily allowed their lifestyle to deteriorate.
I don't know Uncle Jack personally, haven't seen him in decades. But from the descriptions he's the same Uncle Jack I used to observe. That he's 100 makes me realize how old he already was when I was a kid. 1909.
Rutgers Class of '32, same year as economist Milton Friedman. Jack was in his thirties when he served in the Army in World War Two. He was an ageless preppy; that would have been anyone's first impression. He always dressed the part. Not a deep thinker (my family wasn't blessed with those even through marriage), but a guy who loved experiences, & bought them like he bought his swell wardrobe. He's a character. He's like my father in that neither were shy men. But my dad, a voracious reader with an appetite for community service type stuff to go along with his circus ringmaster personality, was the better overall role model. Jack was the slightly quicker wit on the once or twice-yearly occasions they were in the same room.
The oddity was that Uncle Jack & Aunt Jean were personality opposites on the surface. She was rather serious, slow to laugh, you could read the Old New England stock in her. Something I always liked about Aunt Jean that pushed me to drop by her office at Douglass College once in awhile when I lived in New Brunswick, perhaps she helped me imagine my mom in sobriety. But everywhere Jack went, skiing in Vermont or a cruise up the Amazon River, Jean went also, until they were too old to go anywhere except up the road to the Chinese restaurant. I attended a Rutgers game with Jack & Jean when I was 9 or 10, no idea how that invite came about. We sat in the stadium alumnus section - geezers there who had attended their first games driving Flivvers & wearing fur coats - & I recall it was a beautiful fall afternoon & I had a marvelous time & came home with a Rutgers pennant on a stick.
Happy Birthday, Uncle Jack.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
I don't know Uncle Jack personally, haven't seen him in decades. But from the descriptions he's the same Uncle Jack I used to observe. That he's 100 makes me realize how old he already was when I was a kid. 1909.
Rutgers Class of '32, same year as economist Milton Friedman. Jack was in his thirties when he served in the Army in World War Two. He was an ageless preppy; that would have been anyone's first impression. He always dressed the part. Not a deep thinker (my family wasn't blessed with those even through marriage), but a guy who loved experiences, & bought them like he bought his swell wardrobe. He's a character. He's like my father in that neither were shy men. But my dad, a voracious reader with an appetite for community service type stuff to go along with his circus ringmaster personality, was the better overall role model. Jack was the slightly quicker wit on the once or twice-yearly occasions they were in the same room.The oddity was that Uncle Jack & Aunt Jean were personality opposites on the surface. She was rather serious, slow to laugh, you could read the Old New England stock in her. Something I always liked about Aunt Jean that pushed me to drop by her office at Douglass College once in awhile when I lived in New Brunswick, perhaps she helped me imagine my mom in sobriety. But everywhere Jack went, skiing in Vermont or a cruise up the Amazon River, Jean went also, until they were too old to go anywhere except up the road to the Chinese restaurant. I attended a Rutgers game with Jack & Jean when I was 9 or 10, no idea how that invite came about. We sat in the stadium alumnus section - geezers there who had attended their first games driving Flivvers & wearing fur coats - & I recall it was a beautiful fall afternoon & I had a marvelous time & came home with a Rutgers pennant on a stick.
Happy Birthday, Uncle Jack.
Labels: growing up, Rutgers
