Eddie

This is one that really brought tears to my eyes.
Follows the WWII one nicely.

EDDIE
the real beginning of my life

I was returned to the U.S. and was put in the U.S. Naval Hospital in San Diego. My weight had gone from 170 to 120 because I could not retain any food. Malaria is a strange disease and I had it bad. After a few days and many tests and examinations , a young blonde girl came into my room and sat down next to the bed. She said, “I have been assigned to special you and get you up on your feet”. She also said, “I don’t like this anymore than you do, so let’s get on with it”. In my head I thought “who the hell does she think she is?” Each day she was there and I think we hated each other.
Amazingly, I started to retain food and my nausea began to subside. After a few weeks I was out of and standing next to the bed . A couple more weeks and I was actually out the hallway walking with her and talking about going home.

In the next six weeks I had gained some weight and was walking on my own. Not too steady but walking. By Christmas time I was doing well and then I realized I was totally in love with this girl and asked her if she would go to dinner with me. She said she was going to visit her aunt and uncle for Christmas in Los Angeles and I was really devastated. Then she said, “would like to go with me”. My life began and I would never be the same.

Her name was EDDIE. Her real name was Ednagene Congdon. We became friends that week and had a lot of things to talk about. Her life in China, her college days, her nursing career, her sixteen cousins, and mother and father. That part frightened me because her father was a Ph.D. and dean of students at Lehigh University.

When we returned to the hospital we went out every night, sometimes off the base and sometimes we just walked and made stops at the slop-shut (a navy word for a place to sit and have a beer ). After two weeks we were totally in love and I asked her to marry me. We called our parents to give them the good news but they wanted us to come back to Pennsylvania so they could be at the wedding. We said we would and planned to do just that.

This part of the chronicle I agonized over and have had trouble sleeping at night because I am breaking a promise made to person I love so much but I think that since we are not hurting anyone she would want me to tell you the truth. This is not easy for me. Fifty years is a long time to keep a promise. Please don’t judge us, try to understand us.

We had three months before we would be discharged from the service. That seemed like forever so after about two weeks we decided to go to Tijawana, Mexico to get married, with the promise to each other that we would never reveal our secret. When we got to our room that night after our wedding Eddie said to me, "Oh, what tangled webs we weave, when we practice to deceive." The only reply I could think of was, "The optimist fell ten stories, and at each window bar, shouted, all right so far." All through our lives we used those verses to say to each other, remember our promise. We didn’t weaken for fifty years but now I am breaking my promise. The promise was so that we would not hurt our parents. Eddie and I never even talked about it because we were afraid we might accidentally slip.

Now you know why I had been putting off writing this part.
Our parents are gone, Eddie is gone and I said at the beginning of this that I would tell you the story of my life.

Eddie was discharged on the eighteenth of March and I was discharged on the fifteenth. Now we had to go home and get “married”. On May fourth we were married in the Nativity Church in Bethlehem so our parents could attend. It was a nice wedding and Eddie and I kept looking at each other and smiling. We left that afternoon on a bus for our honeymoon in Atlantic City. We had just had a honeymoon in California that lasted three months. San Francisco, La Jolla, Mexico, San Diego, Santa Anna and Los Angeles. La Jolla was our first nudist experience. We were both scared but we basked in the sun for days and enjoyed ourselves. It was a nudist beach and wonderful.

We stayed one night and one day in Atlantic City and even had a picture taken to prove we were there, I think that one of our children has that picture.

Now it was time to go back and get my degree. I had promised Eddie that if she would marry me I would finish college, teach school and get a masters degree.

As I sit writing about Eddie I get a warm feeling and as the memories come back I am reliving them. This part which I avoided for weeks has now become so enjoyable that I may go on and on bringing back the best part of my life.

We moved to Shawnee on the Delaware and we were fortunate to find a house to live in for that semester. One night Eddie told me she was pregnant and while it was sooner than I expected, we were both very happy. It was now the end of the semester and we moved into Eddie’s parents house for the summer. I went to summer school and all was well and we decided to visit my mother for the fourth of July. We were having a good time and about three in the morning on the fifth she came back into our room and told me she was having bad labor pains, she had been in the bathroom all night because she didn’t want to awaken me. Eddie insisted that she was going to go to Dr. Pearson in Bethlehem to have her baby. She wasn’t due for three more weeks but the baby didn’t know that. I loaded the car with our things and left for Bethlehem and within ten minutes she said her water had broken. She started reading out loud, from a book she had on how to deliver a baby.

I drove the eighty miles in sixty-five minutes hoping the police would stop me for speeding, and help deliver the baby. Not a cop in sight the whole trip. We finally got to the hospital and twelve minutes later the most beautiful baby was born. What a night.

We named the baby after both of us. Thomas for me and Edward for her. Thomas Edward Herbert. Wow! We called him Ted (combination of Tom and Eddie.) Wow again, what happiness, what responsibility.

In September we moved back to Shawnee to do my last semester before graduation.
I was graduated in January and soon found-out that there was a overabundance on the market of science teachers. There were no jobs available, so we stayed on for the next semester so I could get certified to teach elementary grades. During that semester Eddie informed me that we were going to have another baby. Back to Bethlehem in June. I would not travel more than ten miles from home. I wasn’t going to get caught again where Eddie would be reading to me about how to deliver a baby.
In September our second beautiful boy was born. He had a full head of hair at birth and two days later when I went into the hospital room Eddie was combing his hair. We named him after Eddie’s father. Wray Congdon Herbert. Wow what responsibility but what happiness. Wray was a very active baby and liked to climb up on anything.

That summer I worked in the steel mill as a slagger. Those are the people who stoke the blast furnaces. The temperature was one-hundred and twenty degrees where I worked, but we worked only six hours but got paid for eight.

Now the four of us started doing things together. Going for long walks, going trout fishing and even playing miniature golf. We took turns carrying the baby and pushing the walker. We went trout fishing one day at a place called Elicks Mill and were having a good time but not catching any fish. A bus pulled in the park and about twenty blind people got off the bus and started to fish near us. They caught fish all morning and we could not catch one no matter what we did. We had always caught fish there but not this time. I guess it proves something but I don’t know what it is.

In September we went to my first teaching job in Bath, New York. The teaching job was fun and I learned a lot from the kids. These were farm people and I related to them pretty well. Eddie and I continued our walks and had a good year. One night was a nightmare, when we were giving the boys their bath. Ted was still in the tub and Eddie was with him, and I dried Wray and turned my back on him for a second and out the door he went and right off the porch and down about fifteen feet to the floor below. He was unconscious and we took him to the doctor who lived next door. After a thorough examination we were told there was nothing broken and no apparent injuries. We stayed up all night and watched him sleep to make sure he was all right. What a night!

That fall we had two small Mastiffs puppies. By November they were no longer small. Eddie made saddles for them and the boys rode them around the yard. The dogs would not allow the boys to go out of the yard and were very protective. At night they were chained to the center post in the garage and howled a lot but behaved very well. One night a prowler came in our yard and the dogs did not want visitors. They pulled the center post down and the garage almost callapsed. It took me a whole week to repair the damage.

At this point I want to say that Eddie and I talked a lot in the evenings about our early days before we met. Eddie had a most unusual early life. She, for example, was unique in that she had triple citizenship status. Her mother was English, her father was American and she was born within the borders of China. Many of the stories she told me happened during her years in China. She loved her life there and lived with a Chinese nurse (AMA). She spoke often about the ducks and chickens in the compound where she lived and mostly about the goats. She never tasted cows milk until she came to United States. But, of all the things she talked about was her baby sister Antoinette (I don’t know how to spell it, I never saw it written). After fifty years she would still tear-up when she spoke about her baby sister. Eddie could speak Chinese until her parents died because then she had no-one with whom to speak Chinese. There are so many dialects in the language. She talked often about playing on the Great Wall when her AMA took her out. She talked about her friend that she played with named Juci Bun. They learned to read English together.

Eddie was educated in the united states mostly. She went to Moravian Seminary, located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for the elementary grades and George School for high school. This is a Friends school located just north of Philadelphia. Eddie almost never lived at home so she really became self-sufficient early in her life. After high school she went to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio where she majored in English Literature and Socialogy. After Antioch she went to St. Lukes Hospital in New York City in their nursing program. At that time the war was going on all over the world so Eddie went in the U.S. Navy. I covered her whole early life in one paragraph and I wish I could give details but I only know what she told me.

I can tell you some things that you probably already know but I’ll tell you anyway. Her favorite Book was Little Women (Maggie , maybe you were really named after Meg), she also liked Les Miserables and read it in French in high school and Shangrila, and hundreds of others. Eddie also loved childrens books and enjoyed reading them to the kids. While I was reading Jack Armstrong she was reading Winnie the Poo, and Uncle Remus. She also liked Washington Irving books like the Ledgens of Sleepy Hallow, The Headless Horseman and Rip VanWinkle. As adults we read, out loud, taking turns, Swiss Family Robinson. That was fun.

Eddie enjoyed music also but not marches which were my favorites. She said it reminded her of war. She liked classical music, and the big bands. Going to Take a Sentimental Journey was one of her favorites. Also, she enjoyed meditating and listened to Buddhist Chants, and hymns. Sometimes she would ask me to sing Moonlight Becomes You, to her and I would, but I’m glad it wasn’t heard by anyone else.

Eddie’s favorite actor was Lesie Howard and her favorite actress was Katherine Hepburn.

Eddie really enjoyed coffee, Chinese tea and also Scotch.

Her favorite food was Chinese food made by her mother, and Eddie also became good at cooking her mother’s recipies. I loved them and miss them.

Often I would say to people, Eddie and I never argued and they would look at me as if I was crazy. Let me explain why we never argued. Early in our marriage whenever we had a disagreement, and we were both trying to make a point, Eddie would say to me, “your right Tom” and that ended it. How can you argue when you have been told your right? After quite some time it dawned on me that she was really winning the argument so one time we started to discuss something and I said “ your right Eddie”. She looked at me and smiled and said, ”Oh no you don’t, that’s my strategy”. We both started to laugh hysterically and soon were hugging and kissing each other. From then on we both knew how not to argue. What a smart wonderful girl!

In April that year I came home from work very proud. The school had offered me a contract for the next year with a substantial raise in pay. I started to tell Eddie about it and she said to wait until the children were in bed. That night we talked and she started by saying, ”what about your masters degree?” After much creative debating, it was decided that I would write to several schools and apply for admission. She suggested Lehigh and also suggested I apply for a teaching job in Bethlehem and the surrounding school districts. As it turned out I was hired to teach in Bethlehem and accepted in the graduate school at Lehigh University. I never could get her to admit it but I think she had all her relatives and friends helping. She always contended that I did it on my own.

We now had two young boys and the Polio epidemic was at it’s height and we were advised by our pediatrician to keep them away from public gatherings whenever possible. Children were dying and becoming crippled all over the country. We couldn’t take them to the store, the movies or a public swimming pool or anywhere where they may be exposed. This was before there was immunization for polio. Eddie came up with the idea of going to a place not too far away where there were very few children and they could go swimming. The place was a nudist community called Sunny Rest Lodge. It was only the second year that it was open and there were very few people. That summer was good for all of us. Eddie and the boys could swim and go for long walks and I could study.

The next three years while I taught school and went to graduate school three nights a week and Saturday mornings Eddie really raised our two boys. We didn’t have a TV yet so we made up all own recreation. Eddie knew more about children’s literature and English literature than anyone I ever met. I took courses in both in college and she knew more than any of my professors. She read to the boys every night while I studied. I don’t think we went out together in those three years. It may sound bad but it was a happy time for us. I had gotten my Masters degree and Principals certification for elementary and secondary schools and had at this point, ninety credits beyond my bachelors degree. HOPE YOUR SATISFIED EDDIE !
Just kidding...

While we were doing all these things Eddie also was so creative we were about to have our third child. In July I was attending a summer school class and came home about three in the afternoon and our neighbor told me that she and her husband had taken Eddie to the hospital because she was having labor pains. When I went into the maternity floor the nurse told me I could go in and see Eddie. There she sat in the bed with a beautiful baby girl with red hair. WOW!! Eddie had picked a name and I agreed with her, Margaret Helen Herbert, named for her favorite aunt and my mother. From the very first day we called and still call her Maggie.

At this point I want to say something about Eddie that I usually don’t talk about. Eddie’s glasses were so thick they looked like the bottom of a milk bottle. She couldn’t see without them and put them on before she got out of bed in the morning and didn’t take them off until she was in bed at night. Consequently, she was clumsy. She used to say she could trip over a grain of rice. Going down steps was often a disaster and I really worried when she drove our car. One night she took our little dog to the vet. When she came home she said she had damaged the car. The back fender on the drivers side was gone. She said a tractor-trailer had sideswiped her. I asked her if she gotten his drivers license name and number and she said he didn’t even know he hit her. I said, “Eddie, when your on the highway you have to stay way over to the right and she said, “ I missed three of them before he hit me”.
Her logic.

After spending three years as a teacher in Bethlehem and going to graduate school all that time I decided I should apply for a school principalship and sent many letters to school districts from California to Maine and was finally hired by a town in New Jersey. We spent twelve years there and I was principal of three different schools. During that time. Whitesville, which was all black, Shark River, which was all white and Neptune, which was seventy percent black. I only mention these ratios to say I had all kinds of experience. We had twelve good years but it was not an easy job.

Eddie was busy with the children and doing art work and bowling. She also worked at the local hospital and many other activities. Eddie always kept busy.

One day the NAACP picked a school to have sit-in demonstration and it happened to be my school. About three-hundred people walked into the school and sat on the floor in all the hallways. The students could not leave their classrooms and we had photographers, newspapers, radio people, and people were making speeches about non-violent demonstrations. It was one hell of a day and I was disgusted with the whole thing. After it was over I went home and told Eddie I was going to look for a different job. She agreed and also told me she was pregnant. I started looking and went to many interviews during that time. Instead of getting a new job I took a graduate assistants job at Lehigh while I worked on my doctorate and took a sabbatical leave from Neptune.

We were back in Bethlehem so naturally Eddie had another baby. The other children started spoiling him from the first day, particularly Maggie. He became the center of the family. We named him James, because we both liked that name, and Randolph, after Eddie’s favorite uncle. We called him JIM and it seemed to fit him, however, I notice his brothers and sister still call him Jimmy. The three older children all wanted to be his parents and particularly Maggie, she wanted to take him everywhere she went and it was nice. In the evenings Jim wanted to be with the family instead of being upstairs all by himself so I would lie on the floor in the livingroom and watch television and Eddie would put him on my chest and within fifteen minute he would be sleeping, but I couldn’t get up or he would awaken. About an hour later Eddie would pick him up and take him upstairs. We all enjoyed our new baby.

After one year, according to our sabbatical leave, we had to go back to Neptune for one year. It was a long year and again I interviewed many times with different school districts, but had the feeling that if I moved I would be going to the same thing but in a different geographical location. One afternoon late, a textbook salesman came to my office. As it turned out he was the regional sales manager for Random House. We talked and he told me about their programs. Then, he turned to me and said, “why don’t you get out of this rat-race and come to work for us as an educational consultant?” We talked some more and I asked questions about what I would be doing, and compensation, and then we talked for about another hour. We decided to meet the next day for lunch. I went home and told Eddie all about it and we stayed up late talking about it. Eddie looked me straight in the eyes and said to me “I want you to take that job.” And so began a totally new career.

Previously Eddie started to teach me about meditation and the Buddhist philosophy and this is when we really started to focus on a daily basis. She explained to me that there is no antagonism between Buddhism and Christianity. We spent many hours conversing about all of the religions and philosophies. (Sound boring, it wasn’t) Eddie once wrote a paper on comparitive religions and went to a Synagogue and talked to a rabbi, went to a Buddhist temple and talked to a monk, went to a Catholic church and talked to a priest, and to several Christian denominations and talked to ministers. She knew how to do research.

He ended this one saying "More Later" but I don't think he really ever got back to this particular line of thought. Sad... its such a treasure.

Things I LOVE about this piece:

• Their fify year secret! The Notebook has nothing on them!
• Gram's "Mary complex." Always back to Bethlehem! :-)
• The origins of your names.