What follows are excerpts/transcripts/copies from e-mails that Pat Heath sent to Bruce in June 2020. Lightly edited by Jon Coss.
One of my earliest memories, when I was three in 1937 was one of my Aunts, I think either Ev [Evelyn] or Ruth took me on a train from South Bend, Indiana to Minneapolis. I remember standing by the tracks and a big black, loud train pulled in. Someone lifted me up and put me on the train. I remember a car taking us to a white house in Minneapolis. Then I remember wearing dresses with big skirts and my two aunts (Ev or Ruth and Verona) curling and brushing my hair every day!! I bet Obed and Verona were newly wed and he was away on a train for some days. I don’t know how many days later my mother called and told me I had a new baby brother. (email 6/19/20)
I grew up in a suburb of Detroit and planned to go to Iowa State College (as it was called in the 1950s). Then my Dad got a job in Dayton in the middle of my senior year. He let us stay in Michigan until school was out. I was so mad, sad, hurt, I said “If you’re doing that I’m going to go to Michigan State.” He said, “That’s a party school. I will not pay for you to go there.” So I went to ISC and got married after two years and only went to Dayton very few times because they had a cottage at Coldwater Lake in Michigan. I spent the summers there so that’s where we went to visit. I probably did go to Dayton 10 times to visit!! Ted and Carlton were both at ISC when I was there and one of them had a car so I went home with them many weekends and I even drove a tractor and plowed/disked fields! So all that’s not for family history, but my memories!! (email to BFL 6/18/20)
My brother was born May 18, 1937. On Halloween 1949 he came down with Polio. He was in the hospital until around Christmas Eve. Then he was in a hospital bed in the dining room for…I don’t remember how long. I think it was the next summer we (Mother and I) took him to Warm Springs, Ga. I think it was President FDR who built that and went there often. Jim ended up with a serious curvature of the spine. He was able to go back to school and I can’t remember where he went to college the first year, somewhere south and east of Dayton. Then he went to the University of Dayton the last three years. I think he got married around 1960 and had Scott, who I think is about 58 now and lives in Florida, and Kathy a couple years later. Jim died in 1992 of lung cancer. It was on the healthy side [of his body] and the other side was squeezed down by the curvature so they couldn’t operate. Love, Pat (email to BFL 6/22/20)