The Shaping Years: A Memoir of My Youth and Education

By Jack Fassett

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 26, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462832460

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Copyright © 2000 by Jack Fassett.

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Contents

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1 : PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 2 : MINEOLA

CHAPTER 3 : WILLISTON PARK

CHAPTER 4 : EAST HAMPTON

CHAPTER 5 : ROCHESTER

CHAPTER 6 : MILITARY SERVICE

CHAPTER 7 : ROCHESTER AGAIN

CHAPTER 8 : BUFFALO

CHAPTER 9 : NEW HAVEN

CHAPTER 10 : MILITARY SERVICE AGAIN

CHAPTER 11 : NEW HAVEN AGAIN

CHAPTER 12 : WASHINGTON

CHAPTER 13 : EPILOGUE

APPENDIX

FOREWORD

During a celebration of the 50th wedding anniversary of Connie and Gunnar Redin, my elder sister and her husband, at the home in Chapel Hill of Joy and Paul Mermin, my elder daughter and her husband, last January, we got into a discussion of events during the years of the depression in this country. I nostalgically related some of my memories of happenings to our family during those difficult times, many of which had been forgotten by Connie. Joy and Paul commented that it was the first time they had heard that portion of our family history. They urged me to record my recollections so that their generation and subsequent generations of the family could have an opportunity to comprehend that part of our family history.

The Redin’s golden anniversary coincidentally also happened to be my 74th birthday. The occasion occurred only a few months after Betty and I moved from St. Petersburg, Florida, where we had lived since my retirement in 1985, to Croasdaile Village Retirement Home in Durham, North Carolina. That move was clearly an overt admission of my advancing age and shortened life expectancy. When Joy reminded me that I had promised on several occasions since my retirement that I would record some of my memories as my mother had done for all of us a few years before she died, I agreed to promote the project on my list of things to do.

Actually, since my retirement, I have recorded very detailed accounts of my employment activities during two distinct periods of my working life. Each of such accounts necessarily included some autobiographical material. The earliest period I wrote about was the term I served as law clerk to Associate Justice Stanley Foreman Reed at the United States Supreme Court. A year after I retired an article detailing my work with the Justice on The School Segregation Cases was published in the Yearbook of the Supreme Court Historical Society.

Eight years later, after much research and many months of writing, New Deal Justice : The Life of Stanley Reed of Kentucky was published. In that comprehensive biography of the Justice I provided in a foreword and two chapters a more complete account of my activities during the momentous 1953 term of the Supreme Court.

The second period of my working career about which I have written was longer and came at the end of my period of full-time employment. After I retired as Chief Executive Officer of the United Illuminating Company in 1985, I remained a director of the company for an additional eleven years. Shortly after my successor as CEO assumed command, he and other members of the board urged me to write a corporate history of the company. Subsidized by the company, UI: History of an Electric Company—A Saga of Problems, Personalities and Power Politics was published in 1990. The dozen years I was at the helm of the electric company and deeply involved in electric industry problems constituted a particularly challenging era. Thus to a large degree the history of the company during that era which I recounted was also my personal history.

Recognizing that I had never carried through in full on my commitment to record my memories and particularly had never done anything to preserve my recollections of events during my youth and education, shortly after the Redin’s anniversary celebration I decided to remedy my delinquency. Spurred by the urging of my schoolteacher daughter, I assembled a pile of yellow legal pads and sharpened a collection of yellow pencils and went to work. Being all too aware that unrecorded memories perish with their possessor, I quickly found that I was writing much more than I had anticipated. It is indeed amazing how taking a pencil in hand and sitting at my desk overlooking the spacious grounds of Croasdaile Village stirred detailed memories of events about which I had not thought for scores of years.

I readily concede that my memoir of my youth can not compete with Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, his recent best-selling tale of his poverty-stricken childhood in Ireland. My Long Island could not compare with Limerick for atmosphere and as a youth, I was in an entirely different league from Frankie when it came to precocious sexuality. I consider my youth to have been more comparable to that of my contemporary, Russell Baker, described in The Good Times published in 1989. He also graduated from high school in 1942 and completed college on the G.I. Bill after military service. Like him, I had a dedicated mother who was determined to see me make something of myself. Neil Simon’s somewhat comparable memories of the same period were written in the forms of plays and movie scripts including Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues. The latter recorded his recollections from 1945 of the same Army air base where I was stationed in 1944.

In any event, as I proceeded to recollect and record happenings in the period of my life beginning in the the roaring twenties and embracing the great Depression, World War II and the first post-war years, I realized more fully that I have lived through a most dynamic period in America. Moreover, I also realized that while much of my experience was essentially representative of the period, many of the events of my early life could be characterized as particularly challenging or unique. In short, as I wrote I became convinced Joy was right : it was a tale worth telling.

Joy has paid a price for nudging me to write. Knowing that I no longer type and stubbornly decline to use a computer, she volunteered to type my memoir if I would write it. Reading and typing the huge pile of yellow pages my trip down memory lane produced was a labor of love that is greatly appreciated.

I hope that all of my children and grandchildren, now six in number with the arrival of Sylvie in Seattle on March 8th, and possibly even their progeny will find my tale interesting and possibly even enlightening.

Jack Fassett

Croasdaile Village, N.C.

June 1,2000

Map of Long Island, New York

missing image file

CHAPTER 1 : PROLOGUE

My birth certificate confirms that I was born on January 30, 1926, in East Hampton, New York. I have no recollection of that event or of any other events prior to the time a couple of years later when our family, my mother, father, sister Connie and I, lived in Mineola, also on Long Island. My mother, Fanny Irene Darby Fassett ( she abhorred her first name and never used it) was always an ardent keeper of records and compiler of notes (traits that were passed on to me). During my first year of life she kept a baby book in which she recorded all of my statistics and every perceived achievement. Thereafter, until I was in junior high school she kept a scrapbook in which she pasted birthday cards, report cards and mementos of every kind pertaining to my childhood. She even kept many test papers and drawings that I toted home from school. Several years ago, when Betty and I moved from a house to a condominium, I discarded both the baby book and the scrapbook. Accordingly, many of the recollections I have recorded in these pages regarding my early life are based solely on my memory. I hope and trust those memories are accurate.

Some of the recorded memories were triggered by revisiting two photograph albums also kept by my mother. She received a large, accordion-like Kodak camera as a graduation present from her parents when she graduated from East Hampton High School in 1919. She, of course, took her camera with her to New Paltz Normal School, subsequently New Paltz State Teachers College and now a branch of the State University of New York, located in the small town of New Paltz on the west side of the lower Hudson River. Not too many rolls of film were exposed by her while training to be a teacher nor during the first few years of her teaching career. However, the taking of photographs increased with the births of my sister and myself. The two earliest albums of her collection that I reviewed present an interesting chronological record of many events of my childhood.

My birthplace was the home of my grandparents on Georgica Road in East Hampton. In 1926, even more than today, East Hampton was a colony of lavish summer cottages owned primarily by affluent Manhattanites. The town, and many of the cottages, was located on the Atlantic Ocean toward the end of the south fork of Long Island. Only a few hours from New York City, it boasted miles of beautiful white-sand beaches. My mother had gone to her parents’ home for the occasion of my birth. She wanted to be attended by Dr. David Edwards, the leading doctor in the town which then had only about 2000 inhabitants during the winter months.

My maternal grandparents were year-round residents of East Hampton. They had moved to the town a few years before my mother was born in 1901. Grandpa David Darby had emigrated to the United States from West Bromwich, England as a young man. He was the youngest of 11 children. That obviously accounts for his decision to emigrate—his older brothers had taken over the family business which was involved in an aspect of iron ore smelting. Grandpa Darby’s father was remotely related to Abraham Darby, the builder of the first iron bridge which was cast in 1779 and is credited with inaugurating the industrial revolution in England. Upon arrival in this country, Grandpa Darby went to work for a relative who had a livery stable in New York City.

Grandma Darby, born Anna Lena Boehme in Leipzig, Germany, emigrated when four years old with her parents to Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father was a shoemaker. She and grandpa met during a summer when both were employed, grandma as a nursemaid and grandpa as a coachman, in Lake George, another summer resort for New Yorkers, in upstate New York. After they married, they purchased a large parcel of property in the heart of the summer colony in East Hampton and established a riding academy and rental stables. Throughout my mother’s youth, my grandfather rented horses, carriages and coaches and the riding academy flourished during each summer season. He, of course, catered to the wealthy cottage owners who arrived each year for the summer months. All of the activities at their home made for exciting childhoods for my mother and her only sibling, an older brother named Arthur. However,

Arthur never completed schooling and left home as a young man. He had become intrigued by the newfangled automobiles and decided to become a chauffeur.

The advent of those automobiles essentially destroyed the stabling and coach-rental businesses and by the time mother graduated from New Paltz her parents had closed the riding academy. Thereafter, the large carriage and living quarters building on my grandparents’ property was converted into a number of rental apartments. Many of the stables at the rear of the property were converted into garages for the proliferating motor vehicles. Like his son, my grandfather also was intrigued by horseless transportation, and he bought his first car in 1909. He also subsequently bought a bus which for a time he operated on a route covering the town and main beach of East Hampton.

The house in which I was born had also been part of the riding academy. Moved to the front of the large lot, it was greatly expanded and became my grandparents’ home. Prior to going to New Paltz, my mother had graduated from East Hampton High School in a class consisting of about a dozen students. Virtually all of the students were girls since the boys of that age had left for service during World War I. Mother nurtured many memories of that war. She was a reasonably accomplished pianist, and, as a result of playing at many wartime functions, she still had a large stack of sheet music of war songs when I was a child. Occasionally, she would play some of them for us. I particularly remember Over There, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and I Didn’t Raise my Boy to be a Soldier. Mother had close friendships with several of her high school classmates and corresponded with at least one of them throughout her life. She wrote a beautiful script, having mastered the Palmer Method of penmanship while at New Paltz.

My parents had been residing in Vineland, New Jersey, prior to my birth. In going home for that occasion, mother followed the same routine she had followed when my older sister, Constance Jane, was born on August 22, 1924. Mother and our father, Howard John Fassett, had been married in April 1923 after a courtship of about eighteen months. They met initially as two new faculty members hired to teach in public schools in the town of Lindenhurst in central Long Island commencing in September, 1921.

My father was born in Glens Falls, New York, in 1899. He was the only son of Olivier Fassett and Mary Lamoureaux Fassett. Grandpa Fassett had two older daughters by a prior wife who had died, and dad had two full sisters who grew up with him in their home at 13 Montcalm Street. Glens Falls was a small industrial city (paper mills and shirt factories) on the Hudson River in upstate New York just below Lake George. The Fassetts were devout Catholics, and my father attended and graduated from the city’s Catholic high school. He was a good student and was selected to give a speech at his graduation in 1916. The speech, which was published in the local newspaper, discussed our country’s involvement with Mexico—a hot topic at the time.

In September 1916, my father began studies at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, as a member of the class of 1920. When our country became a participant in World War I in 1917, father and many of his classmates enlisted in the service. He joined the Navy and was stationed at Floyd Bennett Field which was on the south shore of Long Island not far from where Kennedy Airport now flourishes. Upon being discharged at the end of the war, father returned to Colgate and graduated as a member of the class of 1921. Dad’s college yearbook occupied space on bookshelves in our home throughout my childhood, but I have no recollection regarding his college major or whether he engaged in any athletic activities at Colgate.

I assume my father must have had some athletic credentials since his hiring by the Lindenhurst school system was for the position of high school basketball coach as well as history teacher. My parents first met when both arrived at a boarding house in Lindenhurst. My father disliked the food served at that first choice of residence and shortly moved to another boarding house also accomodating teachers on the same street.

My mother kept a daily diary throughout her relatively brief teaching career. It recorded both her trials and satisfactions with her elementary grade students and my father’s courtship which involved frequent evenings reading to each other or listening to or making music. During basketball season, my mother attended all of Lindenhurst’s games. This involved traveling to many away games at schools throughout central Long Island. On occasions, she and the coach would not arrive back at their boarding houses until well after midnight causing her to regret having to arise and teach that following day. Mother’s diary was given to Connie but has been read by many in the family. As an elementary school teacher, Joy took particular interest in her grandmother’s comments. Among other details, she reported the scores of each of the basketball games. I was struck by the fact that it was unusual for the winning team to score in excess of 20 points.

When my parents began their teaching careers at Lindenhurst in 1921, the economy of central and western Long Island was dominated by farming. Miles of fields growing potatoes, cabbages, cauliflower and other crops stretched not only between Lindenhurst and the eastern tip of the island at Montauk Point, but also from Lindenhurst westward almost to New York City. Many of those farms were still in production during my childhood on Long Island. However, starting in the mid-1920’s most of those in Nassau County, which was within easy commuting distance to the city, began disappearing and being replaced by housing developments and commercial activities.

Mother’s diary recounts the adventure of automotive travel in the early 1920’s based not only on trips to basketball games but on numerous trips between Lindenhurst and East Hampton. Most of the roads were still unpaved and the vehicles were still quite primitive. During her second year of teaching, mother owned a car which had been presented to her by her parents. Her father had taught her to drive while she was still in high school. She or my father would drive her car to East Hampton for many weekends, and it seems each trip was an adventure. Inevitably, en route they experienced flat tires, failing headlights, motor trouble, or else they would get stuck on a muddy road.

My parents became engaged at Christmas in 1922. They discussed a June wedding in East Hampton and a honeymoon trip to Europe, but those plans were scuttled when they decided to elope during spring vacation in April 1923. Aside from impatience, a religious dilemma was the primary cause of their decision to forego a church wedding at the Darby’s Protestant church in East Hampton. Dad’s family felt strongly that he should be wed in a Catholic church so they found a Catholic priest in Lindenhurst who agreed to marry them in the rectory with only a friend of my father’s and his wife as witnesses. Thereafter the newlyweds—together with the Darbys-drove to Niagara Falls and then paid a short visit to the Fassetts in Glens Falls before returning to Lindenhurst to complete their teaching and coaching obligations there.

The newlyweds concluded that a European trip would be extravagant and would exhaust their savings, so they accepted the invitation to spend the summer of1923 in East Hampton. Dad took a summer job in the clubhouse at the Maidstone Club, the posh golf and tennis club for the elite of the summer colony. Mother operated a small cafe on Montauk Highway which she named The Bluebird Inn. The building housing the cafe was actually a structure moved from her parents’ Georgica Road property and expanded. Grandpa Fassett came to East Hampton to assist Grandpa Darby with the carpentry work on the project. The cafe served coffee, soft drinks, sandwiches, and pieces of pies baked by Grandma Darby. I recall mother recounting the day she was driving on a back road from Georgica Road with a number of freshly baked pies. She hit a rut, and the car, probably a model A Ford, tipped over demolishing the pies but not injuring her.

Grandma Darby obviously made a determined effort to convince the newlyweds to settle permanently in East Hampton. However, neither the lure of ownership of the cafe, country living, nor status as year-round residents of a summer colony appealed to my father. He had not particularly enjoyed his months as an employee at the Maidstone Club. He had no desire to become a bonacker, as long-term east-enders are called.

Prior to World War II, it was common for public school systems to reject employment of married female teachers. Accordingly, for the ensuing 1923-4 school year, my parents obtained positions on the staff of a private school. Kew Forest School in Kew Gardens was still on Long Island, but in the part of the island constituting a portion of New York City. The area is known best because of the location of the Forest Hills Tennis Club where the United States tennis championships were played for many years. In addition to coaching basketball, dad