I have learned that writing is one of the things that helps me to cope with the grieving process. In that spirit I offer up this blog on the occasion of the passing of my father – a reflection and appreciation of my Dad’s life.
Mom & Dad
Ronald E. Albee 1928 – 2015
Reflection on a Life
Ronald Edwin Albee was born in 1928 – at the tail end of the “Roaring 20’s” and just before the Great Depression began to blow across the country. – It was the year that Charles Lindbergh became the first man to fly across the Atlantic Ocean and Television started broadcasting its first channel. He was the second of three children born to Nellie and Ray Albee.
His earliest memory came when he was 3 years old. A sparkler he was holding during an Independence Day celebration ignited his shirt. His father saw his young son in flames and jumped down from a second story porch to help smother the fire – but not before young Ronnie suffered serious burns on his chest.
His Aunt Gly Tallman helped to nurse him back to health, giving her a special place in his heart throughout his life. In later years Ronnie would show his children the burn scars on his chest as a way to teach them about having a healthy respect for fire.
He was an active kid growing up and he made friends easily with the kids of his South Gardner neighborhood known as the “Patch”. They played sandlot baseball and football and would usually beat the teams from the other sections of the city. He forged lifetime relationships with his “gang” of kids (which included Billy Meehan, Tony Stone and Tony Manca) who kept in contact with him throughout his lifetime and who would call him every year – even into his 80’s – to wish him a happy birthday.
He liked to go to the Saturday movie matinees with his older brother, Clyde, at the old Gardner Uptown theatre. He would spend his 15 cent allowance to see a Double Feature of Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Roger’s movies – he paid 10 cents for the movie tickets and 5 cents for a large bag of his favorite Peanut Butter kisses.
Walking home from one of those Saturday matinee movies, 10 year old Ronnie and his brother got caught up in the great Hurricane of 1938. They tried to fight the high winds but for every step they took the wind pushed them back 2 steps. They ended up huddled under a concrete stairway at the Royal Steam Heater Co on Main St to wait out the storm. Luckily, the owners happened to notice the two boys under the stairs and offered them shelter in their house. After the storm passed the owners drove the two grateful boys home.
Although Ronnie made friends easily, he enjoyed solitude mostly– perfectly content to amuse himself and be on his own – especially if it had anything to do with nature. When he was a young teenager he bought a “Make Your Own Kayak” kit that he put together by himself. It wasn’t the most seaworthy of boats but it served his purposes. He would carry that kayak down the street on his back to Bent’s pond where he would spend many happy hours fishing and paddling around.
He was fortunate to have an uncle and a lifelong friend in Eddie Tallman who taught him the ways of nature – especially how to trap and fish – when he was a boy. He was always grateful for the time his uncle spent teaching him and he made it a point to return that favor throughout his life; teaching his sons, daughters, grandchildren, and even his Parish Priest (Fr Martinez) how to fish and enjoy nature.
One of the first things he caught trapping when he was 13 years old was a skunk. He was so proud of that first piece of fur that he put the skunk in a shopping bag and rode the bus to Uncle Eddie’s Templeton house to show it to him. I’m pretty sure that the others riding on the bus that day were not as excited as my father was about his first catch.
In 1944, many of my father’s friends were drafted to serve in World War II – Ronnie enrolled for the draft at 16 but was given a deferment so that he could finish High School. By the time he graduated two years later the war was over.
In the Summer of 1946, the Boston Red Sox celebrated Gardner Day at Fenway Park – 18 year old Ronnie was part of a committee representing the citizens of Gardner that went on the field to present Ted Williams with a gift of a telephone pole sized baseball bat from the citizens of the “Chair City”.
Dad would boast with pride in later years that he was on the same field with Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doehrr, and Dom Dimaggio. I remember visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown NY 65 years later in 2011 and seeing that same gigantic-sized baseball bat displayed prominently on the museum wall.
Ronnie was always a good student and a dependable worker. He began working at 15 on a chicken farm for 25 cents per hour, then he moved on to an upholstery job, doing piece work where he could make up to $3 hour – which was a lot of money for a young kid in those days. After graduation from High School he began work as a laborer for the city highway department.
It was about this time that Ronnie’s cousin introduced my Dad to the beautiful Claire Meunier. Claire fell in love with Ronnie’s blue eyes and quiet nature and made it a point to show up at events she knew he would be attending. Ronnie didn’t have a chance against Claire’s many charms and he fell head over heels in love with her. The two would date and Ronnie would take her home on the last bus from Gardner to Templeton. He didn’t mind running the six miles from the Meunier farm back to his home in Gardner if it meant he could spend an extra hour with his sweetheart.
When he asked for Claire’s hand in Marriage, her parents surprised them by saying no. You see Ronnie was a sometime practicing Protestant and Noe and Bernadette could not permit their daughter to marry a man who was not a Catholic. Ronnie was heartbroken, but he decided to talk to a Priest and sign up for catechism classes and become a Catholic. It was in this way that Ronnie came to win his prize bride, and the riches of his Catholic faith also, which gave him great comfort throughout his life. He once told me that marrying my mother and becoming Catholic “were the two best decisions he ever made”.
He married Claire Aline Meunier on her birthday in September 4, 1948 when they were both 20 years old. The Newlyweds began a charmed life together, filled with work, Saturday Night dancing to the music of the Sparky Lane orchestra and the arrival of their first son Robert.
Over the course of the next 16 years, Diane, Danny, Gary, Aline, Linda, Alan and Lisa followed: a blessing of eight happy and healthy children. It was a home where the children thrived because the love of our parents was at its core.
There is a saying that the best way for a father to love his children, is for him to love their mother. And my father loved, cherished and respected my mother all the days of his life – and through loving her, he did the most important thing he could do to love his children.
Our family was never rich in material things, but it didn’t seem to matter – we were happy. Seven kids were squeezed into that first 2 bedroom house. Brothers and sisters often wore hand me down clothes, and we knew better than to be late for dinner lest the food disappear before we could get our share. But the love was abundant and by their actions they taught us a lesson to live simply, work hard and share what we had with others.
One way they saved money was to give their children haircuts. My father would corral his four sons in the basement where we would each take turns sitting in the haircut chair. Dad only knew one style, very short crew cut. Not being fans of that particular style, we were glad once we got our first jobs because it meant that we could earn enough money to go to the barbershop and escape Dad’s haircut chair.
My father was never too much of a disciplinarian; he would do it if it was called for – or if my mother twisted his arm to do it. His heart was never in it but somehow it was still effective because just knowing that our Father was disappointed in something we did made us feel terrible and it hurt more than any punishment he would give us.
In the early years my parents took on small second jobs to make ends meet. My father would take his whole year’s vacation time during the month of November to go trapping. He would spend 17 hour days, 7 days a week setting traps and taking care of the muskrat, mink, beaver, otter and Fisher cats that he would catch. He would sell the fur he caught at an auction in December and then give all the money he collected to my Mother so she could buy Christmas gifts for the family. Christmas was always magical because of the sacrifices he made.
Many of those years on the trapline were spent with his son Danny. They formed a close bond that comes with being partners on a trap line and they developed a healthy competition trying to see who could catch the most fur. My father would proudly recall the day when Danny caught a mink on the last day of the trapping season to beat him out in the race to see who would catch the most mink. He was so happy that he lost to his son. That’s the kind of father he was – happier for his children’s success than for any of his own.
He worked his way up to become Foreman of the Highway Department and then Director of Public Works for the City of Gardner. He liked working heavy equipment and being outside but as he rose higher in the ranks he did not enjoy the paperwork and politics of the desk job.
When I was in High School, I discovered that my Father was the one who helped make the call as to whether school would be cancelled due to bad weather conditions. I would try to cajole and badger him into telling me if school would be canceled the next day, but his response to me was always the same “I suggest you do your homework son”.
In 1985, after 38 years working for the Gardner DPW, he decided to take a retirement package at the early age of 57. That freed him up to do the things he loved most during the last 30 years of his life: fishing, trapping, gardening, going to the dog track, watching sports, playing cards, doing crossword puzzles, napping and indulging his sweet tooth.
My father was never bored – even though in his 87 years he never left the New England area and never traveled more than 300 miles from his home. He was a lifetime Gardner resident. He was content just walking in wooded areas and canoeing along rivers or ponds observing wildlife activities and signs.
I spent many of the happiest days of my life fishing with my Dad. We would usually catch fish but it didn’t matter to me if we didn’t – because just being with him made me happy. It has been said that the Lord does not deduct from man’s allotted span the hours spent in fishing. If that is the case, I estimate Dad extended his life a good nine years past his allotted time.
One particularly memorable fishing experience happened in early Spring at the Millers River. We beached the canoe we were fishing in at a small dam and began casting from shore. As we were standing there we noticed that the canoe had gotten loose and was floating unattended down the river. It eventually got hung up on some bushes on the other side of the river but we could not get to it because the water was deep, cold, and very fast.
We couldn’t figure out how to get to the other side without walking several miles to the bridge upstream. My father then suggested that we try to cast our fishing poles and “hook” the canoe and reel it in over to our side of the river. We figured it was worth a shot – my first cast sailed right over the canoe and got caught on the branches – which was predictable for me at the time. That put even more pressure on my Dad – he was cautious in his first two casts, landing in the water just short of the canoe, but his third cast hit the canoe dead center and wrapped around the support bar – an amazing cast!
He worried that the weight of the canoe and the swift current would break his line as he tried to reel the boat in, so I stripped down to my underwear and stood in the cold water just downstream prepared to swim after the canoe in case the line broke. Luckily I did not have to jump in, as Dad used the drag on his pole to reduce the tension on the line and gently guide the canoe over to where I was waiting. We often joked afterwards about that being the biggest catch of his life.
I remember tagging along with Dad when I was young boy and marveling at how many different places in the woods he knew and how he never got lost. He was at home in the woods and seemed to have unlimited energy bounding up and down the river banks as effortlessly as a mink. It was difficult for me as he aged to see how Father Time had slowed him down and how I now had to help him up those same river banks he used to help me climb so many times when I was a boy. Life comes full circle in the end, but even as his conditions worsened he never stopped showing us how to live a life of dignity and integrity – even to the end in the way he chose to die.
There is a saying that “One day all that will be left of us is the memories we leave with others – so make sure they are good ones”. I have shared a small number of the good memories that my Dad has left with me. There are countless others in the hearts and minds of all those he touched in big and small ways.
It is a testament to the kind of man he was underneath it all; someone who was honest and humble, someone who valued people for who they were and welcomed everyone with a smile, someone who enjoyed life’s simple pleasures and was happy with what he had.
Joy and success for him were not defined by money or things, but by the love of his wife, the gathering of his children and grandchildren around his table, and the opportunity to share laughs until his blue eyes were sparkling with delight. My daughter summed up her Pepere nicely when she wrote: “if you knew him, you couldn’t help but love him”.
So here’s to you Ronald Albee – beloved husband, father, grandfather, friend and best of men. You lived a life full of grace and made this world a better place. We will miss you but you leave us with a legacy we will carry in our hearts everywhere we go – to every stream, lake, wood, hill, field and far off place that we travel.
You will always be a light for us; guiding us in the right direction as we strive every day to live up to your high standards and make decisions we hope would make you proud of us. We love you Dad – Thank you for a job well done. May you rest in peace.
Words to Live By... 