I think most people, to some degree live in the past and ignore their present situations. All of us have a history...I do.
I haven't written a whole lot about my distant past history because of many reasons: the first is the I was married very young under conditions which were not the best of all that people would choose...Sue and I lived only a few doors apart from each other in Moravia, NY. When we found out she was expected a baby we were married. In the ten years following that she gave birth to five more babies. I was a senior in high school and the president of the Student Council, and Mr. Bills called me into his office and asked me if I was a married man. I told him I was. He asked me to resign because it would not be fitting for a married man to hold that position...so I did, and he replace me with another class mate of mine....Jeff Hewitt. I continued to play sports and when I played football that fall, Sue and our new baby girl Julie were there on the sidelines. My year book contained comments like, "John, good luck to Sue and little Julie, I think you will be very happy...." etc. In the huddle they called me "Dad", but I continued to score touch downs anyway.
Of course I started working right away, and soon was hired by the same factory that my father and step mother were working at, the Smith-Corona Typewriter factory in Groton, NY. I also took some courses after I had graduated from Moravia because I had failed a math course and the teacher tutored me until I passed it....I wanted to go to college some day. When my grand parents became too old to farm their small farm, I bought it and soon was doing some work on the farm while working my full time job in Groton. Mary, our second daughter came along within a year after Julie...and then there was John, followed by Anne, then David, and finally Paul Victor.
After David was born I rededicated my life to the Lord, and with the help of a friend, packed up all our furniture and other items into two pick up trucks, and on a rainy day, moved to Lima, NY where I enrolled at the Elim Bible Institute to learn more about the Bible. Of course I needed to earn a living for our growing family so I finally found work in Rochester NY at a TB hospital, Iola where eventually was taught how to take blood pressures, give shots and in charge of a fenced in building where alcoholics with TB were held because of their threat of spreading that dreadful illness to the outside world.
Paul Victor was the comedian of our family....he kept us all laughing even during those difficult times when I was either in school or at work...I didn't spend much time with my family back then. I sure didn't like that and I know they missed having me around. But this school also trained missionaries and many times those missionaries would leave their families for many long periods of time to travel all over the world to spread the Gospel in distant lands. Back then graduates from Elim did not have many churches and so we moved our family back to a tiny church just down the road from that farm I had lived and worked on before going to school. It was called "Pleasant Valley Methodist Church"...but really was just a rural church with about 12 to 15 people in attendance on Sunday. To my great relief, Elim called me that summer and asked me if I would come back there and teach! Well I had been one of the few who took New Testament Greek and that teacher had moved on to pastor a church. It was a dream come true for me, and I think my family also were happy to move back to where our children had started school and had made friends.
Paul Victor was a favorite among the students there...he would often be up on the porch of the administration building and as the students passed by him he would make them laugh with his good looks and funny expressions....
Paul Victor has never lost that ability to make others laugh, even when he himself was having his own problems...it just came naturally to him...and we were glad that it did...and still are thankful for his ability to make us smile when we should be shedding tears.
This is not to say that the only five did nothing! Julie is married to a wonderful man and is now the grandmother of some of the cutest children any grand mother could hope for...and Julie is also a worker...Lord she can work! Mary married a man who had overcome some problems but he became a pastor and now his son is also a pastor. John is a very successful business person, who constantly is traveling around the world doing what he has always done best...a talented salesman, of course he is not home much either. Anne has had the toughest of them all...giving birth to two boys who both required a lot of attention, divorced a man who was a wonderful man, but drank too much...she went back to school and now is a LPN who works ungodly hours at a place where she often loses her patients when they die while she is on duty. But she continues to be an inspiration to so many as they watch her keep her faith and refuses to let her own health problems keep her from doing what she now does best...being a fine mother care giver...and also for Sue who is now in a nursing home. David is also a successful man who has worked his way up by his sheer endurance, both physically and mentally. He has been generous to a fault and I probably stay in touch with him more than the others. He has visited off and on since we moved here deep in the woods of Virginia.
But Paul Victor surprised me greatly when I finally found out that he had been driving from Richmond Virginia to Norfolk for a long time in order to become a first rate chef. I didn't know how much money it cost him...he never told me! But now he has had many great jobs as head chef for many fine eateries and continues to do so as he and his wife Holly live in upper New Jersey and are often the host just for family meals....of course Paul oversees everything that is prepared.
Yes, my son Paul Victor can still make us roll with laughter, but under that ability there is a man who know more than that....he loves people also....all kinds of people. I trust he will live a long life and continue to make people laugh, but leave a much bigger legacy...his love for people. signed: John Romaine...a proud father of six wonderful children by a woman named Sue Strong Romaine.
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