Marriage of Miss Phebe Baker Perry

30 October 1944 | Cincinnati Enquirer

Somehow Christmas just doesn’t seem like Christmas without you and Mother, Honey, Abbie, and dear old Freck and Bill.

 

25 Dec 1944 CH to J

Hotel Philadelphia

Westhampton, N.Y.

Christmas Day 1944

Dear Dad—

Merry Christmas! Wish we could all be there to wish you all that greeting. Maybe some Christmas we can all be together in the old homestead. What fun that would be. Somehow Christmas just doesn’t seem like Christmas without you and Mother, Honey, Abbie, and dear old Freck and Bill. I look back on those days in Cincinnati, what a job you and Mother must have had selecting the things for your children, trying to satisfy each and everyone of us. Then too we had a lot of Fairy God Fathers and Mothers whose Christmas gifts were usually those of untold splendor. I am using today a toolbox and a beautiful set of augur bits, given to Freck and me by Mrs. Smythe or Miss Becky many years ago. Even Freck’s old lathe that “Santa” brought him works in my shop. Somewhere in Southampton a train engine locomotor waits for future use given by Mrs. Reed [Pauline Carson Foster Reed, Mrs. C.L. Reed]. There are other things I don’t remember, but which I still have around.

Today we received a present that has been the trump of the day and the grandest gift imaginable from the swellest person I know. War Bonds for all four of us from My Dad—I can’t begin to thank you . . . I don’t know how, but any way we appreciate them more than words can express.

Today I am lazy and nearly exhausted—for nearly a month my machines have been busy sawing, drilling, etc., making toys. Then week before last I stayed in on my work full time usually from 9 AM to after midnight. In that time I made a barn, a train, a farm wagon model with team, a doll house, and drilled several cradles, in addition to the one that went to Sophie. Each and every item was sold representing about 50 dollars worth of toys. On top of that I made a gun for Chaddie and a rocking horse for Billy. I finished the latter at 11 last night. It is a cute little horse and cuter still when its young master swings into the saddle and rides away. He can really make it go.

Abbie certainly showered Chaddie with presents, we had a box from her and in it was a machine gun, a helmet, and a periscope. He is tickled pink with the helmet as well as the other equipment.

It looks as though we might have a white Christmas. It snowed last Monday and it snowed quite a bit, although there is still quite a bit on the ground it is going fast.  Today has been above freezing and it’s a heavy fog all day and occasional rain.

THANK YOU FOR MY BOND –BILLY

Fran just plopped his majesty in my lap and I thought he better learn to write early—

Friday morning I played Santa at the school party. Charlie is not at all sure it was Santa in fact he had a darn good notion it was me. When he came home I was working in my shop when I came upstairs he looked me over very closely. I had make up on, but washed it all off. My lips however showed signs of having been actual.  He mentioned the fact that I had paint on my face and he was quite positive that I was Santa. We changed the subject so may be he has forgotten.

There has been ice in the bay for a week or so, at last maybe with this thaw we are having I will break up enough to be able to go out and make a couple of dollars. If N.Y. has a meat shortage, which is threatened by the dealers or something, maybe clams should sell at a good price.

I wish you all could have been here today to help eat our 32# turkey. Next year I will have to raise some so that you can have one for Thanksgiving day and Christmas. Maybe a goose for New Years.

Our box went express last Thursday I hope it arrived in time to greet you today. Yours will be here I guess sometime this week as you said it was sent express on Thursday.

Thanks again from the 4 of us for your wonderful gifts.

A Merry Christmas—belated but in time to wish you a very Happy New Year.

Love from us all.

Your son,

Charles

Season's Greetings | 1944

1944 Christmas Card | Westhampton

Westhampton, N.Y.

Christmas Day

1944

Dear Dad—

Merry Christmas! Wish we could all be there to wish you all that greeting. Maybe some Christmas we can all be together in the old homestead. What fun that would be. Somehow Christmas just doesn’t seem like Christmas without you and Mother, Honey, Abbie, and dear old Freck and Bill. I look back on those days in Cincinnati, what a job you and Mother must have had selecting the things for your children, trying to satisfy each and everyone of us. Then too we had a lot of Fairy God Fathers and Mothers whose Christmas gifts were usually those of untold splendor. I am using today a toolbox and a beautiful set of augur bits, given to Freck and me by Mrs. Smythe or Miss Becky many years ago. Even Freck’s old lathe that “Santa” brought him works in my shop. Somewhere in Southampton a train engine locomotor waits for future use given by Mrs. Reed. There are other things I don’t remember, but which I still have around.

Today we received a present that has been the trump of the day and the grandest gift imaginable from the swellest person I know. War Bonds for all four of us from My Dad—I can’t begin to thank you . . . I don’t know how, but any way we appreciatie them more than words can express.

Today I am lazy and nearly exhausted—for nearly a month my machines have been busy sawing, drilling, etc., making toys. Then week before last I stayed in on my work full time usually from 9 AM to after midnight. In that time I made a barn, a train, a farm wagon model with team, a doll house, and drilled several cradles, in addition to the one that went to Sophie. Each and every item was sold representing about 50 dollars worth of toys. On top of that I made a gun for Chaddie and a rocking horse for Billy. I finished the latter at 11 last night. It is a cute little horse and cuter still when its young master swings into the saddle and rides away. He can really make it go.

Abbie certainly showered Chaddie with presents, we had a box from her and in it was a machine gun, a helmet, and a periscope. He is tickled pink with the helmet as well as the other equipment.

It looks as though we might have a white Christmas. It snowed last Monday and it snowed quite a bit, although there is still quite a bit on the ground it is going fast.  Today has been above freezing and it’s a heavy fog all day and occasional rain.

THANK YOU FOR MY BOND –BILLY

Fran just plopped his majesty in my lap and I thought he better learn to write early—

Friday morning I played Santa at the school party. Charlie is not at all sure it was Santa in fact he had a darn good notion it was me. When he came home I was working in my shop when I came upstairs he looked me over very closely. I had make up on, but washed it all off. My lips however showed signs of having been actual.  He mentioned the fact that I had paint on my face and he was quite positive that I was Santa. We changed the subject so may be he has forgotten.

There has been ice in the bay for a week or so, at last maybe with this thaw we are having I will break up enough to be able to go out and make a couple of dollars. If N.Y. has a meat shortage, which is threatened by the dealers or something, maybe clams should sell at a good price.

I wish you all could have been here today to help eat our 32# turkey. Next year I will have to raise some so that you can have one for Thanksgiving day and Christmas. Maybe a goose for New Years.

Our box went express last Thursday I hope it arrived in time to greet you today. Yours will be here I guess sometime this week as you said it was sent express on Thursday.

Before I forget.

Charlie’s Birthday Aug. 5, 1936

Billy’s Birthday Nov. 3, 1943

Jean Grace Raynor May 16, 1944

Thanks again the 4 of us for your wonderful gifts.

A Merry Christmas—belated but in time to wish you a very Happy New Year.

Love from us all.

Your son,

Charles

January 1944 | Abigail Fithian Halsey to Jesse Halsey

Sunday Afternoon

Dear Jesse,

Well, this week our good friend Dr. Nugent left us, the funeral was yesterday. He has been bed ridden and I guess stricken on one side since Nov.—Only last week I went in and he said, “Come up.” He and Helen and I had such a good time. I had had a call from Ada Bishop and regaled him with her account of Henry losing his false teeth at night. He lay prone on his bed, but chuckled away and enjoyed it. Helen has been so fine all thru and called me and asked me to write an article for the Press—says it is one of her greatest comforts, it’s so like old times.

I told her I tried to write something he’d like to read and that she and Liz would approve of.

I’ve been shut in the house all week with bronchitis—that ends in a wracking cough, but it’s letting up and I shall get out tomorrow. Jerry had chicken pox and now Jean is down with it, well broken out. Ibby is the valiant one of us all, but is expecting her call any time, is very well. Jerry was home Thurs. after working all night and so tired he slept most of the day. But a great comfort to Ib. to have him come.

The Rulands celebrated their January birthdays by going to Tobey’s (Camp) for supper last night and took Jerry with them. The Herricks are happy today with John and Dorie and Connie all at home. Adelaide spent a day with us and is grand and Ethel takes lovely care of her going and coming. They came in after Dr. Nugent’s funeral Friday.

Dan Halsey and all of them were sick but are better now, also Mr. Van Brunt. Days are very late in the morning, but the sun stays up a little longer.

Let me know your plans, when and where you will be coming out next month—would you be home sometime to get some oysters if I could get any to send? Henry hasn’t been along for two weeks, but the ice must be out now for it is mild for a change.

I have loved Dunnybrook and wish Adelaide Wentworth [of Cincinnati] were here to read of her Kittery. Of course, you knew Dr. Kennon Dunham’s son [Harry] was lost in aviation [while serving in New Guinea]. Sarah Withrow’s letters are full of it, says Mrs. D. stands it wonderfully, Dr. Dunham not so well. A lovely letter finally from Mrs. [W. E.] Stilwell [in Cincinnati] who is broken hearted over the University School going out.

So ends my weekly chronicle with my love for you and all, am anxious to know Abbie’s plans. I hope you all are well and I look forward to being with you all, but feel I am in the right place, and Ibby is certainly fine. Ed is in Wash. And last week had Eddie and Helen and Anita Howell down to N.Y. for a lovely weekend all together Eddie was in and looks well, goes into the Navy tomorrow. Take care of yourself and take time to rest.

Lovingly,

Abbie

Sermon: The Present Christ

Jesse Halsey | 1944

“It is expedient that I go away. I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.”

These words in the 16^th chapter of St. John have their parallel for our purpose in the last verses of St. Matthew’s gospel, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end.”

I know nothing of textual or high criticism, but I am going to date both texts very late; not A.D. 33 or 65, or 110, or 200, but 1944, or any other date you want to give! This is the Highest Criticism. In other words, we seek the contemporary value and equivalent and experience that these words used to convey!

Last Sunday night I walked from one station to another in Springfield, Illinois—

“. . . here at midnight, in that little town

A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,

Near the old court-house pacing up and down.

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now,

He is among us: --as in times before! . . . .

The prairie-lawyer, master of us all . . .”

(Vachel Lindsay)

That you say is poetry. I understand. And in that poetic sense Jesus comes back.

Quentin Reynolds, in a book scarcely dry, tells of talking with a London bobby who believed that Sir Francis Drake took command of the English boys who went up with their old crates to meet the first onslaughts of the Luftwaffe.

The solid old admiral, under whom I served in the British Navy, believed that Francis Drake was present at the battle of Jutland:

“Take my drum to England—

Guard it by the shore

Call me when your powder’s running low.

When the Dons sight Devon

I will leave the court of heaven

And we’ll drum them from the Channel

As we drummed them long ago.”

That, you say, is mythology. I know. And all the truth that the great myths can carry gather round that Sacred head. The Catholics have a much more fitting word for the truth I have in mind, they call it “Tradition.”

Travelers in Russia tell us that many a Russian peasant and soldier believes tht e Lenin has come back to life. That, you say, is sheer superstition. I know it. But when we speak of the Resurrection and Living Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are not dealing with superstition.

The British soldiers who fought so desperately at Mons—some of them believe that they saw angels on the battlefield. I once asked Studdert-Kennedy, the great chaplain, if he thought there were angels at Mons, and he said, “Well, there were men at Mons and where there are men there can be angels!” It is the spiritual presence of our Lord and its contagion—of this we are thinking.

Look for a moment at that young Jerusalem deacon named Stephen. The apostles were too busy, or too proud, to “serve tables,” so they delivered that responsibility to a group called deacons. The irony of the situation develops in that Stephen, the table server, becomes the most popular preacher in Jerusalem! When he is stoned to death, they hear him say, “Lay not this sin to their charge.” It is the echo of our Lord’s word on the cross, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”

Then there was that other young man, named Saul. He never saw Jesus in the flesh; none-the-less, he saw Him and heard Him—“Saul, Saul, why . . . ?” He said of his companions, “They heard not the voice of Him that spake to me.” Take one example from his life: In the shipwreck—that hour of peril and imminent disaster, it is not the Roman Centurion and the soldiers who prove the heroes of the occasion, but this little man, Paul; not the captain (he and the sailors turned coward), but this little man named Paul. He takes command, “Sirs, be of good courage. Last night I saw the angel of God, whom I serve. He said to me, ‘Be of good cheer.’”

And so through the contagion of Christ’s courage, embodied in the little man Paul, the situation is saved and “all come safely to land.”

Augustine, in the garden, heard a voice and turned his back on the old way of life. So on across the succeeding years of the Christian centuries, “I am with you!”

I knew a boy some fifty years ago, he might have been 12 years old. In the midst of his play he was called to fill the kitchen wood box. Reluctantly, he snatched grandfather’s old wheelbarrow, ran it violently into the big woodpile, climbed to the top, picked up the biggest billet of wood and was about to hurl it down in vengeance on the old vehicle, when suddenly his arms froze in mid-air! Quietly and shamedly, he put the big stick down, clambered off the woodpile, loaded up the wheelbarrow, and with succeeding loads filled the big wood box (with the help of his playmates, for like Tom Sawyer, he knew how to make them work for him). He could say with Paul, “They heard not the voice of Him that spake to me.” But he heard it!

Christ still speaks—and in ways we can understand if we listen!