The year my Thanksgiving went to pot
by
Henry Burt Stevens
This year was the year I finally realized that Thanksgiving for my family had finally gone to pot. Sure we were all thankful, and it had been happening over a number of years, but now I had to own up to the reality that Thanksgiving as my family had know it was all over.
My wife’s family home in Milford, NH had been cleaned out and sold as both her parents had died and no dinner was being served there to 14 to 18 people. My uncle had died and so no big dinner at his home in Morrisville, VT. My sister and her husband have lived all their adult lives in Syracuse, NY and all their children and grandchildren are nearby. My younger brother has died and the home of many really large family dinners has been sold. My sister in law now lives in Augusta, ME near her children.
Patricia and I are in Punta Gorda, FL and did not travel this summer because of health and so missed our usual three month relative tour in New England as we’ve done for about 18 years.
My mother, May Clark Stevens, who is 94 years old, is under hospice care in Burlington, VT and though we speak often by phone mother had Thanksgiving with her usual table assignment at Pillsbury Manor Assisted Living. My father, Joseph Kent Stevens, died in 1988. May and Joe put on many large Thanksgiving dinners in the 1940s and 1950s.
There many thousand similar stories here in Charlotte County within a fifteen mile circle of me, but I had developed a whine about my story, overlooking the fact that it was just part of me being within months of 70 years old.
As a result of my Mother coming under hospice care in late August I started making family picture books and sending them up to her to read and enjoy with visitors. My method was made simple by using my computer. I merely lined up a series of pictures, scanned them into a file, then went to my text editor and inserted the first picture and wrote about that picture, then inserted the next picture and wrote about that, and so on. Afterwards I printed the file, bound it with clear plastic and plastic binder and mailed them off. I sent copies to other members of the family as well.
These booklets are for my mother’s entertainment. I wrote them from my memory using as many facts and actual dates as I could, but these booklets are not a research project, they’re a project to complete and publish now while there is still time.
My first booklet was May and Joe Stevens and covered their married life. The second booklet was Henry, Murray and Barbara Stevens, their three children. I did a booklet on mother’s brother, Francis Atwood Clark, who was also my father’s best friend. The latest book has been Friends of May and Joe, where I solicited old friends for old pictures and made them up in a booklet.
I happened to show the booklets to the PAF/Legacy genealogy interest group which Pat Lebeau hosts once a month and they were favorably received. In fact, Pat asked me to show and tell in greater detail about the booklets at the meeting held the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Pat wrote to me after the meeting that she believes that a number of the attendees went home and started booklets of their own. Pat did.
It was a couple of days later that it came to me to start a new booklet, “Gatherings of Family and Friends” subtitled “Families and friends turn to gold when one’s hair turn to silver” and “What follows is a collection of old and new photos.”
The first picture in my new booklet is a faded color photo from Thanksgiving 1966 held at the Clark home in Morrisville VT and shows cousins, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers around the table. My brother Murray Kent Stevens is standing at the head of the table carving the turkey. Other old pictures follow. I have emailed and solicited old and new pictures from family members for additions to the new booklet.
Eventually all the family members will receive a CD with all the booklet files on them in portable document files format. (.pdf) Especially the children and the newborns will get a CD to go in their baby books.
I’ve turned my Thanksgiving whine upside down. Christmas this year will be an improvement on Thanksgiving for me.
s/ Henry Burt Stevens
941 575 2470
hank330.hotmail.com
12/11/2002
Published The Sun Herald, Port Charlotte, FL 01/01/2003
