Yes, I was the second child in our family. The first child was Marion Gilmore, now Marion is Nefferd. She still lives here in Lima and has a large family.

Then I came along 12 years later. They had a little trouble getting me here but I got here. So Marion helped raise me too, and then five years after that my younger sister was born, Phyllis Mae Gilmore and now she is a Howland. That’s all of us.

Well, my dad was a postal worker by this time. He had worked as a young man at several other little jobs, but he ended up as a postman and during the Depression he never lost a paycheck.

But then, during the Second World War, he went into Uncle Howard Courtney’s machine shop and they made airplane engines.

But, when he was done with that he went back to his postal job. He took the postal job until retirement and then he couldn’t stand being home so he became a bank courier, but then he decided to retire finally.

He lived until he was 84, he died in ’85. They were both born in 1901, and my mom had one boy and four girls were in her family. Oh well, here we go! I should have this in front of me. Her youngest sister was Phyllis.

Toots. Yes, that’s what they called her ever since she was born but her real name was Marjorie. Then Berndein. Okay, so her name was Berndein Lucille. They didn’t want it spelled Bernadine because that was a Catholic name, but in the end they all became Catholics! (Laughter)

I know they lived in a house down on South Atlantic which is down by where Westinghouse was. It was an Italian end of town so I learned to speak Italian before I spoke English.

Mom was a housekeeper but she lived – they moved in with their parents. It must be the Gilmore home, and I was told that the attic belonged to one of dad’s brothers and his wife and the second floor belonged to mom and dad. The other ones lived downstairs, because there just wasn’t any money then so they were bunking up together.