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BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO “There’s more tigers in the state of Ohio, in people’s back yards, than … in India right now, in the wild," — Tim Harrison Tim Harrison’s advocacy for exotic animals — and for common sense — has taken him from southwest Ohio all over the world, speaking on national news programs, teaching for Homeland Security, and being featured in an award-winning documentary.
He will be in Wilmington April 3 on behalf of his organization, Outreach for Animals, as the featured speaker for the Clinton County Reads dinner at the General Denver, which will be a brief stop on his whirlwind schedule, which ranges from rescuing alligators and pythons from Ohio basements to speaking about “Big Cats in Our Back Yard” with actress Tippi Hedren in Los Angeles just days before he speaks here. The Clinton County Reads 2014 book choice, “A Walk in the Woods,” includes information about wild animals along the Appalachian Trail, most often bears, which author Bill Bryson names as one of his great fears along the trail. “A grizzly may chew on a limp form for a minute or two but generally will lose interest and shuffle off,” Bryson writes. “With black bears, however, playing dead is futile, since they will continue chewing on you until you are considerably past caring.”
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BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO I was still in my 20s, still willing to jump chest-deep into a newspaper assignment without asking a lot of questions.
Besides, the Marines called me. My country needed me. How could I refuse? And that’s how I found myself “embedded” 15 years ago — long before there was such a silly journalistic term — with six Camp Lejeune Marines and a Marine’s wife, hiking the Appalachian Trail. When I agreed to go, I had thought I was in decent-enough shape to do a little hiking in the woods. I figured we’d trek up a steep hill, then enjoy the scenery at the top. “La, la, la — look at the lovely wildflowers,” I might remark. I’d carry my backpack and have my hands free to jot down notes as we meandered along the mountain summits. I could not have been more wrong. I barely made it up the first ascent before my lungs were screaming for oxygen, my legs wobbling beneath me. I carried my own backpack for maybe 20 minutes, tops. I was scared, I was overflowing with regret, I was embarrassed, and I was plotting my escape the entire first night in the forest. BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO My great-grandparents, who had immigrated to the United States from southern Italy, were people who made Sunday “gravy” of meat and tomato sauce, poured over pasta. So I am no stranger to comfort food with plenty of carbohydrates. Or “starches,” as they were referred to in our house.
But my Italian family did not mix their starches. If my mother made an “American meal,” it would likely include a meat, a vegetable, and maybe a starch. I personally would’ve preferred a plate of three starches, but that wasn’t in my cards. There’s a scene in the 1996 movie “Big Night,” which is about two brothers from Italy who run a restaurant on the Jersey shore, that makes me laugh each time I recall it. The brothers become frustrated by the Americans’ expectations for Italian food — customers seem to always want a side of spaghetti and meatballs with their starch-filled dishes. Brother Primo, the chef, makes a beautiful risotto (a creamy Italian rice dish) for a woman who insists it should come with something else: spaghetti. Primo is told by his brother that the customer wants a side of spaghetti, and he is incensed. “How can she want it?! They both are starch!” Primo then says, sarcastically, “Maybe I can make mashed potatoes for the other side …” His brother pleads with him to just do as the customer wishes. “No! She’s a criminal!” Primo says. I can certainly understand the criminal mindset when it comes to extra starch. BY EILEEN BRADY SALT MAGAZINE If you’re sitting down with this magazine, perhaps with a hot cup of tea, you’re probably not the person who needs to read this particular article. Maybe you should pass it on to one of those people who says, “I’m so busy” as a badge of honor.
Tap Mrs. Busy on the shoulder and ask her to look up from her smartphone. Tell Mr. Busy to read after midnight, since he brags that he only needs five hours of sleep. Slip it to him on Sunday as he sits in the bleachers at his kid’s sporting event. It’s now a 24/7 world, and we’ve been conditioned to think that more is better, convenience is mandatory, and rest is a four-letter word. For 2,000 years, it was much different: A day of sabbath was observed across cultures, with time for worship and repose. Only in the past several decades has it eroded to the point where nearly any activity — shopping, sports, bar-hopping, working — can happen 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “Sabbath was initially intended not as a heavy theological mandate, but as common sense — because we need to renew,” said the Rev. Dr. Tom Stephenson, pastor at Wilmington’s First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The word “sabbath” means “to rest,” or even “to cease,” which makes the action more intentional, Stephenson said. BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO As the second world war raged in far-flung places, Virgene Webb quietly began making her mark on public education in a small school in western Clinton County.
She carefully entered the names of her first students into her grade book, in beautiful, teacherly cursive: Lorraine Baker, Ruth Esther Bloom, Shirley Bloom, Donald Brewington, Richard Butts ... John Shinkle, Betty Stingley. Miss Webb started teaching in the basement of Kingman School in Chester Township, in time working her way up to a top-floor classroom with windows. That was 1943. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president. Classrooms were filled with female teachers because BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO In the black-and-white photograph of the chair, made of sculptured roots and yellow pine, it looks sturdy and well-built, almost new. The chair, crafted around 1900, has been handed down and moved across state lines, ending up in our neck of the woods.
At one point, though, the chair provided seating on the largest estate in the United States, the Biltmore mansion in Asheville, N.C. In fact, the wood from which it was made was almost certainly homegrown, created from trees on that property. It was built by Dave Taylor’s father’s hands, and it is one of his most prized possessions. He considered allowing the Biltmore to once again place the chair on the estate in Asheville, and a 1974 letter from George H.V. Cecil, then president of the Biltmore Co., states that although there was a policy of not acquiring items for exhibit, Cecil was interested in personally purchasing the chair. But Taylor decided to keep it in the family. David “Dave” Taylor of Wilmington was born in the woods at the Biltmore in 1930, which was completed in 1895 on 125,000 forested acres in western North Carolina. The home of George and Edith Vanderbilt, it was — and still is — the largest home in the United States, a 250-room French Renaissance-style château in what is now Pisgah National Forest. BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO Unless an 11th-hour deal was made last night, the sequester has sequested. The automatic cuts of $85 billion will be trimmed from the federal budget over the next seven months.
Federal workers are freaking out about future furloughs. Hundreds of thousands of nationwide jobs will be lost, and the economy that was picking up speed will slow down again. Airports and military-base communities will be the hardest hit. To a Clinton County resident, it sounds a lot like a DHL pullout. It’s tough to get worked up about the substantial loss of jobs in a place that has already lost a substantial amount of jobs. Clinton County’s unemployment rate went from a low of 5 percent in April 2008 to a high of 19.1 percent in January 2010. It was at 9.7 percent ... BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO Just a few weeks earlier, I had been sitting in the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, tears of appreciation streaming down my face during “Nabucco,” the opera that made Giuseppe Verdi famous.
Far from the living memorial to President John F. Kennedy, I found myself in a grand performing arts venue once more, appreciative tears flowing anew. The production wasn’t an epic Italian opera — just kids strumming harps and creating rhythm with buckets — but I was filled with gratitude that my daughter would feel so comfortable on a stage as beautiful as any in the nation. Tucked into downtown Wilmington is another living memorial — this one to Charles Webb Murphy’s mother — that is truly one of the most beautiful theaters anywhere. For a city our size, it is an anomaly. The marquee can illuminate the entire block and wake up a sleepy little town, but the building’s true beauty lies within. The intricate interior ... BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO At the end of the day, we were either walkers or bus riders. That was in the paleolithic age, before precious family gasoline was spent for school transportation, spawning the arrival of a third category: the “pick-ups.”
I was a bus rider. My parents picked me up from Martinsville Elementary School a handful of times. Otherwise, I had to spend a couple extra hours each weekday commuting on a big, yellow Bluebird bus. I’d wait at the end of my driveway until the bus doors would swing open, the heat would blow in my face, and I’d inhale the familiar yet nauseating smell of pleather seats and rubber aisleways, sometimes mingled with that strange sawdust that covers vomit — a nasty side effect of mixing children, motion, and diesel fumes. I was also part of that unlucky passenger category of being first on, last off. My ride each morning started extra early, and my ride each afternoon ... BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO My mother hoped it would be a phase.
My husband still ranks it up there with the world’s most harrowing announcements. It was 21 years ago that I decided to stop eating meat, just months before I married a hardcore carnivore. The carnivore knew I wasn’t trying to foist my choice on him — or anyone else, for that matter. I made the decision for myself only. I’ve cooked meat regularly since then, and I can surreptitiously eat around meat in anything served to me. Mainly, my husband was worried that our ability to dine out — one of his favorite pastimes — had come to a screeching halt. That didn’t happen, though it does still bother him when I have to resort to ordering a plate of french fries or a small garden salad. For the most part, there’s some kind of item ... BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO “Levy” must be Latin for “headache.”
The proposed 8-mill levy for Wilmington City Schools is a headache for taxpayers who have to pay for it, school employees and students who rely on it, school board members who try to sell it to the public, and anyone like me who struggles to comprehend its implications. I’ve been trying to educate myself about the issues, and although I can’t claim a complete understanding of the Wilmington levy, or Ohio’s unconstitutional need for levies, or the fairness to a community still in the throes of a jobs crisis, I certainly do have a complete headache. The first pains came as I read through the pages of comments on the News Journal’s story after the schools decided Jan. 14 to place a levy on the May ballot. The levy was described, among other things, as a money grab, an unfair burden on farmers and a misuse of money. A few folks, however, said that the relatively low increase is a small price to pay for education. The overall indignity BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO My van’s thermometer registered a 5. Nothing else. No zero followed the 5. Just 5.
Some things should never be single-digit numbers: test scores, batting averages and morning temperatures. A couple Clinton County schools were delayed because of the weather. A couple weren’t. It had not even occurred to me to check to see if my daughter’s school were delayed, because A.) The roads were clear of snow and ice, and B.) This is Ohio, not some fraidy-cat Southern state where they cancel schools at the drop of a flake. But students here do wait for school buses before 7 a.m., so it makes sense that the coldest weather in four years would factor in. I just didn’t think to check for a delay. Five-degree weather must numb my cerebrum. This week, southwestern Ohio has been nowhere close to being the iciest part of the United States, and we haven’t even been breaking our own record lows. But it has been colder than I, a weather whiner, had ever wanted to experience again in my life. The coldest location Monday in the continental United States was Embarrass, Minn., probably named after the people who chose to live in a place where it gets to 36 below zero. BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO There are friends who laugh together, friends who talk for hours, friends who show up in crisis, friends who share food, friends who may as well be family.
I am lucky enough to have many of those kinds of friends, near and far. I can listen to their voices, shop with them, hug them, dine with them and travel with them. I trust them with my family, my pets, my money, my emotional well-being. I dare say most of them would bail me out of jail. So we’re clear that I’m not an anti-social loner in a Kaczynski cabin? I just don’t have any Facebook friends. Because I’ve never joined Facebook. I am not one of the 1 billion-with-a-B people on the planet who use Facebook. Seven out of 10 Americans who are active online visit Facebook, according to Nielsen, the folks who also keep track of our TV viewing. I’m in the minority, but I’ve never really been one to succumb to peer pressure, which was especially helpful when high-school peers were inhaling nitrous oxide from whipped-cream cans. And on Senior Skip Day at Wilmington High School, I was sitting nerdily in class because I had perfect attendance I didn’t want to ruin. If local folks had known a local business was in trouble, would they have gone there first?1/16/2013 BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO Her business was there before Walmart arrived in Wilmington and became her strip-mall neighbor, bringing a great deal of retail traffic with it. Later, her business survived the superstore’s pullout and relocation outside of town.
From Betamax to Blu-Ray, Jen Andorfer has rented it all at First Choice Video. She has worked there more than half her life and has owned the business since 1992. A teenager from Springfield who loved to watch movies, Jen also eventually owned stores in other southwestern Ohio cities, but the Wilmington store is the one that remains. “It’s the only job I’ve had since I was 16,” Jen says. The Clinton County community embraced First Choice Video, and Jen returned the love. She has only raised prices twice in 23 years. Children can still pick a five-day rental for 99 cents. She rents five videos for five days for five bucks. She uses store walls BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO Just 20 miles east of Wilmington, there is a place where disco balls still cast mirrored magic on roller skaters young and old.
At its essence, it’s just a roller rink, and it’s been there for ages. But there’s a timelessness found there that is reassuring when technology and overscheduling seem to distort spontaneous human community. Kids at Roller Haven in Washington Court House still fall under the spell of the colorful lights, the Top 40 music, the physical challenge and the hypnotic revolutions around the wooden floor. The music may indicate it’s 2013 — think “Gangnam Style” and “I’m Sexy and I Know It” — but the DJ usually throws in a song here and there from generations back. On weekend nights, teenagers crowd the center of the rink to dance without wheels. I can still remember my first visit, at age 6, followed by sporadic super-fun skating parties as an adolescent, when Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” was the song BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO One member of our family meets weekly with her friends, and everyone else pitches in to make sure she gets her social time. It’s not who you might think.
Ruthie, our 8-month-old puppy, gets chauffeured Tuesday nights to “puppy pawties,” where she cavorts with Buster and Miley and Cody and Bailey and a roomful of other canine comrades. Ruthie loves it so much, she’d drive herself there if she had opposable thumbs. Each time, there’s a brief puppy version of cocktail hour, with mingling and hugging (and slobbering and rear-end-sniffing). Then it’s down to business with basic obedience commands to learn and practice. And then more play fighting, neck biting and pouncing, ending with each puppy getting weighed on the veterinary scale, equipment that causes anxiety for many pets. There are field trips to local pet-friendly stores such as Lowe’s and Tractor Supply Co. And there’s homework. BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO On a January morning almost four years ago, my daughter was with friends in her kindergarten classroom just a couple of blocks from our home.
But I was 25 minutes away at Fort Belvoir, a large Army base in Virginia, when my phone rang. Another kindergarten parent was calling. Our children’s school was on lockdown. There was a shooter in the neighborhood. That was all the information my friend had. Panic swiftly arrived, followed by a primal desire to get to my child, complicated by distance, strict speeding laws on base and urban traffic. I can still remember the shade of the tree over the parking spot where I took the call; the angle from the entrance to where I was heading; the repeated cell-phone calls to reach my husband, who couldn’t be awoken at home that quickly after finishing a overnight shift. It’s all part of my flashbulb memory. Slowly, details emerged: the man with the gun BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas.
And I’m not talking about pine. We have never had a fresh-cut tree, but we have always had fresh-baked cookies around Christmastime. So the scent of sugar, flour and eggs wafting from the oven is a major sensory tradition in our family. And then, each year, Christmas cookies become the driving force for New Year’s resolutions. But let’s not think about that now. It seems that each geographic region we’ve lived in celebrates with its own particular Christmas cookies, and I’m often surprised when someone has never tasted a cookie that’s considered a staple in other places. We made snickerdoodles two years ago for my daughter’s teacher in Virginia, who fell in love with them and had to have the recipe. I hadn’t know there was a person on the planet who hadn’t eaten a snickerdoodle. Surely they aren’t an Ohio-bred Christmas cookies, a la buckeyes, are they? BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO Last week, two Massachusetts women lost their jobs for a failed attempt at humor in Arlington National Cemetery. People who were particularly offended mounted the effort to have them fired.
If only it were the first act of disrespect at Arlington, I would be able to offer up more outrage. But I seem to have grown desensitized to public stupidity. From the self-absorbed people who are unaware of their surroundings at even the most sacred sites, all the way to the forgotten FBI investigation of the mishandling of human remains at Arlington, the Facebook frenzy over this random act of brainlessness seems somewhat disingenuous. Maybe I’ve just been conditioned to expect people to act as if every tourist attraction — even if it’s a war memorial or national cemetery — is a cool ride at Disney World. Here’s what happened last week to prompt the firings: Lindsey Stone was hunched next to a sign in Arlington cemetery that reads “Respect and silence,” holding up her middle finger and pretending to shout, while her friend Jamie Schuh snapped a photo. The “humor” was that they were challenging authority, as they are apparently wont to do. BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO It was almost six years ago that I wrote about the idea of creating a holiday parade in downtown Wilmington. After the column appeared, I became part of the committee to create Wilmington’s HomeTown HoliDazzle, working at the outset with several of the people who have labored tirelessly every year since then to make HoliDazzle come to life each November. However, I’ve never actually been able to experience HoliDazzle in person, which broke my heart. The military moved our family in the fall of that year, a couple months before the first parade, and we haven’t been able to travel at Thanksgiving. I do remember receiving beautifully detailed, thoughtful emails from friends and fellow committee members who attended and enjoyed that first HoliDazzle parade in 2007 — it made me feel a connection, however small, when I was hundreds of miles away. The military moved our family back to Wilmington this summer, so I am pretty darn thrilled to experience my first HoliDazzle (and Merry TubaChristmas!) on Saturday, which will be the sixth annual event. HoliDazzle brings 10,000 people to downtown Wilmington each year, and I cannot wait to be one of them. Following is the original column, published in the News Journal on Jan. 4, 2007. *** I stood in downtown Lebanon with 39,999 other people early in December and thought, “What does Lebanon have that Wilmington doesn’t have?” I mean, we have a quaint and picturesque downtown, with its beautiful architecture, active business community and government offices that haven’t relocated to a strip mall.
A few of the best restaurants in town even eke out business in the midst of a chain nation. So why were thousands of people gathering in downtown Lebanon instead of downtown Wilmington? Why were people shelling out money all over Warren County? A parade. A holiday parade. Everyone loves a parade. But not just any parade, I’ve come to believe. A parade with a twist. A parade with specificity. A parade like Lebanon’s annual horse-and-carriage parade, which drew an estimated 80,000 people (40,000 in the afternoon, and 40,000 in the evening) and brought participants from hundreds of miles away. The mild weather helped this year’s attendance in Lebanon, but I also saw thousands turn out in last year’s bitter cold and freezing rain. Lebanon cashes in on its historic appeal by harking back to the pre-automobile era, with horse-drawn carriages decked out in jingle bells and sparkling lights. Towns in eastern North Carolina, where my husband and I have lived, capitalize on their nautical appeal by holding Christmas flotillas, parades of boats decked out in lights, viewed by multitudes of people in waterfront downtowns. Heck, we even drove 600 miles to see a flotilla this year. OK, so we technically went for Thanksgiving with friends, but a medical emergency nixed those dinner plans and thus made room for the flotilla to become the highlight of the trip. The point is that a holiday parade is a perfect way to show off a downtown and open local doors to people with Christmas lists in hand and money in their pockets. So I propose a New Year’s thought (I wouldn’t dare create resolutions for anyone), borrowing on an idea from my adopted hometown of Richlands, N.C.: Let’s start a nighttime tractor parade. That’s right — our farmers can bedazzle their John Deeres, make merry with their Massey Fergusons and alight their Allis-Chalmers tractors. They can compete for bragging rights. They can celebrate their final long nights in the fields. They can bring us, our kids, our parents and our friends into downtown Wilmington in the middle of the cold months. Along with celebrating Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Eid or winter solstice, we can celebrate our city’s farming roots. We’re a farming city — our only “skyscraper” is a feed mill. We’re a farming county — with 840 farms, according to the 2000 census. We do it well, and we should create our niche with the area’s only nighttime tractor parade. It might start small, as the Lebanon parade did, but it could likely morph into a regional event. Antique tractor owners might trailer their model B tractors from parts unknown to get a chance to show off for an appreciative audience. Urbanites might bring their kids here, and we’d gladly take their cash. There’s a whole year now before the Wilmington Tractor Spectacular would have to begin. Think we could do it? BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO If we’d had a million dollars and a hovercraft, we may have continued living near Washington, D.C., many more years.
There were countless benefits to living in the D.C. suburbs, but the cost of living, the traffic and the distance from our families in Ohio were major downsides. Clinton County has its own perks, of course, and in the season of Thanksgiving, I’m sharing some of what makes my family and I grateful to live here. *Seeing stars. The night sky is unpolluted at our house, so the sight of billions of stars in cloudless darkness even makes taking the trash to the street an opportunity to stare up at the sky in awe. *Lack of traffic jams. Sure, we sometimes get stuck behind a tractor or two, but there’s a comfort in knowing that a 20-minute trip away from Wilmington is pretty much always going to be a 20-minute trip -- not an unexpected two-hour exercise in frustration. *Graeter’s ice cream. I sure did miss Buckeye Blitz. *Cornfield sunsets. Almost every night, I snap a photo of the sun setting beyond the fields. It’s like ever-changing art. It may not be an oceanfront vista, but dusk here among the rolling hills is pretty darn close. *Tomatoes. Inexpensive, plentiful tomatoes grown in southwestern Ohio soil taste like BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO This Sunday, if you want to personally thank a veteran, just turn left at the sweet-and-sour chicken. You’ll likely run into someone who has fought for your freedom.
If you want to thank someone who has gone out of his way to make those veterans feel special, just look behind the counter at No. 1 China Buffet. As he has done for at least 12 years -- first in Hillsboro and now in Wilmington -- Billy Kong has opened the doors of his Chinese restaurant to military veterans, offering them his appreciation and a free meal. A man who was 12 years old when his family moved to New York City from the Fujian Province in China now hosts what has become Wilmington’s preeminent celebration of Veterans Day. For Kong, it’s simply a way to give back. “That’s the best way for me to express myself, to say thank you,” he says. For those who’ve seen the gratitude on the faces of the veterans, it’s a stirring display of generosity. “It’s amazing. It’s just packed from the time he opens to the time he closes,” says Keith Knauff, who owns Knauff Satellite Sales and Service in New Vienna. Knauff has gone along when his brother, Phil Knauff, who served in the Army BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO Megan Holland and Jordan Woolums have worked hard to secure spots on the soccer team at Indiana University, a Division I school that has been a member of the Big Ten conference since 1899.
They’ve played together for two years in college, after participating most of their lives in various leagues and soccer clubs: Jordan in St. Louis and Megan in Cincinnati. They’ve spent untold hours together as Hoosiers, running drills, competing in matches, and traveling around the Midwest and as far as Malibu, Calif., and Tampa, Fla. But it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that Jordan, Megan and their parents realized their relationship can be traced back almost 50 years to tiny Martinsville, Ohio, population: 462. Megan, 20, is the daughter of Bryan and Julie Holland. Julie grew up on a farm outside of Martinsville, where she was known by her maiden name, Julie Cramton. Jordan, 19, is the daughter of Larry and Mickey Woolums. As a boy growing up in Cuba, Ohio, Larry was then known by his middle name, Keith, and is still called that by family members, including his mother, JoAnn Woolums of Wilmington. BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO Emily nearly kept my fiancé from making it to our wedding in 1993. Just three years after the honeymoon, Bertha tried her best to destroy our new house. Her big sister Fran blew into town two months later, crashing through our fence and taking several prized pecan trees with her. A Category 3 hurricane, Fran was a monster storm that killed 27 people overall and destroyed 696 homes in our North Carolina county alone. The only reason Fran was not even more destructive was because Hurricane Bertha, also arriving in the summer of 1996, had essentially cleared the way weeks earlier. Sneaky Emily had brushed the Outer Banks before heading back to sea, so the military gave the go-ahead for my fiancé to travel to his own wedding. Bertha, a Category 2 storm and the first hurricane I’d ever lived through, felt more like an extreme, long-lasting Ohio thunderstorm. It also seemed to forge a oceanic path for dozens of subsequent East Coast hurricanes, ending a 36-year lull as it became the first full-fledged hurricane to directly hit the North Carolina coast since Donna in 1960.
Our friends who lived with their young children in a mobile home on Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base hunkered down for both hurricanes at our off-base house, playing Yahtzee by candlelight to calm nerves. Our inland home had stood standing since the late 1800s, so we figured its odds were better than something put together in a factory in the 1980s. My husband already had a healthy respect for hurricanes, ever since he flew into Okinawa in 1991 during Typhoon Kinna, as part of an airline’s misguided attempt to “outrun” the storm. Airplanes and typhoons do not play well together, and even the crew was terrified. Bertha’s 100-mph winds sounded as if they would peel off our metal roof like a sardine can. Fran roared as if it would peel the entire house from its foundation. But we were lucky. We survived mostly unscathed. But those storms destroyed building, roads and lives. I can still picture the refrigerators floating next to upside-down fishing boats and cars that had been tossed into the water like Matchbox toys. Hurricane winds uprooted many of the Bradford pear trees planted near the Marine base in honor of each of the 241 Marines, soldiers and sailors killed in the Beirut bombing in 1983. A local car dealership quickly raised the money to replace the memorial trees, but it was another loss those families shouldn’t have had to bear. What I know from the post-hurricane months (and years) is that the American Red Cross, chartered by the U.S. Congress and sustained with donations, appears in a disaster area even faster than the TV news satellite trucks and the Davey Tree bucket trucks that stream in on the highways. I also know that long after most of the outside help and attention has turned elsewhere, coastal communities struggle to rebuild. We survived those major hurricanes, and minor ones in other places, which I reminded myself Monday night as gusts up to 40 mph battered our house in Clinton County, 600 miles from the nearest coast. Just as I have done for countless hurricanes over the past 16 years, I carefully tracked the official hurricane symbol, the one that looks like combative commas. I’d never had to worry about wind-chill factors during hurricane spin-up, though. Hurricane Sandy was predicted to be extremely dangerous and was threatening friends and family in Washington, D.C., and New York City, which worried me even more. A first-grade friend of ours, Liem, heard the storm news near D.C. and said he found it hard to believe it would be bad because “‘Sandy’ sounds like she’d be a nice woman.” He had a point. “If they really wanted us to be worried, they should call it ‘Hurricane House-Destroyer’ or something like that.” Adding “Superstorm” before “Sandy” certainly helps make it a more appropriate moniker. I calmed my nerves by following the pre-disaster protocol of heading to the grocery store, ready to grab the last of the bottled water and bread -- a half-baked move in a landlocked Ohio town. The Kroger shelves were fully stocked late that afternoon. That’s not to say Ohio hasn’t been affected over the years by its share of hurricanes and hurricane-created weather. The path of Hurricane Katrina, the costliest U.S. hurricane, went directly through Clinton County in 2005, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Since 1888, more than 15 hurricane paths have come within 100 miles of Wilmington. Usually, Ohio feels the effects of far-away hurricanes in the heavy rain that they bring. But the biggest impact came in 2008, without much rain, when Hurricane Ike’s winds caused $1.1 billion in damage to our state. Growing up, I’d sometimes question why I was called a Hurryin’ Hurricane, but it makes a little more sense these days. BY EILEEN BRADY THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO The first day of autumn usually triggers some kind of cider-craving mechanism in my brain. And while a global economy makes it possible to eat mediocre apples year- round, only those recently picked at an orchard are crisp and fresh enough to make it really feel like fall.
The perfect apples of my memory came in a small paper bag, which had a cute carrying handle, bearing the words “A&M Orchard.” I remember the sweet coolness of the Apple House and the cider we’d take home, unmatched in quality anywhere. It is the drink my young Ohio-bred nieces and nephews asked for by the name “side-uh,” influenced by their grandmother’s New York accent. So I decided to restart a tradition of visiting the orchard near Midland and proposed a day of apple picking with my daughter, who eagerly tagged along. We headed south on U.S. Route 68, |
Eileen Brady:Observant and curious. Good listener. Archives
March 2014
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