FAMILY REDUX

February 6, 2009

Birren Guided Autobiography

Family Redux

My earlier days with the immediate family were covered in my previous report, so I will try to bring things a little more up to date.

When I returned to this country in 1955, after several years in Paris and London,

I decide not to return to Toledo where all my family lived in the area. A friend and I sublet an apartment on Gramercy Park in New York, and after spending the summer in Rhode Island as General Manager of The Theatre-by-the-Sea, I moved

to New York's Westside just off Riverside Drive.

The following fall, my sister Judy came to visit me before returning to school (she went to Denison, my alma mater) and I did my best to show her New York, but

I realized that I was not feeling well, and it was a real strain to hide it from her.

The day after she left town, I saw my doctor, and he diagnosed a severe case of

hepatitis.

There was no medication available, just bed rest and a very restricted diet, so

I called my step-father at Eagle Point in Toledo, and he and his wife, Jean, whom

I did not really know very well, said that I could come to recuperate.

They put me in an upstairs bedroom, and I asked that they tell no one; so

for the next month or so I slept 16 hours a day, and while they entertained

downstairs at various times, nobody even knew I was in town. It was then that I got to know Jean, and Mary, her daughter (Mary and I call each other step-brother and step- sister, though I am not sure this is correct). Jean was quite wonderful to her husband's stepson. and I am eternally grateful.

After a month or so I called a dear friend, Terry Roloff, who happened to be the

Society Editor of the Toledo Blade, and after she put a note in her column, I suddenly had tons of visitors.

I really was not feeling well enough to return to New York, so when a friend said that he was driving to California and invited me to join him, I accepted. Sarah

Churchill was appearing at the Pasadena Playhouse. and I stayed with her in

West Hollywood until I got a place of my own.

My family, of course, remained in Ohio, and I tried to get back to visit whenever

I could which was about once every two years. When Judy was engaged, she

brought her fiance' out to meet me (Tom Moore, a Kenyon man like her father).

Judy and Tom had three children (Thomas William Moore, III; Elisabeth Smith Moore: and Peter Russell Moore) and I usually stayed at Eagle Point, or with

them in later years in Perrysburg in a house built in 1840, overlooking the Maumee River.

One Spring, in the late 60's, Judy and I were driving down to Granville to visit

Denison, when she announced that she was coming to visit me - for a month -

and bringing her three children. Since I had a small one bedroom apartment, I

was not sure how we would manage; but the kids brought sleeping bags, and

I did have a dining room, so we managed, and the month was just great.

Judy's husband, Tom, died of leukemia in the late 80's, and sad to say, Judy

became an alcoholic. She alienated her two older children though by that time

they were no longer at home. One evening she fell down the steep back staircase and lay there for many hours until found, and certainly had some brain damage.

When Peter, Judy's youngest son, married, I flew to back to Toledo where we

picked up a station wagon, and I drove Judy and her nurse to Chicago for the

nuptials - in February. Judy in a wheelchair seemed to be handling it well.

but when we got back to Perrysburg, she swore she would never again use

the God Damn wheelchair again. And to this day remains bedridden.

Incidentally, I could not think of a wedding present for Peter and Shaw until

I remembered a small ruby glass pitcher inscribed "Dora - Chicago World's Fair -

1893". It was exactly 100 years old, since this was Chicago 1993. Dora

was my grandmother and Peter's great grandmother.

Last October we had a family reunion at Eagle Point. Judy and her children were

at last reconciled; she now has a granddaughter named Winslow.

And I, without children, am the family patriarch.

rwtf