Guest blog today is a letter my grandmother Edith wrote for my Grandfather’s 80th Birthday, on November 7, 2001.
The good lord knew what he was doing when he had our paths cross in 10th grade English class. Our Detroit high school was the only technical high school in the States at that time. Glasco was in the Auto-Aero classes, where they repaired the teachers’ cars and aeroplane motors. He also took a chemistry class – taught by Charles Lindberg’s mother. Our 10th Grade English teacher was impressed and requested that he read out loud a composition on steam engines – that he had built and that really worked plus canons that shot. All this certainly took my notice!
How fortunate I was to meet him at that time. Glasco was so resourceful: for example, he helped his mother caring for a younger brother and two younger sisters. His aunt told me that he would come home from school and chop wood for a cook stove and wash diapers when his mother was in bed with a “milk leg” after his last sister was born, and he would never complain. Glasco was so adept at caring for babies, and still is today!
Glasco enlisted for 4 years in the Marines on Nov. 7th, 1941. I met him in the middle of the busiest street in downtown Detroit, and he said that he had just enlisted, could he write to me; and I said, “sure”! He was called to boot camp on Feb 16th, 1942.
He spent 23 months overseas without returning to the States. When Glasco went overseas, the only two books on board the troop ship were “Wuthering Heights”, which he hated, and a dictionary, which I’m positive that he memorized, as he is an excellent speller today. (Later, when we moved to Wichita, Kansas we had two children and 16 boxes of books.) Glasco started his service in New Zealand, then Guadalcanal, back to New Zealand, and to Tawara, where he was wounded. He was sent to a hospital on Hawaii. In the hospital, he was considered among “the walking wounded” with a chest wound and shrapnel everywhere, but he was required to clean the latrines in the hospital (At least he got to see something in Hawaii while with the Marines). My first “treasure” was a dragon that he carved with a penknife, out of a sperm whale’s tooth while standing in mess lines in the Marines.
From there he went to Saipan, then to Tinian and back to Saipan. The Marines wanted to make him an officer in the field, as they lost so many, but he didn’t think he was qualified. The Marines tested him and sent him to Princeton University on V 12. While he was at Princeton, we saw each other only sporadically since I was in the Henry Ford Hospital School of Nursing. Glasco haunted the New York area to add Chinese coins to his collection and for books at a shop called Orientalia (that was run by two old maids and a black cat). From Princeton, he sent me a book about Jade, and wrote that the best exhibit of Jade in all colors of the rainbow was in a museum in Hawaii. Another unusual book on Chinese symbols was mailed to me from Princeton, the edges were folded pages of rice paper and it was bound in the typical Oriental way. It told that the symbols for music and joy were the same and that the symbol for war was two women under one roof.
We were married the day after I officially finished nurse’s training on March 14, 1946, in Detroit in Hope Lutheran Church. With the lack of housing in Ann Arbor, where he attended the University of Michigan on the GI Bill, I had to stay with my folks while he roomed with a German family. He got around on my bother Art’s bike. When the Michigan State bonus was given to veterans, Glasco spent the 200 dollars on a car that he could fix. He eventually even patched the head, when a rod blew a hole in it. When it came time for his birthday, Nov. 7th, I got up early, baked him a cake and took it on the bus to Ann Arbor. I can still see the incredulous look on his face. As he had never had a birthday cake before this, his 25th birthday.
When he came home from Ann Arbor on the weekend, he would always help – even to dusting if it needed to be done. A 19-year old Danish girl was visiting my folks and she could not get over him, since men in Denmark did not help at all!
While in Ann Arbor, Glasco started polishing stones by hand. Today he is such an expert and perfectionist, checking the stones under his microscope. Among my treasures is a turquoise and sterling necklace that Glasco made for me. When I wore it to Choir at church one day, one girl asked me how much he charged for it. I said that I didn’t know, but that the cost was that I didn’t see him for three months – but I knew where he was – in the basement working on that necklace.
If Glasco wanted to make something, he would go to the Library and read up on the subject. When a friend gave him a huge, but broken walrus tusk, he did an incredible job making a string of flat graduated beads from it. Then he decorated each side of the bead with scrimshaw versions of different birds, exactly as pictured in the National Geographic magazine. So today I have many more treasures.
We always had a garden at the houses where we lived. When we moved to Pittsburgh and rented a duplex with no garden, Glasco would always pick me wild flowers on his walk home. He still brings flowers in from the garden for me. Glasco loved to explore Nature as much as I did. Our greatest adventure with Nature was to have a farm to explore for almost 25 years, until it was time to give it up.
But the real treasure, is how he fixed up this house into a home with his hand crafted and designed furniture. The living room wall of book cases cupboards and show boxes with lights at the top and bottoms and shelves to hold out many treasures. Every friend that comes in and sees it says, “Wow!” So I have every thing a woman wants, a house of her own, a true helpmate, and a never dull, but vibrant being that I hope to spend many more years with!
Edith Rector
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