 |
Grist for the MillA bimonthly Publication of the Freeport Area Historical Society - August/September, 2008 |
|||
MEETINGS Open House dates are scheduled for July 26, August 16 and September 13 during the "September by the River." Come and visit during Open House or come and help. GOOD NEWS - VALLEY MILLS ROOF It rained on Monday morning. Then, on Tuesday morning, Wednesday was a deluge, Thursday was a cloudy day, By Gordon Brenneman If you helped with the roof, you'll remember those trying times. But all those volunteer hours helped us get a PA Heritage Parks Grant, administered by Rivers of Steel. The grant is in the amount of $6,000. YEAH FOR US!! And kudos to Don and Bonnie Collar and Alan and Robin Bennett and Frank Craig for all the hours they spent in compiling information for the grant application. LIFETIME MEMBERS Are you still interested in receiving Grist for the Mill? If not, please let us know. Postage seems to increase every year. MEMORIES At her very tallest, Winnie Jack never reached 5 feet. But she has been a pint-sized bundle of energy from her earliest days right up to the present. The daughter of Howard and Adna Jack, she grew up in Clinton with one sister and three brothers. The river was their playground. In warm weather they would dive in and swim, water ski and canoe. One stunt they pulled was to ride the waves behind paddleboats. They'd ride downriver from Clinton to Freeport, then "catch" a paddleboat back up to Clinton. That ended when her mother found out about it! Obviously her parents had rules about safety. In winter she would ice skate and her father would take a broom handle and go out and check for air holes to be sure they had a safe area to skate. They would play cowboys and Indians in caves along the river. When there was snow, they did a lot of sled and toboggan riding. Winnie says, "We did everything the town kids did plus all the things that country kids did." Most of her friends were cousins; Howard was the oldest of 7 children, Adna the youngest of 10 and many of them lived in the neighborhood. Her education began at a one-room school in Clinton. She attended school there for 7 years. Why not 8? Well, Winnie skipped 3rd grade. The teacher, Miss Bush, who taught all 8 grades, wanted her to skip 5th grade too, but her parents said no - she was already so young. There was a potbelly stove in the school and when it broke down, they'd be so happy because they got to go home for the rest of the day. They also would run home from school each day for lunch then back to school for the afternoon. On the way to school they loved to walk through mud puddles or piles of snow when it was cold. Along the way they'd pass Aunt Lulu's house and know that she'd be reporting their behavior to their mother on the phone. Winnie says, "We couldn't get away with anything!" Winnie spent her freshman year at Freeport. She met her future husband that year (Norman Neubert, also known as Nouch) and participated in the school Christmas play that year. All the other participants were seniors. One was Toby Fullerton, a football player, and since she loved sports as much as she did, it was really special for her to be a part of it. Nouch himself lettered in football all 4 years and she still has his letter sweater. There was no bus transportation, so her mother drove her into town each day; in bad weather sometimes they'd end up in a ditch and do circles, but she got there. In her sophomore year a friend of her brother drove her to Kittanning for school and she still has friends from Kittanning. Bus service began when she was a junior, so it was back to Freeport for her last two years of high school. Not that her mother didn't spend a lot of time going back and forth - Winnie was very active in school, playing intramural field hockey and basketball and was a cheerleader. So her mother did a lot of picking up after those activities. She graduated in 1943. Readers might wonder if they had two cars - no, people didn't in those days. But her father was an engineer on a riverboat, on the Mon and Ohio Rivers, and worked 10 days in a row, and then off 5; so her mother had the car most of the time. One sad memory from her childhood was when her brother Howdy had polio. Happy memories including listening to her mother give a "reading" or elocution. Winnie's favorite was "Tom Brown." Her mother was very talented musically, giving piano lessons and taking singing lessons. She played the organ for 40 years in the Clinton United Presbyterian Church. Not too much of this rubbed off on Winnie - she was too interested in playing sports with the boys. She did do a little piano and took violin lessons from Mr. Don Singer. The violin is now a wall decoration in the home that she and Nouch built. She does regret not continuing with music. Her mother was pretty strict about dating and Winnie had the earliest curfew among the gang and would have to be the first taken home following a party, or skating, or going to a movie (Ritz Theater - peanut heaven - 20 cents admission.) If she was late getting home - next time she didn't get to go! Following graduation she worked for the Navy in Pittsburgh for a couple years. Winnie's mother was again the taxi driver, taking her over to the station in Garvers Ferry. Because of her size, the conductor would lift her up the step. In Pittsburgh she remembers one of the policeman stopping traffic if he'd see her running when the train was late. After work another conductor would hold the train if he'd see her scurrying for the trip back home. Coming home the train was on the Freeport side of the river. Once she got to sit up front with the engineer and blow the whistle. Winnie worked there about two years and the department eventually dissolved some time after the war ended. She was enjoying a little break from the long days - catching a train at 6:10 in the a.m., not getting home until 7:00 p.m. and doing this every day but Sunday and Christmas was pretty exhausting. She would soon be back to work, this time at Schenley, but she never had to interview there. Mary Hill was in charge of hiring salaried people at Schenley. She would stop in at Jess Nixon's store, next to the station, to get a paper on her way to work. One day she asked Jess if she knew anyone who would be good to hire; Jess gave her Winnie's name. This was the day before Thanksgiving, 1945, and the day after Thanksgiving, she began to work there and continued there until some time after they closed, finishing up paperwork. Winnie was in charge of hiring the hourly employees and loved working there. The hours were sometimes long, but the women on the line were very kind to her and she still has contact with some of them to this day. Following her employment at Schenley she worked for the law firm of Lindsay, Kemper and Lutz in Butler as a secretary and then retired at age 62. She and Nouch married in 1951 and he designed the home she lives in to this day. Their wedding was held at Trinity Lutheran Church, with the reception in the church basement. The Neuberts were active in that church and because of the time of the year and the potential for bad weather, they thought it would be easier for people to stay in town. Winnie says that Nouch later "saw the light" and became a Presbyterian! As an adult she continued with sports, always enjoying a swim and skiing. She and Nouch taught many of their nieces and nephews to snow and water ski. They took many canoe trips to Canada and at least three trips a year went out west to snow ski. Nouch flew the largest plane in the world at the time, a B29, over the South Pacific during the war. (See next story.) Winnie proudly will show visitor's his leather military jacket and her dad's WW1 uniform. As an adult, Winnie remained active in countless ways. She taught Sunday School to 3-5 year olds at the Clinton United Presbyterian Church for 40 years. She was active in and a past President of the Freeport Evening Club, a General Federation of Women's' Clubs organization, now defunct. She has been very active in the hospital auxiliary, has done some volunteer work for the library and is past president of the American Cancer Society Four Corners Unit. Winnie runs the yearly Fashion Show for them and it raises some major sums of money to fight the disease. She does all this despite the fact she herself is fighting colon, liver and skin cancer. Winnie is very well known around the area, but we think there is one thing you might not know - Winnie is actually her middle name. Her given name is Carolyn Winifred Jack Neubert and we're sure glad she spent some time with us and shared her life story! TIDBIT IN TIME Winnie has a framed copy of a newspaper clipping regarding an exploit of Norman Neubert who became her husband some years after this incident. It is unknown which newspaper published this story, but we can tell you that Mr. Vincent Robinson was in charge of Kiski Junction at the time this happened and a handwritten date on her copy says July, 1945. Here is the article: "Scores of Freeport persons left their beds and watched early yesterday as a B29 piloted by a Freeport airman soared over the community. Flying out of a Louisiana airport, Flight Officer Norman Neubert phoned his family that he would fly over Freeport during the night. During the early hours of the morning the distant roar of motors could be heard and a few minutes later the plane appeared with searchlights playing over the town. Rail workers at Kiski Junction, believing that the pilot was searching for an emergency landing field, hurriedly lighted the yards and switched on locomotive headlights. The young airman is a son of M/M Norman Neubert, High Street. He left Barksdale Field, Louisiana just 7 hours before he flew over Freeport." |
||||