Growing Up in Williamsport, Ohio

1948
 
Nineteen forty-eight was a pivotal year in our lives. I’m not sure it was a good year or a bad year or a little of both. But any way you look at it, it was a year that changed our lives forever. We were one family that was really like two families, the older kids and the younger kids. It was about to become a family with only two younger kids.
 
Kathleen had gotten married in 1947, Bob enlisted in the Army when he turned 18 on April 14, 1948 and Jean married young. Kathleen’s first child, Louise, was born and Betty and I both got German measles. Unlike the song, I can’t say, “It was a very good year”. I was only ten.
 
Like any mother, Mama didn’t want Bob to enlist in the Army. And like many young men, he made the decision to enlist. He, Earl Rutheford and “Junie” King went to Circleville together. They talked about it and said if they could stay together, they would enlist. They were promised that they could. That never happened and they never saw one another in the service during their enlisted years. I don’t believe “Junie” King was able to go.
 
Bob, Kathleen and Jean were such important people in our lives that their absence was sorely felt. After Bob left, I came home from school one day and stood in front of the heater in the living room and burst into tears. My mother came running from the kitchen and asked, “what is wrong with you?” I said, “I miss Bob” and I continued to cry.

©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020
Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck