Remembering

Yesterday was the birthdate of Arthur Eugene Metzger. Were he still alive, he would be 100 years old.

His fierce love for this farm - these pieces of land stitched together by the Dingman Run Road - defined him in so many ways. It was this love that was planted in the man I married, the man who carries the name, often these days with the Jr. suffix omitted as the Senior Arthur has been gone for more than 40 years.

Polio - infantile paralysis - struck on this farm in the summer of 1944, days before Arthur and Wanda Gooch had planned to be married. 

From The Potter Enterprise, August 10, 1944

Arthur, with Wanda by his side, spent months in the hospital in Sayre and later at a rehabilitation facility in West Virginia.

Potter Enterprise, 1946

'Never fully recovered,' the newspaper story says. But the man I first met in 1970 had recovered and built (with Wanda always at his side) a fulfilling life - a much different life than the one he had dreamed of on this farm. He walked with the assistance of leg braces and crutches, his broad shoulders and strong arms a testament to his strength and determination. They had been a part of his life since that fateful summer.

Farming - especially in the days before air-conditioned mega tractors and gps guided equipment - demanded great physical strength and, while the whole family supported the effort, it was too much. By this time, he was raising two children, and his parents sharing farming responsibilities while caring for the older generation and raising a young daughter, were stretched to their limits. He knew his farming dream wouldn't support the needs of a growing family. The whole family pitched in to make it work as he set off to college at nearby St. Bonaventure and graduating magna cum laude in 1961.

His career as an accountant with the Federal Government took the family from the farm to locations in New York, the Harrisburg area and then northeastern Pennsylvania. Nearly every weekend and every hunting season, they packed up the station wagon traveled back to the farm.

He and Wanda planned their future together here, a time when they could retire. They fixed up the old horse barn, built a new workshop when the old one was destroyed by fire, and made some modern updates in the old farmhouse.

Memories are blurry sometimes, much like the picture at the top of this post. Though I've heard pieces of this story from many perspectives over the years, it's not my story to tell. Perhaps some day those who carry the memories - his sister Dawn, his daughter Carol and his son, Arthur, will tell their own stories.

I like to think of him as a grandfather, for the birth of our daughter Kate changed him, softened what I perceived as a hard, protective shell and brought him great joy. In fact, they delighted in one another.

By the time Joey was born four years later, Arthur Sr. was ill and returning to this farm in retirement was just a dream. He died in this house in the early summer of 1983.

We all miss him.

with grandson Joseph Arthur, February 1982