MORE OF THE PIERCE CLAN...........................

Now for an account of Dad's siblings and their spouses and offspring.  These people you remember for the most part.  You will also remember some eventa I include here, but maybe there will also be some new things that you did not know.  So here goes.

Dad was the third child of four children born to Alvah and Edna Pierce.  I think all four children were born in the Danielson area, most in the home where they lived.  In those days, many women had their babies at home and did not have access to a hospital.  Uncle Luther was the first born, Aunt Esther the second born,  Dad was the third child and Uncle Richard the baby of the clan.  They were all within two to five years of each other, so grew up together, beginning with the frame house built for the family after they moved from that original old homestead, then at the big white home in Brooklyn, which you all remember. and which is now part of the Pierce Memorial Home for the elderly. 

I will attempt to write for  you what I remember as being told me by the various members of the family, but I may not remember the sequence of everything.  Uncle Luther was the first born. As was often the case, your grandmothr and grandfather made their home with his parents. This was often the case with young married people of that day.  But then Grandpa Pierce had a home built for Uncle Luther and his beginning family which is where they lived I think for some time before eventually moving to the big white house in Brooklyn town.   Uncle Luther was born in that frame house and was followed two years later by Aunt Esther.

When Uncle Luther was in his late teens or early twenties, the Second World War erupted, and he joined the army.  During the period of his training in the service, he was sent to Dothan, Alabama, where there was a large training base. There was a big Southern Baptist church in town where Aunt Fran attended, and she and her friends held regular events for the young men living on the nearby military base. Uncle Luther - being brought up a good Baptist - attended the Baptist church and also went to their gatherings for the soldiers, which is where he met Aunt Fran.  She was a Southern belle, and has never really lost her Southen accent and charm.  They made their home in Brooklyn, where they lived in a small house not far from his parents.  Later on, Luther and his family moved into a spacious home, on the next property to the Pierce home you grew up with as children. When they were younger, there were some marital problems for a while, but they wer resolved and they have had a long, happy married life. For some years Uncle Luther owned and flew his own small plane and Aunt Fran learned to fly that also.  They have always kept in touch with us - even came to Africa to see us, and always visited on furlough.  They moved to Miami from New England to take an assistant pastorate in a large Baptist church there. Uncle Luther had a radio program in Miami which was quite popular as a religious program of those days. From there he took a fulltime pastorate in Hallendale, Florida, north of Miami, and we visited them there one Easter time on our furlough.  They moved back north again and ended up in Pittsfield, Massachusettes, where Uncle Lu servd as an assistant pastor in a Congregational (?) church.  They built themselves their own home in the woods of the hill country there, and finally sold it a couple years ago and moved to Florida again. They live near Roger and his wife in central Florida and plan to remain there.  They, of all the family, have kept in best contact with us through the years.

Aunt Esther was a charming lady.  She had married fairly young,  and I never knew that husband. When I first met Aunt Esther, she lived in Yale and then New York City, where she worked in the publishing house of the Episcopal church.  Sh worked in their junior high educational department, developing written SS materials, for some years.  In New York she met Uncle Averill (distant relative of Averill Harriman, the well know at the time New Yorker)  and they seemed to have a good marriage. They were both New Yorkers, kind of artsy, and fun people really.  They had no children and so adopted children - Alice and Philip. Alice was also very artsy like her parents, and eventually ended up out in Hollywood where they live until this day.  Phillip married also, and he was an educator.  His wife is a dear person, but unfortunately bcame an alcoholic.  They finally moved up to Vermont, thinking a change would be good for her, but she remained an alcoholic.  Phillip and she were finally divorced, he has remarried, they both live in Vermont as well as Uncle Averill, and they share the children.  What is it they call them - wishbone children, pulled in two directions.  They were all at Aunt Esther's funeral on that cold, wintry day in Vermont. And they all still live in the same area up there.

Aunt Esther's funeral was a time of gathering for the family. During the ceremony, communion was served up front by the woman priest officiating. We went up by rows to take communion, and Philip was there with his newly engaged wife as well as his divorced wife. I went up with the divorced wife to take communion and their young son went up with us too.  If you did not want to sip the alcohol in the chalice, you crossed your arms in front of you over your chest, and as I stood by the young son, he crossed his arms as did his mother.  This because of her alcoholism. I had never seen that before.

The youngest of the Pierce offspring was Uncle Richard.  He studied for the ministry at Andover-Newton Seminary in New England, I think a congregational seminary.  They had been married several years and had no children, so they decided to take two boys as foster children. These boys were brothers. They had a beautiful mother (I remember meeting her) but she was too busy running around to care for her boys and so gave them up for foster care.  Dick and Jean were elated, but after several years they realized the mother would never give the boys up for adoption, and so they decided to send them back and at that time adopted their two girls, Sally and Susan.  You kids knew those girls growing up. Sally is divorced from her military husband of some years, and lives with her children in Maryland. Susan married a loser, and she had one daughter. He left her and she married another loser. She lives near her folks in Hartford, CT, and her parents often care for their granddaughter.  They still live in the same little house they bough back in the beginning of their marriage.  Jean retired recently from the town library where she was librarian for many years. Uncle Richard is still active in his local church near where they live.  Baptist I think.  

One furthere paragraph about the Luther Pierce children....The oldest, Roger, rose to the rank of major in the United States army.  He retired from the army, married an older lady, whom he had met on marathon bike rides, which they both love.  They seem happily married and live in Florida near his parents.  Larry was the second son, loved his trips to Africa, played the piano like a pro. He married young, actually a Christian girl, but after several years of marriage - and no children - she divorced him.  He was single for a while, but finally married Rose.  We met her once when we were on tour near them in Florida.  She was a total mismatch for Larry, and she had two or three grown girls of her own from a previous marriage.  Several years ago, Rose died suddenly.  The girls made life hard for Larry - took all his money, furniture, etc.  And he finally died unexpectedly from (I think) a heart attack.  Jimmy was next in line in the family, and again I think he was divorced, then married again.  We went to their wedding as were in Nyack on Home Assignment. That wedding was so hard on Grandma Pierce, as it was so very secular, with a wild  reception after the dry ceremony.  Both Jimmy and Alan married women who had already been married and wre divorced/ They "inherited" children through their divorced wives, and they all live in Massachusettes near each other I think.  It is interesting to note that Uncle Lu and Aunt Fran do not have a single biological grandchild.  And of the four Pierce children, only Dad and Luther had biological children.  The rest were adopted.

And I thiink that about sums up the Pierce progeny!

NOW FOR THE PIERCE CLAN

Now for Dad's side of the family.....
   You and I knew Grandma Pierce when she was quite afluent, but she was not always that way.  She was born into a preacher's family - her dad was a Nazarene preacher. He was a super strict, conservative man and the family was very ordinary.  I remember her telling me once that when she was a girl, there was a period when she could not go to school as she had no shoes to wear!  There were several children and Grandma's birth mother died quite young.  Her Dad married again.

The one sister I knew was her sister, Edith.  When we lived in Rutland, when you older girls were babies, she brought her sister with her and drove up to spend some time visiting us.  Aunt Edith had married an eastern European immigrant, and they lived on a hand-to-mouth kind of farm.  There were a number of children, and without doubt that family still lives in the Danielson area of Connecticut.

Grandma had a brother whom we knew, Uncle Nelson.  He and his wife, Elsie, had a daughter, Beverly, and the whole family traveled out to our wedding in Pennsylvania.  Uncle Nelson lived on a farm in the Danielson area, and I remember visiting there once.  They were good Christian people and Nazarene.

Grandpa Pierce I never met.  Just about the time Dad and I started dating, when we were both at Nyack College, Dad got word that his father had had a massive heart attack and was not expected to live.  I was working as roving hostess in the dining room that day when the phone call came for Dad saying his dad had passed on, and I had to deliver the message to him.  He went home for a week for the funeral.  So that is why I never met your Grandfather Pierce.  The family were farmers - remember when we all visited that old family farm, which is like a museum.  Grandpa and Grandma lived on that old farm, then moved on to another house, and eventually moved to the big white house in Brooklyn, which we visited last year.

Both Grandma and Grandpa worked in the Connecticut Baptist Convention. He was for a while president of the state Baptist convention, and used to often give messages and speeches to various groups. He was a well known Baptist layman in that area.  Grandma also worked in the Missions department of the Connecticut Baptist Convention, and every year she planned an elaborate women's missions conference in Hartford.  After Grandpa's death, Grandma joined a Baptist group and made a world tour by ship.  She also went to Alaska by boat with a group.  And of course she came more than once to visit us in Burkina Faso.

Grandpa Pierce had a brother, Charles, who died young.  He also had a brother, Fred, and we used to visit them in Massachusettes when you girls were young.  Fred was an educator all his life and worked in the Massachusettes school system.  We visited them a couple times, and when you children were young, they always sent us Christmas gifts.  They had one son who was mentally incapacitated, a big man. He was not violent, very passive, but a big care for the parents all of his life, his name was David. Uncle Fred and Aunt Gladys had another son, Stanley, who was also an educator. He and his family lived near Chicago.  We went to visit them one time when we were involvd in a TEE seminar in Wheaton.  They were Christian people, middle class, had a couple of children also. We used to exchange cards and news at Christmas time each year.

So Grandma came from a Nazarene background and Grandpa Pierce's family were all Baptists....
 how did they get togther??  The story goes that they met in a grocery store. He may have been working there and she came to buy something, and that was the beginning of a long family line of Pierce's!! 

So in capsule form,  this is the tale of the Amasa Dowe Pierce family, to which you all belong! 

THE KENNEDY CONNECTION...............

Now on to Grandpa Kennedy's side of the family.  Both Grandma and Grandpa Kennedy (your Grandpa's parents)  were born in Western PA.  I remember that Grandpa was born in Ford City, PA, which means that his parents lived there.  One time Debbi and I were driving to Mahaffey from Pittsburgh and passed right by the little burg of Ford City.  To my knowledge, they never traveled anywhere - except from house to house always in the Pittsburgh area.  They were both tall, large boned people and I remember them only with white hair. .  They were by nature nomads I guess as every time we visited them, it was in a different house, but all in the Pittsburgh area.

Grandpa was a railroad man, and he was a big man, with a deep raspy voice and a heart like a marshmallow.  His mother died when he was young, and the new wife of his father did not want children and so he was relegated to grow up in an orphanage.  I remember visiting Grandma and Grandpa Kennedy when I was young.  They were kind people and I enjoyed being with them.  They were obviously very prejudiced people, as I remember one time when I was staying alone with them, they were living on a hill and at the foot of the hill was a cluster of houses.  My grandmother warned me not to go near there, that those people were "hunkies".  I think they were actually Italians.  And actually my grandparents always lived in quarters that we would consider the poverty level today.

There were five children in the Kennedy clan:  Grandpa, the oldest, then Aunt Vivian, Uncle Fred, Uncle Kenneth and Aunt Thelma.  I do not know if you remember any of them, but again they all lived around the Pittsburgh area.  After Grandpa Kennedy died, Grandma always lived with her youngest daughter, Aunt Thelma. They both attended an Alliance church spasmodically.  Aunt Thelma was a long time single before she married Uncle George.  They produced twins - not identical in any way.  The girl was like Aunt Thelma, tall and normal and the boy was like Uncle George, a bit strange in both looks and personality!  Aunt Thelma was a member of the Aliquippa Alliance church, I suppose until her death. And I have lost track of her children.

Aunt Vivian was a great lady.  She and my Uncle Chuck were a kind of strange couple - he was a very short skinny man and she was a tall, well built lady.  To my knowledge he never accepted the Lord, but she was a faithful Christian all her life.  He was a chain smoker, their house was very tiny, but I always loved going there. They were a happy family and although their house was very small, they welcomed everyone and she was a good cook and very hospitable.  Their children were Mary, the oldest and the one from whom we got the saying in our family - "Pass the food, cousin Mary" as she would never pass anything at the table.  (How is that for trivia??)  The second was also a girl, Virginia, who was my age.  She was a diabetic and married and raised a family right near her folks.

Then there was Charles, called Sonny by everyone.  He married a lovely girl who attended the small Alliance church where Aunt Vivian took her children each week, and they have had a long very happy marriage.  They still keep in contact with us.  He worked in the local steel mills.  Tommy was the youngest and I really do not know what his life was like after childhood.  We probably visited this family more often than the other relatives.

Then there was Uncle Fred.  He had been married as a young man, but I never knew that wife.  He remarried  another lady after a divorce, something that made him a kind of "black sheep" of the family, as divorce was frowned on in those days.  They had one daughter  and we visited them occasionally on furlough.  Uncle Kenneth and his wife kept in contact with my parents until their death.  To my knowledge, they never professed salvation, but they did keep up family contact.  They had two sons, and I always had a good time with them when they visited - Billy and Jimmy.

My Dad attended Whiteside Memorial Bible Institute at the Allegheny Center Alliance church.  I was in that church on tour several years ago, and was looking at the old pictures on the church office walls.  I found a picture of Grandpa Kennedy standing on the back row of his class at Whiteside.  From there he went to Nyack for a year of missions training.

Grandma Kennedy was a student for three years at Nyack Missionary Training Institute. She did not have the money to live in the dorm, so she worked for a wealthy family down on the Hudson river shore, where she helped keep house and slept and thus earned her living.  As soon as Nyack graduation was over, Grandma and Grandpa went home to Marion Hill and were married in the Alliance church there. From there they went directly into ministry, in Buffalo, New York, and from there to French West Africa.  

YOUR FAMILY TREE

With the advent of Facebook and other internet services, someone is always asking me to please sign on as his/her relative.  Sometimes these are real relatives, occasionally it is someone I have never heard of. Usually I look at the invitation, but at some point it seems to be too complicated for me to get into.  However, it did give me the idea for cpntinuing our family blog, as  I was wondering how much each of you really knows about our family backgrounds.  There are all kinds of interesting characters there, and so I thought I would search my memory in order to share with you all your relatives in both Dad's and my families.

As far as the immediate family, you are all very familiar with my side of the family - the Kennedys and Albrights -  but you may be less familiar with your relatives on Dad's side of the chart.  You lived with the Kennedy clan in Africa al of your lives, but not so much with Dad's family, except for occasional visits during a furlough.  This is not meant to be a linear report of your extended family, but rather the memories I have of different family members on both sides.  So here goes.

Your Grandma Kennedy's maiden name was Best and that family (except for Grandma) lived all their lives in the Beaver Valley of Pennsylvania.  Most of the Best family lived on farms in a fairly concentrated area of Western PA.  Stories are told of how my great grandmother was quite a horsewoman. She also loved to drive her horses hard in front of her wagon as she travelled around the country.  That is really all I know of her. 

But I do remember well her son, my grandfather, and his wife, my grandmother.  He was a tall man - over six feet tall. And she was a very short lady of about five feet.  They also lived on a semi-farm, in Marion Hill, PA, but Grandpa Best worked full time at a large factory about twenty five miles from home, called St. Joe's Lead Company.  He actually died in that same factory, electrocuted.  My grandmother was so overcome with grief for him that she never recovered, and several months later died herself of natural causes.  I was just a little girl, but I can still remember when that word came at Baramba, Mali,  by our mail carrier who brought our mail by foot from Koutiala. 

There was an older Best boy, my mother's brother, but he also died young and I never knew him. Uncle Merle was the youngest brother and my favorite as he was only a few years older than I and often played with me when we visited. Merle became an alcoholic, married my Aunt Theresa and had several children.  He died of a freak accident when he was fixing his own car in his yard one day - had hoisted it up with a pulley and was underneath. The pulley broke, the car fell with force and killed him!  I never did keep track of those children.

My mother had a brother, Rodney, who went to Europe in the Second World War, was killed in battle and is buried somewhere in one of those beautiful military cemeteries in northern France.  I thought of him recently whn we visitd an American cemetery in Tunisia, where many of our soldiers lie buried in Tunisian soil, the cemtery carefully kept by Amrican miliary personnel.  He was never married. 

Some of you may remember Uncle Henry and Aunt Virginia. We visited them often when you were growing up. He was Grandma's brother and he also served in the military but was one of those lucky ones who came home again!  They lived for many years in New Brighton in the same home that they owned.  She found the Lord before Uncle Henry did, but when he was very ill - before he died - Aunt Virginia led him to the Lord. You no doubt remember Aunt Virginia and what a wonderful person she was. In later life she taught women's Bible studies in the area.  They had two children, both of whom married. The last I know of the married son and family was that they lived down on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. and he ran a rather prosperous pizza business. They also had children. The daughter, Nancy, and her husband, John, lived out in the midwest - we stoppd overnight with them once when you kids were little. They never had children, and the last I heard from Aunt Virginia was that they had lost their faith and become atheists.  They were very nice, middle class people, but have never kept in touch.

Grandma Kennedy also had one sister, Alice.  Aunt Alice was a fairly tall woman with deep auburn hair - I remember her well from my childhood.  Unfortunately she was both a chain smoker and an alcoholic.  She had a daughter, Mary Ruth, (whom we all called Dumple).  Aunt Alice's significant other and father of Dumple, was a partner alcoholic with her and they spent a lot of times in bars.  She also died fairly young, but her daughter was grown, contacted by the church, was saved, and was present at my mother's funeral with some of her family.  So that is one bright spot in that family! 

Thast pretty well sums up what I know about the Best side of the family, and next installment will be about the Kennedy clan.  As I go back and remember some of my ancestors - and yours - I realize what a lot of losers in life some of them were - and are.  It is only as we allow Christ to transform our lives that we can enjoy a godly heritage! 

SPRINGTIME IN THE SOUTH.........................

When we decided the last months of our  career in Africa to live in the South, we wondered how we would like it.  Dad was a Northerner, the time I spent in the States was in the North. We both went to colleges located in the North and took all of our home assignments - except that one year in Shell Point - in the North.  Florida is not really living in the South, and we chose Georgia because both of you sons lived in the Atlanta area and the girls were all spending their lives overseas.  So this influenced our decision.

We had just so much to spend on a house - money from an inheritance from Grandma Pierce - and in researching the situation, we realized that houses in Toccoa were within our price range.  We had many friends who lived in Toccoa, there was a good church here, and we liked the idea of living near a college. In hindsight, we realize we made the right decision.  Both of you boys have flown north but when you lived here in Georgia, it was only an hour's drive to go and visit with you.  Those were good years, we enjoyed being near you, with the girls all so far away!  Now that we no longer have any children and grandchildren living near us, we are still glad we decided to live here.  We did have Elizabeth here in college for four years and both Bubnas and Clousers spent a short home assignment here, which was wonderful.  Now we look forward to every family gathering anywhere, as well as occasional visits from all of you when you can make it. We are indeed blessed.  When we deal every day with such fractured families - even in the church - we realize what a gift of God it is to us to have a loving, cohesive family!  Thank you all!

The time I like best of the year here in Georgia is Springtime.....a beautiful early Spring in Toccoa is a treat. We are in the midst of that now.  The world is a wonderland right now - trees all leafing out and the streets are lined with flowering dogwoods, yards are full of flowers in bloom. And it is still only the month of March! The front of our house is lined with several colors of azaleas, the dogwood tree in the yard is in bloom, there are tulips and other ground flowers showing their bright colors.  Our Japanese maple - a gift from John and Jennie one year - is growing and is a beautiful dull red in color.  Dad visited the plant nurseries recently and our porches are lined with bright  geraniums, petunias, and other plants coming into flower.  Our plum tree has already set fruit and soon other bushes will be in full bloom. Dad has had to mow the lawn twice already as it grows so fast! The weather has been in the 80's this week.  Most afternoons we sit out back on the patio and enjoy the warm weather and the bright flowers and delight in the home to which God led us those twelve years ago. 

We have always believed that God has directed our lives, and even in retirement He continues to do that. Here in Toccoa we have a supportive church, monistries to be involved in, both in the church and the community.  We have many friends, lots of contact with missions (which has always been our life) and a comfortable home.      We are indeed blessed of God! 

OUR SMALL GROUP...............................

Somewhere along the line, while we were working overseas, "Small Groups" started in relationship with churches.  This seems to be the current method of pastoral care in a church, so we are learning about that.  Ideally, every person in a church should belong to a small group - usually these do not exceed twelve or so people.  The small group can be a group of friends who sign up together or it can be totally disparate people who just sign up at random.  The latter is the kind of group we belong to.  The members of the group are interesting.  We were sixteen, but lost a couple because of scheduling, so we are down to fourteen.

Our leader is a gentleman who is a retired college professor and lost his wife a couple years ago now. He is well organized and makes a good leader. We have been in groups before where the leader was in the clouds and had no idea how to lead and that was sort of frustrating at the time.  But this group is one of people from different walks of life, and we seem to interact together rather well.

Besides the leader. there is a couple who do not come to the church but know the Lord. They have been disappointed in the church and so do not join, but they are friends of our leader and they fit in well with the rest of us.  He is a former pilot and she was a flight attendant. They met while flying the same airlines and married - have no children but something like eight cats!  (which they do not bring to small group thankfully!)  Another couple both work at TFC, came originally from the northand, are college grads.  There is a former police chief of our town with his wife, people in their early fifties. And they love the study and fellowship.  There is another couple, originally from the north and have always been Alliance church members.  Besides us, there is an Alliance missionary widow and a retired missionary couple.  So we come from different backgrounds, sometimes have different perspective on things, have good discussions and really enjoy our Monday evenings.

The group meets in our home, so that means Monday we have to set up the living room for the Bible study time and have enough chairs in place, as well as our back room set up with more chairs for refreshment time. Each of us takes turns bringing the refreshments, and we never eat supper Monday night as everyone brings adequate for a meal.   The talk is fun and has a range of subjects as we are eating together and then by about nine o'clock everyone goes home..

We pray for each other and stay in touch. One member is in Emory Hospital right now with heart disease, and we get reports of his progress or lack of it each day.  So it has drawn us together as a group and put us in contact with some people we have not known well before this.  So I guess it is fulfilling its purpose.  Next week we have the final dinner together of this semester, and so we will not meet together again until the Fall. We read that in today's society, small groups are the answer to getting to know people in your church, and it seems to be working for those of us who participate in it. 

Pastoral visits are out - unless you are near death's door.....elder care is sketchy......but the church is trying small groups now.  I guess they are here to stay in the evangelical church of today.