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Epsom NH News

June 11, 2014

The Suncook Valley Sun News Archive is Maintained by Modern Concepts. We are NOT affliated in any way with the Suncook Valley Sun Newspaper.



 

Congratulations to Daniel J. Kroll of Epsom, N.H., who received a bachelor of science degree in engineering and management from Clarkson University on May 10, 2014.

 


 

Congratulations to Benjamin Roy Kroll of Epsom who has been recognized on the Dean’s List for the Spring 2014 semester at Norwich University.

 


 

Epsom Public Library

 

From time to time, patrons of the Epsom Public Library write book reviews, essays, or, in this case, a story to be published in our newsletter.

 

Mort Glazer is one of those patrons who is not only a voracious reader but also an excellent writer.  The following is his story, “Revenge."

 


 

Readers’ Corner

Revenge

By Mort Glazer

 

I first met Jacob in the late 1940’s when he was visiting his Aunt Sadie in Brookline, MA. My family lived next door to Sadie, and our homes were set on the highest point of Brookline with a view towards Boston, Cambridge, and beyond. Sadie was a warm and lovely lady, who had the terribly tragic misfortune to lose both her sons and their wives, along with 488 others, in Boston’s Cocoanut Grove fire, on November 28, 1942. With the exception of paying the usual respects, the neighborhood left her and her remaining two children to their private grief.

 

I began to notice that at least two weekends a month, an extended family would visit, one of whom was Jacob, along with who I assumed were his grandparents. He would enter his aunt’s home, and usually ten minutes later, he would emerge with a glove and tennis ball and start playing stoop ball with himself against the stairs. Although he was short for his age, and stocky from the waist down, with a rather large rear end, his hands were very quick, and very few balls got by him. Within ten minutes, his grandfather would come outside and shoo him away, complaining that he was driving everyone in the house crazy. So Jacob would go out in the middle of the street and toss the ball as high as he could and then run under it as if he were an outfielder. I use the word “run” loosely, as he was extremely slow, but he was able to make these circus catches nevertheless.

 

One Sunday, I decided to introduce myself to him and came out with my glove and asked if he would like to play catch. Se we threw the ball back and forth or played grounders. He caught everything within his limited range, but if any ball did get past him or, God forbid, he made an error, he would get red in the face, angry with himself, and then we would resume play, as if to him it were life and death. The balls he would throw to me became harder and eventually out of my range entirely, although I was reasonably fast and had good hand-eye coordination. His face was always twitching, either his eyebrows going up and down or eyes blinking. The more irate he became, the more he twitched, and occasionally he made squeaky noises.

 

This went on for over a couple of months on the Sundays he would visit, and on one hot August day we finally sat down under a shaded tree and had our first conversation. He was 13-years-old at the time, I guess, and I was going on 17. I asked him why he always came with his grandparents, and he said his grandparents were dead. “Those are my parents. I was a change-of-life child. It was a mistake.”

 

I asked why he twitched, which set off a series of tics even worse, and he said he remembered they started when he was around five after he stepped on a broken milk bottle while walking barefoot in the woods. He was rushed to the hospital and screamed at the doctor not to cut his off his leg. He threw up, and the doctor was “pissed,” he said. He’d had the tics ever since, and the kids at school were always making fun of him.

 

They had plenty of ammunition. I was short, chubby, and a Jew. I think we were the only Jews in Charlestown, and my father owned a junkyard there, and no one was going to make him move because he was a Jew. Some of these kids were in my class, and I was smarter than all of them put together, and I used to piss them off when I raised my hand to answer a question they were too stupid to know. So they began to wait for me after school. But I knew every exit, which they couldn’t cover since there were only eight of them usually, and they preferred to stick together as a group. You won’t find many bullies that’ll attack without friends around. So I would escape through one of the exits; however, they would have lookouts, and although I was able to get home safely most of the time (knowing every backyard between my home and school) they would sometimes catch me and surround me in a circle. They would shout, “Jakey, the fat Jewboy. What’s with the crazy face, you filthy Jew?” Stuff like that. My only defense was to act like I was crazy and charge at one of them, and he would run away, cause I could never catch anyone. Then they would make a circle again, and the same thing would be repeated, until they got tired.

 

I told my father about it, and he says to me, “Don’t be a coward. Fight them” I said there were too many. So, what does my father do? He goes out and buys me boxing gloves. What, am I going to take my boxing gloves to school? I got three older sisters, and no brother, so I’m alone. No brother – no nothing This went on from the third through the sixth grade, and I could never get my hands on one of them.

 

Over the course of many Sundays, he told me more stories about this guy named George Harrison, an older kid that would wait in doorways for him to walk by. This guy was tall and lean with a face like a wolf. I’d be walking along, then suddenly from behind I would feel someone’s fingers wrapped around my throat, and he would say, “It’s time to die, Jew!” or he would grab my arm and twist it behind my back. He had this sick laugh. I was never so scared in all my life. I screamed that my big brother would kill him, and he would punch me hard and run. Then after about a year it suddenly stopped, and I never saw him again.

 

Many years later, we met for lunch, and he told me he had decided to confront Harrison. Jacob was then in his early 20’s and running his father’s junkyard, never having finished college or heading off to a profession. He said that one day he started thinking about Harrison and was determined to have it out with him once and for all. He knew where he lived, but first he went out and bought a knife and hid it in his pocket. He knocked on Harrison’s door, not knowing if he still lived there, and a woman answered. When he asked if George Harrison lived there, she laughed and said, “He’s safely away. He’s in Walpole State Prison, thank goodness, serving a life sentence for murder and armed robber.” Jeez, I wanted to stick a knife in him so bad. I guess I was lucky he wasn’t there, but, you know? The shame, humiliation, and hate are still there, eating me up.

 

Whenever we met for lunch throughout the 50’s and even into the 60’s, his childhood was still very close to the surface. He wasn’t the fat, undersized kid anymore; he was muscular from physical labor, with grime embedded in his fingers. He had been in the army reserves as an infantryman in 1962 and didn’t look like a guy one would want to take on. In 1964 he married a girl named Miriam, and I was an usher at his wedding. She was a school teacher and very much in love with him. They had a son in April of 1967, and I went to his son’s briss, and that was the last time I ever saw Jacob.

 

Some time in May of 1967, when war between Israel and the Arab nations seemed inevitable, Jacob and some of his friends left to go to Israel to fight, despite Miriam’s stricken hysteria and his heartbroken parents. When the Six Day War started on June 5th, one of his friends took a picture of him heading to the front in a truck with other soldiers, all in uniform and shouldering or carrying weapons. Standing next to Jacob was an older tall, blond, broad-chested soldier with his arm around Jacob, just like the big brother he’d always wanted. Jacob was beaming.

 

Jacob died from a gunshot in that war, and I sometimes wonder if, before he died, he saw in the enemy the faces of those kids who had picked on him, and was charging them... trying to catch them... finally, at long last exorcising the shame.

 


 

Epsom Public Library News

Movie 

 

The library will show the star-studded movie, The Monuments Men, on Wednesday, June 11, at 7:00 p.m.  George Clooney, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray and Hugh Bonneville play art historians or art experts searching for paintings and statuary stolen by the Germans during World War II.  Movie critic Roger Ebert says that the movie “adds something else as well:  an appreciation of how hard it is to get people to care about art when cities have been reduced to rubble and whole populations wiped out. . . .The Monuments Men presents its heroes as mice – skittering through the margins of history, trying not to get stepped on.  They’re mostly too old or out-of-shape to be effective soldiers, and they’re aware that the combat troops they pass in the field would support their mission only to the point where they had to choose between saving a Picasso and getting shot.[The movie presents] a realistic portrain of wartime, one that shows the heroes being thwarted by higher-ups who aren’t bad people but just have different priorities.”

 

We hope you’ll join us for an entertaining evening, complete with popcorn and soft drinks.

 


 

Meal Management To The Rescue

 

On Wednesday, June 18, at 7:00 p.m., the library will host Nancy Carlson, a certified professional fitness trainer with GetFitNH, who will present “Meal Management to the Rescue.”

 

There’s no doubt that prepping and planning your meals is not only crucial to achieving your best body, but also extremely challenging!  Today’s hectic lifestyles make “grab and go” a lot more likely than “sit and relax,” Nancy says.  Who’s got the time to prepare?

 

In this seminar Coach Nancy, a mom of six who homeschools her children and is a full-time fitness professional, will guide you every step of the way.

 

You will learn how to easily pull mealtime together for your family.  You’ll also walk away with a week’s worth of dinner meal plans plus the ability to expand that to a whole month.

 

We hope you’ll join us.  Get Fit, Epsom!

 

Organize Your Wishes For The Care You Want

 

The Concord Regional Visiting Nurse Association will present “Organizing Your Wishes for the Care You Want” at the library on Tuesday, June 17, from 1 – 2 p.m.          

 

Advance care planning is making decisions about the care you would want to receive if you happen to become unable to speak for yourself.  Your wishes are based on your personal values, preferences, and discussions with loved ones.

 

Learn information, tools, and steps to help you plan for futue medical care and treatment.  You may obtain further information by calling (603)24-4083.

 


 

Letter

 

To my constituents in Allenstown, Epsom, and Pittsfield,

This week, the House met, for the last scheduled session, to vote on 64 committee of conference reports. Many of these were controversial bills where the House and Senate had taken different positions; others were scheduling accidents, since the Senate met after the House last time and even if everyone agreed on the substance, amended House bills have to be approved by the House. Forty three reports were approved by voice vote, with no discussion.

 

The most important bill we dealt with was SB369, revising the Medicaid Enhancement Tax. This was an agreement reached between all but one hospital and the state, where they agreed to pay their taxes and not sue the state, and the state promised to lower the rate of the tax and use all the proceeds for Medicaid payments and reimbursements of uncompensated care. The deal protects the current budget, but leaves about $200 million in extra payments promised over the next two, with no extra revenue in sight. After some explanations and discussion, it passed, 278-72. I voted against it because it’s a short term fix, I don’t understand all the implications, and cutting the next budget may be easier if we’re on record as not supporting this agreement. Dan voted for it, because he believes the issues will be easier to deal with in the context of the entire state budget.

 

No committee of conference report was rejected; the closest was HB1167, on exceptions from boiler inspection requirements. The House had amended this to exclude home offices; the Senate rejected this change. After some debate, it passed, 182-152, and home offices will now subject residential boilers to the state inspection requirements.

 

Interested readers can email me for my newsletter, with more details than fit here.

 

Representative Carol McGuire

[email protected]

782-4918

 


 

Epsom Food Pantry

 

Well another good week at the Food Pantry. Our selection just seems to get better all the time. The last few weeks we have had fresh apples as well as onions. We have been fortunate to have meat given to us along with some nice whole chickens. I want to remind all you folks who do the home garqen not to forget a row for the Pantry, Also at our last meeting we decided to try an evening session so on June l6th we will be open from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM and give it a trial run. Our main goal here at the Pantry is to accommodate our members who work at different hours so they can participate at their home Pantry.

 

Until next time, Priscilla

 


Obituaries


 

Carol Smith

 

Carol (Graeber) Smith died Saturday, May 31, 2014 at Concord Hospital. She was surrounded by her loving family.

 

Carol was born January 29, 1961 in Philadelphia, PA, the daughter of Raymond (deceased) and Carol (Stein) Graeber. Carol moved to Fontana, CA in 1969 and graduated from Fontana High School. Carol lived in Epsom for the past 16 years.

 

Carol loved nature and being outdoors. Animals and gardens were her passion. She loved to laugh and dance and she especially loved summer barbecues with her husband, children and grandchildren. She loved people and was a very dear and loyal friend. Carol was also a great decorator and enjoyed decorating her home for Christmas, her favorite holiday. Decorating the Christmas tree was her favorite part.

 

Carol is survived by her husband, Dean Smith of Epsom; her mother, Carol Graeber; two brothers and sisters-in-law, Raymond Graeber and Kati Simpson and Stephen and Angel Graeber, all of Fontana, CA; five children, Teresa Drouin and her husband, Kyle of Pembroke, Jeff Smith of Pembroke, Stephanie Smith, Dean M. Smith and Mariah Smith, all of Epsom; three grandchildren, Jessica, Austin and Ariana; and many aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins.

 

A Celebration of Life will be held at the Smith Residence, 324 North Road in Epsom from noon until 8:00pm on Saturday, June 21, 2014.

 

The Cremation Society of NH is assisting the family with arrangements. To view an online memorial please go to www.csnn.com.

 

Donations for the memorial fund may be sent to the Smith Family, 324 North Rd., Epsom, NH 03234.

 


 


 

 











 
 

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