Bordentown

 Some memories are embedded in bits and parts like an incomplete puzzle in which a number of pieces are permanently lost. One of those memories has been tarnished recently by events that happened long ago and outside of my personal experience. It resides in a special compartment I reserve for my paternal grandmother Kathryn and her husband, John. John wasn't my grandfather. My actual grandfather Clarence died of polio when my father was still a young child. Clarence left five children of which my father was the oldest. At the height of the Great Depression, my grandmother had few options but to depend substantially on her own mother and the hope that she could could at some point find another man who wouldn't mind taking on not one or two, but five children fathered by another man. As it turned out, Kathryn was unable to harness that security until years later, with her children grown and facing a very uncertain middle age. One of the neglected stories of the post WWII era were the numerous widowed or single women who weren't able to take advantage of the prosperity of those years. A breadwinning man wasn't a dream for many of those women but an unfortunate necessity--especially when the average family had more than three children. 

Kathryn finally found a career Army man--John--whom she wed and followed overseas to numerous posts until they settled into a contented, modest life in Bordentown, New Jersey--close to Fort Dix, where he worked until retirement. By the time I was able to remember the various summer trips we took to visit them, my older siblings were already beginning to leave the nest. It was often just me and my sister Amy. We were the youngest of the five. It was a small apartment with a kitchen my mother used to compare to a closet. On those rare but exciting early visits, my mother would take me on walks around the neighborhood. We would pause in front of an imposing cast iron gate where what looked like a mysterious castle sat like a sentinel. It was here where the cloistered sisters of St. Clare--known as the "poor Clares"--resided. Mom explained to her inquisitive child, endless questions abounding, "They aren't allowed to ever go out. They can't talk." My imaginative mind immediately conjured up all kinds of bizarre images. Unlike the Sisters of St. Joseph who taught me back at Holy Rosary, these nuns must have ethereal qualities--perhaps they could even float! Today, the former Monastery of St. Clare is an assisted living facility--bought and converted in 1999. At least the building's exterior is extant. A bit further along our walk sat a small brick cottage-like building. It's thatched roof recalled another era and it looked small--even to an eleven year-old. This was the one time schoolhouse of the famed Clara Barton (1821-1912), a nurse who founded the American Red Cross. Her earlier career as an educator and innovator prompted her to open the first ever free school in the city of Bordentown in 1852. The small one-room schoolhouse was fascinating. Aside from the historical designation plaque which mom and I read together, one could peak into the windows of the building where a poorly maintained mannequin figure dressed in mid-19th Century attire stood stoically near a primitive chalkboard. By the mid 1970s, there was clearly not much attention being paid to the historic site--which had been dedicated in 1921. It is gratifying to see that it has recently been restored for future preservation. 

The apartment on Chestnut Street was a two bedroom unit on an oak tree shaded six acre tract of land. Each building had only four apartment units--the kind that one would enter from an interior corridor. Each unit had a storage cellar--private and locked. On one visit, John (Kathryn's husband) took mom, dad and I down to that cellar to see how he had all the canned goods marked by name and date--meticulously labeled to exacting detail. I remember dad making a joke about it being a holdover from John's military days. 

John was a quiet man. I can view pictures of him now but they don't do justice to the person I remember. He had been previously married and had an adult son who lived in Erie. The son never married and my mother told me in later years that she suspected he was gay. Closeted, of course, but gay. I have no idea if that's true and there's no way I could now confirm it. My few memories of John that contain any detail include one of him getting dressed in my parent's bedroom. My mom and dad would relinquish their bed in later years when Kathryn and John would visit. I was walking past my parent's room and John was laboriously getting into a girdle. I had never seen a man getting into a girdle before. I'd seen my mom in hers previously on occasion --quite by accident but this...this was shocking! I didn't know men wore girdles!

There was something about John that didn't feel right. Call it intuition or gut but my trust level as a child was normally quite accepting--giving adults around me the benefit of the doubt. Not so with John. I didn't feel right calling him "grandpa" and my dad always addressed him as "John." As a child I was pretty rude when it came to staring at adults. I was usually summing them up and although I was generally a bit shy I always looked them in the eyes when they were addressing me. Something about this man's eyes was disturbing. I couldn't define it as a child but now I can say that they were empty and dark. In fact, the word "evil" comes to mind. And evil they were. Years after John's death, I discovered that he had sexually abused one of my cousins. There may be others he abused but this is the one I know about. Before she passed, my mother alluded to the possibility of more victims but thankfully, my sisters and even myself--as pedophiles typically disregard gender when opportunity presents itself--were spared from this predator. 

Again...my mind wanders back to those visits to Bordentown. I took delight in seeing this man feed the neighborhood squirrels but I knew to keep my distance. I feel nothing but sadness and anger for his victims. Who knows how many there are?

The Clara Barton Schoolhouse. Photo courtesy of Bordentown Tourism.

The Monastery of the Poor Clares. Bordentown, New Jersey. Photo Credit: unknown