HASKELL Family Reunion

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Buchanan Loesch
as remembered by Jean Loesch Krauklin

Up and Away
It's an unusual name, and there's no middle name. Called "Buck" by almost everyone (although as a little boy he was nicknamed "Canyon") he was named after his maternal grandmother, Isabel Buchanan. She was a Scot who married a Danish farmer named Johnson.
Buck's parents came to western Colorado from Chicago about 1914. Dick (Richards L. Loesch), his father, was a graduate engineer from a prominent Chicago family; Peg (Margaret) was a music teacher with a degree from a teacher's college in Wisconsin. I don't remember why this privileged young couple elected to leave the city life and go west to start life on an undeveloped ranch, but the land was owned by Dick's father as an investment, perhaps. When a federal irrigation project was finished about 1910, bringing water through a tunnel in the Rockies to the western slope area, starting the farm may have seemed like a challenging opportunity. This ranch, called Pahgre Valley Ranch after the nearby Uncompahgre River, was a beautiful piece of land on top of a mesa, 600 acres, I believe, and the original dry scrub was turned into a highly productive farm. It must have been very hard work for the Loesches and their tenant farmers in the early days.
Pahgre Valley Ranch, by the early 1920s, was a happy and wholesome place for the children who were raised there. Buck was the third of four children (Winifred, Richards L, Jr., (Dix) and Franklin C.) Besides this family, Uncle Joe and Connie Loesch, also from Chicago, were living on the ranch and raising a family - Gregory, Malcolm (Bud) and Harrison. With the animals, farm machinery, and the canals used for irrigation (and swimming), there was always plenty to do. All the children put in work weeding the vegetable gardens, picking fruit, and pitching hay during the summer vacations. Someone on the ranch built a tennis court too.
Buck attended a country school and later the local high school in Montrose, going by bus and carrying his lunch. He was an easy-going, pleasant-natured boy, according to his mother and his sister. When he was about 12 he missed several months of school because of a severe attack of rheumatic fever. This painful illness, dangerous in the years before our present drugs, caused his parents to take Canyon to Chicago, where he lived at the home of relatives, one of whom, Dr. Graves, I believe looked after the boy until he was well enough to go home.
The ranch house was very comfortable as the family was growing up. There was a grand piano, a beautiful blue Chinese rug, and good looking furniture purchased in Chicago. When the chores were done, the family would enjoy evening activities with friends from town -- square dancing, charades, spelling bees, bridge, poker. Occasionally there were fishing trips to the mountain streams and lakes, and perhaps a family trip in the Pierce-Arrow. Buck took up the trombone in high school and enjoyed playing in the band. In his high school yearbook, the words beside his picture were "Sees all, knows all, tells all."
Older sister Win was first to leave the ranch after high school; she went to the University of Wisconsin (she later received a Ph.D. in English and taught at the University of Florida). Brother Dix was next: he went to MIT and became an aeronautical engineer. Later he became a test pilot/engineer at Boeing in Seattle.
Buck decided to follow his brother to MIT, as he did very well in math and science too. Later younger brother Frank (called Spud until he grew up) likewise went to MIT for both undergraduate and graduate work. When Dix and Buck were in college the Depression was in full swing. Without the help of Grandpa Loesch (Frank J. Loesch) of Chicago, it wouldn't have been possible to manage college just on the profits from the ranch and what Buck's father made in his insurance business on the side. But by scrimping, eating only one meal a day some times, and not going home for vacations except in summer, Buck and his brothers all graduated. Buck's fraternity was Beta Theta Pi, and he lived at their house most of his four years.
Buck got out of college just before World War II. For considerable time he was kept out of the draft because of having to wear glasses. He had a professor, Dr. Barrows, who had given him his early training in radar at MIT. Radar was a top secret and crucial new "weapon' at this time. Barrows helped Buck to get a good job in Boston, teaching radar to Army and Navy officers. For three years, until 1944 when Buck finally got into the service himself, he worked at the Harbor Building on Atlantic Avenue, which had on its roof a lot of radar equipment for observing Boston Harbor. The contribution of MIT to the success of our part in WW2 was very considerable, and Buck certainly did his part.
But life was not all war and work. It was fun to live in a large apartment at No. 326 Commonwealth Avenue with two or three fellow MTT grads. John Tinlot and Sid Wingate and Buck had plenty of good times with weekend parties, dancing to the record player and attempting to cook fancy dinners for their girlfriends. One of the girls was Jean Haskell, a recent Katie Gibbs graduate who was a secretary for the wartime Office of Price Administration. They dated for several months and became engaged in the spring of 1944.
There was a lot of uncertainty among young people then because of the war. To marry or to wait was the question. We chose to wait. I wanted to meet Buck's family first. The opportunity arose when Buck became eligible for the draft (eye standards were going down as the war went on). His draft board being in Colorado, Buck decided to wait for his final notice out there. Meanwhile, he had applied for an officer's commission in the Navy, naturally preferring that to life as an Army private.
He wanted Jean to go with him. Jean told her parents that she was going to quit her job and drive across the country to Colorado in Buck's ancient Lincoln car. They reluctantly gave their consent because of the wartime circumstances -- it was not really acceptable then for a young lady to travel with a man unchaperoned.
It was a wonderful trip, but the car broke down with finality in Elyria, Ohio. Buck sold it right there, mostly for the value of the gas ration card that came with it. In the street Buck packed up his belongings in boxes and shipped them home; we continued by train and bus. Six lovely summer weeks with the family went by pleasantly before the Navy commission came through, just in time to avoid the draft. Radar expertise was so important that the Navy made a special exception for the eye problem. So Buck became an instant ensign, and when we arrived back in Boston he outfitted himself with uniforms at Jordan Marsh.
What the Navy had in store was surprising. Instead of going off to Pago Pago where the war was raging, Buck was told to head back to the Harbor Building and take the course that he had been teaching! He even took the exams that he had made up. Needless to say, he did very well, although it was boring until he finished the course three months later.
The next orders were to resume teaching, but in Philadelphia. So in February 1945 Buck and Jean got married at her home in Berlin, N.H. There was a honeymoon in Montreal, convenient because we had no car, and the train through Berlin went to Canada. Buck had found an apartment on Kirkland Street in Cambridge, and we lived there a few months until we went off to Philadelphia.
In Philadelphia there was a real housing shortage. After a few weeks in the YMCA, we found a one-room apartment next to Fairmount Park, where we stayed until Buck was discharged as a Lieutenant Junior Grade, and we went back to Boston.
This was the only time we considered living anywhere but New England. California and New Jersey both seemed to have suitable jobs for radar experts, but in the end we chose the familiar. MIT was glad to welcome Buck back. The war was over, and Buck worked in one of M.I.T.'s affiliated laboratories near the campus. He also started work on a master's degree. He was busy, but we enjoyed our-selves with other young couples. We had an apartment now on Burbank Street, near Symphony Hall. The first baby was on the way, and Jean hurried to finish typing Buck's thesis before the big event.
That was a big year, 1947. Karen was born, Buck got his master's, we acquired a new Ford (gift from Buck's parents), and we began to look for a house. Soon Peter arrived, and for a while all four of us slept in one bedroom. There was almost nothing for sale, due to all the returning vets and the baby boom. We kept trying, but finally decided to buy land and build.
Through mutual friends we heard about a piece of land we could afford, owned by Arthur and Phyllis Spencer on Summer Avenue. It was a big decision, but Buck decided to have the foundation put in and the frame put up, using all our savings, and then go to work on it by himself, evenings, weekends, and vacations. Through 1948, 1949, when Pete was born, and most of 1950 Buck worked building the house while Jean stayed in the Boston apartment with the two babies.
Some of Buck's building skills had been learned as a boy, but he tackled wiring, roofing, shingling, power tools, etc., and did very well with them; later it was furniture building and yard work. Most of the work took a lot of patience, working alone, but the long wait was finally over.
It was a proud day when the family moved into the partly finished house at No. 489 Summer Avenue in October, 1950. The plaster (professional lob) was drying, the lights in the basement showed through the sub-floor, and there was only one interior door (bathroom), but we had the yard and the trees and sunny rooms and nice neighbors. We had Army cots for beds, and all second-hand furniture for a while--but Buck's parents gave us a new piano when they came to visit and see the wonderful house their son had built. And Jean's parents contributed a Bendix automatic washing machine, greatly improving her lifestyle. The house became more and more comfortable as the years went by, and Buck was pleased when he paid off the mortgage from his Dad after only 7 years.
So Buck now became a commuter by train into the city. He usually took the train, leaving the car at the station, until Jean learned to drive it.
About this time a few of Buck's associates started a new company, Dunn Engineering Associates. They kept trying to persuade him to come in with them, and eventually he did. Radar research and development companies were springing up (the Cold War time) and some did very well. Dunn prospered, and Buck found the work interesting. However, after a few years the company's president showed some poor judgment; for example, he would opt for fancy offices rather than buying equipment needed for his engineers. Dunn went out of business--but not before Buck had decided to leave and go back to MIT. He had sold his Dunn stock while it still had value, and this was quite a leg-up, financially.
The rest of Buck's working career was spent at Lincoln Laboratory. Most of the time he enjoyed the work and the coworkers, although driving on Route 128 every day was frustrating. The work was mostly secret, and I know little about it except that it had to do with antennas and radars for the armed services. The income was more than adequate through the years, and the Loesch family was growing--Kenneth and Stacy arrived in 1953 and 1956.
Buck chose the town of Reading because it had one of the best school systems around Boston. Reading also had a good many other advantages as a place to raise the family. It had a symphony orchestra, a lively amateur art interest group, an active social life through the various churches and clubs, an especially good Little League system with "farm teams," all of which we made use of. There was nearby Lake Quannapowitt, where for a time we belonged to a little "yacht club" and used Buck's homemade sailboat. We also joined a country club in North Reading, the Thompson Club, not for the golf, but for its swimming pool. Buck and the family joined the Congregational Church, its Monday Nighters couples' club, and was a member of a professional engineer's society, and of course his fraternity from MIT, Beta Theta Pi. He liked a game of bridge once in a while, and a game of chess with his good friend Dick Jones as well. We had many close friends in Reading.
Buck's family had been great travelers. I think his parents had been in every state except Alaska. They would travel in fall and winter after the children had left the ranch, and usually wound up in Florida for part of the winter. Likewise, Buck took his own family on many trips. Even when the children were very young we would splurge and go to Colorado in a Pullman car compartment or two roomettes. We stayed at the ranch, or at the cabin at Lake Lenore when it was built, high in the San Juan mountains at Ouray. Other trips we enjoyed were to Deer Isle, New York City, Washington, D.C., Montreal, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Seattle, and St. Croix. Once he took the three boys to the Baseball Hall of Fame, which time I am sure they all remember fondly.
About once a year Buck would have a "date" with Karen, taking her to lunch or dinner at a fancy restaurant, such as the Ritz Carlton in Boston. Then as a family we would eat out quite often. We would visit McDonald's, or the China Moon; also, we'd take all the kids to a fine restaurant in Cambridge or Boston once in a while, as Buck wanted them to experience the finer things too. Another thing Buck did that I'm sure the children remember was going to the amusement parks--the big ones such as Old Orchard Beach, and little ones such as the one in Stoneham with its kid-sized train. Buck would let the kids enjoy the rides over and over again; he hardly ever said no! The Stoneham zoo was another frequent family outing. And every Sunday, along with the Boston Globe, came a comic book and candy bar for each child.
Just before Karen entered Middlebury College, Buck went on his first trip to Europe, along with Jean, her sister Ruth and husband, Warren Young. They visited Copenhagen, Germany, Switzerland and France, traveling by plane, car, train and boat. It was a marvelous trip.
But it wasn't all such smooth sailing. There was a sudden serious illness when Buck was in his late 40's. After being stricken with a severe headache at work, Buck was taken home and then sent to the hospital and found to have suffered a burst or leaking aneurysm in an area behind the eyes. He was fortunate that no lasting damage was done, and although the weak artery could not be operated on a neurosurgeon performed an operation clamping the carotid (neck) artery on the affected side, and this relieved a lot of Pressure where the aneurysm was. Buck made an excellent recovery, and although he was bored staying home for six weeks, he got back to work with no ill effects at all. In fact, he remarked that a side effect of the operation was that he no longer had the periodic headaches that he endured for years. We were so grateful to Dr. Hinnendael for his alert diagnosis, and to Dr. Wilkinson for his surgical skills and his very real interest in Buck's case. Dr. Wilkinson regarded Buck as one of his real success stories.
Buck always took great pleasure in watching the children's progress in sports, as well as in school. He hardly missed a Little League or Farm Team game when the boys' teams were playing, and later on he would teach all of them to play tennis. He took them bowling, to Red Sox games, to Longwood Tennis Club, to football games at Reading High, and we had ping pong and pool tables in our basement playroom, which was of course wood paneled and floored with tile by Buck! Buck always saw to it that there was a basketball hoop and net over the garage door. He devoted as much time to his children as any father could, and taught them his good attitude towards winning and losing. To this day he and his boys especially enjoy an interest in nearly all the sports, both active and on TV.
It was Buck's idea for our family to have a foreign student live with us for a year. This program (American Field Service) had just been started in Reading. We were accepted as a host family after considerable investigation, and Setsuke Kumon arrived from Nagoya to attend Reading High in 1963-4. She fitted into the family beautifully as our fifth child, and she became a close "sister" to Karen. Buck was able, many year's later, to visit Setsuke in Japan.
Pete went off to college in 1966. College expenses were high, but legacies from Buck's parents helped a good deal at this time. It was a smaller family at home after Pete left, but the house was far from quiet. Ken was playing the electric bass guitar and had a rock band practicing in our basement regularly. The sound, though it shook the house, was a happy one, and they were talented kids--no complaints from Buck, although there were a few from our neighbors.
Since this story only concerns the first 50 years, we will leave my memories here. Imagine Stacy reading the sports page on the living room floor. Ken packing the station wagon with loudspeakers and equipment for a dance job, and Buck tinkering in the basement with his latest handiwork. And the writer? Maybe playing the piano, or perhaps making a birthday cake. There were a good many birthdays celebrated over those years!
September 1987

Any comments or questions? Contact
louise@loesch.net
S i t e d e s i g n b y W e b f a i r

Home Family History Family Tree Photo Album Reminiscing Reunion Info Family News Address Book From Our Kitchen		Buchanan Loesch as remembered by Jean Loesch Krauklin It's an unusual name, and there's no middle name. Called "Buck" by almost everyone (although as a little boy he was nicknamed "Canyon") he was named after his maternal grandmother, Isabel Buchanan. She was a Scot who married a Danish farmer named Johnson. Buck's parents came to western Colorado from Chicago about 1914. Dick (Richards L. Loesch), his father, was a graduate engineer from a prominent Chicago family; Peg (Margaret) was a music teacher with a degree from a teacher's college in Wisconsin. I don't remember why this privileged young couple elected to leave the city life and go west to start life on an undeveloped ranch, but the land was owned by Dick's father as an investment, perhaps. When a federal irrigation project was finished about 1910, bringing water through a tunnel in the Rockies to the western slope area, starting the farm may have seemed like a challenging opportunity. This ranch, called Pahgre Valley Ranch after the nearby Uncompahgre River, was a beautiful piece of land on top of a mesa, 600 acres, I believe, and the original dry scrub was turned into a highly productive farm. It must have been very hard work for the Loesches and their tenant farmers in the early days. Pahgre Valley Ranch, by the early 1920s, was a happy and wholesome place for the children who were raised there. Buck was the third of four children (Winifred, Richards L, Jr., (Dix) and Franklin C.) Besides this family, Uncle Joe and Connie Loesch, also from Chicago, were living on the ranch and raising a family - Gregory, Malcolm (Bud) and Harrison. With the animals, farm machinery, and the canals used for irrigation (and swimming), there was always plenty to do. All the children put in work weeding the vegetable gardens, picking fruit, and pitching hay during the summer vacations. Someone on the ranch built a tennis court too. Buck attended a country school and later the local high school in Montrose, going by bus and carrying his lunch. He was an easy-going, pleasant-natured boy, according to his mother and his sister. When he was about 12 he missed several months of school because of a severe attack of rheumatic fever. This painful illness, dangerous in the years before our present drugs, caused his parents to take Canyon to Chicago, where he lived at the home of relatives, one of whom, Dr. Graves, I believe looked after the boy until he was well enough to go home. The ranch house was very comfortable as the family was growing up. There was a grand piano, a beautiful blue Chinese rug, and good looking furniture purchased in Chicago. When the chores were done, the family would enjoy evening activities with friends from town -- square dancing, charades, spelling bees, bridge, poker. Occasionally there were fishing trips to the mountain streams and lakes, and perhaps a family trip in the Pierce-Arrow. Buck took up the trombone in high school and enjoyed playing in the band. In his high school yearbook, the words beside his picture were "Sees all, knows all, tells all." Older sister Win was first to leave the ranch after high school; she went to the University of Wisconsin (she later received a Ph.D. in English and taught at the University of Florida). Brother Dix was next: he went to MIT and became an aeronautical engineer. Later he became a test pilot/engineer at Boeing in Seattle. Buck decided to follow his brother to MIT, as he did very well in math and science too. Later younger brother Frank (called Spud until he grew up) likewise went to MIT for both undergraduate and graduate work. When Dix and Buck were in college the Depression was in full swing. Without the help of Grandpa Loesch (Frank J. Loesch) of Chicago, it wouldn't have been possible to manage college just on the profits from the ranch and what Buck's father made in his insurance business on the side. But by scrimping, eating only one meal a day some times, and not going home for vacations except in summer, Buck and his brothers all graduated. Buck's fraternity was Beta Theta Pi, and he lived at their house most of his four years. Buck got out of college just before World War II. For considerable time he was kept out of the draft because of having to wear glasses. He had a professor, Dr. Barrows, who had given him his early training in radar at MIT. Radar was a top secret and crucial new "weapon' at this time. Barrows helped Buck to get a good job in Boston, teaching radar to Army and Navy officers. For three years, until 1944 when Buck finally got into the service himself, he worked at the Harbor Building on Atlantic Avenue, which had on its roof a lot of radar equipment for observing Boston Harbor. The contribution of MIT to the success of our part in WW2 was very considerable, and Buck certainly did his part. But life was not all war and work. It was fun to live in a large apartment at No. 326 Commonwealth Avenue with two or three fellow MTT grads. John Tinlot and Sid Wingate and Buck had plenty of good times with weekend parties, dancing to the record player and attempting to cook fancy dinners for their girlfriends. One of the girls was Jean Haskell, a recent Katie Gibbs graduate who was a secretary for the wartime Office of Price Administration. They dated for several months and became engaged in the spring of 1944. There was a lot of uncertainty among young people then because of the war. To marry or to wait was the question. We chose to wait. I wanted to meet Buck's family first. The opportunity arose when Buck became eligible for the draft (eye standards were going down as the war went on). His draft board being in Colorado, Buck decided to wait for his final notice out there. Meanwhile, he had applied for an officer's commission in the Navy, naturally preferring that to life as an Army private. He wanted Jean to go with him. Jean told her parents that she was going to quit her job and drive across the country to Colorado in Buck's ancient Lincoln car. They reluctantly gave their consent because of the wartime circumstances -- it was not really acceptable then for a young lady to travel with a man unchaperoned. It was a wonderful trip, but the car broke down with finality in Elyria, Ohio. Buck sold it right there, mostly for the value of the gas ration card that came with it. In the street Buck packed up his belongings in boxes and shipped them home; we continued by train and bus. Six lovely summer weeks with the family went by pleasantly before the Navy commission came through, just in time to avoid the draft. Radar expertise was so important that the Navy made a special exception for the eye problem. So Buck became an instant ensign, and when we arrived back in Boston he outfitted himself with uniforms at Jordan Marsh. What the Navy had in store was surprising. Instead of going off to Pago Pago where the war was raging, Buck was told to head back to the Harbor Building and take the course that he had been teaching! He even took the exams that he had made up. Needless to say, he did very well, although it was boring until he finished the course three months later. The next orders were to resume teaching, but in Philadelphia. So in February 1945 Buck and Jean got married at her home in Berlin, N.H. There was a honeymoon in Montreal, convenient because we had no car, and the train through Berlin went to Canada. Buck had found an apartment on Kirkland Street in Cambridge, and we lived there a few months until we went off to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia there was a real housing shortage. After a few weeks in the YMCA, we found a one-room apartment next to Fairmount Park, where we stayed until Buck was discharged as a Lieutenant Junior Grade, and we went back to Boston. This was the only time we considered living anywhere but New England. California and New Jersey both seemed to have suitable jobs for radar experts, but in the end we chose the familiar. MIT was glad to welcome Buck back. The war was over, and Buck worked in one of M.I.T.'s affiliated laboratories near the campus. He also started work on a master's degree. He was busy, but we enjoyed our-selves with other young couples. We had an apartment now on Burbank Street, near Symphony Hall. The first baby was on the way, and Jean hurried to finish typing Buck's thesis before the big event. That was a big year, 1947. Karen was born, Buck got his master's, we acquired a new Ford (gift from Buck's parents), and we began to look for a house. Soon Peter arrived, and for a while all four of us slept in one bedroom. There was almost nothing for sale, due to all the returning vets and the baby boom. We kept trying, but finally decided to buy land and build. Through mutual friends we heard about a piece of land we could afford, owned by Arthur and Phyllis Spencer on Summer Avenue. It was a big decision, but Buck decided to have the foundation put in and the frame put up, using all our savings, and then go to work on it by himself, evenings, weekends, and vacations. Through 1948, 1949, when Pete was born, and most of 1950 Buck worked building the house while Jean stayed in the Boston apartment with the two babies. Some of Buck's building skills had been learned as a boy, but he tackled wiring, roofing, shingling, power tools, etc., and did very well with them; later it was furniture building and yard work. Most of the work took a lot of patience, working alone, but the long wait was finally over. It was a proud day when the family moved into the partly finished house at No. 489 Summer Avenue in October, 1950. The plaster (professional lob) was drying, the lights in the basement showed through the sub-floor, and there was only one interior door (bathroom), but we had the yard and the trees and sunny rooms and nice neighbors. We had Army cots for beds, and all second-hand furniture for a while--but Buck's parents gave us a new piano when they came to visit and see the wonderful house their son had built. And Jean's parents contributed a Bendix automatic washing machine, greatly improving her lifestyle. The house became more and more comfortable as the years went by, and Buck was pleased when he paid off the mortgage from his Dad after only 7 years. So Buck now became a commuter by train into the city. He usually took the train, leaving the car at the station, until Jean learned to drive it. About this time a few of Buck's associates started a new company, Dunn Engineering Associates. They kept trying to persuade him to come in with them, and eventually he did. Radar research and development companies were springing up (the Cold War time) and some did very well. Dunn prospered, and Buck found the work interesting. However, after a few years the company's president showed some poor judgment; for example, he would opt for fancy offices rather than buying equipment needed for his engineers. Dunn went out of business--but not before Buck had decided to leave and go back to MIT. He had sold his Dunn stock while it still had value, and this was quite a leg-up, financially. The rest of Buck's working career was spent at Lincoln Laboratory. Most of the time he enjoyed the work and the coworkers, although driving on Route 128 every day was frustrating. The work was mostly secret, and I know little about it except that it had to do with antennas and radars for the armed services. The income was more than adequate through the years, and the Loesch family was growing--Kenneth and Stacy arrived in 1953 and 1956. Buck chose the town of Reading because it had one of the best school systems around Boston. Reading also had a good many other advantages as a place to raise the family. It had a symphony orchestra, a lively amateur art interest group, an active social life through the various churches and clubs, an especially good Little League system with "farm teams," all of which we made use of. There was nearby Lake Quannapowitt, where for a time we belonged to a little "yacht club" and used Buck's homemade sailboat. We also joined a country club in North Reading, the Thompson Club, not for the golf, but for its swimming pool. Buck and the family joined the Congregational Church, its Monday Nighters couples' club, and was a member of a professional engineer's society, and of course his fraternity from MIT, Beta Theta Pi. He liked a game of bridge once in a while, and a game of chess with his good friend Dick Jones as well. We had many close friends in Reading. Buck's family had been great travelers. I think his parents had been in every state except Alaska. They would travel in fall and winter after the children had left the ranch, and usually wound up in Florida for part of the winter. Likewise, Buck took his own family on many trips. Even when the children were very young we would splurge and go to Colorado in a Pullman car compartment or two roomettes. We stayed at the ranch, or at the cabin at Lake Lenore when it was built, high in the San Juan mountains at Ouray. Other trips we enjoyed were to Deer Isle, New York City, Washington, D.C., Montreal, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Seattle, and St. Croix. Once he took the three boys to the Baseball Hall of Fame, which time I am sure they all remember fondly. About once a year Buck would have a "date" with Karen, taking her to lunch or dinner at a fancy restaurant, such as the Ritz Carlton in Boston. Then as a family we would eat out quite often. We would visit McDonald's, or the China Moon; also, we'd take all the kids to a fine restaurant in Cambridge or Boston once in a while, as Buck wanted them to experience the finer things too. Another thing Buck did that I'm sure the children remember was going to the amusement parks--the big ones such as Old Orchard Beach, and little ones such as the one in Stoneham with its kid-sized train. Buck would let the kids enjoy the rides over and over again; he hardly ever said no! The Stoneham zoo was another frequent family outing. And every Sunday, along with the Boston Globe, came a comic book and candy bar for each child. Just before Karen entered Middlebury College, Buck went on his first trip to Europe, along with Jean, her sister Ruth and husband, Warren Young. They visited Copenhagen, Germany, Switzerland and France, traveling by plane, car, train and boat. It was a marvelous trip. But it wasn't all such smooth sailing. There was a sudden serious illness when Buck was in his late 40's. After being stricken with a severe headache at work, Buck was taken home and then sent to the hospital and found to have suffered a burst or leaking aneurysm in an area behind the eyes. He was fortunate that no lasting damage was done, and although the weak artery could not be operated on a neurosurgeon performed an operation clamping the carotid (neck) artery on the affected side, and this relieved a lot of Pressure where the aneurysm was. Buck made an excellent recovery, and although he was bored staying home for six weeks, he got back to work with no ill effects at all. In fact, he remarked that a side effect of the operation was that he no longer had the periodic headaches that he endured for years. We were so grateful to Dr. Hinnendael for his alert diagnosis, and to Dr. Wilkinson for his surgical skills and his very real interest in Buck's case. Dr. Wilkinson regarded Buck as one of his real success stories. Buck always took great pleasure in watching the children's progress in sports, as well as in school. He hardly missed a Little League or Farm Team game when the boys' teams were playing, and later on he would teach all of them to play tennis. He took them bowling, to Red Sox games, to Longwood Tennis Club, to football games at Reading High, and we had ping pong and pool tables in our basement playroom, which was of course wood paneled and floored with tile by Buck! Buck always saw to it that there was a basketball hoop and net over the garage door. He devoted as much time to his children as any father could, and taught them his good attitude towards winning and losing. To this day he and his boys especially enjoy an interest in nearly all the sports, both active and on TV. It was Buck's idea for our family to have a foreign student live with us for a year. This program (American Field Service) had just been started in Reading. We were accepted as a host family after considerable investigation, and Setsuke Kumon arrived from Nagoya to attend Reading High in 1963-4. She fitted into the family beautifully as our fifth child, and she became a close "sister" to Karen. Buck was able, many year's later, to visit Setsuke in Japan. Pete went off to college in 1966. College expenses were high, but legacies from Buck's parents helped a good deal at this time. It was a smaller family at home after Pete left, but the house was far from quiet. Ken was playing the electric bass guitar and had a rock band practicing in our basement regularly. The sound, though it shook the house, was a happy one, and they were talented kids--no complaints from Buck, although there were a few from our neighbors. Since this story only concerns the first 50 years, we will leave my memories here. Imagine Stacy reading the sports page on the living room floor. Ken packing the station wagon with loudspeakers and equipment for a dance job, and Buck tinkering in the basement with his latest handiwork. And the writer? Maybe playing the piano, or perhaps making a birthday cake. There were a good many birthdays celebrated over those years! September 1987
		Any comments or questions? Contact louise@loesch.net S i t e d e s i g n b y W e b f a i r