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The Story of Jean
by Jean Loesch Krauklin

A little philosophy to begin with! All the things I've done or tried to do make quite a long "history," but then, 80 years is a long time. I'm glad I've always had enough energy, enough interests, good health, and joie de vivre. I'm eternally grateful for the good fortune to have four such wonderful children, along with their children, as well as the finest kind of other relatives and friends. I can never express the feeling of love and pride and contentment my family has brought me. I wish I could be with them more, but glad they are making their own lives happily and successfully, and that we can be in contact by telephone, letters, pictures, and email! My vital statistics: born March 30,1923 in Berlin, New Hampshire, eldest of four children born to Benjamin Stacy Haskell and Lydia Gilbert Haskell. Married February 24, 1945 to Buchanan Loesch for 27 years. Remarried October 29, 1983 to Ewald L. Krauklin.
My education in Berlin, a mill town, was remarkably good for a city of its size with a large foreign-born population. The Brown Paper Company funded a public kindergarten, which I attended in 1928-9. Then I started first grade in a private school held at the Browns' home with two of their children. There were 5 in the class, and I recall being picked up each day by the Browns' chauffeur. Second grade saw the beginning of the Depression, and I joined the other kids in public school. Fourth grade was special - I was picked to be in Miss Abbott's advanced class. She was a super teacher with mind-expanding ways who opened our eyes and ears to drama, music, dancing, Greek myths, field trips, poetry, and painting -- what a year!
In high school I took all the courses I could fit in. I loved school, which lasted from 8 to 4 every day, and was always near the top of my class of 195 kids. I was in College Preparatory, but also took commercial subjects and played flute in the school orchestra and band. It was cold playing in the band at football games - sometimes I wore gloves while I played! There were dances in the gym several times a year, and sometimes we had a professional orchestra from Portland or even Boston, playing "big band" music. None of my classmates had a car, so we walked home afterwards, unless a boyfriend had 50 cents extra to buy an ice cream soda at LaRochelle's Drug Store on the way home.
After graduation (I played a flute solo during the ceremony) and the usual vacation at the camp in Deer Isle, I went off to the Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School, my first look at a big city. The Students' Union on the Fenway boarded young women from a dozen or more schools and colleges in the area, and this made for an interesting experience in dormitory life. My roommate, Shirley Prindle of Litchfield, Connecticut, was a jolly, popular girl who helped me to loosen up a bit, although I was still one of the most determined A-seekers imaginable.
The Gibbs School was a superior one in its field, and my training there has always been useful. It made getting a job easy anywhere I went in later years. My first job after that year was an absolute cinch after all the pressure Gibbs teachers put on us! Was that the end of my education? Of course not. From then on I have read anything that interested me, from anthropology to zoology -- not systematically, but with zest. A college course here and there, a flute scholarship at the Boston Conservatory for one year, and I'm still happily learning at 80 years old.
World War II started while I was at Gibbs. The ominous announcement was made over the radio at school the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. I was horrified again and again when I learned that many of my Berlin and Deer Isle boy friends were being killed on faraway Pacific Islands. I wondered if my brothers would have to serve -- no one could predict how long the war would go on. (David did join the Navy, but his service was mostly just after the war ended.) Newspapers screamed dreadful headlines every day for years -- I remember one I saw as I rode the subway home in 1944: "Science Splits the Atom!" The outcome of this event was of course the atomic bomb that finally brought the war to its end. What I did in the War was to work as a secretary 6 days a week in the Office of Price Administration in downtown Boston; I lived in a pleasant rooming house at the foot of Beacon Hill with my friend Mary Louise Sullivan. One night a week we were USO hostesses and danced with servicemen in their time off for recreation. During this time I met Buchanan Loesch ("Buck"), and he and I enjoyed a lovely courtship for several months while he worked teaching radar to Navy officers at MIT. At last Buck's deferment ended, and he went into the Navy as an ensign. Buck rather hoped he would be shipped to "Pago Pago," but got a big surprise when he got orders to the radar school where he had been teaching -and to take the three-month course that he had taught! After that he was sent to Philadelphia. He and I traveled there and spent the rest of the War in a one-room apartment beside Fairmount Park. I got a part-time job at the law school of the University of Pennsylvania.
With the War over, Buck (now a Lieutenant J.G.) was delighted to be back in civilian clothes, and I to see the end of rationing and "cardboard" shoes. Buck got a job teaching and later researching at MIT, and he started working on a master's degree there. We also started a family -- our daughter Karen arrived in 1947. We were the happiest of parents!
When Peter was born in 1949, we had started building a house in Reading, Massachusetts, having bought some land for $500 from a friend of a friend. Buck did most of the building after the cellar was in and the frame up. It was a great day in October 1950 when we moved out of the sooty, cramped apartment near Symphony Hall in Boston and out to the suburbs in our new house. Reading proved to be a good hometown, with our circle of special friends, the Arthurs, Blanchards, Whittemores, Stones, and Joneses. We entertained each other, played bridge, and gave each other support for many years. The schools were very good, and our four children did well there (Kenneth (1953) and Stacy (1956) completed our growing family.) We spent vacations with my family in Deer Isle, or in Colorado on Buck's family's ranch, or traveling to places like Seattle, San Francisco, St. Croix, and New York City. We traveled by sleeper train, jet plane, and by car. One year we added a Japanese "foreign student" to our family; Setsuko Kumon spent her senior year with us. We enjoyed this experience very much and have kept in touch ever since.
My first trip abroad was in the fall of the year daughter Karen went off to college. Buck, my sister Ruth, her husband Warren, and I spent about three weeks traveling by car, train, and boat around Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, and France. This was a marvelous trip, and others followed over the years - several to the Caribbean, one to Hawaii, one to Yorkshire, England for a month, one to London, Edinburgh, and France; one to the Florence area of Italy, another to Vienna for a month, and recently a Mediterranean cruise visiting Rome, Venice, Athens, Turkey and Israel. Some of these trips involved attending music workshops and playing with small groups of musicians.
Music has always been a major part of my life, starting with the jigs and reels my dad played on his fiddle. I had piano lessons for several years, listened to operas on the radio, learned to play the flute and played in orchestras whenever I had the chance - all these privileges contributed so much to my lifelong involvement in music. I have taught flute, played professionally from time to time, and now in later years play in small groups with friends. I have a plaque honoring my service on the Board of the Treasure Coast Symphony in Florida! The very fine Verne Q. Powell flute that I have played for 40 years was inherited from my long-time friend Jean Preo of Berlin.
Writing is another of my interests, and this has led to my being elected Secretary of almost every organization I ever worked with, starting with the Little League in Reading. A few little essays have been published, but mostly I've enjoyed writing letters and personal histories of my family members. My interest in writing led to a job as a copy editor at the Addison Wesley Publishing Company in Reading, which I held for a year or two before I moved to Boston in 1971. This was quite a switch -- instead of being a secretary, I HAD one! (Even though I had to share her with five other editors.)
In the field of sports, I was never any good at any of them, but I did give several a good try. In Berlin I ice-skated, skied, climbed four big mountains, swam at the Y, and bicycled. Later on I tried tennis and golf, bowling and croquet. Nowadays I'm down to walking and swimming, and I enjoy these almost every day in sunny Florida.
In 1973 after Buck and I were divorced, I decided to live and work in St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where my sister Ruth had lived for many years. I held several jobs in succession (legal secretary mostly) and bought a small house. I had a roommate, Susan Elmour, for years; we were friends and her rental dollars helped pay the mortgage. I found the island life delightful in every way, especially the many wonderful people I met.
As social secretary to Mrs. Henry Kaiser, Mr. Fairleigh Dickinson and Mrs. James P. Hendricks, I had opportunities I never would have had otherwise. I had a great job with Pivar Real Estate, working with Ruth and other realtors; I eventually got a real estate salesman's license. With Ruth's family, by small plane and sailboat I got to explore more than a dozen West Indian islands with their varying cultures and languages. And where else would I have met Maureen O'Hara and Victor Borge, or had dinner with officers on a visiting British ship!
(Continued on page 2)

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		The Story of Jean by Jean Loesch Krauklin A little philosophy to begin with! All the things I've done or tried to do make quite a long "history," but then, 80 years is a long time. I'm glad I've always had enough energy, enough interests, good health, and joie de vivre. I'm eternally grateful for the good fortune to have four such wonderful children, along with their children, as well as the finest kind of other relatives and friends. I can never express the feeling of love and pride and contentment my family has brought me. I wish I could be with them more, but glad they are making their own lives happily and successfully, and that we can be in contact by telephone, letters, pictures, and email! My vital statistics: born March 30,1923 in Berlin, New Hampshire, eldest of four children born to Benjamin Stacy Haskell and Lydia Gilbert Haskell. Married February 24, 1945 to Buchanan Loesch for 27 years. Remarried October 29, 1983 to Ewald L. Krauklin. My education in Berlin, a mill town, was remarkably good for a city of its size with a large foreign-born population. The Brown Paper Company funded a public kindergarten, which I attended in 1928-9. Then I started first grade in a private school held at the Browns' home with two of their children. There were 5 in the class, and I recall being picked up each day by the Browns' chauffeur. Second grade saw the beginning of the Depression, and I joined the other kids in public school. Fourth grade was special - I was picked to be in Miss Abbott's advanced class. She was a super teacher with mind-expanding ways who opened our eyes and ears to drama, music, dancing, Greek myths, field trips, poetry, and painting -- what a year! In high school I took all the courses I could fit in. I loved school, which lasted from 8 to 4 every day, and was always near the top of my class of 195 kids. I was in College Preparatory, but also took commercial subjects and played flute in the school orchestra and band. It was cold playing in the band at football games - sometimes I wore gloves while I played! There were dances in the gym several times a year, and sometimes we had a professional orchestra from Portland or even Boston, playing "big band" music. None of my classmates had a car, so we walked home afterwards, unless a boyfriend had 50 cents extra to buy an ice cream soda at LaRochelle's Drug Store on the way home. After graduation (I played a flute solo during the ceremony) and the usual vacation at the camp in Deer Isle, I went off to the Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School, my first look at a big city. The Students' Union on the Fenway boarded young women from a dozen or more schools and colleges in the area, and this made for an interesting experience in dormitory life. My roommate, Shirley Prindle of Litchfield, Connecticut, was a jolly, popular girl who helped me to loosen up a bit, although I was still one of the most determined A-seekers imaginable. The Gibbs School was a superior one in its field, and my training there has always been useful. It made getting a job easy anywhere I went in later years. My first job after that year was an absolute cinch after all the pressure Gibbs teachers put on us! Was that the end of my education? Of course not. From then on I have read anything that interested me, from anthropology to zoology -- not systematically, but with zest. A college course here and there, a flute scholarship at the Boston Conservatory for one year, and I'm still happily learning at 80 years old. World War II started while I was at Gibbs. The ominous announcement was made over the radio at school the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. I was horrified again and again when I learned that many of my Berlin and Deer Isle boy friends were being killed on faraway Pacific Islands. I wondered if my brothers would have to serve -- no one could predict how long the war would go on. (David did join the Navy, but his service was mostly just after the war ended.) Newspapers screamed dreadful headlines every day for years -- I remember one I saw as I rode the subway home in 1944: "Science Splits the Atom!" The outcome of this event was of course the atomic bomb that finally brought the war to its end. What I did in the War was to work as a secretary 6 days a week in the Office of Price Administration in downtown Boston; I lived in a pleasant rooming house at the foot of Beacon Hill with my friend Mary Louise Sullivan. One night a week we were USO hostesses and danced with servicemen in their time off for recreation. During this time I met Buchanan Loesch ("Buck"), and he and I enjoyed a lovely courtship for several months while he worked teaching radar to Navy officers at MIT. At last Buck's deferment ended, and he went into the Navy as an ensign. Buck rather hoped he would be shipped to "Pago Pago," but got a big surprise when he got orders to the radar school where he had been teaching -and to take the three-month course that he had taught! After that he was sent to Philadelphia. He and I traveled there and spent the rest of the War in a one-room apartment beside Fairmount Park. I got a part-time job at the law school of the University of Pennsylvania. With the War over, Buck (now a Lieutenant J.G.) was delighted to be back in civilian clothes, and I to see the end of rationing and "cardboard" shoes. Buck got a job teaching and later researching at MIT, and he started working on a master's degree there. We also started a family -- our daughter Karen arrived in 1947. We were the happiest of parents! When Peter was born in 1949, we had started building a house in Reading, Massachusetts, having bought some land for $500 from a friend of a friend. Buck did most of the building after the cellar was in and the frame up. It was a great day in October 1950 when we moved out of the sooty, cramped apartment near Symphony Hall in Boston and out to the suburbs in our new house. Reading proved to be a good hometown, with our circle of special friends, the Arthurs, Blanchards, Whittemores, Stones, and Joneses. We entertained each other, played bridge, and gave each other support for many years. The schools were very good, and our four children did well there (Kenneth (1953) and Stacy (1956) completed our growing family.) We spent vacations with my family in Deer Isle, or in Colorado on Buck's family's ranch, or traveling to places like Seattle, San Francisco, St. Croix, and New York City. We traveled by sleeper train, jet plane, and by car. One year we added a Japanese "foreign student" to our family; Setsuko Kumon spent her senior year with us. We enjoyed this experience very much and have kept in touch ever since. My first trip abroad was in the fall of the year daughter Karen went off to college. Buck, my sister Ruth, her husband Warren, and I spent about three weeks traveling by car, train, and boat around Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, and France. This was a marvelous trip, and others followed over the years - several to the Caribbean, one to Hawaii, one to Yorkshire, England for a month, one to London, Edinburgh, and France; one to the Florence area of Italy, another to Vienna for a month, and recently a Mediterranean cruise visiting Rome, Venice, Athens, Turkey and Israel. Some of these trips involved attending music workshops and playing with small groups of musicians. Music has always been a major part of my life, starting with the jigs and reels my dad played on his fiddle. I had piano lessons for several years, listened to operas on the radio, learned to play the flute and played in orchestras whenever I had the chance - all these privileges contributed so much to my lifelong involvement in music. I have taught flute, played professionally from time to time, and now in later years play in small groups with friends. I have a plaque honoring my service on the Board of the Treasure Coast Symphony in Florida! The very fine Verne Q. Powell flute that I have played for 40 years was inherited from my long-time friend Jean Preo of Berlin. Writing is another of my interests, and this has led to my being elected Secretary of almost every organization I ever worked with, starting with the Little League in Reading. A few little essays have been published, but mostly I've enjoyed writing letters and personal histories of my family members. My interest in writing led to a job as a copy editor at the Addison Wesley Publishing Company in Reading, which I held for a year or two before I moved to Boston in 1971. This was quite a switch -- instead of being a secretary, I HAD one! (Even though I had to share her with five other editors.) In the field of sports, I was never any good at any of them, but I did give several a good try. In Berlin I ice-skated, skied, climbed four big mountains, swam at the Y, and bicycled. Later on I tried tennis and golf, bowling and croquet. Nowadays I'm down to walking and swimming, and I enjoy these almost every day in sunny Florida. In 1973 after Buck and I were divorced, I decided to live and work in St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where my sister Ruth had lived for many years. I held several jobs in succession (legal secretary mostly) and bought a small house. I had a roommate, Susan Elmour, for years; we were friends and her rental dollars helped pay the mortgage. I found the island life delightful in every way, especially the many wonderful people I met. As social secretary to Mrs. Henry Kaiser, Mr. Fairleigh Dickinson and Mrs. James P. Hendricks, I had opportunities I never would have had otherwise. I had a great job with Pivar Real Estate, working with Ruth and other realtors; I eventually got a real estate salesman's license. With Ruth's family, by small plane and sailboat I got to explore more than a dozen West Indian islands with their varying cultures and languages. And where else would I have met Maureen O'Hara and Victor Borge, or had dinner with officers on a visiting British ship! (Continued on page 2)
		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