2004
Note:
Many of the links in this letter may no longer be valid.
Things change fast on the Web.
Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year from Sue Anne and
Bruce!
A lot has happened this year. On a sad note, Bruce’s mother
Sis passed away in June at age 92, after a ten-year struggle with
Alzheimer’s. We were all prepared for this, and we are sustained
by memories of a wonderful person and of wonderful times together in
the past. Her ashes were buried on a beautiful day in August at
the cemetery in North Andover, Mass., near to her parents and a number
of her brothers and sisters.
Bruce’s Dad Jim (or Milf within the family) is doing well, living
nearby in a very pleasant retirement community. We see each other
often. He joined us at our house in New Hampshire this summer,
and then we all went to the 100th anniversary celebration at the camp in the Adirondacks where he
worked from 1946 to 1953 and where we lived as a family. He made
quite a name for himself there, and it was really a wonderful reunion
with lots of very special friends.
Bruce retired from his job with a defense
contractor at the end of April. Together with retirement from
his government job and from the Army
Reserve, this makes him a triple-dipper! He is enjoying the
freedom of schedule that retirement provides, but the days still don’t
seem long enough to accomplish everything that needs to be done.
Sue Anne’s art interests have moved in the direction of hooked rugs—the
kind that you hang on the wall to admire, not the kind you step on with
dirty shoes. With Karin’s assistance she is setting up a Web
site, www.artists-eye.com, to
showcase this work. Work on the site hadn’t progressed too far
before she realized that it could also serve to illustrate the work of
a number of other talented members of our extended family, so you will
soon find other family artists represented there, and a variety of
media. Check it out! Sue Anne also continues her work as a
docent at a nearby historical site, the ruins of the Patapsco Female
Institute, a pioneering 19th Century girls’ school.
We have been extremely mobile this year. The last tenant left our
house in New Hampshire at the end of June, and now it’s ours for
real. We spend as much time as we can there, working on the minor
and major chores necessary to get it ready to become our fulltime
home. Intermixed with that we spend as much time as we can at our
house in Maryland, sorting out the stuff that one accumulates from over
thirty years in residence and getting the house ready to sell. We
hope to have our move completely behind us by next summer.
And we also spend a lot of time with Sarah and her family in Edmonton,
Alberta. We all got together at Dan’s parents’ house in British
Columbia in April to celebrate Noelle’s first birthday, where we got to
witness Noelle taking her first steps. And now she never seems to
stop moving! Dan’s parents live in a beautiful resort area called
the Okanagan valley, which is
known for long, beautiful lakes, orchards, and vineyards, along with a
very temperate climate. We are all looking forward to the birth
of Sarah and Dan’s second child next spring.
Karin has done extremely well in establishing her Web design company,
exceeding her self-imposed 2004 billing target by the end of
November. We’re really proud of how well she has done. You
can see a lot of her work at her Web site, www.karintracy.com. Dan
(Both our sons-in-law are named Dan!) continues his work as a rehabber
of Baltimore rowhouses and put those skills to good use in working with
Bruce on some summer projects at the New Hampshire house.
While on the subject of New Hampshire, now’s a good time to give you
our address and phone number, because that’s where we will be at this
time next year. Our mailing address will be PO Box 66, Elkins, NH
03233-0066, though our actual street address is 617 Sugar House Road, New London, NH
03257. Elkins is a part of New London with its own little
Post Office, and it’s more convenient to our house than the main Post
Office in town. We could even get to Elkins by kayak! Our
phone number is 603 526-2496, and our e-mail address remains
bbb@acm.org, which will follow us wherever we might be.
We’ve enjoyed our 34 years in Maryland. We’ve made a lot of
wonderful friends, done a lot of interesting things, had rewarding
careers, raised a wonderful family. We’ll miss all of this, but
we are excited about coming back home to New England in the New
Year. We hope it will be a wonderful year for you all.