Ambler, PA Snow Man

This has to be from the winter of 1958-1959 in Ambler, PA. Dad was an assistant professor at Ambler (now Temple) Junior College. We lived in housing owned by the college. Debbie was in second grade, Bobby was in Kindergarten and Roger was pre-school.

Dressing Up For Easter, 1959

Debbie, Roger and Bobby on the steps of the farm house at Ambler Junior College on Easter, 1959. I am not sure who the woman in the background might be. It could be my father's grandmother known to us as "Muddy", Helen Robinson Parent. She ran a florist business in Millville, NJ. My father lived with her and helped out in the greenhouses during his high school years.

Debbie was in second grade and I was in kindergarten. Roger, who looks like he is holding a cell phone to his ear, was just over two years old.

These are photos of an old slide.

Debbie's 3rd Grade at Wenonah Elementary School

We moved to Wenonah, NJ in August, 1959. We had lived in a number of other places prior to Wenonah. As I recall they included the following towns in the order listed:

Biloxi, Mississippi
Pitman, New Jersey
Kewaunee, Wisconsin
Poughkeepsie, New York
New Brunswick, New Jersey
downtown Ambler, Pennsylvania
rural Ambler, Pennsylvania
Wenonah, New Jersey

Why so many moves? My father was in the Air Force (AF) and taking training in Biloxi. The AF sent him to Nome, Alaska to work at a Distant Early Warning (DEW Line) radar site after the training and we couldn't go, so we lived with my paternal grandparents in Pitman, NJ while he was gone. Next the AF sent him to Keewaunee, WI and we followed. After the Korean War cooled off he resigned from the AF and went to work for IBM in Poughkeepsie, NY but they wanted him to move about the country as much as the AF so he quit that and went back work on a graduate degree on the GI Bill.

While working on the degree he was offered a teaching job at Ambler Junior College so we moved into a brick row house there while the college renovated some old farm houses. Once one house was done we moved into the rural spring house on the far edge of the campus. We later moved into a larger nicer farm house within sight of the first one.

Ambler Junior College is now Temple Junior College.

While teaching at the college my father was told about a sales position with Gloeckners, Inc., a company that sold bulbs, plants, seeds and supplies to greenhouses. My mother had always liked Wenonah, based on the impression of it that she got when she rode the bus from Bridgeton to Philadelphia, so when my father left the college job they hunted for a house in Wenonah.
Our parents bought a house at 102 N. Monroe Avenue in Wenonah. It was their first house purchase and the last house that they lived in.

Click on the photo to view a larger version of the photo.



Debbie started school in Kindergarten in New York. She must have attended school for a while in New Brunswick and then again in Ambler.

In September of 1959 she entered 3rd grade in Miss Quigley's combined 2nd and 3rd grade class.

Here's a photo of the class. If you would like to read a bit about growing up in Wenonah in the 1960s check out her classmate Jack Wiler's blog -


http://jackwiler.blogspot.com




click on the class photo to see a larger version of the photo