Its All About Julie

By Julianne Fetterly and Marty Fetterly

A family memoir in which the author (the family matriach) relates her life story, from 1920's rural New York to her elderly years in Virginia Beach.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543995084

Book preview

© All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN: 978-1-54399-507-7 | eBook ISBN: 978-1-54399-508-4

This book is dedicated to my loving deceased husband, Maxwell Garrett Fetterly, and our seven marvelous children: Marty, Maxine, Mark, Michele, Marlene, Melissa, and Marcie.

Contents

Prologue

Preface

Acknowledgements by Marty Fetterly

It’s All About Julie

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

APPENDEX A

Prologue

I am so grateful to

my older brother Marty for taking this time to help my mother write her story. Julianne Rita Teresa Vince Fetterly is one tough woman. I am the second oldest of seven children and the first daughter. Starting at a very young age, my mother taught me everything about homemaking and raising children. I tried to do everything right. Yet, I also played and had the time of my life: first, growing up in the farm country of western New York in the town of Ransomville; later, living in Morocco, Africa, with my ever-growing family; and, finally, finding my own wings as an adult. Our parents raised us well and taught us so much about every aspect of life, even to appreciate other cultures. They gave us a lot of freedom, love, and a few spankings along the way to make us straighten up and fly right.

As a young girl, I helped Mom a lot around the house. As a teenager, I made her worry a lot. When I left home at the age of twenty, we weren’t even speaking. We became friends again when they returned from Morocco. Marty, Mark, and I had our own wings when we reunited with the whole family to meet our new sister Marcie, born in Kentucky. Marty’s daughter, Jennifer, was born while we were away. It was an awesome time of family celebration. The Fetterlys were a happy bunch, together again in the USA after five years away.

Life moved on, and change was constant for all of us. Marty has recorded Mom’s story with my help in editing and filling in the missing pieces. Mom was not a nurturing type. She was the yeller and screamer and we were always ruffling her feathers, it seems. Dad was the mediator and the peacemaker. When Dad passed in 2004, our life was turned upside down. He had already given us so much, and then he gave us those four years in the nursing home to help us let him go. He was Mom’s pillar and our stone. We mourned as we watched him float away with dementia. We still miss him so much today. Now, it’s Mom turn to let go, and she is showing us how in her own way. A couple years ago, she asked for her Catholic last rites and received them. She’s good to go!

Mom chose to leave the house on Old Ocean View Road in early 2012. I suggested a senior home off Military Highway. It would have worked for her; however, the apartment that was available was a building separate from where the activities took place and too far for her to venture alone. When she moved, I rented the Old Ocean View house, took off for a trip across the country, and then I left for India. During my absence, our youngest sister, Marcie, began to handle all Moms’ affairs, which was a total relief for me. Mom moved every year, looking for somewhere to call home again. She even spent time in Pennsylvania with our sister Melissa. I had been in India for almost four years. Mom wrote me a letter saying that she was lonely and missed me; I felt her loneliness as well. During my last year away in India, Mom found yet another apartment. The apartment she chose was the worst. It had long hallways and no balcony. With only one good eye left, she could barely work the appliances. The activities room at the entrance was too far away, and I felt sad for her.

I returned to the USA in November 2016. I made it my mission to find a good place for Mom to live. I met a friend who worked at an independent living facility in Norfolk. I had visited this place years ago to see an elderly friend. It was perfect for Mom! When we took Mom there to see the old Victorian home, she said it reminded her of the old Vince farmhouse. She agreed to move in and enjoyed her stay.

For the first time, after showing so much anger and unhappiness, she has other women to communicate with instead of just us kids. There is live music, arts and crafts, bowling, and singing at her new home. Mom learned to smile again and shows gratitude for her life. Mom still has her mind, yet many of the women there don’t talk much. It is sometimes difficult for Mom to understand their dementia, yet she was beginning to show it too. The activities directors help to keep them motivated and active. Mom still has a few complaints, yet she always adds, Don’t get me wrong: I really like this place! She is grateful today for a life well lived and for the seven great children who love and care for her. I’m sure we will continue to find more missing pieces of our family history and this book will inspire us to tell more stories. Our family history and these times of sharing family memories will live on forever.

Thanks Mom and Dad. I love you!

Maxine Fetterly

Preface

My name is Martin (Marty)

Charles Fetterly (USN Retired CWO3), the oldest of Maxwell and Julie Fetterly’s seven children. Our family had its beginnings in the small town of Ransomville, New York, north of Niagara Falls. The memoir of Julie Fetterly recorded in It’s All About Julie consists of the personal experiences and observations of my mother. My mother and I began writing this story when she was 87 and residing in Norfolk, Virginia, where she and my father had relocated many years earlier. We met several days a week: I interviewed Mom and was able to assist her in recording the memories of her long and fruitful life. My sister Maxine spent many months ensuring these events and recordings were placed into a chronological sequence. Each of the Fetterly children, introduced throughout the course of this book, has added to the writing process and accuracy of our mother’s story. My mother insisted on consulting the many bi-annual Vince Family Reunion booklets, which began in 1996 with the first reunion in Chicago, Illinois. Our only living aunt still resides in Chicago today.

My Uncle Martin always told me, When the Vinces get together Marty, it’s always about Julie! To all the late aunts and uncles, your past support and love is woven through the foundation of my mother’s life. All her siblings helped bring up the baby of this multi-generational Vince family.

Most of the book was written prior to the onset of my mother’s diminished short-term memory, which began around the year 2017. Here I became my mothers, Ghost Writer. However, mother personally reviewed all these chapters as I read them to her during the editing process. She would say, Stop, Marty. Let me straighten you out about this or that! Or, I never said that! In addition, Mom would say, That’s my story and I’m sticking with it!

The Fetterly family hopes you enjoy these pages composed by our feisty, humorous, and (at times) opinionated mother, Julie. Mother continues to listen to current events and she is still up on the times of our ever-changing world. In Mom’s words on Thanksgiving of 2018, Where’s the book? I’m ready to kick the bucket and go be with Max! On May 26, 2019, Mom attended my 70th surprise birthday party. She broke into the proceedings to ask, If Marty is 70, how many years old am I?

Acknowledgements by Marty Fetterly

I want to thank the

Churchland Writers Group of Portsmouth, Virginia, for their support, guidance, and patience during the course of this enterprise. Many writers in this group have helped develop the written interviews into the original twenty-five chapters, and many edits were necessary to compose the final draft: thank you all.

My love and thanks to my devoted wife, Patricia Fetterly, who sat beside me throughout the entire venture. She refers to her life as living with Marty Fetterly.

It’s All About Julie

Spring! Did you hear me?

Spring is my favorite time of the year! I remember when I was young: the beautiful spring flowers were blooming in the countryside of western New York State. Yes, spring was in the air and I had a spring in my step! I would take off skipping and singing while gathering fluffy white pussy willows along the creek banks and taking in the smells of forsythia and lilac along the road. I’ve always enjoyed having fresh, colorful flowers as the centerpiece on the family table. Just yesterday, at the age of 92, I looked out across the back deck from my wheelchair at the brilliant red and pink azaleas, dogwoods, tulips, and daffodils here at the Old Ocean View Home in Norfolk, Virginia, where my husband and I lived for 27 years. Today, I’m in a nursing facility peering across a patio window at a similar sight, a courtyard with flowers, shrubs, and odd patches of purple that make me feel like royalty. My name is Julianne Rita Teresa Vince Fetterly, and I am 93 years young. This is my story, from farm life to faraway places. Buckle up for a wild ride!

Chapter 1

I was born during the

Roaring Twenties on July 10, 1926. Most people in the United States had been dancing on the prosperity of the last fifty years. My parents were no exception. Their farm had evolved from orchards and a few milk cows into the huge production known as The Vince Farm Dairy. My father was a successful businessman; they were milking over sixty cows, as well as bottling and selling milk in Niagara Falls, New York. My mother and my father were instrumental in the early development of many immigrant social clubs having their roots in Niagara Falls.

The city of Niagara Falls had a population of 87,000, and the waterfalls generated cheap electricity for industry, which was booming all through the 1920s. Sometime around the end of 1929, they finished paving Packard Road, which eventually connected to Lockport just to the east, which had become a center for business due to the Erie Canal. Packard Road ended at the back entrance to the Niagara Falls Airport, which brought additional business to my parents’ farm.

It’s important for me to discuss my family origin before and after I was born. I’m proud to say that we Vinces were farmers. Both of my parents migrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia. My mother, Agnes Ambro Vince (1892-1951), came from the town of Velke Levare in 1906, when she was fourteen years old. My father, Martin Vince III (1882-1972), came from Mele Levare in 1909 at the age of twenty-five. These towns were agricultural communities. I know this because my husband Max and I visited my mother’s family at Velke Levare in 1970. Just recently, I received an Easter Card from my cousin Anton Blakeh, the son of my mother’s sister. Anton still lives in the home we visited in the 1970s.

I am the youngest of six children, and I have two sisters and three brothers: Mary (1912-1986), who married William; Agnes (1914-1975), who married George; Michael (1916-2006), who married Frances and Marylou; Joseph Vince (1918-1928); and Martin Vince IV (1921-2008), who married Marylin. My brother Martin and I were born in the old stone house, called the Packard House. My parents rented the house and farm, which once made up the large Packard Motor Company Estate. This was located on Packard Road, which was then the city line of Niagara Falls. Everyone who knew my parents referred to them as Pa and Ma Vince. The only time I remember hearing their first names was when friends and relatives visited on Sundays, holidays, and special occasions like wedding and funerals.

All the kids loved to run around the apple orchard and the dairy barn. Everything on the farm was entertaining to my young mind. Our farm had one of the original gasoline hiss-and-pop engines that ran the vacuum pump. I used to watch Dad get it running and sometimes fix it when it didn’t want to start. Dad and my brother Mike could fix about everything on the farm.

My father had worked on large sugar beet farms in Austria, worked in the coalmines in Pennsylvania, and was a rigger in the steel mills and foundries in Niagara Falls. He and my mother also were caretakers of the Niagara Falls Country Club and Golf Course prior to leasing the farm and building their dairy business.

Pa was the brains behind the farm operation. The only thing bad was that Pa had a bit of a temper, and sometimes he drank too much of his own hard cider. He and I were best of friends; he would allow me to ride on the horse-drawn wagons when my mother was out of sight. I remember her saying I was too young to be around the farm machinery and livestock. My brother Martin was only five years older, and he was always with me, even when I tagged along with Dad.

My mother and older brother Mike would arrive at the barn early to heat the water in a furnace-like hot water tank. I can’t remember what fueled the water heater: it might have been kerosene located in a separate stone building near the milk house, or it could