Large Was Their Bounty: Memories of Mom and Dad

By Paul Clavelle, Sue Clavelle, David Clavelle and 3 more

"What matters most in life is not great deeds, but great love."
St. Thérèse of Lisieux

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Oct 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483458342

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CLAVELLE

Copyright © 2016 Paul Clavelle.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5835-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5834-2 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Clavelle Books

6182 Campfire

Columbia, MD 21045

Contact information:

443-545-4659

[e-mail]

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 10/20/2016

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. Mem and Pep Clavelle

Chapter 2. Mem and Pep Bergeron

Chapter 3. Mom and Dad: Growing Up

Chapter 4. The War and the Wedding

Chapter 5. Working and Raising the Kids

Chapter 6. Retirement

Chapter 7. 2007-08: No More Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

Chapter 8. 2009: Hanging in There

Chapter 9. Mom’s Last Two Months

Chapter 10. Dad Moves to Ethan Allen

Chapter 11. Ethan Allen

Chapter 12. Dad’s Last Gift

Epilogue

Appendix 1. Sue’s Eulogy for Mom

Appendix 2. Rick’s Song for Mom

Appendix 3. Tom’s Eulogy for Dad

Appendix 4. Rick’s Song for Dad

Appendix 5. An Outsider’s Perspective

Appendix 6. The Grandchildren Remember Their Mim and Pip

Appendix 7. The Future Generations

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere

From The Epitaph of

Elegy Written in a

Country Churchyard

by Thomas Gray

Dedication

To Mom and Dad, for everything,

and to the community of family and friends who laughed with them, cried with them,

and prayed with them

throughout their lives.

Introduction

26 Hall Street

1953

Mom and Dad didn’t want to move. They had to.

For the first eight years of their married life, they had been contentedly ensconced in the second-story apartment that had been carved just for them out of Dad’s family homestead on Weaver Street. For their part, Mem and Pep* Clavelle had been delighted to have their elder son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren right above them. That’s how they had been raised. Families stayed together, certainly until the children married, and often afterward. Life could be hard, but family was always there. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, children—whoever needed or wanted a place to stay had one.

But now, with three children and a fourth on the way, Mom and Dad knew it was time. So Dad went about finding a house the way men sometimes made decisions in those days—on his own. He overheard that one of his grocery store customers was thinking of selling his house. He went over, took a look, and made a down payment. Then he told Mom.

Oh, how I hated to leave Weaver Street, Mom often said. I loved it so much. The apartment was sunny. People were always walking by. We were across the street from the convent, the school, and the church. Oh, how I hated to leave.

But move they did, to 26 Hall Street—a thirty-year-old, immaculately-maintained house just three blocks away. Ideal for a young family with three small children: Plenty of running room for the kids in the large backyard. Several nicely-spaced, mature trees for shade. Rhubarb and asparagus and broccoli plants next to the grapevine. A neighborly front porch just a few feet away from the street and a small front lawn accented by a Texas pine tree and a hydrangea bush.

The new house even came with a touch of family history: It was located next door to the old brick house where Pep Clavelle had lived some fifty years before.

HallSt57.jpg

26 Hall St. 1957.

Family history or not, you’d have thought we had moved out of state. Mem Clavelle cried as only she could cry, grieving the loss of the closeness that she and her son’s family had enjoyed for several years, and that now was irretrievably a thing of the past.

Mom was not so demonstrative. She cried in solitude, as she set about her vocation—raising us children and keeping the house as clean as one can when two adults and (eventually) six children share a three-bedroom, one-bath residence.

~~~

This is Mom and Dad’s story, as remembered by us, their children. Much of it takes place at the house on Hall Street that was so new to them in 1953 and that became their home for the rest of their lives—almost sixty years.

We make no pretense of objectivity. Our intent has been to create a tribute, not a history. A tone poem, not a newspaper account. When we have presented facts, we have tried to do so accurately.* But even that has proven to be a sometimes elusive goal. How to decide among differing recollections of past events, some of which occurred more than fifty years ago? In the end, we have done the best we could to be true to the facts, while recognizing that memories are the often less-than-photographic creations of the human mind.

We trust you will enjoy, and be enriched by, the bounty that Mom and Dad passed on to all of us.

Chapter 1

Mem and Pep Clavelle

Our grandparents and great-grandparents moved to Winooski, Vermont in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries for the same reason so many people move anywhere—there was work to be had. Physically-demanding, sometimes-dangerous, but reasonably-steady jobs at the town’s woolen mill and in the small businesses that sustained its working-class immigrant workforce.

The American Woolen Mill, established in the nineteenth century when Vermont was still one of the sheep centers of the U.S., defined the economy. What better use for the falls of the Winooski River than to generate the energy that helped spin and weave the wool that kept people warm throughout the long New England fall and winter? What better home for the thousands of French-Canadian, Polish, Lebanese, and Irish working-class immigrants who found their way to the town of 7,000? Add to that the crime-free neighborhoods, the spiritual comfort provided by two Catholic churches (one French-Canadian, the other Irish), and the well-respected parochial and public schools. Little wonder that the city was a Mecca to many first- and second-generation Americans.

Dad’s paternal grandparents had emigrated from a small town north of Montreal (Sainte-Scholastique, now incorporated into Mirabel) to work in the New England mills. They began in Winooski, but, during an economic lull, moved to Central Falls, Rhode Island, where their middle son—and our future grandfather, Alfred—was born. They eventually made their way back to Winooski, where Dad’s grandfather went to work in the screen shop on East Spring Street, a mile or so from the woolen mill. A famously strong man, he worked hard until his early fifties, when he died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. By then, Alfred had become well-known in town as Moon. (There is controversy about the origin of Pep Clavelle’s nickname. Many old-timers said it was because of his round, moon-shaped face as a young man. He, however, insisted that it derived from his adolescent dice-playing days down near the river, where he displayed a penchant for shooting for the moon.)

Whatever the reason for the nickname, there was no doubt that shooting dice was his favorite pre-teen and teen activity. Much more so than school. I flunked fourth grade three times, then I was old enough to go to work in the mill. That’s all I wanted to do, other than shoot dice and play baseball, he used to say in explaining his priorities as a youngster.

When he reached the age of 13, he realized his dream. He started working in the mill, where he would remain for nearly forty years—five or six days a week, eight to ten hours a day, and double shifts during times of peak demand, such as World War II.

His wife-to-be, Rena Provost, joined the mill workforce at about the same time—and also at the age of 13. She too would remain there until the mill closed at mid-century. She was a Winooski native, whose parents, through thrift, and thanks to their connections to the town’s richest man, had eventually realized their lifelong dream of owning their own home. And not just anywhere, but at a prime location—across the street from St. Louis Convent and School and just three houses down from St. Francis Xavier Church, the hub of Winooski’s French-Canadian community.

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When Moon and Rena got married in 1921, there was no question as to where they would be living. Rena’s mother had died, and her father was feeble. He needed assistance tending to the homestead, and they were more than eager to provide it. They settled into the house where they would spend the rest of their lives—195 Weaver Street.

Their two boys, Bob and Ray, came in quick succession—Bob in October of 1922 and Ray almost exactly one year later. Moon and Rena were well on their way to having a typical French-Canadian family of the time—six to ten children. But it was not to be. Bob, at 10+ lbs, had been difficult for Rena to carry and deliver. But Ray, at 13+ lbs, had been far too much. Rena almost died. The risk was too great, the doctors said. There could be no more children.

They settled into a comfortable routine. Both worked at the mill. On weekends, Pep Clavelle had enough pocket change to indulge his love for small-time gambling. He eventually even rented some rooms in a downtown building just a block from the mill, and opened a weekend poker joint.

Opened might not be quite the right term. Prohibition was the law of the land. There could be no alcoholic beverages on the premises. But a dry poker joint? It was a contradiction in terms. So Pep needed to make some arrangements first. That wasn’t too difficult. The Winooski police chief was his good friend, Charlie Barber, who conveniently looked the other way as Pep ran his poker joint in downtown Winooski, referred to by the soldiers at nearby Fort Ethan Allen as little Chicago. The game started every Friday after work, and went on until early Sunday morning, when everyone went home, cleaned up, got into their Sunday best, and went to church. Then the joint would reopen into the evening.

Every now and then, for appearance’s sake, Charlie would raid the establishment, but only after having warned Pep. By the time of the raid, there was no alcohol on the premises—just a bunch of the boys playing a friendly game of cards. On a small number of occasions, in order to deflect the suspicions of some city officials who were not as understanding as Charlie, the game was safely moved to Mem and Pep’s house across the street from the convent.

Mem raked in a quarter a pot as her reimbursement for allowing the card players to use her kitchen table. And she enforced the rules—all four feet, ten inches, 90 pounds of her. The most inviolable: No card playing on Sunday morning. Missing Sunday Mass was a mortal sin, and Mem was not about to have that on her conscience. Besides, the church was 100 yards up the street, so there were no excuses.

There was another reason to set limits on the card-playing. The men who frequented Pep’s joint, to include Pep himself, were not gambling with money they could afford to lose. They were mill workers and low-ranking soldiers from the Fort. They were placing bets with money from the paychecks they had just cashed. More than once, Dad described how he and Uncle Ray and Mem would stand watch at the front window on Sunday morning, straining to make out the look on Pep’s face as he returned home to get ready for church. A grin and a jaunty walk meant he had made money; a frown and a slump of the shoulders portended bad news. Money would be tight that week.

Many years after Pep had closed his poker joint, cards were still a favorite pastime at 195 Weaver Street, though the stakes were much smaller—and more prudent. The card games were an occasion for inexpensive socializing with family and friends. Pep played as long as he could, but Parkinson’s Disease eventually made that impossible. Fortunately for us grandchildren, Mem was able, and eager, to keep on playing.

How she loved to take out her bag of pennies, pour herself (and us, when we were almost old enough) a glass of Wild Irish Rose wine, place a pack of Winstons and some matches on the table, get out the cards, and spend the evening playing poker (Michigan rummy in her later years)! And she meant business. You knew Mem was not going to let you win out of some misguided sense of pity or kindness. She did not like to lose. You should not like to lose. She would teach you how to win by seeing that you lost.

You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, was her mantra. As for walking away, that was out of the question. You played as long as you had the time and the pennies, and as long as it wasn’t Sunday morning. On a good day, you might win $2. On a bad day… There were no bad days, not when there was a card game going on.

1935pic.jpg

(L to R) Dad, Mem, Pep, and Uncle Ray. c. 1935.

From the mid-1920’s on, it went without saying that Pep took a break from poker and dice on autumn Saturday afternoons. As with the Sunday morning breaks, the reason was spiritual. Notre Dame football games were on the radio, and demanded Pep’s full attention. Especially the 1935 classic against Ohio State. If you’re an avid football historian, you know about that game. The iconic Grantland Rice described what happened: Completely outplayed in the first two quarters, trailing 13 to 0 as the final quarter started with every killing break against it— breaks that would crack the heart of an iron ox— this Notre Dame team came surging back in the final quarter. Notre Dame scored early in the fourth, but the extra point attempt bounced off the crossbar, and it was 13-6. After an interception, the Irish drove to within six inches of the goal line when Milner fumbled the ball away…. With 90 seconds left (in the game), Andy Pilney passed to Mike Layden for a touchdown, but the extra point failed and the Irish trailed 13-12. On the next series of plays, Pilney forced a Buckeye fumble at midfield, giving the Irish the ball at the 49 yard line, and on the next play, Pilney, taking over as quarterback, scrambled to the 19 yard line, but was injured. With only one play left in the game, reserve quarterback Bill Shakespeare passed to Wayne Milner for the 18-13 win. A miracle, without doubt.

What Rice could not have known was the reason for the win. Pep Clavelle had been on his knees throughout the fourth quarter, fervently saying the rosary; and he took pride for the rest of his life at having helped to convince the Almighty to look down favorably on Notre Dame that afternoon.

Rooting for the Fighting Irish must have somehow altered his genetic makeup, or at least his physical appearance. In the late 1940’s, as he and Dad were standing in line overnight in Boston to get tickets to a Red Sox World Series game, he was approached by a ruddy-faced gentleman who proclaimed him to have the map of Ireland written all over your face. The man was so taken by Pep’s embodiment of all things Irish that he went off somewhere (exactly where is not clear, since it was 4 am), acquired a bottle of Irish whiskey, and presented it to Pep in honor of his Celtic ancestry.

Dad remembers having to remind Pep not to say too much to the fellow, since his French-Canadian accent might give him away.

Pep’s interest in sports was not limited to Notre Dame football. Winooski in the first half of the century was a baseball town, and Pep shared