July 7, 1926 - May 31, 2006 My father John P. Suler was born on July 7, 1926 to Joseph and Mary Suler. He had two younger sisters, Marcella and Dorothy. Like the children of many immigrant families, my father grew up on the streets of New York, on Shepard Avenue in Brooklyn. He played stickball. He scaled the L-train tracks like suburban kids would climb monkey bars. When the city maintenance crews came to patch up the streets, he and his friends helped themselves to their tar and chewed it like bubble gum. On special days, he bought Italian ice from the man pushing the cart holding bottles of different flavored syrups and a large block of ice that he shaved into cups. Once, when he was a teenager, he ran away from home. His father managed to find him. Rather than lecturing or scolding him, he simply asked his son if he wanted to go bowling. That was a defining moment in my father’s love for his father. Even though some people joke about bowling and the Polish fascination for it, the game was no joke for them. It was a way of life. Grandpa Suler achieved not once but twice the incredibly difficult feat of a perfect 300 game. Everyday he wore his 300-game medals on his belt. My father admired him. He spent the rest of his own life striving for that perfect game and several times he came very close. When WW II broke out, my father and some of his friends lied about their age so they could join up to fight. He hadn’t yet completed high school. As a gunner on a B-17 bomber, he flew several missions in Europe, was shot in the leg, and received a Purple Heart. When the Germans broke through the Allied lines in the Battle of the Bulge, he was transferred to the infantry. He was spared none of the horrors that men had to endure in that war, but when it ended he came back to America as a hero. He received the Bronze Star for single-handedly knocking out a German tank in battle. Serving as a soldier was one of the major accomplishment in his life, and throughout his life he relived those experiences in the many war movies he watched on TV, over and over again. While still a young man in uniform, he met my mother, Doris Bauer, a young woman from Long Island who was attending college, liked to play softball, and also worked as a model. Her dad, John Bauer, a strict German father and civil engineer, wasn’t always approving of their courtship. One night my father left AWOL from guard duty and drove an hour in order to have a short visit with Dottie, only to be met at the door by Mr. Bauer, who sternly informed him that his daughter did not receive visitors during the school week and promptly closed the door in my fathers's face. “I wanted to pull out my gun and shoot him!” my father always joked. Of course he didn’t. Despite their differences, Grandpa Bauer and my father did form a strong bond, as when they drank shots of whiskey one night together until both of them ended up rolling on the floor laughing. My mother and father married in April of 1950. They raised their children – my older sister Ellen, me, and my younger sister and brother, Nancy and Robert – in the brand new suburbs of Farmingdale, where the potato farms used to be, near an exit of the gently curving Southern State Parkway that Robert Moses designed to ease the city people into the countryside of Long Island. Soon after a start that seemed bright and promising, my parents ran into hard times. My father lost his well-paying job at American Safety Razor when the company relocated. Ellen fell out of the backseat of the car while my mother was driving and badly hurt her head. My Dad got into an accident that totaled the new car. But they were young and resilient. They moved forward. After a series of jobs as a short order cook at Howard Johnsons, a taxi driver, and wall paper cutter, Dad started working at the Long Island Lighting Company, starting off as a ditch-digger, and eventually working his way up to parts coordinator of the vehicle fleet. He was proud of the fact that whenever he went on vacation, no one else could seem to handle the complexity of all the paper work that piled up on his desk. He actually looked forward to tacking that pile of papers. People said they loved his voice on the phone, and as a hobby he did in fact record his singing on his state-of-the-art reel-to-reel tape recorder. He loved the Big Bands and gladly lugged his tape recorder to all the family gatherings in order to show off his machine and share his music. He got his pilot’s license, joined the Civil Air Patrol, and encouraged me to join too. Learning how to march and receive inspection in the gymnasium of a local public school, I was impressed by my father in his uniform. He was a CAPTAIN and knew well how to play that role of command and authority. Among the young recruits I got no special favors from him, though I sensed that beneath the stern exterior, he was proud of me. On the weekends he sometimes took me flying. One night we even flew over New Y

Our grandmother (me and Antique Dog Photos) has that air of self-possession that seems to be an inherited trait. I have a photo of my father with this same look, at a similar (or younger) age. She seems too smart to be really pretty, at this age. When she was in her twenties (see other photos posted here----I will put them in a set when I get time) she softened into attractiveness. There are, of course, dozens of stories about Grandma. I'll give just one now: she did not have that grandparental attitude that the grandchildren should be allowed to "win" at games. If you won against her, you earned it, and she always played to win. We usually played this game called "Easy Money," which was an off-brand game company's version of Monopoly. I won a few times; she won a lot. She loved to play, probably because she enjoyed winning. Well, now I've got some time for some more stories. Her husband, Harry, died when he was twenty-seven, and she never remarried. Probably around 1930 or 1932, she took my father and a friend of his in a big touring car on a trip that took them to Arizona and Yellowstone before they swung back to Ohio. I have a map that details their journey. She taught in the Barberton School system for probably fifty years. She could be a rather demanding perfectionist. She was, I think, the best pure cook I ever met, aside from my Aunt Betty in Louisiana, who once made two different kinds of biscuits for lunch, just to show off. Grandma had a rather limited repertoire as a cook, but everything that she made was the best, of that particular item, that I have ever had. She took particular pleasure in corn, sweet corn, and each year she was eager to try out a newer and sweeter variety. At her house I first tasted Silver Queen, which was a big deal when it first came out. Once she asked me if I loved her for an reason other than her cooking. When Grandma died, Judith was her executor, and I helped go through Grandma's things. She had written little notes and attached them here and there to explain to us, now that she was not there, what something was, or who should get it. This, to me, was an incredibly brave and thoughtful gesture. Maybe there are other life lessons that I should have concentrated on, but I've always responded with most avidity to those who teach how to savor life. Grandma Van Noate was one of the great teachers.