Gail Litowsky and Herman Held
Gail and Herman met around 1962, but my grandmother had no interest in my grandfather at the time. She was in a serious relationship with someone else, and she believed Herman was too nerdy for her. My mom joked, “it’s possible that we are the nerdiest family of all time” (the most recent statement of that belief, pre-interview, was when nine of us were collaborating on a New York Times crossword puzzle).
My grandparents, Gail and Herman Held, in 2011
A map of notable places for my grandparents: The University of Minnesota; Woburn, MA; Chelmsford Center, MA; Westford, MA; South Chelmsford, MA
Herman Held attended the University of Minnesota for electrical engineering, and soon after graduating got a job at Honeywell. He also got his master’s degree at the University of Minnesota. He got a draft notice for Vietnam but was deferred from the draft due to his essential worker position as an engineer.
My grandfather got relocated through Honeywell to Massachusetts, and lived in Woburn. In Massachusetts he was drafted again, and was able to defer again, due to his work status. He was briefly back in Minnesota, where my grandmother now had an interest in him. She states, “he was no longer the nerdy teen I had known — he grew up a little bit”. My aunt found this to be hilarious, stating, “I can’t picture Dad being anything but a serious grown up”. My grandfather noted, “I was a little crazy — I went skiing in the Alps!”.
My grandparents got married in 1973, and they eloped as to not have to deal with planning a wedding and their “overbearing parents”. They moved into an apartment in Chelmsford, MA, in the center, in the “converted carriage house”, which is there to this day.
In early 1974 they moved to Westford, MA and my aunt, Maria, was born in November of that year. My mom, Jenny, was born in October 1977, and my other aunt, Laura, was born in February 1981. In 1985 the Held Family moved to South Chelmsford.
(From left to right): My aunt, Laura; me; my grandmother, Gail; my aunt, Maria; and my mom, Jenny, at Thanksgiving in 2018
Quest Engineering Solutions
In around 1990, Honeywell asked my grandfather to lay off his entire department, around ten people that he was managing. Instead of laying them off, my grandfather bought out the department and started his own business, Quest Engineering Solutions. Quest is still around to this day, and my grandfather is still on the staff. The pandemic did finally get him to cut down on some of his hours, and now he only goes in “from around 9-2”, which according to my aunt is "a massive improvement". Quest actually saw an upturn in business during the pandemic, as they worked on military and government contracts.
In 1994 my grandparents, mom, and her younger sister, moved to a condo in Chelmsford, which is where my grandparents live to this day. As a child I loved climbing the brick walls in the parking lot and walking around the tiny duck pond beside the complex.
Small/Held/Litowsky/Johnson family Thanksgiving, 2015
Jack Litowsky and Gail Held, Minneapolis, MN, 2021
My grandmother’s brother, Jack, still lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and my grandparents love to go to visit him. My family makes it out to Minnesota around every other year. My grandfather's brother, Isaac, lives in Pennington, NJ. We do our Thanksgivings with that side of my family, and that is where this interview took place, which allowed for many side comments from everyone who I was not interviewing.