EPISODES FROM A WAYNE CHILDHOOD, Pt. 2

GOING HOME AGAIN

In 1939, my father returned to Wayne from a career with the Walter Baker Company in Boston (at the time a division of General Foods), because my grandfather had had a heart attack and our small family chocolate factory in Germantown, the DeWitt P. Henry Co., Confectioners, was at risk.  From that point on, he felt overshadowed by my grandfather’s life, and grew embittered by the obligation of the business, which put a strain on his own marriage and parenting, and resulted in an alcoholic collapse during World War II.  Later, given the crisis that the factory had brought to all of our lives, he vowed never to burden any of us, his own children, with such a life.

To his credit, he never did.  I am now a college teacher, a writer, an editor, and have made my life in Boston.  The factory was sold in the 1970s.  The houses we once lived in have been sold and resold, and the largest, 114 Bloomingdale Avenue in Wayne, has been turned into condos.  My parents are buried in a family plot that my grandfather purchased in West Laurel Hill Cemetery.  With his own table-sized stone at the head, engraved with my name, his vision had been dynastic, but neither my two deceased brothers, nor my living sister, me, or our children have been or will be buried there. 

When I revisited Wayne in 1985, the summer of my mother’s dying, my wife, daughter and I drove those familiar streets and I groped for recognitions and for landmarks to point out.  Everywhere the streets seemed narrower and blocks shorter than in memory: the old high school, now the middle school; my old primary school an administration building.  The familiar names of tradesmen in the business district were gone, although the buildings remained: Moffo’s Shoe Repair (the shoemaker’s daughter, Anna, had become an opera star), The Men and Boys Shop, Harrison’s, Espenshades, Woolworth’s, Brooks’ Stationery, Wack’s Druggists.  The Anthony Wayne movie theater was still there, the Presbyterian Church, the firehouse, the Wayne Title and Trust Clock, although the bank itself had moved.  New to Wayne, recognizable franchises adjoined the supermarket: Starbucks, Wendy’s, Borders. The mile along the Lancaster Pike between Wayne and St. David’s now seemed an unbroken strip of malls, indistinguishable from those in anywhere, USA. 

I’ve made other trips back since for my 50th Radnor reunion, and most recently to read from my memoirs to classmates who have remained in Wayne, as well as to newer friends and residents gathered in the Radnor Memorial Library.  We all share this place; we all change and yet remain familiar.  And we all have our stories to live, imagine, and tell.