There are many stories for everyone in the family to add to this trip. Some I participated in. Some I just heard about. I will try to tell these stories as I remember them and put them into sections for each person.
Sally
Sally loved to play golf and was lucky to play at all the great courses in Westchester and Fairfield counties through the Women's Westchester & Fairfield County Golf Association. Through her friends she also went to a week-long tournament at the Mid-Ocean Club in Bermuda each year in the early spring.
Our family used to enjoy many great things because she had arranged them for us all. I was a member of the Yale Club and we would go down to New York on Sundays to enjoy brunch when we were not at a football game. Then there was the Yale Glee Club Jamboree in February, which we all enjoyed. When the Gala for the Bicentennial of the country was held in New York in 1976, she got tickets for all of us and arranged for us to use the Yale Club as a base of operations.
Sally loved her gardens and we went to all the big shows. I even arranged two of our trips to London to be at the time of the Chelsea Flower Show in May. Another time, Sally took a trip with the local garden group to see the special gardens in England at Lord Spencer’s house. He was the father of Princess Diana. The other trip was to see the Gardens of Monet in Givenchy, France.
Sally also went to the two outdoor consistories in Rome, where many new cardinals were elevated. I had an invitation from the Knights of Malta, but did not want to go. It was beautifully planned and included a trip to Florence and to the Blue Grotto and Pompeii. At the first one, our new cardinal in New York hosted them. The last one included our new cardinal, Edward Egan, who was our bishop, Ted McCarrick, who I went to school with and debated with, and Avery Dulles, who taught me at Fordham and I have kept up with. I’ll tell you more about that later when I tell Sara’s stories.
When Sara was in Vienna and Tommy was in London, Sally decided to visit Sara and then take the 100th anniversary trip of the Orient Express. She had a great time and even had time to go to the Vienna Opera. The Orient Express has two routes, so she took the train from Vienna to Istanbul and then back the other way. She also went to the Tulip Festival in Holland, where all the tulips were out as far as the eye can see.
Sally and Sara took two trips to Russia and had marvelous trips to Moscow, St. Petersburg and several other cities. On the way home one time, they visited Prague and found it a delightfully quaint city.
When they were walking up a steep hill to a castle, someone snatched Sally’s purse. She wasn’t hurt, but she suggested that Sara run after the perp. Sara did and she was able to retrieve it. They also enjoyed a memorable trip to Australia and New Zealand.
Sally died in December 2010. She was a wonderful partner to go through life with. She knew how to manage me to do the right thing when I was doing something stupid. She also created a wonderful social life for all of us.
Tommy
Tom got his athletic ability from ME. When he was in high school, he was quarterback at King School in Stamford. I don’t know if they had a coach with no ideas or Tom had a bad memory. He always called a play known as 64 Left.
He was also one of my two children with a musical talent. We got him a set of drums one year but, fortunately, that fad died very quickly and we had no trouble with our neighbors. Tom’s interests very soon turned to golf, and that has never changed.
When he was in the last two years of high school, we got him a small car. I was very strict in explaining to him about no accidents. It seems I was overcautious. I backed out of the driveway one morning and put a dent in his fender. I told him I had good and bad news for him. The bad news was that I dented it and the good news was I would get it fixed after we returned from skiing.
That car took him through medical school. One day when he was sitting on the porch of the house he was boarding in at medical school, a city sweeper was coming down the street. Tom yelled at him to be careful, but the sweeper turned the car into trash.
When he decided to go to medical school, I made my usual phone calls. I had a friend in charge of the program at Johns Hopkins, but Tom wanted to go to my alma mater, Bowman Gray, down at Wake Forest.
My old ophthalmology chairman, Winston Roberts, said he would put in a word as did Dr. Richard Janeway, the present dean at Wake Forest. He and I had trained together as residents. Tom had an early interview in the fall of his senior year. On his way home at Thanksgiving, he had an interview at Georgetown. I was glad Georgetown was interested, but it was the most expensive medical school in the country.
Fortunately, on his return to school that Monday, there was a letter of acceptance at Bowman Gray, and we were all very glad. He also had a girlfriend down there at that time. It was Elizabeth Douglas, and we love her.
Tommy met Elizabeth while at Wake Forest. Her father was a doctor and was one of my residents at Bowman Gray. They dated and got married in his third year in medical school. Elizabeth was an archeology major in college. You might wonder about the subject as a career builder. I was wrong. When they went to Pittsburgh, she had a job at the Mellon Museum. She traveled all over looking at different museum in the way they were caring for their animal specimens. She even came to the Natural History Museum in New York City.
Later on, the Mellon Museum was opening up a new section on archeology, and she had a very large part in setting it up. She was developing a large future for herself.
Tom took another year of training with Dr. Starzl in transplant surgery. He was liked and they suggested that he go to Montreal for more experience. Then he could back and run one of the transplant services. This was the beginning of transplant surgery and Dr. Strazl was the number one man.
In Tom's junior year, I arranged for a friend of mine at Queen Square to take him under his wing. Tom’s idea of hard work was to go for a run in the morning and, on his return, the housekeeper would have his breakfast ready. Then he would get to the hospital by 10. Many a day, he would take his lunch and go over to Russell Square and eat at the British Museum. He met Sally and Sara in March in Vienna. He was supposed to meet Sara in Rome at Easter and share expenses.
There was an air-traffic controllers’ strike in Europe, so I would get phone calls at home at 3 or 4 in the morning all week and I tried to help him out. It turned out he could not get to Italy, so I told him to take the ferry and the train to Paris since he had a credit card. It worked out for him, but it resulted in Sara being short money and getting a rather poor hotel room as a result.
One of my highlights was in 1973 at my 25th year out of medical school. It was also the year Tommy was graduating. Two things happened. I was named a Distinguished Graduate at alumni weekend and I was asked to give the speech. I got permission for Tommy to give it with me, showing the medical and age gaps.
Sally surprised me and had all the girls come down to North Carolina. I did not see them until I was up on the stage. It was a thrill.
One year, I received a call from one of the deputy deans in March asking me if I could speak at the medical school graduation ceremony. I accepted and started working on my speech. Then in May, they called me and canceled it with no reason. I was sorely disappointed.
When Tommy was finishing his training at Pittsburgh, I arranged an interview with Bill Collins, the chief of surgery at Yale. He wanted to offer Tom the job of chief of the transplant service, but he decided not to take it.
When I was in residency in North Carolina, Grandfather Maust invited us up for a weekend at the Greenbriar. He was the biggest shipper on the C&O Railroad, so we were given rooms in the presidential wing. Grandfather always wanted the children, no matter how young, to come to dinner. Tommy could not wait that long, so we ordered up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I’m sure they had to send out for it.
A waiter brought up a rolling tray and laid out the table with china silver, a water glass and all sorts of things. Then with a flair, he lifted the dome covering the food and there was the PBJ sandwich. It was never served so grand.
Tommy and Elizabeth returned to High Point, N.C. and have three children. The oldest is Molly. She graduated cum laude from Duke. She wanted to be a doctor, but two grandfathers and her father talked her out of it. She went to veterinary school and loves it. She took another year of training in surgery and is now in a surgical vet practice in Raleigh. She is married to another very bright young man who has been at the top of his class in Duke and at law school.
The next child is Malory, who became a nurse and recently went to Cork, Ireland, to work for a year or so. The third child is Thomas, who is a champion golfer in North Carolina has a golf scholarship at the University of Virginia. He will start his third year in September 2017. He was just awarded the title of Academic Golf scholar.
Sara
Before I write this section, Sara has asked to write a rebuttal at the end of this since she feels we as a family exaggerate her stories.
Sara has had her ups and downs with injuries. There was the time we were up in Montreal at an expo. She was about 8 years old. We were in the Mexican pavilion having a cool one. She started to get a little distracted and was standing on the seat. We told her not to, but she didn’t listen. At that moment, she fell off the seat and hit her head on the table. She got a cut on her forehead and was making a bloody mess, but she was OK. I looked at the blood and it wasn’t bad, just messy. I gave her my handkerchief to hold over her head until we finished our drinks. After that, I would take her to the first-aid station and get a few stitches put in it.
While we were waiting, several of the Spanish-speaking members of the establishment came over and were hysterical. They were more of a problem than Sara. We finally went over to the first-aid station. It was mobbed. I introduced myself and showed my medical ID and asked if I could sew Sara up to save time. They said certainly.
I tried to tell Sara as nicely as possible that after I put in the anesthetic, she would not feel anything. She understood and sat still, but kept yelling and screaming. I finished fixing her up and thanked the doctors. They thanked me profusely.
It seems that the crowd outside was worried about the yelling and screaming. Sally explained to those in the waiting room that I was taking care of my daughter. As a result of Sara's yelling and screaming, most of the people decided they were not that sick and walked away.
This happened one other time when Sara and Sally were skiing. She fell and cut her knee. They went to a local doctor’s office and she did the same thing while he stitched her up. I don’t think she emptied his office that day.
The highlight of stories about Sara is one that happened in New York just before Christmas. The entire family went into New York to go to dinner at the Yale Club and then to see the windows along Fifth Avenue. Sara was probably about 12.
It was snowing as we walked down the street. As we were across the street from the public library, Sara somehow lost a contact lens, then another. We were all scrambling around in the snow looking for them. We had no luck but continued along.
At the next street, we came to Lord and Taylor’s department store. As we were standing in front of the windows admiring the scene and the moving dolls, Sara asked Meg, “Are they pretty this year?” It was a great imitation of Ray Charles.
Then there was the episode when Sara fell off her horse and tore off her Achilles tendon. She was very lucky that she landed on her foot and not on her head.
These were great years with the horses for all the girls. It was particularly great when we were all at the Hunt Club on Sunday mornings, looking at the indoor tournaments and getting ribbons from Mr. Richard Salant. He took time off from his job as head of CBS News on this particular Sunday, just to give his daughter and my girls their ribbons.
Everyone enjoyed it until it was the June show week. All of them were frantic and, of course, as they grew up they needed new clothes for the show. This was different from their sport clothes at the expensive Convent School, where they held their sport skirts together with staples and scotch tape.
Meanwhile to get back to Sara's foot problem. After the surgery in November, she was in a cast and came with us on a ski trip to Vermont. I was concerned the cast would not make it for the week in wet snow, so I got some plaster of Paris. I never wanted to take it off as it got ragged, so I just wrapped more around it.
I was concerned that if I took it off to replace it, I might disturb the surgical area. It worked very well. However, the cast grew bigger and bigger, and Sara said that by the end of the week she was dragging her foot like Quasimodo in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame.'' It wasn’t pretty but functional.
After the trip, we had Sara visit her orthopedist. When he saw it, the doctor had all his office staff come in to see the old cast before putting on a new one. I wish we had a picture for the book.
This was not the end of her leg stories. It was time for Confirmation at our local church. She walked down the aisle using a crutch. As she reached the bishop, he told her not to kneel and gave her the blessing. It was a moving moment. We all witnessed a miracle, because from that moment on she never needed the crutch again.
That is not really true. Years later when she was living in Stamford, she fell off a ladder early one morning. I was in Stamford on an errand. She called me and asked if I could come get her and take her to the hospital. It turned out that I was going to the hospital anyway.
Kelly had just had her second child, Michael, and he was having some respiratory difficulty. I had arranged for him to go to the Yale PICU. So, I arrived at Greenwich Hospital and took one family member out and admitted another one in. Fortunately, both situations worked out well.
Sara was not very supportive of my sailing ability. Sometimes, she would jump ship and go swimming. So what if I hit a few rocks? We never sank. We called her "Spazz'' and named the boat after her.
Beginning in late '60s, we used to go for a week skiing in Vermont before Christmas. We needed two cars, so Sara went with me and the dog. I also had the cookies and the banana bread that my nurses gave me for Christmas. Sara and I ate them all before we reached Vermont. The dog was strange. He did not look out the window. Instead, he sat on the floor in the back and faced toward the seat the entire way.
Sara was not enthralled with Denison University, but she worked hard and did well. We sent her to Vienna for a winter semester. She was lucky. Rather than staying with a family, she had an upstairs apartment over a pastry shop. The hot water -- or the lack of it -- for her baths was the only down side. She also went skiing on weekends and stayed at the chalet owned by her landlord. She twisted her ankle once, but there was no damage.
We had it covered by the head of Texaco in that part of the world and he made sure that she saw a first-class doctor. As a result of this, she was treated royally by the folks at Texaco and went to several nice social events because of them. She loved her school and felt she learned a lot.
As a result of the schedule, she had long weekends and did a lot of traveling on a EuroRail pass. Sally visited her once and Tommy was supposed to meet her in Rome and also to share the expenses. You heard about them not meeting in an earlier section. When she arrived, she asked the man for a cheaper room and he showed her the attic, which had never been opened before. She then told him she would take the more expensive room.
At the end of her time in Vienna, the school ran a one-week bus trip to East Europe as part of her geopolitics course. Then it was time to come home. She planned to go by train to Paris and then on to friends in Amsterdam and finally home.
She asked the people at Texaco to make the hotel and train reservations for her. When she arrived at the hogel in Brussels, she was asked by tbe clerk if Texaco should be charged. Sara was sorely tempted. They would not care, but she knew I would not like it. I would have been glad to reimburse the company, but that would not happen either. She said no.
She got on the train with so much luggage, I could not believe she carried it all through Europe. She arrived in Paris and decided to get a cab with all her bags. She was lucky again. Her hotel was no more than a block away, and the cabby did not try to rob her.
She did some sightseeing and then went back on the train to Amsterdam to stay with mutual friends. Then she got on a plane for New York with half the baggage in Europe. She was lucky that she did not drink alcohol since the soft drinks were free. It seemed she arrived in New York with 50 cents. Her approach to customs was that if she owed anything, they could put her in jail or she could go outside and find me to pay her tax. It turned out customs didn’t care and let her back in the USA for free.
Sara loves to travel and had a school trip to Mexico and another one to Switzerland. When in Switzerland, she took off to go somewhere on a bus and got a little lost, but she straightened it out. She still loves to travel to great places like London and Bhutan.
Not only was Sara not wild about my orthopedic ability, but she did not care for my sailing. I have told you about my sailing in Bermuda with the family. They said I almost hit a Japanese freighter. That was a gross exaggeration. However, I hold the record for the largest peace-time tonnage sunk in that harbor. I always like to be best.
Sara tells the stories how I hit a few rocks in Noroton Harbor. Sometimes, the wind was against me and it took me a little while to get in. She would jump off and swim home. She would not have been an inspiration on the Titanic.
One time, I was visiting friends in Long Island and I was out sailing with Kelly. My step-mother was on the beach. She commented that we were having a fine time sailing back and forth. After a while, our friends saw we were having trouble tacking in, so they came out with a motor boat. Kelly was about to jump overboard. It seems to be some congenital disease in the family.
Sara finished at Denison a semester early, and we sent her to the American University in Washington, D.C. It was at a time when Ronald Reagan was starting to get ready for his second term. Sara got a job at the White House and then worked for the re-election committee. It worked out well since the other two girls worked at the White House when they were in D.C.
Sara and I have some conversations about unusual topics. One of them was about some of the stories in the Bible, such as Adam and Eve and Noah’s Ark. I arranged to meet an old professor of mine, Cardinal Dulles. When he would lecture, he was so erudite you could not understand what he was saying. However, when we went to visit him, he was not only very gracious but very straightforward. He felt that the church needed to get its stories straight. We were very honest in our conversation.
It got to the point that Sara was afraid I might use irreverent nicknames for the Holy Trinity. I was better than that. Our talk with Cardinal Dulles reminded me of the days at Xavier when I was taught by the Jesuits.
Sara, as well as all the children, loved going to summer camp at Our Lady of Lourdes in the Catskills. Believe it or not, she got a neatness banner because she had one of the little kids in the camp as her housekeeper. Sara would bribe her with some of the care packages of food we sent.
Tommy went to the boys’ camp called Camp Acadia. There were the two parents' weekends and we loaded the kids up with food and everything else they wanted. The girls were also good with horses, and they got to get extra time with them. The girls would take them for baths in the lake or go blueberry picking.
Later in her life, Sara was into cooking. Early on, when she was following baking instructions about separating the white from the yolk of eggs, she thought it meant the shells since that was all the white she saw. Years later, Sara became a good cook.
She likes going up to West Point with me and she likes to kid me. The motto at the Point is Duty, Honor and Country. It seems she is upset by some of the marital problems the senior members of the military have had. She would like to make the H in honor to be in lower case.
Kelly
I do not have as many stories about all my children than about myself. These are a few memorable ones for Kelly.
On Christmas Eve, everybody who lived on the street would meet in front of one of the houses that had a large pine tree and had it decorated with Christmas lights. One of our neighbors would dress up as Santa Claus and gave every child a present and a candy cane. Before he arrived, all of us would get in the spirit by singing carols. In later years, he could not do it, so somehow, I was elected.
I still had my Santa suit and I enjoyed doing it. In order to see the name on the presents, Kelly acted as my elf. After I wished the child "Merry Christmas'' and told them they had to be in bed early if I were to visit them later with more presents. I had a habit of telling them to write if they got work. Kelly wasn’t wild about that.
The end of her last year of high school, there was a graduation dance. We elected to have the kids use a limousine. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone. I just did not want an accident with her date driving. Meg went also with a date. They came home at a late hour as expected, and I was sleeping comfortably.
What I did not know was that Kelly had been dropped off and Meg had told the driver to take her to multiple parties over parts of Westchester. Meg finally got home as I was going out to work. I was not pleased, but it was probably the safest decision I made considering the alternative.
Kelly did her overseas stint at Cambridge in England and had a great experience. However, she did not do as much traveling as did Sara. Part of it is that being on an island restricts you. There was no Tunnel to France at that time. However, I think she got a lot out of the experience.
The highlight of stories about Kelly was when she spent a semester at Trinity College in Washington, where Meg was. She arrived the First of September. We arranged for her to get a job at the White House since the other two girls had done so. She went over and was introduced and got her ID.
A few days later, the White House hostess asked her to come to a reception at the White House for some ambassador. They liked to have young people in the crowd, as well as young military men in their uniforms. Kelly said she could not come because her sister was giving her a party for her birthday. The hostess asked at what time. Kelly told her about 9 p.m. The hostess said that would not be a problem since the White House affair was 5 p.m.
Kelly accepted and arrived at the appropriate hour. They were all in the East Room waiting for President Reagan, his wife and their guests. After they played "Hail to the Chief,'' the orchestra of the Marine Corps played "Happy Birthday'' and everybody, including President Reagan, sang to her. The President and Mrs. Reagan then kissed her. That makes quite an impression for your 21st birthday. It certainly beats going to a Georgetown bar.
Kelly finished up at Providence College and graduated. That was two down and one to go with school. She got married to Mike Parkhurst, and they live in Darien. They have two boys: John who just turned 16, and Michael, who is 14. John is beginning to apply to colleges and is interested in a career in computers. He also is about to get his Eagle Scout in the next few weeks. He plays volleyball for his school and they are currently the state champs.
She and Sara do a lot of work themselves to fix their homes and gardens and do a great job. However, there are some jobs that are beyond their expertise. It is also a time before the big financial crash that the prices for regular people to do it are too much.
At Exit 8 of the Connecticut Turnpike in Stamford, there are 40 or 50 day laborers who line up daily for work. Kelly went down there and tried to not get in trouble. She found one guy called George. He turned out to speak English and had several friends who were very skilled. Kelly got him to do a job and his work was first class. His men were not just off the boat, but they were highly skilled. For each further project, he seemed to have a friend who was perfect for the job. These people do a better job than the locals.
Kelly loved to cook. She had some criticism from us once in a while. When she made pound cake, we called it her ''pound-and-a-half cake.''
The girls liked gardening, except for cleaning up leaves. I agreed. They were not into domestic things like sewing. We got them a sewing machine, but they broke the needle and that was the end of sewing. Sally wasn’t much into sewing either. She cured me of that as I mentioned earlier.
When Kelly and Meg were in high school, they visited Grandmother Walsh in Florida during spring break. She had her friends in to see her grand-daughters. During the party Meg or Kelly mentioned that I was discharged from Xavier. Grandmother took disagreement to this and said I left because they were not nice to me. I think they still say the same thing.
When I took Kelly’s boys to West Point, they asked why there were cadets walking in the central area with rifles. Kelly said they were walking punishment tours. John asked if their grandfather had to do that when he was there. Kelly said yes and told them the story about breaking the water system and showed them the area on Thayer Road where it happened.
John told this story at school. Some of the mothers didn't think this was a stupid stunt. They called Kelly, wanting to know if I was a terrorist.
Meg
Meg followed the other two at grammar and high school. She started at New Canaan Country Day School. It was unfortunate that she and Kelly were in the lower school since the headmaster of that section was a nut.
Sara had started at the Convent of the Sacred Heart earlier and then transferred up when we started the other two. She was in middle school, so she did not have the nut. He decided that he don’t push children to work. They will do it all by themselves. That was all these kids needed to know. In one of their art classes, they would put putty on the ceiling and then wait for it to fall on someone during class.
Early on, it became time for Meg to make her First Holy Communion at the local church, which was four blocks from our house. We had the usual party after the ceremony. It seemed we forgot to bring Meg home and she had to walk and arrived later. The worst was that we did not notice her gone.
When Sara finished eighth grade, she did not want to go to boarding school. So, we sent her and the other two back to the Convent. They all finished there before college. Meg, like her two sisters, liked sports. On one occasion, she got a big blow on the head with a field hockey stick and this gave her a long difficult history of migraines that carried over until after college.
During her time at the Covent, I was made a Knight of Malta. On the day of the instillation, we had the ceremony at St. Patrick’s and then over to the Waldorf for lunch. Cardinal Cooke was then the Bishop. When we were all on the receiving line to greet him, he commented on Meg’s hat. She told him she liked his red hat also. He told her to talk to his associate, Msgr. Rigney, about where she might get one.
Meg had her deb at St. Vincent’s and a second one at the International Garden Club. Kelly and Sara also had a second one at the Garden Club. The dresses at the Garden Club were spectacular, since we had them made from the brocade we bought in China.
Meg graduated and went to Trinity College in Washington. She arrived and the first weekend she took a cab to a pub in Georgetown. She was only a passenger, but the driver managed to plow it into the front of a pub in town that we used to go to for lunch. She wasn’t hurt, but she was well-known there by the time of our next visit. Her usual hangout, however, was a place called the Sign of the Whale.
When she went to Trinity, I suggested that she enjoy the first semester since I did not feel she would make it beyond that. It was touch and go, but she did make it on time. We had a graduation luncheon for her at the Willard Hotel and I made an apology.
However, when we went to graduation, I asked her if she did well on her final exams. She had one in which the grade was very questionable. Her story to the instructor was that her alarm clock did not work because a squirrel ate through the electrical wires. I guess they believed her since she graduated and our trip was not for nothing.
But I was concerned about the quality of her education when I asked her to identify one of the school buildings. She did not know. I found out later it was the library. It all ended well, and she got a job in D.C. and lived there for a time while Sara was also working there.
Our Pets
Animals have been a member of the Walsh family from the first. Sally rode horses and had a dog as a child, as did my girls.
Tommy was born in March 1959 during my internship. Three months later, I was off to Korea with the Army. Sally and Tommy moved back to the big house in Pelham with her parents. She then got our first dog, which was a Sheltie she named Boots because of four white paws.
Her dad Ray was also fond of dogs and previously had a chow who died. In the 14 months I was away, he and the dog became very close. When I finished with the Army, we all packed up and went to my residency in North Carolina. As a parting gift, we got him another Sheltie which he spoiled. The dog was given his own knife and fork which Ray would feed him with. He named him Junior.
When Ray would sit outside in the yard, Junior would sit as quiet company. For a while at his board meetings he would discuss with them any new ideas that he and Junior had discussed. Nobody knew who Junior was. The board members also knew Ray only had two daughters. Everyone wondered who this Junior was and what was his place to be in the corporation. Still, nobody dared to ask Ray who Junior was.
Our Boots adopted to his new environment with Tommy growing up and now running around in the yard. Then Sara came along, and Boots now had two friends. However, Boots developed epilepsy, which we treated. It did not work adequately over the long term. We had to put him asleep just before we left North Carolina to go for a fellowship in Miami.
In Florida, we got another Sheltie that we called Boots. Sally had set up a swing and jungle gym. There was a family with six kids across the street and they would come over to play. Our new Boots knew our kids could not go out of the yard. So, when the kids wanted to go home, Boots would nip at their feet to keep them in the yard. When everybody complied, he would then go somewhere and just sit and watch.
Later after one year of fellowship, we set off for home and practice. We had a house on a street with a dead end, which made it safer for the kids. However, one day about a few months at our new home, the children were up the street playing with other kids. The dog quietly followed them. However, when a UPS truck inexplicitly was racing down the dead end, the dog tried to protect the children and was hit fatally. Boots made it back to the house and into the front hall, where he died. It was traumatic for us all. He always tried his best to protect the children.
Our next dog was another Sheltie with white paws. Of course, we named him Boots. He was just as friendly as all our previous dogs. Our housekeeper, Mrs. Toni, took as much care for him as she did the children, like making him scrambled eggs.
One day, as Meg and Kelly were playing on the trampoline, it fell over and injured one of Boots' legs. Nothing was broken, but he had a significant limp. This left me a lot less friendly if we went to pet him. I don’t blame him. However, in his final years, he would like to sit next to me in my easy chair in the den and watch TV. He lived a long life despite the limp.
Boots 3 died, we went to the nearby breeder to get another dog. In the course of the selection, the breeder was pushing one dog in particular. They swore he was a Sheltie. We bought him but found out he was a Border Collie despite his papers. However, he turned out to be just as friendly and smarter than any other dog.
We needed a new name, so we called him Max. He was our brightest dog. When we would let him out in the morning, he would leap over all the steps and quickly survey all four corners of the yard. He would clear out any animals like rabbits or chipmunks who had settled during the previous evening.
Max, however, had a mind of his own and showed a lot of curiosity whenever we would leave the kitchen door open. He would quietly sneak out and wander up and down the street. One evening when he did, we were worried about him. Sally sent me out to find him. I went up our street and crossed over to the next street before coming back. I came in empty-handed. About 10 minutes later, Max wandered into the kitchen.
The next day, Sally was working in the front garden and saw our next-door neighbor. The lady asked Sally was there a problem with the dog or me. She had heard me calling the dog and getting no response. As I would turn around, the dog would hide and I would move back toward the house. As you can see, Max was looking after me.
Max was also very partial to Sara. When it came time for Sara to come up from D.C. for a visit or school, he would know she was in the area and would wait at the door. About 10 minutes later, she would appear.
Max lived a long life and died quietly. The next Sheltie, who is our present one, is a tricolor type named Clancy. He has been my best companion since my retirement. However, as much I take care of him, he is Sara’s dog. His best trick is finding new ways to get cookies from me. If he isn’t trying to get cookies, he wants to play ball.
The two horses the girls rode were called Leprechaun and Royal. Leppy was a problem. Whenever the girls would bring him back to the barn and into his stall, he wanted to go to the food bin.
We also had a brief episode with goldfish, which I regret was not successful.
The End of the Stories
There are more stories to tell but this will give my readers an idea why I created the title that I did.
My academic and practice life is over, but I still have some ideas and projects left. I am leading a group for a new drug for Parkinson and Alzheimer’s diseases. Our approach is how the literature is leaning these days and it works very well in animal subjects. We are very excited. I have been working with Pfizer, and so far, they are very interested.
At the end of all Academy social events, the band played ARMY BLUE. Later on, it was used by Elvis Presley who called it “Love Me Tender.” We both stole it from an old Scottish melody.