good morning this is brenda bhutan and this is another episode of a moment in time this morning we're interviewing arlen emerson arlen lives in jericho and isn't very involved in community affairs  i want to ask you a lot of questions and i'd like to start with some history about yourself right you were born where i was born in ridgewood new jersey and the hospital that i was born in is a nursing home now it was a little tiny house and i was born in ridgewood new jersey and we lived there for my family lived there for thirty years thirty five years my mother bought died my father married and moved to california and then i got married in fifty six and moved to long island so how many brothers and sisters did you have i have two sisters i have a has to have sister but she's really a full sister to me my mother was married twice her her first husband was killed and in the airplane crash when she was carrying my sister and my father married her five years later so why did you meet chad i met him at life magazine when i graduated from i'm not sure if i think that magazine was like thirty years old when it closed some assuming it was about ten maybe about ten years old when i was there because the gentleman that we  his world war two pictures were in life magazine oh really so and that's interesting that was interesting so i had worked there for seven twenty seven years he had been there for twenty seven you know until they closed and so what did you do for him i worked for him we were in i was a sex i was secretary for him and nobody knew we were dating he was funny because one night five of this went out for a drink and he took everybody home first but me and at the end he said i'll take you home or on you took me home and taxi i was living in new york city at the time and i thought this is strange you know so then he got on the car and he said i said let's go have some night so we did we went out some night and we just continue and that's how i met him we didn't tell anybody in the office nobody in the office knew we were dating it was a big surprise i mean we now we we started dating october seventeenth on nineteen fifty four and in nineteen him or was it just an assumption no he asked me to marry him get down his hands in these and he had a little violet and he got down his hands and knees and asked me to marry him and then he gave me my ring because we i was from new jersey and his family's from new jersey we lived in new york we went over the george washington bridge and he stopped in the middle of the bridge between new jersey you know with the sign is from new jersey to to new york and he gave me my ring right there and all this traffic it's like christie let's stop the traffic and it gave me my engagement ring on the border on the border of that or george washington bridge and now now i know that shad was a character yes having him haven't written for the paper right but to those who didn't know she had what kind of a character was he he was a character you never knew he never knew anyone is saying and never knew it was going to happen you didn't know what you came in the house she didn't know it was going to be there but he was a character he was a folk who had a wonderful sense of humor his sense of humor was incredible i just can't be that fast and what so what did you do after you were secretary when you married  continue working you know i stopped working and life and i went to work for collier's magazine and then i was copywriter collier's magazine and then they went out of business so then i switched over to elizabeth arden and i worked at elizabeth ray and it was funny because you weren't allowed to have any coffee on your on your desk when she was around she wasn't they are very often so that the doorman downstairs would call when she was coming and we'd all put our coffees in the desk and shut the door so she couldn't see where we're drinking coffee she was she was and she used to she used to put our and skin cream was one of her one of her prized products and used to put on her horses she was a great horse person she had she had a very famous horse called main chance so she had the softness horses and found yeah she had she had racing horses and she put skin cream she put screen cream this orange skin cream on her horses and did you ever try and oh yeah i use it all the time it's great i don't know if they still do it or not i don't know you know she was she was funny and then somebody one time she came in and she learned that somebody had had their hair done it somebody else is beside her place and she got fired on the spot well today that really discrimination and i know it would be it would be in another time she came in and somebody else had the same outfit she had on so she made them go home and change it she was a really good character so now you have just one daughter  current i have two you have two daughters and their names are lori is older and ellie is the younger one and you have one granddaughter and i have a granddaughter she just got her doctorate in physical therapy that's exciting that was exciting i looking for jobs they asked him to work for people magazine when when when life went and we looked at the magazine we saw the mock up and everything and we thought he doesn't want to work for that magazine and he was or why not him that's not him so we decided to leave new york and we came and we decide to get out of the city get the kids out of the city and we just moved up here we moved up to vermont why did you choose for mom well my sister was here and his sister was here so we decided to come to vermont and they all kept saying you have to come to vermont you have to come to vermont so we did we came to vermont and he got some jobs and he was getting jobs in little no newspapers in the area  to do much with the writing but he worked with the edit people so what did you were doing in vermont i've been doing a lot when i first came here i got a job with the i was coordinator of the child abuse gene for the hospital and i worked in the in the social service department and then from there i went to the of vermont state colleges and i was there for fifteen years and i was the office manager and the assistant to the chancellor and i was there for fifteen years and then i retired fifteen years ago and i got into volved in very community activities i'm very involved in the community center in the library and what should what do you like best about volunteering i like the people i love i love the people i work with volunteering and i'm and i love to see you meet so many different things and you learn so many different things you know i'm bowing to your work with this delight wing for the garden tour we do the garden tour every year together and you you mean so you learn so much about every gardener has a different idea about doing things and i learned so much you learn so much i mean th they they they know so much about gardens and what they're doing and it's just so great to see the different things that they they've incorporated into their gardens you have gardens here or do i have gardens but they're not garden tour business just you know a lot if they're hanging around i like working that's it's good therapy i think i find that working in the garden and getting outside is wonderful there so not are you on the planning committee for houses and around the different gardens and we're going to have somebody come in and talk about the different birds that are attracted to different plants in your gardens and things like that we're just we're just in the process now of organizing it and finalizing the plans you take on willingly or well it's a it's it's kind of like a burden but i i feel that you know that i'm doing i'm helping with their situation and i feel so i feel guilty if i haven't gone over to see them for three or four weeks or something so i feel good so i go in and see them because i i do you know i don't think they say that when people have dementia right when i come in she smiles and you know you just can't i just don't understand it's hard to understand exactly what they see and what they don't see or what they hear and what they don't hear were right so so how do you feel about growing older you know i haven't thought about it i just grow old but a chef sister was dean of nursing for a little bit at your v m and i see this very intelligent  n with nothing there now and it just it really bothers you you just you can't believe that this person is this is happening to them and why you know because she's she was very smart very smart and you just don't understand it's hard to understand exactly what she's thinking and i know she would be very upset with what is happening to her now now you said you have one granddaughter what is it about your life that you would like your granddaughter to know she's i think she taught her a lot of things i think i think being yourself doing what you want to do doesn't matter what people want you to do do what you want to do and that's what exactly what she's doing now i remember shout as a jokester yeah and the first time i met him he walked into the mountain is that office and he said hi i'm chad and you need me to work for you and he had he had a of an odd sense of humor and did he teach that to your granddaughter as well yes and my daughter my older daughter is exactly like him a lot of like him thinks with him has the same person you know same personality comes out with the same jokes and now i know he used to drive down the road and wave to everyone yes and he told me i waved to waving to everybody and we'd say we don't know that person and say well he said that's ok he says he says he'll know me yeah and then he would get out of the car sometimes if you didn't know somebody would just get out of the car and start talking to them he did that with a simonton that's how he met gays i mean to and she was a very special person to him and and this and the other way to now did you ever go to mountain high with him no i didn't he do you know it's funny because he hates pizza he hates pizza he hated pizza he didn't like pizza but next thing i know he's going down in every morning and has his breakfast down there and i heard he has pizza and i heard he went around and talked to everybody at the tables and some people were who is this crazy old man i know you are i think i think that's the way he thought he was he was old and he was crazy and people didn't care you know he didn't care at all how did that bother you at all did he do that in regular restaurants or he did sometimes yes sometimes it get little worried about what he was going to do or what he was going to say so and he was sometimes he embarrassed the whole family yeah you think you were doing that no no no i'm not that way you're very quiet very quiet yeah so he brought a lot out he brought a lot out of me though because to me i see very when i was very when i first got married i was very timid and kind of quiet but so it brought a lot out so without him you you probably would be the person you are as far as volunteering and i think volunteering i would be by i don't think i'd be as aggressive i mean i think i'd be able to talk as well you know now do you volunteer for something else besides the garden children will i do the community center on the board the community center and i was chairman of the library cochairman library board for a while and i just left them but now i'm doing volunteer with them i do a lot of volunteering for them and what does that entail that in him on fridays i go in  help with the librarian every friday and then if they need something special like i did the books to help with the book sale for the town meeting day we have a book sale library does and i was i did that for them in the community center where we're very involved you know it's hard keeping these old buildings going it is you know we just had a meeting yesterday about things we need to have new things we need to do to the community center in and we want to make it special and we don't want it to fall apart  it for the community now do you think there's a difference between jericho center and jericho village you know we often talk about that because i feel that sometimes we feel that people over there on the other side don't really over there and they'll say oh what's a community center in that community center is sort of they go to deborah lawson my brain didn't even know we hear a little library over here and then when they do find out we do have a little library over here they can't believe it because they say it's such a cute it's such a cute homey little library it's not a a big library it's a very small it's great for kids right that's what i like i like to go in and volunteer that kids are so cute now this is this side seems to be very rural and and very much like it's been for generations or you get on the other side and it's kind of becoming a strip mall issue of fifty right so do you think with the difference in personality of the two different sections of town do you think that makes a difference and how people look at it i think so i think that they they're used to that over there then they come over here and we had a little you know in that little country store you know i think that people are starting to use the country store a lot more when they're over there when they were over there and now they're coming and using the country store a lot more and i think that people are starting to combine with us a little bit more than they used to but i notice that when we have done when we first moved here there were no houses presently on this road and we used to sit at the window and say oh i saw a car go by you know but now it's it's being established there's a lot more houses on this road and i think i think that things are are growing up more now do you think there are a lot more people that have come in from out of this state yes out of town and i think so i think so it's it's my daughter who lives in south burlington she's always said to me mom she says you have you live in a community she says i don't feel like i'm living in a community because she there's in south burlington over in butler farms area and she says you have a community and my nephew says the same thing to me she said as you're very community oriented here there's a lot to do and it's and if you want to go out if you don't if you've got to go to the store something like we can buy eggs here you can go to the country store you can buy meat at sadler's farm i mean there's always there's always something close all a lot of it's fresh through a lot of inspiration a lot of it's you know it's a lot of it is pressure and close by you don't have to because when i remember when i first moved here we had to go all the way into the grand union which is not there anymore right right and there was nothing here really that little country store was here but now there's so much more so it off this community went from being a very vibrant community with a with a funeral home and sawmills and of moving in migrating back out to right to the rural areas where you can buy whatever it is you want to hear and i think we get a lot of we got a lot of people we get a lot of people now with you know with kids and like they like that they like the kids things to do out here and they come you find a lot of families moving out here now with and they like they like the situation for their kids because there's so much to do there's sports and there's i mean there's always activities going on the schools have a lot of activities going on and that he wanted the plays and stuff that they have at the high school or i used to i don't go as much anymore but a lot of people do i know and then and then and i just it's just that there's so much for kids to do at here you wouldn't think of it but there  are and we do they have a lot of things that are going on in the community center for for people now we have painting lessons painting we have yoga we have dancing we have all kinds of things going on the community center now you do you do yoga or  dancing or you know i dance for twenty five years and that's why i got my bed it's opening night of dancing to do i did ballet and tap and i did a lot of that and then i i did a lot of exercising dancing exercise dancing know he went to yoga one time oh my god it's just so funny i went to yoga with this guy down the street one time and they went to you know going to came back and he says i can stand on my head so that every time he went to a party now he would stand on his head to show people how he could stand on his head and  if there was something that you could tell young people about life and what to look forward to are what to do what would it be i think as i say as i said before tell them to do what they want don't deteriorate what you want them to do don't don't make them feel that they have to do what you want them to do or go on your your way of thinking let them think i think kids today communicate because more i don't i don't know what it is but they seem to be able to communicate with you more and more not when they have their cell phones in their little you know technology stuff for them if they could put those down for a while but they know so much more than when we grew up i think they're learned from maybe from that t v or that i mean the computer and i think that you just have to tell them to do what they want to do now where you're social do you think your social skills were better than what all these kids have now i don't know i think so no i don't i don't know no i don't think so i think kids today are more social i mean you can interact with people little bit more than we did because we were when you know we did things family orientated and we just but today i think that families are doing things more together now i think it was different when when i lived in new york people had parties and kids were invited but when we moved here you did things with your family you went skiing you did this you did that you're never going to babysit or when we moved here i mean when we moved from  we lived in for washington for a while in new york and my kids to babysit all the time because parent people would go out and their kids were invited to go to these parties or they go out all the time and we moved here nobody if you went out you went with the family and you went to a family's house with your family so it was socially acceptable yeah to bring your children they were no longer to be seen and right when seen in new york when he grew up and it was like seeing but not h i can remember going to some people's houses and that their kids were in bed by five because their father would come home from work and he'd be too tired to be with the kids or something and they'd be in bed asleep you know they thought that it couldn't be around but here i found what we moved here it was so different everything was family oriented here it was a whole different kettle of fish that it had to change the social interaction or how your you saw your kids change when they were growing up i saw i saw it was a lot different because we did things together a lot we was to go skiing together we'd go out the backyard here and go skiing every day laurie would come home from school any would come up we go on jump and go skiing and cross country skiing at the backyard and we did a lot of things together know it's as i say it was a whole different atmosphere moving here than when we lived in new york so do you ever miss living in the big city did you ever miss that i don't miss that now i did when i first moved here because a lot of my friends were  r were still there and i missed it i still go over i still go down to see a friend of mine once in a while and i have i talk on the phone probably every day of a lot of my friends that i had before when we lived in new york but  i don't miss it anymore we went to we went to boston this weekend for my daughter's graduate granddaughter started graduation i was thinking i don't think i could ever live in the city again you want to come ocean disco much commotion and i don't know it's just when you're young that felt good that yeah i lived in new york city before i was married for a couple years and i mean it was great but i could never move back i have a very good friend who's eighty s five years old and she just moved to new york city she's having a wonderful time she she gets she has a walker and she gets on she goes out she goes to all the museums and all this and i was thinking i'm missing then i think no i don't miss that she wanted to go yard out there and walk around and go i walk every day and i don't know and i like that now do you feel safer out here than you would in the city if you moved back i don't think so i felt very safe when i lived in new york city because we didn't have a lot of crime and when i lived there we didn't have a lot of crime and i feel safe here a lot of people say oh you're living here by yourself i say i'm not i don't doesn't i'm not afraid sometimes that if i hear something downstairs the middle of night i'll come down in time we'll say come downstairs to look to see fun putting down here friends from new york city how can you how can you live out there by yourself and i said i don't mind i like it so so i was going to just know when you came from the city where there's lights everywhere all the time yeah i so i missed it a little bit when you come out here and it's  dark and i missed it and i think i don't think my kids missed it that much they sort of were excited when we got out of the city except what's afraid they would because my shed used to take them into new york city all the time to the museums and on their birthday they would have that's all they'd want to doas  go to the museums on their birthday so we used to take them in for the museums and do things with them in the city and i thought they were going to be you know it would be upset about that but they like the skiing they like to get outside and they were outside all the time that's well that's one thing i think that i find here now as a kid right now in this generate little this generation that's coming up right now i don't see them outside much no you drive a road new wonder you don't see anybody knowing the law you don't see any kids that play once in a while you'll see a dog but you don't see any people you don't see the kids outside playing right it's amazing and i and my kids were always outside as soon as  to school they were outside or on their own will i didn't say for them to go out you know because they just love being out there was how were they when they came here they were in that c l e he was was in the sixth grade and laurie was just going into high school was in ninth grade so not only was in seventh grade i guess and lori was in ninth grade so they had been brought up in a city where they could not just go out every day into the backyard and they could we did we were in a suburban area they could go out in the city i mean because we were in a suburbia area of the city but they could go out yeah they went out all the time and they used to play i mean they they they they wouldn't they would ask you to keep them busy you know you always but i just think that kids today are so involved in this technology they come home and they they watch they have they play games or they watch t v or they do that or it's different it's a lot different than when my kids were growing up i didn't we didn't we didn't have to buy all this equipment we didn't have all that equipment i have a son who is a sword so he needs you know yeah he's killing things i think i think if they call it they call it live action roleplay you know because my daughter ellie my daughter said to me one day she says you know mom when we grew up you didn't have to buy all this stuff because now she had to buy all this stuff you know my effort for her daughter now because she's in that age but should you don't have to buy all this stuff that we have to buy now for the kids to keep them busy there's a clue to that that would have to have to write yeah you don't have to know i don't have to because we didn't we didn't have t v we didn't have t v much and we were kids were growing and we moved here we had this little tiny t v and i used to put it in the closet but we took it out and watched it once in a while and we did it we didn't have and when i grew up to i can remember when t v first came out we didn't get to my parents didn't buy that we didn't get jump up and down right tell him what to do but i think that kids today they they it's so different than when my when my kids were growing up right right so so what york my father and mother lived there for thirty years i mean when i got married i was married at twenty two twenty one twenty two i just turned twenty two but my parents still live there and so what did your father do he was real he was a real estate broker he sold the empire state building one time yeah the guy that was supposed to be working on it got sick that day which is really great so my father took it over and he he s the empire state building but then he got this it's called mears disease and you get vertigo and he was working in the city and he couldn't he couldn't walk on the city's streets so we had to quit his job and move back out into new jersey out into ridgewood out he had to retire very early and that would your mother just work the home or did she have a job my mother was very it wasn't talking about community or navy and she was she worked for the red cross used to get up at three or four o'clock in the morning and feed the troops in new york city when they came over on the ship when they come in the ships would come in she'd get up at three o'clock in the morning and go feed the troops and she was very involved she was present the woman's club and she was a very volatile person will you be getting some of that from her yeah that's it my kids tell me my sisters tell me that you're just like mother and do you think you're just like mother no i think i'm a little bit more organized and i mean there was a lot on the dot com forum secretary i did actually where she was she was the head dietician at stanford university and she got out of school and she loved to cook and i love to cook so i cut that from her and then you quote for functions that they have here donated food and so her and i cook a lot i used to cater to a little bit when we were in port washington and help people with their parties i did stuff for them but i love to cook i love it it's a it's good therapy when i get upset or something and just go in the kitchen and make something and then when you're living by yourself you have to make it so i still bank it and i give it i give it away  or give it to my kids so my kids get tired of because every time they come over and i want to give them all this stuff i don't want it i don't need it you know all this stuff but and i freeze it and just have a little bit of the time but i do a lot of gourmet cooking and we do what i do we july and i do the all the cooking for the the garden tour we get people to help us but we do a lot of that garden or now do you go to the senior center and participate in the senior meals and so you know i haven't gotten that far while i haven't seen her for a while i go over and see her and i and i go and see diane schellenberg or some other she's ninety five i think now goes spend time with people but i don't i don't do that i i bit older and but still we have a lot of young people coming in and we are you turning in the young people to take over where you are we try to but some sometimes are not interested and we end up doing it all anyway sometimes is there anything about the community or your software your life that you want to pass on inviting people to come more well i like to  on that it's it's good to get involved in your community you meet people you meet all different kinds of people you and it's a really enjoyment i love getting out and and being with that you know doing something for your community so that people enjoy being in your community like keeping that the community center going and keeping i just think that jericho is such a great historical little place we had barn tours we started barn tore we did five born towards four or five barn tours we started barn tour one year and we had everybody from coming we had i did all the publicity for it and we did all that i had people calling me from from wisconsin or michigan or places like that and call you because because they would hear about it we had it in the county weekly or might know what's that what's what's that the vermont paper the vermont in vermont life we had a story in there and they call me and they were they were so excited they were going to come they're going to be coming to vermont and they want to stop and go to the barn door and we had a lot of people and then when we stopped when we ended  they kept saying oh i hope you're going to have one next year have one next year because we love seeing coming and seeing these all barns and people keeping the old barns going now they still there's a stall a lot of old burns and in jericho there are but there aren't as many but i think there are there are there are you involved with the calendar that they do to yes that's a community center we do the calendar you do the calendars you have a counter every year and this year we're going to this year we're having we're asking artists to contribute volunteer to contribute one of their their pieces so if you just started trying to get people to do that artist to do that and the artists are they really being receptive to doing this well i don't know we had it on front page form we haven't heard from many of them but we just want to get we have to get the word out more because i know that we have so many artists and so very very  community we had that the the m e a group b gallery which is a great great gallery that used to be an old old barn that they made into a gallery you should someday be you know you should go over and see it it's really she said they've done a wonderful job right i've been there yeah and then that's where jericho settlers farm is as well and jericho settlers farm is there now and that's a good place to get a c s a and fresh vegetables  churches i was when we first when we moved to when we're in port watching we were very involved with the church my door daughter was very involved in the church we came up here we tried to find the same thing that we could never never found when you we when we're comfortable with what we used to go on you know just go to different ones once in a while but never centered on one of here well it's been a very nice time talking with you it's been good talking to you too and i hope we can do this again sometime we can i well