Gene Lovelace’s “life after high school”

When I was set to leave high school in 1956, I had no idea what I would want to do for “my life’s work”.   Thankfully there were “Liberal Arts” colleges where one did not have to declare a major until after the first two years.  I applied to 3 schools, and made my decision between Alfred University and Harpur College.  I chose to go to Harpur since it was part of the State U. system (later SUNY-Binghamton, and now Binghamton U.) and as such was pretty cheap:  $400/year for tuition.  After thinking I might major in History, French, Biology, or Art, I ended up choosing psychology.

 In my Junior year I met a young woman, a freshman, from Poughkeepsie, NY named Mary Jo.  We dated for a year and a half, and when I went to graduate school at the U. of Iowa she went back closer to home and attended SUNY-New Paltz for a year.  At the end of that year we both went back to Endicott and worked there for the summer, and arranged out wedding to be there in early Sept of 1961.  She worked at a bank in Iowa City to help out financially while I got my PhD.   We have two daughters.  The first, Kristin, was born in Iowa City in late May of 1964, just before I left to take my first job teaching at the U. of Virginia.  In May of 1966 our daughter Shelley was born in Charlottesville, Va.

 I was at the U. of Virginia for 21 years, with some leave time spent at U. of Colorado in the fall of 1974 and at Duke U. in 1980-81.  Our two daughters graduated from high school in Albemarle County, Va.  In the summer of 1985 I went to teach at Alfred University, in southwestern NY.  While we were in Charlottesville, Mary Jo had been working in a bank, and then in Legal Advisor’s Office at U. Va., and then for an office in the Medical Center.  At Alfred she worked in the university library.  I retired from Alfred on Jan 1 of 2001 (the first day of the “true” new millennium saw me a free man), and Mary Jo retired in the middle of the spring semester.  In the summer of 2001 we moved back to the old farmhouse that I’d grown up in, at the intersection of Waterburg and Mecklenburg Roads, and I replaced my sister Ruth as the 24/7 caregiver for my mother for the last 15 months of her life (she was nearly 97 when she died).
 
A few years ago, one of our daughters, her husband, our 4 grandkids, a dog, 3 cats, 2 rabbits, some goats, and a  horse moved in to live with us permanently.  Since this old house, the “Roloson Homestead” has never been out of the family from 1830s (my grandfather Lovelace’s mother was a Roloson) I was delighted at the prospect that two more generations of the clan will live here.  (My father died in 1987, at the age of 83, within a few feet of the spot where he was born in this old house)

  I’ve heard that some people have a hard time adjusting to retirement, but we’ve mostly found joy in this phase of life.  For a few years after my mom’s death I mainly did whatever was fun.  We have traveled a bit; sometimes to our favorite spot on the planet, Acadia National Park in Maine, and in the Canadian maritime provinces up to Newfoundland.  Then I began to volunteer some more time: to our local hospice, and three other organizations working with aging-related issues.  I dance on Friday afternoons at Lifelong (Senior Center in Ithaca) and bike and cross-country ski with a friend.  Feels at times like I have too many irons in the fire, but at least life’s NOT boring.