The Goddess Esther, 1927-2014. She died two years and two days after The Commander. I found this out this morning when I received an email from her son, my childhood friend Dan[ny]. With so many of that generation dead and all of us scattered around, the regular channels of communication aren’t as operational as they once were. So, here’s Esther and her husband Pete (who is still alive at 91 or thereabouts). He and his brother Jim were Veteran Greenhorns along with my old coot.

For a number of years, the Shermans and their five kids drove their VW Bus over to the Great Lake State from their home near Niagara Falls to spend a couple summer weeks camping in the moomincabin back yard. Those were the days of big impromptu community dinners. The moms would run up to the little meat market on Six Mile (Aunt Jane’s, What a Pickle) and grandaddy would often arrive with a bushel of corn on the cob from some farmer somewhere and a couple gallons of A&W root beer. The Sherman fam parked this little tent camper in our back yard and shared our outhouse for the duration. Yes, that would be 11 people using one outhouse.

I have lots of good memories of Esther and one kind of scary one when I got into a friendly little scuffle with her son and managed to pick a hole in his handmade (by Esther) sweater. She was angry and let me know it (and I was a brat who deserved her angry words). But in the grand scheme of life, we were friends and I will never forget her phone calls during the days The Commander was sick and dying and I was camping in the Dillon House wondering if I would ever regain some sort of normalcy to my life. Anyway, here’s a pic of my brother and three of the four Sherman boys having good old-fashioned burying fun on the beach. The Soccery Blue Sacre Bleu sailboat is in the background…

Finally, here is my friend Dan, my dog Tigger, and me. Yes, I’ve posted this one before. And I will post it again. Godspeed Esther.

P.S. All of these photos are from the Sherman Archives, no doubt taken by Pete. I did not ask permission to post them so I hope it’s okay with the Sherman fam. I haven’t told Dan I am a blahgger. I figure he has enough to do without feeling any sort of nebulous obligation to watch paint dry every day.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2014 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.