The Gyllenhaals of Alnwick Road

By Charles Pendleton Gyllenhaal

Charles, the third child of Leonard and Philo Pendleton Gyllenhaal, grew up with a talent for writing. While a student, he worked summers at the Macon Telegraph, his mother's family newspaper in Georgia. He was the editor of the Daily Pennsylvanian at the University of Pennsylvania. In his later years, he began working on this memoir about the joys and challenges of growing up in the 1920s through 1940s. He and his six brothers and sisters lived what he described as an idillic, freewheeling life for the early years in their stately stone house on Alnwick Road in Bryn Athyn. The challenges came after Leonard Gyllenhaal died at age 53. It fell to Philo, left without many resources, some of the children still in elementary school, to guide her family through the hard times. A remarkable woman, she found ways to instill her strong values, usher all her children through college, help her boys survive the perils of World War II and see each of them launch their marriages and families. Completed in April 1988, here's the story of how she quietly, stoically managed it all.

How the Gyllenhaal Family

Took On the World

The Gyllenhaal house on Alnwick Road has always been a very busy place. When the children of the original family were quite young there was always at least one part of the house that was a complete mess. Mother’s theory was that children should be allowed "to express themselves" in that way, an example of this happened on the day some of them filled the nursery almost to the ceiling with crumbled—up newspapers (The newspapers were stored in the basement for starting up the coal furnace.)

The house was especially busy during the 1930s and 1940s when we were growing up and were involved in education at various levels. The following is an account of what the house was like then. It comes from someone who was a dignified young lady and had just moved to Bryn Athyn from California. The author, of course, was Ruth.

"Coming from a rather quiet and reserved family, I was amazed at the noise and constant vitality of this large family of seven kids. Everybody was always doing something. Usually in the same room. Harriet would be banging out opera on the piano. Chas. was running the Daily Pennsylvanian from a telephone in the coat closet. Hugh was beating drums. Anne was singing, but not the same song that Harriet was playing. Eileen was doing ballet — and Peter? What was little Peter doing? Working in the garden, probably, or mowing the lawn. Only Leonard wasn’t there. He never liked the confusion. He was usually at our house and my Mother was feeding him. Did you ever see the play ‘You Can’t Take It with You?’ There is a similar scene to this.”

What follows is the story of that busy family. It is the story of Leonard E. Gyllenhaal and Philo Pendleton who were married in 1915 and had seven children. It is the story of these children growing up and becoming successful adults. The story is being recounted for the benefit of the family and of our descendants especially for the dynamic, successful third generation and for their children. It is not designed to impress or to be especially interesting to everyone else.

However the story is unusual. The family history covers the years when the two greatest wars and the greatest depression in history were taking place. This is the period Time magazine has called the most amazing 60 years in history. It was also a difficult period in the development of the New Church and of the Academy, institutions with which all of us remained very much involved. The period included difficult times for the family including the tragic death of the father and getting by on a very limited income. There was much striving to reach adulthood, and at the same time lots of fun. It must have been fun as I’ve never heard anyone in the family complain much about those difficult years. No one retreated into a shell as might have happened, None of us had to use the problems we encountered as an excuse for having failed later on.

In fact the story turned out very happily. Mother’s later years were peaceful and happy. She was surrounded by her gardens and her grandchildren. Her seven children became very successful and productive people. Everyone, apparently, made the right choice when they married. Someone has made the following observation: "Though the Gyllenhaal men never had much money they did have an eye for beauty, They married bright, lovely. girls, and the Gyllenhaal girls married handsome and smart men and so kept the blood line strong and handsome.” These marriages have produced a new generation of unusually smart and successful people. Their story is included, too.

The spirit that lives in our family and the mutual love and respect that typifies it is beautifully expressed in an annual family event, More than fifty years ago a special celebration of Christmas Eve developed at our home, Mother loved Christmas Eve, The special refreshments she created, the carol singing that everyone enjoyed and the warm sphere that evolved, made this the party that our young friends wanted to be invited to attend. Every Christmas Eve since then there has been a family Christmas Eve party, with everyone in the family there, if they could be. That is quite a record.

The history of the family divides itself into four periods. The first is the "growing up" time when we were all quite young. Then come the years when most of us were getting a higher education. This period was interrupted by the five World War ’ll years, in many ways a separate period in our history. Finally, the happy time arrived after the war when the family members began to settle down and raise their own families.

The key to this success story is, of course, the couple responsible for the family. When they married, Mother was 28 and Daddy 34. They had both enjoyed interesting careers before marrying, which must have been part of the reason they became unusual parents, The story, therefore, begins with accounts of the interesting lives they had led before they married,

The last part of the book traces the interesting origins of Gyllenhaal and Pendleton families, starting with the immediate past and going back many hundreds of years.

MOTHER

A Southern Lady’s Impact

On the Solid North

We took Mother for granted when she took over as a single parent: Some of us were babies and the oldest were teenagers. It is difficult to appreciate the problems she had to face or to understand how the events that took place during her life must have affected her. It’s also difficult to understand fully the tough job she had to do and to comprehend everything that she accomplished.

She was very much a lady -- and a very tough one. Ginny remembers that she was always in control, but at the same time seemed always to be relaxed, Anne says she can never remember her raising her voice or being harsh, She was completely dedicated to her children’s welfare, and she was determined that nothing would interfere with what she planned for theme. She told Anne: you can let the dust stay under the bed, but don’t give up your music. She wanted us to grow up to be happy, well-educated and successful people,

During the years when she was accomplishing this she was always on a completely "even keel". I never saw any sign of her breaking down and I never saw a tear. Ginny says that she cried at their wedding rehearsal. Those were tears of joy, however, and came when most of the battles had been won.

All of us remember things that she did for us. Harriet gives Mother credit for making her stick with her demanding educational program, which led to her fascinating career in music,

Mother taught us to love good music, using the radio as her teaching tool. She also taught us to enjoy gardening. She encouraged us to let our imaginations run free and when this often resulted in the yard or the house becoming a huge mess, she didn’t stop us. She knew they were important messes.

At times she taught us (or our spouses) lessons that were quite simple, For instance, she taught Marion that if you learn to cook one thing well, such as her famous cinnamon buns or bread, then you ’ll get to be known as a great cook. She set a fine example for us to use when entertaining guests. According to Ginny, when Hugh started courting her Mother provided delightful entertainment and set a fine table, using the best silverware and china.

We were probably spoiled. For example, on her birthday she wouldn’t let us give her presents. Instead, she gave presents to us. She never scolded us severely. If you did something wrong, she would glare at you and you knew right away that she was very disappointed in your behavior, even though she hadn’t said a word.

Mother was well prepared to handle the difficult situations she faced when she had to take over as a single parent. When she married at the age of 28 she gave up an exciting life. Any one of her careers were unusual for a young woman at the beginning of the century. They included working as a singer, as society editor of a daily newspaper (and editor of the Santa Claus column) and as a teacher.

In high school and college she was very active socially and in extra—curricular affairs. This becomes apparent when you read the diary she kept during those days. The soft southern accent was an important social asset, we suspect. But she was much more than a gentle and attractive girl from the deep south. She was a "doer!’ She was, for instance, the founder and first president of the Deka sorority at the Academy.

Her ability to cope with whatever came along showed up during World War II. In the diary she kept then she seems to write about the sometimes dangerous activities of her four sons in the service in an almost cavalier way. "Hugh and Patton crossed the Rhine today", she wrote. The heavy combat Hugh was in then was the top headline news of the day, I looked up the newspapers of that period in the library. The ordinary mother of a soldier involved in those events would have been terrified. But Mother had complete trust in Providence and in President Franklin D, Roosevelt. She knew that everything would turn out well.

Mother was a rebel — an independent rebel from the South. She challenged authority and taught us to do the same. Whether it was a school principal, a government authority, or even the army, she never was afraid to disagree with them and say so. If she thought they were wrong she would fight them.

She could have been bitter about many things. There were people she didn’t like and didn’t trust, But she essentially had a very positive attitude. She could be sentimental. idealistic, romantic and aristocratic. But she didn’t have much time for these things. She worked very hard, kept up with everything her children were doing, and always stayed very well informed about what was going on in the world. She was very well read and could express an opinion on any current event, Although her ideas were usually very conservative, she was very much a Democrat during the New Deal years.

Over the years I‘ve come to realize more and more what a remarkable woman she was. The story of her early years illustrates how unique she was, especially for a young lady living in that time period. These days she would be considered a "liberated woman.” Back then, however, there were very few young ladies who did the things she did. Her early years in the South were exciting years, even to a young lady of the "nineteen eightiesThe story of those early years follows.

THE EARLY YEARS

Mother was born and lived in Valdosta, Georgia, until she was nine years old. Then her father moved the family to Macon, Georgia, where he took over the management of the Macon Telegraph. This must have been the beginning of a new and much pleasanter life for Mother and her brothers and sisters. Valdosta, where her grandparents had lived on a farm, was a very small town, This small—town family eventually produced two bishops, a nationally-known editor and a successful author. This story comes later. It is interesting to note, however, that the powerful force in the family seemed to be Mother’s Grandmother, Catherine Tebeau Pendleton, Waycross, Georgia, was originally named Tebeauville, after her family. Her husband, Philip C., was a journalist, who had lived an interesting but disruptive life all over Georgia before finally settling his family in Valdosta,

While most of the brothers and sisters of the Pendleton family left Valdosta as soon as they were old enough, Mother’s father, Charles, remained for a time and took over the family newspaper, the Valdosta Times, He was only 22 years old when he took charge, and he turned the newspaper into a very successful. enterprise. As a result, he was asked to manage the much bigger Macon Telegraph.

Mother was very much attached to her father and sometimes was teased about it. He seemed to be quite fond of her and must have been pleased that she worked with him on the newspaper from time to time.

Life in Macon was very pleasant for the Pendleton family, Grandfather Pendleton became very well known and well liked in the city and in the state, He eventually bought the newspaper, became financially secure and was involved in state politics. His story, too, appears later. The family bought a big home on Hardiman Avenue, the fanciest street in town.

Grandmother Pendleton was formerly Sarah Peeples and her father was a judge. That story comes later. Some of us remember Grandmother as "Boomama.” She seemed to stay in the background, as most southern ladies did in those days. Mother was an exception.

Mother was officially named "Philola", the female version of Philo, She was named after an uncle, Philo, who died as a young man in Valdosta. Her father addressed her as "Philola” in his early letters to her in Bryn Athyn. Before long, however, he had shortened it to "Philo", probably at her request, I wonder if she liked the name “Philo"? Her middle name was Catherine, after her intriguing grandmother, Catharine Tebeau. Perhaps, if Mother’s first name had been Catherine, she would have been nicknamed "Katie!’ That would have been more appropriate for the young lady from the South who arrived at the Academy in 1904, when she was just sixteen years old.

SHE HEADS NORTH

Mother attended her first General Assembly in 1904, just before she enrolled at the Academy. It was in Bryn Athyn and she obviously enjoyed everything that went on. A pretty girl with reddish dark hair, a quick wit and a southern accent, she was sure to be popular with the boys. And she was.

She wasn’t a complete stranger to Bryn Athyn. She had visited there often. Her brother, Charles Jr., had studied at the Academy for several years and had received his B.A. from the Academy College in 1904. Plenty of cousins lived there, too. They were the daughters of Bishop W.F. Pendleton. Another uncle, Louis Pendleton, the author, also lived in Bryn Athyn.

If she wasn’t ready to leave home and live in the North before the Assembly, she certainly was afterwards. She enrolled in the Girls’ Seminary in September, 1904, leaving behind in Macon more than one disappointed male admirer. One of them wrote, “I want to see you bad… I am looking at that pretty picture of yours... I guess you have forgotten all about me. Keep your pretty looks about you.” That was written by a young man in Macon in the Spring of her Junior year.

While a high school senior, Mother enjoyed many triumphs. There also was a social tragedy. In January there was a smallpox epidemic and she was exposed, not once, but twice. Most people in Bryn Athyn, homeopaths, were opposed to vaccinations. There was a great "brouhaha" about the epidemic. Two students in the boys’ dorm came down with the disease. Mother was quarantined and suffered other indignities, such as having her clothes and books burned. This had a devastating effect on her social life.

A letter her father wrote to her in February may have helped a little. In part it reads: "I do not understand why they are talking about burning up your clothes and books. Dr. Hall told me two years ago that that practice was a thing of the past — that formaldehyde gas thoroughly destroyed the germs and burning was no longer necessary, But if you are thus ruthlessly despoiled of your clothes, get a new set at once as soon as you can, and tell Charley to give a check for them on his deposit here and I will replace an equivalent amount in the bank to his credit.

"My dear girl, I hope you will soon get out of that trouble. It seems hard that it should come upon you a second time. If the vaccination has taken on you, and the disease has not developed by this time, I have not much fear of you taking it. We all think about you a great deal. We have not felt that Charley was in as much danger as you, His letters were always signed: "C.R.Pendleton” He added a postscript: "Be cheerful and avoid desponding, How can a young lady be cheerful when they're when they're about to burn up all her clothes? 

Above are som of the original photos and pages from Charles memoir. Click on the arrows to page through them. 

By March things had improved. Her father, who typed his own letters in the office at the Telegraph, wrote: (March 7, 1906) "My Dear Daughter: We are very much delighted at the news that you are free again. To be locked in twice before you are grown on account of smallpox is quite an unusual experience. I am reminded of the old saying: ‘The villain pursues her, but I hope this is the last of it for you. Undoubtedly, some in the Boys’ Academy were also happy to see Philo free again.

Before graduating from the Girls’ Seminary in June 1906, Mother began working on the idea of forming a sorority in Glenn Hall, the girls’ dormitory. The Deka was formally started by her the following year, when she was in her first year of college. The Deka was formed "to promote sisterhood among the resident girls and college women" It was the forerunner of all the fraternities and sororities at the Academy. The young lady from the South had made her mark in the North at an early age.

Eileen has the bracelet that was given Mother for being the Deka’s first president. It is appropriate that Daughter—in—Law Ginny was also President of the Deka.

IN THE SWING OF THINGS

In 1904, the Academy formed the Normal School as part of the College. Its purpose was to train teachers. Mother entered this program in the Fall of 1906. She must have been a quick learner, as she couldn’t have devoted too much of her time to studying. There were too many distractions.

There were, of course, the "boys." There was also time spent on organizing the Deka and other activities. She began to be even more dedicated to her singing, doing much practicing and performing. She even considered making singing a career. She started performing publicly around Macon and in the Bryn Athyn area during this period. The Macon Telegraph reported, after one of her appearances,” Miss Pendleton has a high soprano voice of charming quality and much sweetness.” Mother also found time to attend concerts and operas in Philadelphia and New York. She attended “Hamlet," "Caesar and Cleopatra," and a Damrosch concert in New York.

Her social life in Macon was busy, There were plenty of boyfriends in Bryn Athyn, too. One of them, who lived in West Virginia, wrote (after she had sent him a tin whistle): "I shall keep it sacred to the memory of Willow Grove, and it shall play no tune but – Dixie. Apparently the Willow Grove Amusement Park was popular in 1907.

Her social interests also were reaching out as far as Canada. Some of her girlfriends were Canadians as were some of her male friends. During this period she made her first trip to Honey Harbor on Georgian Bay in Canada. She loved this place and talked about it many times in later years. I’m quite sure our family was there on more than one of the camping trips. Honey Harbor is still well liked by vacationers. Her grandson, Edward, and his bride, Kirsten, a Canadian, spent their honeymoon there.

As noted Mother was very popular with the boys, At the same time she was well liked by the girls. It may have helped that in 1907 her older brother, Charles Jr., graduated from the Academy college with a degree in Theology, started teaching there and became the head coach of a famous Academy football team. He was a bachelor then.

On Valentine’s Day in 1908 she collected and saved many very sentimental valentines. During the same year the Deka celebrated its first anniversary with a banquet. It was as much a tribute to its founder as it was an anniversary celebration. There were many poems and songs addressed to her.

Mother closely followed the news of her father’s activities in Macon. He was busy getting the man he favored elected Governor of Georgia, After the election he was a member of the "notification committee." Mother kept all the clippings about this she received from home.

She graduated from the Normal School in 1908. She had been a student at the Academy for four years by then. On the faculty at the Academy was Leonard Gyllenhaal, who was in his mid twenties. There had been no mention of him so far in diaries Mother wrote during those years, however.

Two Careers

In June 1908, Mother got her Normal School diploma. She was then equipped to begin a career as a teacher. She also had enough experience to go into newspaper work, if she wished. Indeed, over the next half decade she spent time following both those careers as well as doing some professional singing.

However she wasn’t really interested in any of these careers. In her diary she makes it quite plain that what she really wanted to do was marry and raise a big family. But six years was to go by before the right man proposed.

Before graduating she wrote “It suddenly rushed over me how much I ‘d like to be at my own table — my special guests there; and I presiding. I was thinking of the lovely time I’d have planning the meal, arranging the table with nice linen and dishes — I am not wanting everything very fine — just nice and refined and neat and homelike. Well, I am going to do it next year at home.. but my prayer and wish is and always will be — give me a home where I can live and work.”

At about the same time, after observing a friend who had been married for two years and looked bedraggled, she wrote, "There’s one thing certain — if I ever get married I am not going to be that way, I’ll work hard and enjoy it and make things cheerful and happy. 1 wonder who’s coming to the Assembly that I care about?" She also describes thoughts she had while riding the train alone at night. They were thoughts of having her own home, prompted by looking at the homes she saw through the train window. Here was a young lady with just one plan for the future, and it wasn’t a career. However, for a time she did work at all of the Jobs she was prepared for.

During her career period she had an almost endless supply of boyfriends both in Bryn Athyn and in Georgia, The diary she wrote then mentions a total of 24 boys she dated or with whom she corresponded. (Leonard Gyllenhaal wasn’t mentioned until 1910.) A number of them were pursuing her seriously, None of those friendships led to a serious romance.

Mother spent the first year after graduation at home in Macon. After being in the north for four years she wanted to spend some time with her family. It was a good time for a young lady to be away from Bryn Athyn. The bad publicity in the Philadelphia newspapers surrounding the vaccination crisis had hardly gone away, when even worse publicity about the Krampf will case exploded in the newspapers. During the vaccination crisis Bryn Athyn’s neighbors worried about unvaccinated Bryn Athynites riding the trains. During the intensive coverage of the Krampf will trial the newspapers, helped by some members of the Convention branch of the Church, made it appear that the young ladies of Bryn Athyn believed in free love.

After graduation from the Academy's "Normal School" in 1908, Mother took the train (by herself) to Canada. The postcard (above) was sent to her Father from Georgian Bay. The photographs below were taken ther and in Kitchner.

On the back of the card she writes (Dear Papa,  The arrow shows about the situation of our camp. I had my luck and caught the first fish and one of the largest black bass. I wish you were her for the fishing is splendid.  We went to a dance at this hotel a few nights ago. I am going to learn to swim.  Philo

Before heading home in 1908 Mother traveled to the cool shore at Honey Harbor. She wrote to her fisherman Father on a postcard from Honey Harbor: "We went 13 miles on a fishing trip in a gasoline launch. I caught the first fish and the largest black bass. There were also dancing and many other activities. She then went to Toronto to visit the Roschmans. Her close friend, Venita Roschman, was a frequent visitor at our house over many years. Miss Roschman still Lives in Canada. I had a long talk with her recently about Mother, of whom she was very fond.

After Canada it was back to Macon where she stayed until the following summer. During that winter she spent most of her time around home. Perhaps she was learning to be an efficient housewife. She also pursued her interest in singing. She was a member of the choir of St. Paul s Episcopal Church. A picture of this choir, when she was in it, appeared fifty years later in the Macon Telegraph. She also sang at Christ Church, and a contemporary write—up stated that she "has a high soprano voice of charming quality and much sweetness. One year at home was enough, however, and in the fall of 1909 she began teaching in Bryn Athyn.

TENTATIVE TEACHER

In early July, 1909, Mother packed a very large trunk and boarded an overnight train for Toronto. She traveled by herself. Arrangements were made by a young man who had been a classmate and who lived in Toronto. All of July and part of August were spent there or at a camp north of Toronto, probably at Honey Harbor. There was lots of fishing which she always enjoyed. Perhaps Mother-s immense love for the seashore was developed on a fresh water lake.

In the fall she began her short teaching career in the Bryn Athyn Elementary School. She was 23 years old. She started out with a class of 22 pupils. In her diary she notes that the other teachers only had 8 pupils. She writes that she complained to her uncle Bishop W. F. Pendleton, about this. She was upset, too, because the authorities maintained that she was too young for this responsibility, and was not to be depended on even though they gave her the most work. Obviously, she wasn’t happy with the teaching profession. She hardly ever wrote about it in her diary after that.

Although her social life was as intense as usual she wasn’t at all content with life in Bryn Athyn. She wrote: "Things aren’t going so well...I’d like to be a man so I could put my hands in my pocket and glower — and exercise strong language sometimes. Things get very provoking…”

There was little time for her to sing. Her first performance wasn’t until May. In early April she mentions a picnic attended by someone, mentioned casually, named Leonard. He wasn’t pursuing her at this point however. A Yale man was doing the pursuing. He was from Macon and very persistent. He even wanted her to spend a weekend at "The Club!” Mother was definitely not interested in I ‘Mr. McCracken". There were several New Church boys who were seriously interested too. But she bet one of them 10 cigars that she wouldn’t become engaged before her sister’s planned marriage, 18 months away.

Edmund Pendleton, Mother’s brother, was engaged to a Bryn Athyn girl, Miriam Smith. She had taken ill during the Spring of 1910 and in June was getting worse. By the end of the summer she had passed away. This put a damper on the summer, most of which Mother spent in Macon. To make things worse her father-s favorite politician, Mr. Brown, was defeated for re-election. In September she was back in Bryn Athyn getting ready to work in the Library. Daddy was librarian for four years and during this time the Library moved into its permanent building, Mother probably had helped get ready for this move. Afterwards, she showed visitors through the new facility,

She was also doing some teaching. One course she mentions involved the Civil War. This must have been interesting to the Northern students as she was quite prejudiced in favor of the South. She wrote.”I am so glad I am teaching Civil War this year, for I practically knew nothing of it before — and I realize more and more, how much we have to be proud of and glad for — to belong to the Southern side They were such a fine, high—bred, noble set of men and I am Just beginning to really love the glorious South and what she stood for.”

During the school year of 1910—11 her social life became even more intense. She was very active in planning for balls. She went to a "masked ball" as Cleopatra in a costume which had "more to it than the one Cleopatra wore. She also went "chestnutting” with the boys and played a bridge game with Leonard Gyllenhaal.

She remained very interested in the news of her Father’s activities. In November 1910, the Telegraph plant burned to the ground. This didn’t seem to be the tragedy it might have been. It must have been fully covered by insurance. A new plant was built which featured a new and very modern press. On the political scene Senator Clay died during the winter and Grandfather Pendleton was offered the Senate seat by the Governor. He turned it down,

The biggest development in Mother’s life then, however, involved her singing. She began taking regular lessons every Thursday morning with Miss Helena Boericke, She became very fond of Miss Boericke and has stated that it was she who really taught her to sing. During the year she performed frequently at parties and gave recitals. One of the recitals was in Chestnut Hill Mildred Glenn, who became Mrs. Raymond Pitcairn, was also on the program, Another concert was in downtown Philadelphia. She also sang at a Theta Alpha banquet in Bryn Athyn. Her interest in, and knowledge of, opera increased then too. She attended 10 operas in Philadelphia during that winter. She describes sitting in the back, so that she could follow the opera on her libretto.

Towards the end of the school year Mother wrote: "My singing is the greatest pleasure of all and keeps me in the heights of happiness at times. I only want to be able to sing so people will enjoy listening to me and so that I can express my feelings and emotions in that way.”

To balance out the joy of singing, however, there were frequent trips to the dentist, including one that lasted all day Sunday.

During the Spring in 1911 more and more events in the diary included the name of the man she eventually married, In March he was her assistant at a bridge game. In April she was wondering where a box of candy was that she was expecting from him. Then they went together on a picnic and shared in smoking a cigarette. At about this time the diary ends and the dates they had together must have ended too. Mother spent the next three years in Georgia and Daddy spent the next three years in Glenview.

Before returning to Macon to go to work on the Telegraph however, Mother spent part of the Summer of 1911 in Canada. In July she was at "Camp of the Whispering Hills" and in August back in Toronto.

From September 1911, until January 1915, she was in Macon, spending most of her time as "Society Editor" and managing the Woman’s Page of the Telegraph. She also edited the "Santa Claus" column. For this she received a special award from the business office. Someone there called it one of the best features the paper had ever published. While holding down the newspaper job, she kept up with her singing, too. In addition to singing in the St. Paul’s choir she performed as a solo at many affairs in and around Macon.

Obviously these careers didn’t interfere with her main goal. There must have been a lively correspondence between Glenview and Macon going on during the entire period that Mother and Daddy were separated. Before the summer of 1914 was over they were engaged and love letters flew back and forth. They were married in January 1915, in Bryn Athyn. The career that Mother really wanted to pursue finally got underway.

Mother’s hopes for the future, as well as her philosophy of life, are nicely summed up in an essay she wrote at the end of her diary. The following was written several days after she first mentions Daddy in the diary:

"Last night was - Lohengrin. I am very glad, too, for I love Lohengrin, Slezak in a gorgeous silver armour and white and silver cloak, was a fine, brave, gentle Lohengrin, with a great love and a great sorrow. All tenderness and pity and love for his erring bride, A tall, splendidly—built figure, he towered over the situation. It meant a great deal to me — more than I could ever put in words. Gadski, too, was wonderful I went in at five; as usual I enjoyed being all alone on the train late in the evening — looking through the windows of the homes and wondering about the people who were inside; picturing myself first in this place and then that; imagining the furnishings of the house: the soft lights, the big table of books, the comfortable, big chairs; the soft window curtains and shades; the pretty dining table and the clean, cool bedrooms; the piano and the music on top — and the people who belong there — faces that I don’t know, but that I love — faces that will come someday. Then something else comes — you search the people on the platform for a face — not one you know at all, but one you seem to be looking for — and so you wander ‘til you pull yourself together with a start at your stopping place — the terminal. You have gone miles and acres beyond your wildest thoughts of daylight.

"Then comes supper at Acker - ang a jolly bunch of girls and you wake up, not to go off again till sob and the orchestra is off.

"You are conscious of the first delicious, dreamy notes of the grail motive, and then you -re off (like the orchestra) You shut your eyes and then intermixed with the music come thoughts — all your dreams and hopes and desires surge one after another — upraised above sordidity and even as if you were suddenly raised into another world, but with your life still to live — the light of a more glorious atmosphere shining over and illuminating all you must go through for years to come You gasp for breath, almost all the immensity of what might come to you passes before your enraptured mind and you let your breath go in a gasp — as the orchestra strikes its last chords and the sumptuous red velvet curtains draw aside to reveal the first scene

"Then passes scene after scene, act after act; you following first the music in the orchestra, the chorus, the costumes, the scenery, the wonderful, clear Elsa — and then ‘Lohengrin- and an undercurrent of your own personal thoughts surging between.

"It’s over. Shivering, you hurry block after block, dazed at the awakening — and finally — you blow out your light with a prayer in the darkness to the Most High to make you worthy of all that might come into your life — and to give you strength to bear the happiness as well as the sorrow, that is the portion of a music—loving idealist of a girl., who will probably never in this world see one third of her dreams fulfilled.”

Most of her dreams were fulfilled. Both happiness and sorrow were Mother’s portion in life and she was given great strength to bear the sorrow and a special ability to pursue happiness.

DADDY

A Very Busy Man Who

Was Everyone’s Friend

Daddy was an unusual man. He was unusually talented. He was unusually dedicated. He was unusually compassionate and until his illness overtook him, after he turned fifty, he was filled with an unusual amount of energy and drive. He was a very friendly man and much loved by those who knew him.

Most of us have little or no memory of our father. Some of his children were very young when he died, Those of his family and friends

who do remember him will agree with what Bishop N. D. Pendleton ordinarily said in the memorial address: “He loved his friends more than everyone was his friend. This stood out as a marked characteristic, He wanted to do something for everyone with whom he came in contact. Moreover, what he wanted to do, he did.” Bishop Pendleton had worked closely with Daddy and was a close personal friend.

Daddy was highly intelligent and well educated. He was interested in literature, language and history and enjoyed teaching those subjects. He was also interested in the theater, He taught at the Rugby School in Illinois, the New Church School in Glenview and at the Academy for many years. His subjects included English, Literature, Greek, Latin and even Botany. He was at one time the Academy Librarian and was the editor of several publications.

But he never really had a chance to enjoy these interests fully, because at the peak of his career he accepted the Jobs of Treasurer of the Academy and of the Bryn Athyn Church. These duties took most of his time, It was apparent that he took these jobs because there was no one else at all qualified and who was willing to accept them. Daddy married when he was 34, fathered seven children and was devoted to his family. His life of valuable uses ended when he was only 33 years old.

While Treasurer during a difficult time in the General Church’s growth he was in charge of two General Assemblies and in the construction of the Assembly Hall. He was a very busy man. But he was always willing to listen to anyone’s problems, took them seriously, worried about them and tried to solve them. This extreme concern for his duties and for the problems of other people undoubtably added to the stress he was experiencing as he grew older. Bishop de Charms believes signs of this stress began to appear when he took the financial jobs in 1918.

Daddy was born in 1881 in Chicago before there was a New Church Community in Glenview. His father had moved to Chicago from Sweden       after a short career on the sea. Grandfather Gyllenhaal became editor and publisher of Chicago s Swedish—language newspaper His story is told later. He married Selma, the daughter of Swain Nelson, also originally from Sweden. Great Grandfather Nelson became a very successful nurseryman in the Chicago area. The Nelsons were leaders in the early days of the New Church in Glenview.

Daddy’s parents were married in Chicago in 1880, Daddy was their firstborn. Later they moved to Glenview. Daddy entered the Church school there when he was seven years old. He graduated 10 years later and then continued his education at the Academy, After finishing high school in Bryn Athyn he attended the Rugby School in Kenilworth, IL, near Glenview. For two years, 1902—4, he taught in the Immanuel School, the New Church school in Glenview. At the same time he managed to get a B.A. in Language and Literature from the University of Chicago, finishing there in 1904, He also taught at the Rugby School during this period.

He then moved to Bryn Athyn and began a long career at the Academy as teacher, librarian and treasurer. During his spare time he managed to obtain a Master’s Degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He was working towards a Ph.D., when he passed away.

He began teaching at the Academy in 1905, when he was 24 years old. His subjects were Greek, Latin, English and Botany, He wrote to his Mother before school began: "It all means that I will have twenty—two hours of classes a week and twenty—five after Christmas, I shall be as busy as possible. But I know I am going to enjoy my work. All are so cordial, both the teachers and the people. He taught in the "College’ which was the name given to the boys’ high school then. He wrote: "All of my work will be in the College, so the girls need not worry. "One of the girls who didn’t worry was Philo Pendleton. She was then just a senior in the girls’ school in Bryn Athyn.

Daddy lived in the Boy’s Dormitory, He wrote: "I eat breakfast at the Inn, but so far manage to get invitations for the other meals. The Inn was at the point of Alnwick Road and South Avenue a few hundred feet from where he later built our house. As a young bachelor in Bryn Athyn he was very much in demand. Life in the dormitory wasn’t too bad, In the letter to his Mother he wrote: "There are plenty of children here to cheer me up and they are not shy either. Dormitory John and some of his brothers have just paid me a visit and they were hard to get rid of.”

While starting a new job away from home he was concerned about his Mother: “I hope seeing the children off has not tired you out completely and that you will rest a little now; get Fred to help you do what I could not finish. Apparently his Father wasn’t well, He died before the end of the year.

In 1906 Daddy was made Principal of the Intermediate School. The purpose of the Intermediate School was to train elementary school pupils for the work they were to do in the high school. The work was the equivalent of the work done in the first year of a city high school. Daddy taught most of the courses: Grammar, English Composition, History and Literature.

During this period he also developed his interest in the theater. With Miss Rita Buell, who became Mother’s good friend, he directed a series of plays at the Academy including "The Princess", "The Taming of the Shrew", and in a what was called a fancy production ”Two Gentlemen of Verona.”

Then in 1908 he added the task of editing the Journal of Education, a monthly magazine about all levels of education in the Church. Editorials he wrote then illustrate his educational philosophy. There apparently was an ongoing discussion on the relative position of the humanities and of science in the curriculum. Some thought science should be kept out because it could lead to materialism. His editorial on the subject reads: "We need not fear science nor neglect the humanities, for the end and purpose are the same in both — further revelation on the supreme doctrine of the Divine Human. He points out the place of science in the Writings and states that the wrong interpretation of the humanities can lead us astray also. The complete editorial appears at the end of this chapter. In 1908 he also became Secretary of the Faculty.

By the Summer of 1911 Mother and Daddy had become very good friends. Mother had begun teaching at the Academy in 1909 when she was 24 years old. Daddy kept all of the jobs he had been given until June of 1911. At this time they both left the Academy and started new careers Daddy was thirty years old and Mother was twenty—four.

Daddy returned to Glenview and took a Job as salesman for Swain Nelson Co., a New Church tree company. No one, including Bishop deCharms, can remember why he did this, There were family money problems. He was the oldest of seven children and his father had died a few years earlier. He was likely needed at home. The Academy’s pay for young teachers was very low.

During the two years he spent back in Glenview Daddy furthered his Interest in the Academy through the new Sons of the Academy organization. He became Chairman of the first chapter of the Sons in Glenview, He was elected to the international Board of Directors and remained on that board for many years. For a while he was Editor of the Sons Bulletin and in 1914 was elected International Secretary of the organization. He apparently was the first to push for the creation of Sons scholarships. He also pushed to make the Sons Bulletin financially independent of the other Sons uses. Daddy’s death was barely mentioned in the Sons Bulletin in 1934.

Daddy returned to the Academy in the Fall of 1914 as librarian. By this time he and Mother were in love and engaged to be married the following January. In September of 1914 a love letter from Glenview to Macon spoke of the apartment they had already arranged for in Bryn Athyn.

Daddy spent the next four years running the Library in its fancy new building and teaching at the Academy. He loved teaching but he also seemed to énjoy being the librarian, although he wasn’t trained to be one. While he was librarian about 10,000 volumes were added and catalogued. When he left the job, there were 30,000 volumes, considered a big library for a small college in those days. Among the collections catalogued during his administration were the manuscripts and books given the library by Miss Beekman, a controversial figure She was a student of the Writings who had left the Church.

The Academy administration at one time tried to use income from a fund left to the Library for something not connected with the Library. Daddy fought and won a battle to restore these funds. He also was praised by many for a program he started, designed to train young women to become assistant librarians. In addition he did a great deal of work on the "Swedenborgian Collection", putting the material in a separate room.

He did some teaching while he was librarian and later while he was treasurer. But careers in either of these uses he loved weren’t to be his permanently.

RELUCTANT TREASURER

In 1918 Daddy became Treasurer of the Academy. Bishop George deCharms in a letter to me wrote: "My impression is that his real love was teaching; but he was on the Academy faculty when it was necessary to impress teachers into various activities which were needed, whether they were technically prepared to fill such positions or not”. Bishop de Charms was his closest friend and companion. He was earlier a student in some of Daddy’s classes, and as Assistant Bishop when Daddy was treasurer worked very closely with him, It must have been that, if there were any in the Church who were prepared for this kind of work they weren’t interested. It wasn’t an attractive job for a businessman in the boom times after the first World War.

The Bishop also wrote: "Leonard may have been interested in the work of librarian because of his interest in history and literature; but I do not think he had any technical training for that work. I know that because he lacked the necessary business training he was deeply distressed with his responsibility as Treasurer of the Academy. He was constantly fearful of making some error that might embarrass the Academy. This fear preyed on his mind and I am convinced that it had much to do with his mental breakdown.”

I can still remember visiting him in his office when I was very young and Daddy was treasurer. It was just inside and to the right of the main door of old Benade Hall It was an extremely messy office, the desk covered with a scramble of papers and books. There must have been some kind of a problem affecting him for this impression to stick in my mind when I was so young.

He worked very hard. He would go to the office early on Sunday morning, leave there and go to church, sliding into the pew just before the service began. During the 1930 Assembly, which he ran, he was quoted as saying that he arrived on the scene at 3:30 A.M. During this same period – the early part of the Great Depression – he also finished by himself the interior walls of the third floor of our house, partly because we needed the room, partly to help the economy of the nation.

Daddy seemed to enjoy his early years as Treasurer. World War I was ending, the economy was good and the Academy was beginning to grow. In 1920 he reported to the Academy Finance Association that the school needed more teachers and would soon need more dormitories and school buildings. He also wanted to increase the salaries of the teachers. He was an "upbeat" treasurer then.

His reports in 1924 show that he still was in an "upbeat" mood. The salaries had been raised, the buildings and grounds were in much better repair and "there is satisfaction in the realization that several problems, which have been acute for a number of years, have been solved.”

During this period, although he was quite busy. Daddy managed to fit in some teaching. As late as 1927 he taught literature, languages and essay in the Boys’ Academy as well as courses in the College.

Late in the decade things began going badly for him. They weren‘t at first Academy financial problems. They were "people problems". The biggest one revolved around the building of the Assembly Hall. More about that later,

In 1925 Daddy became Secretary of the Board of Health, as though he didn’t have enough to do. This was just in time for the outbreak of the scarlet fever epidemic. The young daughter of the Geoffrey Childs family died during this epidemic, upsetting Daddy very much. It was his job to declare a quarantine. During most of this time he also kept his job as Treasurer of the Bryn Athyn Society.

As part of his Academy duties he had to decide who was deserving of scholarship help after getting agreement from the Bishop. In one letter to the Bishop he recommended that two individuals be denied scholarship work and asks, in effect, "What should I do about it?”. Another big problem was the Japanese Beetle. Fighting them in 1929 caused him to overspend considerably the budget for the grounds. I remember being paid by the quart for the Japanese beetles we collected from plants in the gardens.

Not long after the Great Depression began it was necessary for the Academy to cut salaries of everyone by 10%. There were probably layoffs too. Return on the Academy’s investment was declining and the school was beginning to run a deficit. It was a very difficult time for everyone, especially the Treasurer.

In 1928 it was decided that a meeting hall should be built for the use of the Academy, the Bryn Athyn Society and the General Church. Meetings, dances, Friday suppers and such were being held in the Auditorium atop deCharms Hall, which as was proven later was a firetrap. Daddy was to be in charge of the construction of the new building, as he was financially involved with all three organizations.

Unfortunately, a few young, not—yet—very—smart Bryn Athynites decided that the Bryn Athyn Church should have its own separate facility. Those pushing this idea apparently held some bitter resentment towards the Academy. There was a bitter controversy, with Daddy right in the middle and becoming very upset. There was finally a vote and it was decided to construct just one building.

Some of those who pushed for a separate building later left the Church and joined the "Hemelsche Leer" movement. The leaders of the Church apparently tried to keep this dispute quiet but it all came out during the 1930 Assembly. The Assembly Hall opened just before this Assembly began. In the book “Towards a New Church University", there is a picture of the ground breaking for the Assembly Hall. Daddy is not in it, He was too busy to attend.

This dispute sounds very much like a dispute that arose a generation later, when Daddy’s son and namesake was in charge of building the new elementary school and was put just as squarely in the middle by a group who didn’t think there should be a stone facing on the building.

In 1928 a committee, consisting of Daddy and four other men, was appointed to plan for the 1930 General Assembly. The minutes show that Daddy had all the information on previous assemblies, raised all the questions, provided most of the answers and made most of the decisions, getting the committee’s approval on each point before adjourning. The exception was the first order of business at the first meeting. It was a motion (not made by Daddy) to hire an orchestra for the Assembly Ball.

Making the 1930 Assembly a success appeared to be Daddy’s personal challenge. It was a very successful affair and he was given lots of the credit. Said one speaker at the Banquet, the final session: "We owe a very great tribute to Mr. Gyllenhaal, who is personally the true power of the Assembly. I think that Mr. Gyllenhaal is a marvel; he has turned up with the most surprising occupations. I understand, for instance, that this meeting must close shortly because Mr. Gyllenhaal has also to wash the dishes.”

The Toastmaster, immediately after this remark, stated: "Mr. Gyllenhaal! The members of the General Church have spontaneously desired to render you a tribute, not merely for this Assembly, not even for the many Assemblies before that you have continually taken the responsibility for, but because we realize that as Treasurer you have devoted every moment of your time and your living affection to the great cause of the Lord’s New Church, And so the folks at the Assembly have spontaneously given money to purchase this little silver sugar bowl and cream pitcher which we give with the deepest of love.” Eileen now has the solid silver cream and sugar server, still pretty after much use Daddy responded with a light—hearted speech, with most of his remarks relating to the new Assembly Hall. Daddy had spoken to the Assembly at least once before, at a daytime session. I remember it because I was there as a shoe—shine boy. He was very serious and seemed to be scolding the Assembly. I was very young but I have always remembered that he was angry. I learned later that he was talking of the break—up in the Church and appealing for unity. It wasn’t long after this that states of depression began. It was also just after this that Daddy resigned as Treasurer.

The Real L.E.G.

Daddy was an interesting and a brilliant man. He worked for and gained two degrees from prestigious universities, while pursuing full—time employment. He mastered languages and social studies quickly, and was able to teach them while still in his early twenties, He was capable of teaching, not only eighth graders, and heading up their separate school, but also of teaching college students.

With no business training whatever he took over as Treasurer (manager) of the Academy and of the local society. He worried about making mistakes, but I haven’t heard anyone say that he made any. He served as editor of both the Journal of Education and the Sons Bulletin, He ran the library for four years, another job for which he wasn’t trained. He served the Academy and the Church well. He probably would have preferred to be the academic dean of one of the schools. But the Academy at that time was reserving those posts for ministers. The administration then even discouraged the use of teachers who had received training other than at the Academy.

He was full of energy, He maintained a large vegetable garden, which helped to feed his family. There was also a flock of chickens, providing both eggs and an occasional Sunday dinner. During Prohibition he made grape wine and apple brandy in a still in the basement. He was interested in politics. When an election was underway he would travel to the coal mine area to push the candidacy of the Democrat contender. He was a supporter of Al Smith, when he ran against Herbert Hoover for President.

He seemed to be the one person around the Academy with the inclination and energy to go frequently to the wharves in Philadelphia with an Academy truck and buy, in addition to wine grapes, many fruits and vegetables, in large quantities at wholesale prices. This helped various people fight the effects of the depression, Ginny remembers that he brought produce to her house, when her father had lost his job. Mary Alice Carswell also remembers her parents speaking of his generosity. She also remembers being afraid of the large stalks of bananas, because they probably were crawling with tarantulas.

I often wonder why no other able—bodied members of the community found time to tackle this time—consuming job. Members of our family divided merchandise up and delivered it around the community, often to families headed by able—bodied members. I’ve also wondered if he was always reimbursed for these purchases. I remember hearing, at the time, that some family heads were off playing golf while Daddy was at the wharves.

On one of these trips our car was side—swiped by an old truck full of vegetables, driven by an Italian who could barely speak english. The truck overturned, worrying Daddy very much, although it wasn’t his

 fault. Daddy gave the man produce for many years afterwards. Harriet remembers him coming to our house to get it. Most of the time, however ,the trips to the wharves were great fun for those of us who went along.

Daddy was also a great camper and took his family on many trips. Often, he went off on separate trips with Bishop deCharms. The Bishop writes of these trips: "Your Father was a wonderful camper, and travel companion, and we spent many happy times together in summer months with a Ford jalopy in the Adirondacks and in the Canadian woods. I regarded him as a close and highly esteemed friend.” He also made at least one trip to Europe on Church business. Harriet has some fancy teaspoons, shaped like water lilies, that he brought back to Mother,

Above everything else Daddy believed in the Church and was dedicated to its advancement. This is why he accepted whatever task he was asked to perform. He was distressed more than most when the Church was threatened. It was severely threatened when he was Treasurer, financially and also because of dissension among its members. Daddy would be thrilled to see the growth in the Church and in the impressive improvement and enlargement of the Academy, accomplished while his son held the same job he had. He surely knows now.

During all the difficulties he faced as treasurer, he maintained a rather unique sense of humor. During one of his talks to the 1930 Assembly, he commented on the troubles he had during the fight between the Academy and the those in the Society who wanted a separate building. He quoted one "smart little kid" who, he claimed, told him: “The Academy owns the Gym, the General Church — the big hall, the Bryn Athyn Church the kitchen, and the borough the road.

In the same talk he mentioned some of the older ladies who voted the straight Republican ticket, and of Father Pendleton (W. D.) who, he said, was a "wet Democrat.” That morning he had arrived on the campus at 5:30 a.m. with a box of balloons Uncle Bert Henderson had brought him from Glenview. He thought they might "liven up the Assembly.

During this Assembly Bishop de Charms was elected as Assistant Bishop. Daddy in his seconding speech wondered if it would be proper for the Assistant Bishop to go camping on the way to the next Assembly.

Sometimes his sense of humor appeared when he put notices in the Bryn Athyn Post, such as:

Said Gyllenhaal, Treasurer, ”Hey,

The teachers must have better pay,

I’d tear out my hair

And die of despair

If I got as little as they.”

Daddy’s funeral was held at home, with just the family and a few close friends present. Hugh told Jinny that he remembers that in the days before the funeral, the neighbors came to our house to help out doing things like shelling peas.

Immediately after the funeral, Mother had a short talk with me — up in "the little boys room" — about Daddy’s death. I don’t remember any conversation about Daddy’s death taking place after that among any members of the family. We talked about Daddy, but not about his death. Hugh and I never spoke of it to each other for almost ten years afterwards. In 1943, when we were both in the Army and about to ship overseas, we met in a suite he had rented in the Meulebach Hotel in Kansas City. We talked about many things, including for the first time, Daddy’s death.

Psychologists usually say that tragedies like this should be brought out and thoroughly talked about in a family. We didn’t do it that way. I think we were right not to dwell on things. We all became well—adjusted and very successful and useful people.

But that’s not the note to end this chapter on. Daddy had a strong influence on the lives of all of us in many different ways. Perhaps the biggest influences were indirect: the examples of his many accomplishments and our memory of his unusual character.

I have two special memories of him both of which illustrate his influence on us. It was in 1927 that he left work early and came walking excitedly across the field next to our house. We were playing in the backyard, and he called out to us that Lindbe6gh had flown an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean. His interests were very wide and his enthusiasm in many areas very great. We weren’t encouraged to ignore the world outside of Bryn Athyn.

There was another occasion I remember quite vividly. I was about nine years old and was operating as a shoe shine boy at what must have been a General Assembly. (Ten cents a shine.) While the meetings were in session, the young people would watch from the kitchen, through the open doors. Apparently the "Dutch position" conflict was at a most critical stage. While I watched, very proudly, my Father made an impassioned speech. It was an appeal for unity, I was told later, He didn’t want the Church to break apart. How many there really listened to him?

THE SETTING

The Always Changing

House and Magic Yard

Mother and Daddy were married on January 9th, 1913. Daddy had been back in Bryn Athyn for about a year in the job of Librarian. Mother had just returned after three years in the South. She was 28. He was 34, They already knew much about the world and about life, having both worked at a variety of challenging jobs after leaving school. They were ready now to establish a home and raise a big family in a New Church community. Daddy was ready to devote his life to the Academy and the Church.

Their first home was an apartment located in the Hicks house. This had been arranged well before their marriage and Daddy had spent the Fall fixing it up. The big house, later the Childs and then the Van Zyverden house, is on South Avenue at the top of the hill directly above the Bryn Athyn station.

The family began to grow immediately. Harriet was born in 1915 and Leonard in 1917, both in the Hicks house. Leonard was in a special hurry. The doctor didn’t get there in time and Miss Phoebe Bostock, the community nurse, handled the delivery.

Shortly after Leonard was born, the family moved into its brand new home on Alnwick Road. From the front of the big stone house there are beautiful views of the Pennypack Valley and the Cathedral, which was still under construction then. The maple trees along the street weren’t big enough to block the view then. The main building of the Cathedral was dedicated a year after they moved into the new house. The other buildings around the Cathedral were constructed over the next decade.

The house was built by Uncle Charlie Pendleton, Mother’s oldest brother. He was a building contractor and at the same time he was teaching science and philosophy at the Academy. He built a house for his family behind our house.

Hugh and I didn’t wait long to appear. We were born in the new house in 1919 and 1921. After a short pause the rest of the family appeared, Anne, Peter and Eileen formed a flying wedge of their own. The older ones called them the "Three Little Kids", which probably didn’t please them very much.

We can easily imagine the life Mother and Daddy led in the early years of their marriage. Plans for the construction of the house must have been underway from the beginning. At about the same time the house was finished and occupied, Daddy began his time—consuming jobs as

 treasurer. Mother, too, must have been kept very busy. There was almost always a baby to be cared for or on the way and usually one or more toddlers getting into mischief.

Mother and Daddy were very active socially before they married and they continued to live at a fast pace afterwards. They were busy members of an organization known as "The Younger Generation." Its purpose was to separate their generation from that of their parents, the founders of the General Church. Among their friends who apparently were also members were the Ed Davises, the Harold Pitcairns, the Wilfred Howards, the Paul Carpenters and the George de Charmses.

They were also wrapped up in the game of bridge. The contests often took place at our house. I can remember running down to Bishop N.D. Pendleton’s house to get his pipe and tobacco, which he usually forgot to bring.

Most of the time they had their hands full caring for the seven kids. Daddy helped as much as possible. In 1924 at a Civic and Social Club dance he was elected “Most Domestic" among the men. The new house and the family and friends who were nearby, must have helped lessen the pressure of raising of a big family.

The new home, the big yard and the surrounding area made a very enjoyable setting for the children, too, as we’ll now set out to show.

A LUCKY LOCATION

Our parents were fortunate that they could purchase the property on which they built our house. For them and for us as we grew up, it was a most convenient location. It was near the school. We could sleep in later than most and got home sooner. But it also meant that the oldest boy in school could go home at recess to stoke or sometimes restart the coal furnace. This unfortunately cut down on the time available to meet the girls in the passageway between the boys’ and girls’ schools.

Across the street was an entire valley of fields and woods. The bus stop on the Pike, which we used extensively, was almost in the backyard. Getting to Church was simple, too.

They built a very large house. Obviously they planned a big family. The house was constructed of stone from the quarry down in the valley. The stone held up well over the many decades. But the woodwork inside didn’t fare as well. Tricycles and roller skates, circling through the first floor were the baseboards down to a frazzle. The plaster walls didn’t survive very well either.

The first floor was planned for gracious living. It has a big dining room with a fancy built—in china closet, a study and a comfortably large living room, with a porch just off the east end. The kitchen has a "Butler’s Pantry" attached, An entranceway off the kitchen was for doing business with the delivery merchants. The milkman deposited his glass bottles of milk there in the early morning. In the winter the frozen cream was pushing out of the bottle by the time we were up. Also on the first floor is “the study" and a clothes closet.

However things didn’t work out quite the way the architect planned. The coat closet was used as a private telephone booth. The study was used for everything but studying. The dining room was most often used as a study, as it had a large table. The living room was most often a music room — dominated by the piano and the radio. The butler’s pantry remained just a pantry, no butler.

The rooms on the second floor were preserved as bedrooms, with the one at the top of the stairs designated as the nursery. When the children weren’t outside making "messes” they made them here. Those created on the days Mother “went to town", to Philadelphia on the train were the biggest. When she returned, bringing each of us a little present picked up at the Five and Dime, she would have to face whatever mess the kids håd decided to make.

On one occasion we made a giant spider web in the nursery, using Mother’s big collection of thread. We stretched it from side to side and corner to corner, as high as we could reach. It took hours for us to get the thread back on the spools. Another time we filled the room up, almost as high as we were, with crushed up newspapers.

There was also a sleeping porch. As there were no air conditioners or window fans, the entire family slept on the porch in the summer, This meant that the area was completely covered with beds. If your bed was away from the door, you had to crawl over the other beds to get to your own.

The third floor wasn’t finished on the inside when the house was first built. Daddy finished it himself just after the depression hit. The government asked that citizens spend money on their homes to get the economy moving. That was Daddy’s contribution. It was fortunate for his family that he did this. For a while it was used as a boys’ bedroom, Later, it was used as a private apartment by the family’s young adults and young marrieds. It was even rented out for a while.

In the basement were the laundry room and the coal bins. The wringer washer in the laundry was a mean one and at one point, it broke cousin Hannah Nelson’s arm. The laundry room also contained two wash tubs which became part of the distillery. Alcohol was prohibited by the federal government when most of us were young. Many loyal Americans got around the law by making their own and we were no exception. The still Daddy used was either rented or borrowed. Perhaps it belonged to Uncle Charlie Pendleton who was quite active in this type of endeavor. Grapes from our vines or secured on trips to the wharves in Philadelphia were used. We all became part of the process. The children’s job was to squash up the grapes. We did this by jumping on them in the wash tubs in our bare feet. Dirt and germs were boiled away in the distilling process.

For something stronger Daddy made apple brandy. He took all our wormy apples to the cider mill in Richboro and we watched them being pressed into cider Some of the cider was saved for us but most of it was allowed to ferment and then was distilled. After World War II we found some of this brandy in the storage room. It was still quite good,

The house was perfect for a big family. It was well planned and a nice house in which to grow up. It was very fortunate that Leonard and Ruth were able to buy it a few years after World War II. It was convenient for them and, thanks to them, Mother was able to live there the rest of her life.

OUR MAGIC BACK YARD

Our back yard was magical and it was unusual. In the early years, the yard was filled with flower gardens. But as the children came along it became more and more a messy playground. Mother always let us “express ourselves" all over the out—of—doors just as we did indoors. This was tough on the gardens she loved. Eventually, the gardens almost disappeared but she never complained.

In fact she found the transition from gardens to play—yard interesting enough to write an article entitled “My Back Yard". It was published in McCalls magazine, In it she described the evolütion her gardens from flowers to sandboxes, swings, and to miniature cities with two—story—high tree houses above them. It took a special mother to let things like that happen in her garden and even feel content enough to write about it.

Mother loved flowers and loved to grow them. Not all the gardens were overrun by children. And somehow she managed to pass her love of flowers and gardening on to her offspring. She taught us by example that flower gardening can please the gardener’s own creative feelings, ease tensions and also make other people’s lives more pleasant. If you visit the homes of her sons and daughters, you usually find flower and vegetable gardens and great devotion to their care. Many of us really get carried away and have extensive layouts.

Some of her in—laws benefitted from her instruction too. Marion remembers learning flower arranging, using colors foreign to her. She says she also learned plant perspective, plant moods and scenes. Mother tried to put her on a five—year planting schedule.

We can only imagine what the backyard looked like during the summers soon after the house was built and before the children took it over. I have faint memories of lots of flowers in the backyard, an arbor with flowering vines on it and of a grape arbor somewhere. (see photo.) Over the years Mother managed to keep some hollyhocks in the backyard and a very respectable collection of flowers in the long garden in front. There were many iris, roses, daylilies and other perennials. Anne remembers peonies. All of these managed to survive the Fall football games we played on top of them. (Unfortunately, the long garden was the end zone and games were played almost every evening.)

When we had grown up, Mother was able to pay more attention to the gardens. She planted Japanese iris, miniature roses, hosta, salvia and, as time went on, many other flowers. She had limited resources. So she would go into friends’ gardens and take clippings and nurture them into healthy plants. She supplied her rock garden with snippets from Miss Buell’s garden.’ Some of Her roses were cuttings taken from Hugh and Jinny’s Ohio garden.

Mother used the gardens to attract birds. She missed the southern birds, especially the mockingbirds. But she always managed to have lots of northern birds around her home. This was another interest that she passed on to her children.

The vegetable garden was a different challenge. (it was in the field next to our property.) It’s purpose was to feed us and it was Daddy’s area of expertise. A horse with a plow from the Academy farm (Powel’s) came and plowed it up in the early spring. This always created some excitement. Daddy seemed to enjoy getting out in the vegetable garden and away from his job. When Daddy had the garden the harvests were quite large There were more vegetables than we could possibly eat. The children, with a wagon full of vegetables, traveled around the "loop" (Alnwick Rd. and South Ave.) and sold them from door to door, It was an established route with many stops where we were expected. We didn’t get to keep all the money but always got enough to keep us supplied with candy from Mrs. Heath’s store on South Avenue. When the sons took over the garden it wasn’t as successful. It was time—consuming and we had other things we rather have been doing.

Trees were an important feature of our yard. There were trees that were strictly for decoration and trees that were useful. The pine trees by the porch weren’t useful because we couldn’t climb them. In the front yard the beech tree and the red maple defined the borders of our football field. They were both beautiful trees, but only the maple mattered. It was climbable.

In the backyard most of the trees were important to us. We hardly knew that apples grew on apple trees. To us they were for climbing and for holding up our tree houses. The area under them made an excellent, shady playground.

The two maple trees, directly behind the house, were important for climbing and were used to reach the roof of the chicken coop and the attached garage. There were also some exotic trees in the backyard: a tulip tree, too tall to climb, a quince tree that provided quince -jelly and a chestnut tree that we stayed away from because its fruit was too prickly. It died of a disease that had spread across the country. Our parents must have enjoyed picking out all these trees when they planned their property.

But nothing in the yard or in the house was what it seemed to be. When the children in the family began to pursue their “projects" everything magically turned into something different, as we shall now see.

GETTING AROUND

We grew up very near the Cathedral and the school and within walking distance of the grocery stores. So while we were young we probably could have gotten along without a car by using bikes and taking the train to the city. At the time of Daddy’s death we were getting by with an old Studebaker. Big plans were underway for advanced education for seven children, however, and it was apparent that better transportation would be needed. So Mother used part of the insurance money to buy a new 1936 Plymouth. It was beautiful and shiny and very modern compared to previous family cars. It felt very luxurious.

Our parents had owned cars from the beginning of their marriage. No one remembers what the first car looked like. What may have been the original car made history of sorts, however. According to the Bryn Athyn Post in 1924: "Five of the boys from school purchased the old Ford car belonging to L. E. Gyllenhaal for 30 cents and had the nerve to leave for Chicago in it.”

That car was replaced by the Ford touring car in which we made many trips around the country with Daddy. It had a full back seat, with a trunk behind it. There was a canvas—type roof, running boards and Eisenglass windows. It was likely a Model T. We went on many camping trips in that car and it made a number of trips to Glenview. Another trip I remember clearly taking in it was to Kitchener, with Bishop de Charms, his son, Charles, and Daddy. After Kitchener we headed north, probably to Georgian Bay.

Late in the twenties it was time to upgrade our transportation. One evening, after dark, a shiny, new car pulled to the side of the road in front of our house. It was delivered by the dealer. Hugh remembered, as I did, that we admired it from an upstairs window together, dressed for bed. The car had a much glossier paint job than the earlier car which was dull black. It seemed to shine in the night. The car had a steel roof and much wider running boards. (Swimmers were transported to and from the pond on running boards, so that the seats wouldn’t get wet. ) It was a Studebaker and it must have given us a certain amount of class. The older children learned to drive in it before it was traded in on the 1936 Plymouth.

I’m not sure why we got a Plymouth. Perhaps it was because the Pitcairns and the Academy had money in the Chrysler Corp. In any case considering the wear and tear it endured the gray sedan served the family well. Everyone in the family drove it at one time or another. Mother believed a car was to be used, not pampered. We used it for all sorts of adventures. The one thing she insisted on was that only family members drive it.

The Plymouth usually went to all the *away" Academy football games with part of the team aboard. Some families with two cars wouldn’t trust their football—playing sons with their car. One fall when Hugh and I were students at Penn Mother let us drive the car to Ann Arbor, 

Michigan, to see Penn and Michigan play in a game considered the top game in the country that weekend. We left after Friday supper with some friends, drove straight through to the stadium. We then drove all the way back without sleep. Getting the car wasn’t a problem. Mother said: “Go ahead. It sounds like fun.” Penn lost.

The Plymouth made many trips to the University of Pennsylvania. All four sons graduated from Penn and there was no easy way to get to the campus by public transportation. On one trip with Leonard and I on board a trolley car we were passing suddenly turned; its rear end swung around and thoroughly crumpled our rear fender. We were told to go to the main office of the company and report the accident. They laughed at us. The fender was patched up but remained crumpled. That made the car easy to identify in parking lots. (We always had to lock at the bright side of things, according to Mother.)

As time went on many in the family learned to drive in the sturdy, old Plymouth. Even Mother learned, partly taught by Shawn Pendleton. She actually got a driver’s license. But after that she never drove again.

Our driving lessons were on the road behind the Cathedral. Most everyone remembers learning there. When it was Eileen’s turn, however, the car kept stalling and the lessons were more difficult. Mr. Kofod, who had a garage in Bethayres and had been a friend of Daddy’s, kept the car going, but just barely. Ruth took Peter to get his license in the Plymouth, when the older boys were in the service. She was unable to park the car properly, according to Peter, and the officials there wondered whether she or Peter was meant to be trying for a license. Peter began driving before he was sixteen. He was the male head of the family then.

The car was very useful for romancing by almost everyone in the family. Hugh and Ginny cruised around in the car before they were married. Hugh usually waited until the gas tank was almost empty before he would put gas in. One day they ran out of gas out in the country, with Mother along. No one had any money. So Mother then started hiding money in the car. Jinny says that Hugh always found it before it could be used for gas. When we did put gas in the car it was usually a dollar’s worth, which was all the cash anyone could come up with.

For part of this time I had my own car. It was a 1929 Model A Ford "roadster", with a canvas roof and a rumble seat that folded out. It ran like magic. I drove it to Penn every day for a while. When I worked on the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, I went through Germantown, picked up George Seltzer, the city editor, who helped with the gas. I had bought the car from Phil Finkledey for $15. When I was overseas during the war Mother sold it back to him for the same price.

Aside from the automobiles the only transportation was the railroad. For really cheap transportation we got around the country by hitch—hiking. Hugh and Reds Pendleton hitched all 

the way to the West Coast and back. When I took a job on the Macon Telegraph, hitch—hiking was the only way I could afford to get there. Most of my rides were in old cars being towed South to be sold to the poor people. The law required that someone be in each car being towed, Sometimes a truck would tow five or six cars, with a hitch—hiker in each one.

The railroad in those days was rather exciting. The trains were all steam—powered. There were lots of them, stopping at both the Bethayres and Bryn Athyn stations. They had intriguing whistles which you could hear off in the distance from our sleeping porch. It made us think of faraway places.

The locomotives chugged through the wooded areas around Bryn Athyn, over the bridges, with plumes of smoke gushing from them. Reading Terminal in Philadelphia was always crowded with trains and full of smoke and people. There were trains on every track during the rush hour. It was quite exciting, much like today’s airports,

To get to the Penn campus from the Terminal you took the elevated or a trolley. When neither was running late one night Leonard had to walk from his part—time job. One night he was attacked by a thug. Using a car, even an old beat up one, was after all the best way to get there.

"ANGELS ON HORSEBACK"

Hugh told his children that as we grew up we lived mostly on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Although peanut butter was a big part of our diet, because it was cheap, nutritious and tasted good, it wasn’t all we had, even though some of us would have been quite happy to have had nothing else. Fortunately, the peanut butter was usually spread on the oatmeal bread that Mother made. The bread was not only good but it was nutritious. Every slice was close to eating a good breakfast.

We also bought white bread from the baker’s truck that stopped at the house. It was called "Wonder Bread. One summer we went to the World's Fair in Chicago and visited the “Wonder Bread" display, an operating bakery. We saw there that each loaf began as a tiny bit of white dough and then was puffed up in the oven to fill up the pan. This was described as the great modern way to bake bread. It made us appreciate Mother’s bread even more.

There were a frequent main meals made from bread and peanut butter at our house. They were called "Angels on Horseback". A sauce was made from peanut butter and liberally spread on toast and served hot. This sometimes was the main dish at dinnertime, when there was no meat. Anne remembers that they were sometimes sprinkled with bacon. She also remembers mustard and butter sandwiches, and brown sugar and butter sandwiches. Mother told the Hugh Gyllenhaals that she'd serve peanut butter for lunch and dinner but never for breakfast.

We seldom had a beefsteak or a roast. Meat when we had it was either hamburger or chicken. Sometimes we ate one of our own garbage—fed creatures, usually one who had become too old or too lazy to lay eggs. To get it ready for the oven one of us would grab the chicken by the neck and swing it around until its neck was broken. Later, when it was Peter’s job, he used a hatchet. He would hold it by the head, Mother would grab its feet, and Whack! Off came its head, In either case the chicken would be plucked, cleaned out and eaten by almost everyone. Peter didn’t always enjoy the meal; Ginny says she never would eat our home—bred chicken meat. In any case the creatures, while alive, were always a source for eggs, which were comparatively expensive in the grocery stores.

Mother had to learn to feed a big family with very little money. Hugh and I often did the shopping at the American Store in Huntingdon Valley. We’d take her list and a five-dollar bill. The clerk, with a pinch—like device on the end of a long pole, would pick the items from the high shelves behind him. We brought back a wagonload of groceries. Later, when the older boys were in college and some inflation had occurred, Peter would go shopping with Mother. He remembers returning items to the clerk to stay within a ten-dollar bill.

Mother learned, after she married, to stretch what food she had to satisfy a big family. Her family had been quite well off and even had 

servants. Ginny remembers that she could serve a meal for fifteen people on five dollars. Harriet remembers meals of spinach and eggs and lentils with hot dogs. She recalls that we always had oatmeal bread and cinnamon buns, but never enough butter to put on them, We never had bananas. Harriet remembers how good one tasted when she visited the Bostock’s down the street. (Now she doesn't like bananas!) Fresh beef was often in the form of meatballs, which everyone remembers as being especially good, perhaps because of the liver Mother snuck into them.

Mother gave us lots of milk, even though it must have made a big dent in our budget. Our milk was delivered by Schmidt’s Dairy In Huntingdon Valley, rather than by the Pitcairn Dairy. Schmidt’s milk was pasteurized; the Pitcairn milk wasn’t, Another reason must have been that Schmidts didn't push us for money. He supplied us even though we were as much as a year behind in paying him. Mr. Schmidt, Sr., had been a good friend of Daddy's.

Mother didn't skimp on desserts, except when economics demanded that she serve rice pudding. There were of course the famous homemade cinnamon buns. They were especially juicy. Mother used lots of brown sugar. She served them to the young couples who stopped in after the Sunday afternoon walks. You could almost get a date on a Sunday just because of the cinnamon buns. She also served them at our house to the football team after the Friday afternoon games or after ice skating.

Other home—made desserts included our own ice cream — usually peach— with cookies, especially Christmas cookies. Mother was famous for her Christmas cookies. Her Christmas fruit cake was also famous. Dried fruit was used in the fruit cake.

We eventually got a refrigerator. It arrived in the early thirties. Before that we had an ice box. That Coldspot refrigerator wasn't very old before one of the coils was hit by an icepick, leaked gas and drove us out of the house. It was fixed up, however, and kept our food cold for decades.

KEEP IT CLEAN

No one in the family owned what could be called a "wardrobe". really didn’t matter that much, Hugh told Jinny that Mother's philosophy was : "It doesn’t matter what you wear as long as it’s clean and mended.” The clothes were washed in the Sears wringer washer and mended on the Wilcox and Gibbs sewing machine, over and over again.

When a boy's shirt collar wore thin it was turned around. When the cuffs were worn, they were shortened. Peter remembers that the shirt sleeves got shorter and shorter. Keeping clothes mended was necessary, because they were usually handed down to the next in line. Almost everything the boys and girls wore could easily be passed on. Styles didn’t change much. But Peter recalls wearing, as short pants, a bigger boy’s long pants, cut off at the knees. They were usually too big around the waist.

Anne says that when she was in high school Mother made most of her clothes — broomstick skirts — a skirt gathered on a waist band. She also remembers that Mother always found money to buy a formal for a dance if one was needed. Each girl was given a dress by Mrs. Pitcairn, made by a seamstress who came to the Inn for fittings. Eileen couldn't wait for Anne to outgrow something she was hoping to wear herself. Eileen says Mother made everything she wore when she went to business school in Philadelphia. Eileen was proud of the clothes and happy with them. Mother is also remembered for the clothes she made for little girls. There were little velvet dresses and dresses decorated with fancy needlework. After her own children grew up, she smocked dresses for her granddaughters.

Girls were dressed much more formally then than they are now. They wore white gloves to church and even carried muffs in cold weather. They always wore dresses, never anything more comfortable. The boys’ clothing for school and formal occasions was quite standard. We wore corduroy pants: knickers that came down to the knee. Below them we wore long wool stockings. There were dress shoes for Church, “keds" for all other occasions. For school there was always a white shirt, a tie, and a sweater on top. We didn't wear suit coats.

Our outfits probably weren't much better when we went off to college. Some of us had our first matching coats and pants when we joined the service and clothes were supplied by the government at no charge. After the war clothes posed a new problem. We all wanted to get out of uniform immediately and civilian clothes were very hard to get. Everyone was getting out at the same time, and everything was being snapped up. Ruth's father worked for a clothing outfit in Trenton, and he solved the problem for me very quickly. He arranged for me to get my first civilian suit with matching coat and pants.

KEEPING BUSY

There Always Was

Something Happening   

Our house was always full of music. At first this was because of Mother’s love for it. All of us can remember Mother singing around the house when she was younger. Later the house filled with music when Harriet took up the piano at a very young age. Soon Leonard’s music, played on the piano "by ear", was added. Hugh added some more piano music. Then it was Anne’s singing that kept the house a musical one. Finally beautiful music came from Peter’s violin and from the records that accompanied Eileen, when danced. We grew up surrounded by music and over the years music has played a big part in our lives.

When we were young some of us wouldn't have believed that this love of music would have developed. We didn't think the Czerny exercises were very inspiring and wondered what Harriet was up to when she practiced theme. In the end, though, we all benefited from being surrounded by her beautiful music.

During the earlier days the music came from the big upright piano and from a very large console record player. The record player used thick, unbreakable 78 rpm single—sided records . It had a thick needle you replaced quite often. You wound the machine up with a crank. We were very cautious when we did this. Someone had told us that the crank could reverse itself and break your arm. The sound came from a horn speaker. It wasn’t electronic. We had some nice records. Harriet remembers “Les Miserables”, "Scheherazade" and some Brahms symphonies.

In the nineteen—twenties, Uncle Charlie built a homemade radio for us in a wooden box. (Electronics was another one of his many talents.) That radio was one of the first in the area. Among other programs we listened to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on Saturday afternoon on this set, whether we wanted to or not.

Later the piano was updated. Harriet remembers the big event: "Once, a couple of days before Christmas, I was suddenly sent up to my room for a long time. When I came down there was a beautiful grand piano. Daddy had bought a used 'Henry F, Miller” for me. That was my biggest thrill,

We were also exposed to good music out in the community. Sometimes It was Raymond Pitcairn playing the violin during church. Some of us were exposed to music from the player piano at Glenn Hall when we walked the girls home after Church. Sometimes it was a Philadelphia Orchestra concert at the Academy of Music. Occasionally, we were Invited to the Friday afternoon concert or the youth concert by the Raymond Pitcairns.

Harriet remembers jealously watching the Pitcairn limousine picking up the Hyatts for the Friday concerts. She also remembers standing in line for tickets to Bit in the "Peanut Gallery". Now she has season tickets and often can't make the Friday concerts because of a conflict.

The story of Harriet's musical career could be the topic of a book by itself. She began piano lessons with Hubert Synnestvedt who had a music school in Huntingdon Valley. Mrs. Synnestvedt taught the younger and less experienced students. Most of us were required by Mother to take lessons from her. Most often It didn’t take. It seemed to some of us that the purpose of the school was to put on a recital and embarrass the students. Harriet says that Mr. Synnestvedt was a good teacher but didn't teach her any technique.  He must have kept up her enthusiasm however.

The big boost in her career came later. While quite young she became the Academy’s accompanist. This Included being the accompanist for the Whittingdon Chorus under the Rev. K.R. Alden. One year the Philadelphia Orchestra Youth Concert series held auditions for choruses, soloists etc., to perform at the concert. The Whittingdon Chorus, with Harriet accompanying, won the audition. At a concert they sang two choruses from "Die Miestersinger”. In preparation, Sylvan Levin, assistant to Leopold Stokoweki, the famed conductor, came to Bryn Athyn and rehearsed the chorus. Even Stokowski came out.

Mr. Levin became interested in Harriet’s talent. Harriet sang in the chorus and still remembers the opening sounds on the stage of the Academy of Music. Mr. Levin took over her training and kept her on technique for two years. I suspect he also introduced her to the right people.

Harriet then spent three summers at the Juilliard School in New York City, staying at the Parnassus Club for Women. She had a job waiting on tables In the dining room there. She also attended one winter session, part of the time sharing an apartment with her friend, Helen Lindsay. While completing another winter term, she commuted from Bryn Athyn by train. Eventually, she received a diploma from Juilliard. Mother covered the tuition and expenses that jobs didn’t. Harriet still doesn’t know where she found the money.

Also, during this period Harriet occasionally entertained friends who were also pursuing musical careers. Most were voice students at the Academy of Vocal Arts In Philadelphia where Harriet had taken a job as accompanist. She’s still there today, as a very well-known opera coach. The students She entertained are still remembered by family members. Peter remembers the big, buxom sopranos. Eileen remembers the tenors, of course. One of the male singers who pursued Harriet was Jim Pease who became a world famous Metropolitan Opera star.

Since those days more than forty years ago Harriet has accompanied numerous auditions for the Philadelphia Orchestra with Eugene Ormandy and regional auditions for the Metropolitan Opera. She says: ”My friends now include William Smith, assistant director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, several stage directors and conductors at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and many opera singers. There are now eight former Academy of Vocal Arts students at the Metropolitan Opera, with all of whom I worked very hard.”

Other members of the family developed their musical talents in a variety of ways. Leonard taught himself a special technique he used in playing the popular songs. He would pick out the tune with his right hand, the thumb and little finger playing notes an octave apart. He would at the same time play a series of chords with the left hand. This technique was also used by Russell Stevens when he lived at our house. It sounded fine. Harriet calls this “instinctive" playing by ear. She says that it is a very special talent few people have. Hugh also played the piano, apparently self—taught.

Anne started singing when she was very young. She would write down the words to the popular song she heard on the radio and sing them later. She did the same thing with tunes from the Gilbert and Sullivan shows put on by the Academy. Later Mother arranged for singing lessons. The story of Anne’s musical career comes later.

Peter studied the violin with Miss Greenup, Mother’s friend, for many years and worked hard at it. The violin expertise stayed with him, and he is now first violinist with the Bryn Athyn Orchestra,

Eileen, while still in high schoo1, took private dancing lessons with Miss Florence Roemer. She danced at various recitals during her high school years, In June 1945, she gave her own recital, when just 17 years old. According to Mother’s diary she danced "exquisitely". Anne was performing in various places at about the same time. At a community "Jamboree” where Anne danced and Eileen sang, the consensus was that "the Gyllenhaa1s stole the show.”

In my case it was felt that I had artistic not musical talent. Mother sent me to the "Graphic Sketch Club" in South Philadelphia for lessons. She also bought me an expensive set of watercolors in tubes. I never got to use them. Anne, quite young then, had fun squeezing them out all over the brand-new palette. The only lasting art from this period is the sketch I made for the 1937 class banner of a sphinx. The Sphinx still marches in the parade every Charter Day.

MAGIC CHRISTMAS

Christmas has always been a special time in the Gyllenhaal home on Alnwick Road. Mother loved the Christmas season and passed this love on to the rest of us. The most important part of Christmas at our house was Christmas Eve. For as long as any of us can remember there was always a special celebration on the night before Christmas.

Our Christmas Eve parties became famous in the community, especially in the nineteen thirties and forties when most of us were teenagers. When we were in school, our house was the place to visit on Christmas Eve. Our party tied in nicely with the traditional caroling. We were each allowed to invite a couple of friends to stop in. I can remember hints coming well before Christmastime from young ladies who didn't seem at all interested in me at other times of the year.

It wasn't just the food although the food was very special. Mother made excellent fruit cake and a big assortment of distinctive Christmas cookies including springerle. The drink of course was eggnog, which was spiked when we were older. Mother had a special recipe. The bayberry candles made from the wax of berries we had picked on Cape Cod also added to the atmosphere, with their distinctive aroma.
Something else made Christmas Eve different at our house. There was a sphere that is hard to describe. Our friends liked to come because of that sphere and the community carolers always stopped at our house. The high point of the evening came when we all sang "Calm on the Listening Ear of Night", with Harriet banging out the accompaniment, the only way to play that piece.

Christmas Day was also exciting. Festivities started early in the morning when we lined up in front of the closed door to the living room where Santa had visited. We lined up according to height, smallest in front. Little Cousin Hannah Nelson always got in line with the children. In the early years she was near the back of the line. Eventually she was the shortest, at the head of the line and the first to enter the living room. We had all grown to be taller than she was. We’d march around the couch to the fireplace where the stockings were hung and each retrieve his or her stocking.

The stockings were mostly filled with fruit and candy. Hugh reportedly liked to tell his children stories of having no tree and no presents. He was kidding them. There was always a tree and modest but useful presents which Mother shopped for very carefully on her "trips to town".

Another big event at Christmastime was the anonymous" arrival every year of the fruit basket from the Raymond Pitcairns. (I know it was from them I saw the baskets being filled when I visited at Cairnwood.) In addition to the fruit there were other more important goodies that went fast. There were chocolate cookies which Peter polished off with Hugh’s help. The nuts were the next to go and the fruit the last. Each Christmas Mrs. Harold Pitcairn gave Mother a fancy and expensive house dress, complete with sales slip. Mother took the fancy dress back and exchanged it for something more practical.

The Christmas surprise that the older members of the family remember best however, was the arrival of a very fancy Philco radio at the front door. It was placed unwrapped on the step, and no one saw who brought it. This was during the mid—thirties when the radio broadcasting business was growing very fast, with more and more classical music, opera and popular music being broadcast from stations all over the country plus important programs such as "Amos and Andy". Our first radio didn't pull stations from very far. This shiny new model received many more stations and sounded much better. 

There has been a continuing discussion ever since about the source of this wonderful present. No one has ever been at all sure who left it. Was it meant for Harriet from an admirer? Was It from one of Mother's and Daddy’s friends? We’re still guessing. The radio was very important to all of us for many years. 

THE PROJECTS

Not many parents would allow their children to make messes in the house and yard to the extent that our parents did. Some think that children who make "messes" grow up to be untidy, disorganized and mentally confused. Mother apparently considered what we were doing was a necessary part of our growing up to be creative , original and happy. We may have set records for making messes, even in Mother’s beloved gardens. But we were expressing ourselves; we were learning to create, to do things, to get along with each other. When we were older we didn’t feel restricted; we weren't afraid to try things. We weren’t afraid to work, whether it was at our job or for the Church and the community,

Anne believes that "we were blessed because we had to make our own fun and create our play things.”  I’m sure this developed skills which have helped to make us all successful in our endeavors. That’s why it seems important to dwell for a while on the fun we had making messes or as we called them, "The Projects".

"The Projects" were spread all over the house and yard. They usually were instigated by Hugh and I. But many others were involved, including Anne, Peter and Eileen and even some of the neighbors. This must have created havoc but we were never stopped.

We pretended that places in the house and the yard were very different from what they actually were. The trees, the buildings, the lawns and various parts of the house magically became places we had read about or seen in the movies, They became imaginary settings in which we could act out our fantasies.

For instance, the steps between the first and second floor were really the seats in a movie theater. The main part of the stairway faces a blank wall on the landing near the bottom. The ceiling light in Harriet’s room upstairs, shone down the stairs, completely illuminating the wall at the bottom. The wall faces the "theater seats". It became a "shadow—movie" screen. The shadows of objects placed at the very top of the stairs showed up beautifully on the wall at the bottom. When the objects were pulled with a string by someone off to the side, they appeared to move on their own, All sorts of toys, cut—outs and assorted objects had movie careers and were featured players in shows with complicated plots, The show was over when Harriet finished practicing on the piano, went to her room and closed the door.

Having become interested in the movie business, we answered an ad which offered a free movie projector for selling Christmas cards. We sold the cards to friends and relatives and were ready to go into the movie business in a serious way. But the projector they sent us was a fraud. The light source was a candle. One short strip of film came with it. Nothing showed up on the small screen they supplied.

So, it was back to the stairs and shadow—movies. Isn't it interesting that Hugh’s son, Steve, is now a successful movie director, who recently directed the NBC Sunday night movie, "The Abduction of Kari Swenson", and seems on his way to an important career as a director.

When the stairs weren't being used as a movie theater, they were a toboggan run. The toboggan was a mattress from one of our beds. It slid very nicely down the stairs with one of us lying on it. Mother let us get away with almost anything.

OUTSIDE PROJECTS

The most elaborate projects were outside the house. The area we could use for them was largely determined by the neighbors. They insisted that we stay in our own yard. You couldn’t blame them.

The property at the back of the yard belonged to Uncle Charlie Pendleton, Mother's brother. He had beautiful strawberry and asparagus patches adjacent to our property. He kept an eye on us as he worked with his hoe in the patches, and in the large vegetable garden he also maintained. To us he was the "Mr. McGregor" of the Peter Rabbit stories.

The neighbors to the west were the Charlie Smiths. A number of different families lived in the apartments in this house over the years, including for a while the Rev. K. R, Alden with a big family. I had the feeling that people in that house also kept an eye on the Gyllenhaal kids. To the east was a field, good only when the hay was high and we could play in It. When it got that high, a horse—drawn sickle would come and cut it down.

So, we made the best of our own yard, staying in the back most of the time. Usually, when we pursued one of our "projects” we changed the nature of the area, not only in our imaginations but physically as well

In the east rear corner of the yard there were two large apple trees, close to each other. They were meant to supply us with apples, and they did so in a limited way, mostly with cider. One day Anne sampled them while they were still green. She got very sick, had convulsions, and Mother rushed her to Miss Phoebe’s. (The nurse down the street.) The apple trees were mainly used as a multilevel playground. The trees were excellent for climbing, with sturdy, long branches. The lowest branches were near the ground. When we played in these trees, they became a Jungle and we were "Tarzans”.

The apple trees were also ideal for building the treehouses Mother described in the magazine article mentioned earlier. The most elaborate one was two stories high. There were two enclosed rooms, one above the other. The leaves of the trees provided abundant shade in the summertime and the area beneath the trees became a favorite playground.

An even more elaborate construction project unfolded beneath these trees. The treehouses were lowered to the ground and Other buildings were built along streets that had been mapped out. A complete kid—sized city was built. It was eventually called “HyPenGi11 City" (Hyatt, Pendleton, Gyllenhaal), in honor of its residents. It was in every way a "Kiddie City". Anne, Peter and Eileen, as well as Sally Pendleton, Uncle Charlie’s daughter, were important residents of the city. 

Located on "Main Street" was a general store with goods for young "housewives" to buy. The items on the shelves were empty cans and boxes, but they looked as real as the goods at the American Store in Huntingdon Valley. Other "goods" were the match boxes, coffee cans and Prince Albert tobacco cans we had carefully saved all winter, for some reason or other.

Lots of neighborhood kids visited the city. There was a hotel for those who came from a distance, such as the Hyatts’ from across the street. There was a complete restaurant with real food. The economic basis for the city was paper money we created. We sold it to the neighborhood kids for real U. S, coins.

It was mainly the younger ones who took part in these doings. Harriet and Leonard weren’t involved. Their activities were a mystery to us, which is why there isn’t more written about them here. Harriet was busy on the piano, or off taking lessons. She probably was also starting to get involved with boys.

Leonard, if he wasn’t mowing the lawn or doing other important work around the house, was down at the Ed Bostock 0 s house, two doors away. (It is now the Lachlan Pitcairn house.) What he and his friend, Crary Bostock, were doing, we didn’t know. If we had known we would have been quite jealous. They were usually adventuring along the Pennypack creek, far up the railway tracks, or they were riding horses and cows at the Bostock farm up the Pike a little ways.

When the "Kiddie City" phase passed we started on the next project. It became known as "Mole City". Behind the garage and the chicken coop was a large area where the chickens used to roam when they were in residence. It stayed a weed patch, until we took it over one summer.

We dug four or five underground rooms and a series of long interconnecting tunnels. We then covered everything over with boards, put dirt over the boards and let the weeds grow over the top. When we were finished we had an underground city. We felt like the moles we had read about in the popular childrens’ stories current then.

Another "project" we undertook after the chickens left used the garage roof and the roof of the chicken coop attached to it. The chicken coop had a flat roof at a lower level than the pitched roof of the garage.

These buildings were transformed into a full—sized sailing ship. The chicken coop roof became the ship’s deck. The peaked roof of the garage we imagined to be the sails, which we clamored over. We mounted a ship's wheel on the side of the garage which faced the chicken coop roof. We stood on the coop’s roof, before the wheel, and with it, we piloted that ship around the world. A railing was put around the edge of the deck. It kept the small kids from falling into the ocean. We became pirates most often, but when not feeling ferocious enough acted out the story of Peter Pan.

Experienced sailors got to the deck mainly by climbing the nearby maple tree and out on to a branch. The younger ones who took part must have used a ladder. They to a took important parts in the Peter Pan stories. If you were big and brave enough you departed the ship by jumping off into the ocean. When you did this you were qualified to be called a “big kid”. Hugh did this before I did.

Most of the front yard was off limits to us young fry and was used mainly for playing football. The driveway, which had a nice slope down to the street, was a different matter. Everyone tried coasting down it in a wagon which wasn’t very exciting even though I broke an arm doing it. The driveway became an exciting challenge however when someone at our house invented the world's first skateboard. A square gallon can was firmly pushed on to a roller skate so that parts of the skate penetrated the can to make it stick there. The driver sat on the cane. As you sped down the driveway, you steered by leaning either to the right or left. The contraption responded properly and swerved to either side. The experts got to the bottom without upsetting.

With the driveway conquered we moved on to the Quarry road just below the Cathedral. Many neighborhood kids joined us. We could "sit—skate" from Alnwick Road all the way to the bottom, below Cairncrest. We didn’t know it then but we were about to invent the skateboard, more than 50 years before it became popular all over the country.

Someone got the idea of enlarging the contraption by putting a pair of skates under a long board with an orange crate nailed in an upright position on one end. The orange crate was about three feet high and we put a handlebar on the top of it.    We stood on the board, grabbed the handlebar and pushed ahead with one foot on the ground. It was also fine for coasting down the hills. They call these "scooters" nowadays.

This sort of thing kept us busy in the daytime during the summer when we weren’t traveling with Mother and Daddy, which was quite often. In the evening when we were all back inside the area around our house was usually very quiet. There wasn't much traffic on the road in front of our house or even on the Pike. Occasionally you might hear a steam train whistle on the Newtown Line or the fire whistle might sound and create some excitement.

More often however, the peace was shattered by unpleasant screaming sounds. They were made by the peacocks at Cairnwood. It was very scary, This is probably why when we began adventuring into the world outside our own yard. We never sought them out. We left them alone.

WORLD AROUND US

Friends, Relations and  

Nearby Attractions 

Our horizons would have been very limited if we had been content to stay in the imaginary world we created in the house and yard. Before we began to explore the outside world, however, some of the outside world came to visit us. These visits created quite a bit of excitement, especially when we were quite young.

The first daily visitor came early in the morning. He was the milkman who left glass bottles of milk on the back doorstep. In the winter the milk was frozen by the time the family was up and the frozen cream pushed up out of the bottle. Schmidt Dairy in Huntingdon Valley delivered our milk. Some of us wished that the Cairnwood Dairy had been our milkman. They used a wagon pulled by a horse. Horses were much more exciting than a motor truck.

The man who delivered coal for the furnace came in a special truck. It dumped the coal down a metal chute, through a window, into the bin in our basement. This took place with a tremendous roar which we relished. The coal came from the Bryn Athyn Supply Co. at the bottom of the Quarry Road. They received the coal in a rail car which was pushed up on to an elevated platform. The coal dropped from bottom of the rail car into the truck. This was fun to watch when we went exploring there.

A garbage man also came to call but we weren't very much interested. He picked up garbage from the back step, but not trash. Trash was burned out back. He was very happy to collect garbage without charge because he fed it to his pigs (which, very likely, we later ate.) The huckster was more interesting. He came with a wagonload of fresh fruits and vegetables, some of which he let us sample. Another visitor was Russ the Tailor, who picked up clothes to be cleaned and pressed.

The most excitement in the summer happened when the iceman came. Not only did he bring big squares of ice for our ice box, but he came in a horse—drawn wagon. His service was necessary before we had an electric refrigerator. He stopped at the bottom of the driveway. With an ice pick he would expertly chop out a piece of ice to fit our particular ice box. He would carry it up to the kitchen with a large pair of tongs and put it in the ice box. While he was doing this, we were busy collecting the little pieces of ice he left scattered in the wagon and on the ground.

Dugan’s bakery truck was another source of excitement. Mother bought plain white bread from him. But the kids agitated for and sometimes got jelly-filled doughnuts. The New York Times was delivered every Sunday. This wasn't too important to us, however, because there were no funnies in the Times. We figured this was the reason we got that particular newspaper.

Other interesting traffic went by on Alnwick Road without stopping. Every afternoon Preston would coax the Cairnwood horse and carriage to the B.A. station to get the Pitcairn's mail. I don’t know if there was a speed limit, but he seemed to go by too fast even to wave to us. The Doering Grocery store delivered groceries from Bethayres and also went by quickly. His delivered groceries were too expensive for us.

Often during the day, a motorcycle would go up and down the streets of Bryn Athyn. On it was the town policeman. At one time he was known as “Buzzy”. His name was Willard Pendleton and he eventually became the Bishop of the General Church.

There was also interesting pedestrian traffic. Some of the pedestrians were Academy professors, very much wrapped up in their important thoughts, as they ambled by our house. They seldom stopped to talk. These included Bishop Alfred Acton and Dr. C E Doering. Bishop de Charms was more friendly when he walked by on the way to work.

The most friendly pedestrians were the workmen who were building the Cathedral and Glencairn. They passed our house on the way to and from the Bryn Athyn station, where they took the steam train to their homes in Philadelphia. They were usually recent Italian immigrants and spoke with heavy accents if they spoke English at all. But they seemed happy to patronize the lemonade stand we often set up, primarily to sell to them. They probably bought the lemonade just to be friendly. 

There was a unique sound which filled the air continuously. It was a shrieking sound made by the peacocks who lived at Cairnwood. There was another sound which became more and more familiar over the years. It came from the "aeroplanes” which flew from Pitcairn field beginning in 1925. That was the year Mr. Harold Pitcairn opened his "flying field" at Byberry Road and the Pike now part of the Academy grounds. Eventually autogiros began to land on the lawn near Cairncrest. Hugh was a passenger on several occasions in the brand new revolving wing plane that Mr. Pitcairn helped to invent and develop. The Autogiro was the forerunner of the helicopter.

THE WORLD BEYOND

The Gyllenhaal offspring weren’t always content to stay in their own backyard. "Adventureland” across Alnwick Road beckoned. The nearest challenge was the Hyatt's yard and the fields around it. The Hyatt family was made up mostly of girls. Even though the upper part of our family was mostly boys, we got along famously with the Hyatts. One summer we developed together a fascinating game in the hayfield that surrounded their property. The hay had grown higher than we were. We tied clumps of it together in rows making an intricate layout of long tunnels. We moved around the field in the tunnels without being seen. Once again, we were moles.

After the hay was cut down the boys often played together in the Hyatt's yard. Shirley (now Herb Schoenberger), who was younger than we were, annoyed us at least once however. One afternoon with the help of her brother Kent, to get even, we tied her to a tree behind their house and then forgot about her. The Hyatts wondered what had happened to her when she didn't show up for supper and found her after a search. Actually, she could have gotten away but stayed in place because she thought it was part of the game.

In the summer the Hyatts slept in a cabin, screened in on all sides. It was at the top of their path, just a few feet from Alnwick Road. Anne remembers sleeping over there. Was the idea to get them as far as possible from the house where the parents slept?

A nearby attraction in "Adventureland” was the hill on which the Cathedral stands. Year round we enjoyed the pile of huge boulders at the top of the hill near the Cathedral, left over from its construction. There were many caves and places to hide among the boulders which were piled thirty feet high. In that area now is the stone wall in front of the Cathedral.

The church hill itself was a challenge in wintertime. When there was snow the entire community sledded on it. We tried it several times in our wagons in the summertime, a dangerous undertaking. Between the Cathedral and Cairncrest was a large wooded area that then reached down to Quarry Road. This forest was :Never, Never land", a la Peter Pan. The pirates, we figured, operated from the little grove nearest the road at the bottom because someone had hung the skeleton of an animal there. It was very scary.

The area most appealing to us was further down Quärry Road and along Pennypack Creek. The creek and the Newtown railroad line wound through the valley. There were plenty of woods, quarries and cliffs, but few people or houses. It was excellent for exploring.

This was where young entrepreneurs, looking for animal pelts, set their traps. Fur companies bought the pelts from us. In our family this endeavor began with Leonard in league with Crary Bostock. Later

Hugh, Robin Bostock and I took on the responsibility. Headquarters was in Bostock's garage. We usually caught possum, hoped for coons and sometimes came home with skunks. We trapped a skunk alive one Sunday morning. Just a leg was caught in the trap. We dragged it to the garage headquarters where Robin shot it with a “22”. But not before it had sprayed us. We didn’t realize that the skunk smell was an allowable reason for skipping Children's Service. We were stopped and sent home before we could get into the Cathedral.

 When we weren't climbing around the quarries we were walking the railroad tracks, The idea was to walk on the rails •without losing your balance”. The bridges over the creek could be crossed this way or on the struts beneath the tracks. There was always an ear open for the sound of one of the trains which came through often then,

Additional challenges included the islands in the creek that had to be conquered. They were usually reached by jumping from one stone to another over the water. The most famous was “Three Rid Island". There was a special feeling when you were on an island. Maybe it was because of the many islands in the literature for young boys that we could relate to.

It was also fun to explore the several stone quarries near the creek. One afternoon two of the Rose boys played a trick on the smaller boys who had come to explore one of the quarries. There were caves in one of the quarry walls about half way up, one at each end. The two boys looked very much alike from the distance. One of them, while his brother was hiding in the cave on the left, told the littler boys that he had dug a tunnel connecting the two caves. He then entered the cave on the right and after a short pause his brother emerged from the opposite cave making it look as though he had gone through a tunnel. The younger boys never found out the truth, as it was too steep a climb for them to reach the caves and investigate.

 On the other side of town was the pond. It was at the edge of the Cairnwood Dairy farm and the stream that fed it came through the cow field. This is why it had such a dirty color and smell. That didn’t bother most people. It was still used by much of the community for swimming. The pond is still there

Dr. Lungerich, who taught at the Academy, was the volunteer swimming instructor for anyone who wished to learn. He loved to do this. But he hated the thistles that grew in the fields around Bryn Athyn. To get a swimming lesson you had to go on one of his thistle—digging expeditions. When you learned to swim you moved from the very muddy shallow side, across the pond to the deep side, where you didn’t have to touch the muddy bottom.It had stone—walled edges and a diving board.

Within walking distance, were some fascinating places that were educational too. Some of these places were associated with the building of the Cathedral and Glencairn. Both these buildings were constructed by craftsmen who pursued their trades in sheds nearby.

Construction of the Cathedral was in progress when the Gyllenhaals first moved to Alnwick Road. Work on the main building began in 1913. The Cathedral was dedicated in 1919. In 1924 just after the Philip Pendletons were married one of the pinnacles was hit by lighting.

Work on the Council Hall and the Choir Hall went on in the early twenties. When the work on the Cathedral buildings was finished, construction of Glencairn, better known then as "The Castle", began. Some of us remember the stakes on the Cairnwood lawn that outlined the building. Leonard could. He was playing there, fell and cut his knee badly on the nail holding a string to the top of a stake. The Cairnwood chauffeur brought him home in the carriage pulled by a horse That was the first and only time it stopped at our house.

Later Leonard worked in the summertime on the Glencairn construction crew. It was a valuable experience for a budding civil engineer. Observing the construction that took place over the decades was valuable for all of us because of the unusual way in which the work was done. Instead of importing finished materials, the blocks of stone and finished wood parts were made by craftsmen on or near the site.

The glasshouse was on the edge of the Academy campus near the Pike. The multi—colored stained glass for the windows was manufactured there.

 We watched the workers blow the glass brought out of the glowing ovens. Our main interest was to get the many—colored, little round balls of glass that were left over from the process. I’ve often thought about the glass house while sitting in the Cathedral and watching the morning sun shine through the colorful windows, making the stones on the chancel appear to be translucent.

Nearer the Cathedral were the stone shops. The stone masons, working with chips flying, wisely wouldn't let us near them. Sometimes we got close enough to rescue interesting pieces of granite to take home. There was also a metal forming shop, a carpenter shop and an architectural studio.

On the Pike where Buck Road connects was the Blacksmith’s shop, A garage operated by Jack Davis, Ruth’s brother, was there later. The smithy's main job was to equip the many horses in the area with shoes. He also fashioned iron parts and repaired tools. We went there with Daddy to get things fixed. There was always a very hot fire going.

Up the pike in the opposite direction were several farms. This is where you went if you liked horses. There were always horses in the fields or being worked out on the race tracks at Justa Farms. Sometimes there were horse races, attended mostly by the fashionably correct.

Where the college campus now stands was Pitcairn Aviation Field. The Autogiro, forerunner of the helicopter, was developed here by Harold Pitcairn and Mr. Cierva. When we were quite young the airfield was an exciting place. We had strange ideas about what was going on there. We found long strands of rubber on the field. Older kids told younger kids they were used to make the propellers go around, as they do in toy airplanes. I always thought they were used to hold the two wings together. However, Mr. Gunther has since told me they were wound around the axles to keep the wheels in place.

We grew up before the advent of shopping malls. Most everything the family needed was available at one of the stores within walking distance. One unique store was known as “Mrs. Heaths" and it was on South Ave. about two blocks from us at the top of Station Hill. Mrs. Heath was a widow. She and her husband had acted on the stage. Her store was in what had been her living room. It contained a large variety of merchandise from food to needles and thread. When we weren't getting something for Mother we were after candy or a dixie cup of ice cream.

The store was at street level. We weren’t old enough to patronize the C&S Club bar, which was under the store and which you entered from the rear, down the hill. It was routine after leaving Heaths store to throw empty candy wrappers and dixie cups in the gutter South Avenue was littered from one end to the other with trash.

Near the American Store in Huntingdon Valley was Brown’s Drug Store. There were probably many useful items there in addition to school supplies, but we knew it best for ice cream sodas and sundaes. They were served at the marble—topped counter where we sat on high stools.

There was one errand that was reserved for teenagers. This was "getting the mail", a trip to the Bryn Athyn post office in the train station at the bottom of the hill. The mail was an excuse. There wasn't that much of it. But this is where boys met girls and vice versa. When one of us volunteered for this errand, it was a sure sign that we had outgrown "Adventureland.

PLENTY OF RELATIVES

As we grew older, we gradually came to know our many and widespread relatives. There is an abundance of them on both sides of the family. Some we got to know when we were very young. They lived nearby. Some came from other parts of the country. Occasionally they visited us. Sometimes we travelled to visit them.

One of those who lived very near was Daddy’s sister, Aunt Vida. She was very special and very important to us. Aunt Vida seemed to be part of our immediate family. When we were young and much older, too, we depended on Aunt Vida in a great many ways. She worked for the Academy, operating the Dining Hall and lived in the apartment above it. She was single. When measles or mumps or even a rash of colds struck those of us not affected were sent to stay with her. We may also have been sent there sometimes when peace was wanted at home. We really enjoyed those visits. The food was good (despite what the dormitory students said). Anne remembers visiting the kitchen and being given a new kind of ice cream wrapped in paper. It was fun to visit the grown—up students. The boys especially appreciated these visits. We ate our meals on the girls’ side of the dining room. We even got to play touch football with the girls on the lawn behind Benade Hall.

Aunt Vida was always good for a loan and a good piece of advice. Harriet remembers that when Mother ran out of food money at the end of the week, she would send someone to the Dining Hall to borrow $1 or so. We also used her as an apothecary when we felt ill. She had a big and varied supply of homeopathic medicine. Harriet found our taking advantage of Aunt Vida that way very embarrassing. I thought it was the way life worked; that every family had an Aunt Vida.

She was a passionate gardener and helped develop our love of flowers. She maintained a large flower garden between Benade Hall and the Dining Hall. It became known to everyone in Bryn Athyn as “The Carden of Vide". Aunt Vida was very charming and pretty. Some wondered why she never married. There were rumors of a busted romance.

Cousin Hannah Nelson lived next door in Glenn Hall for a while, just after she came here from Sweden. She had a room in the basement with a loom on which she created fancy cloth and rugs. This was very interesting to watch. During one period Cousin Hannah lived at our house, in the corner room downstairs, loom and all.

Behind our house and beyond his large vegetable garden lived Uncle Charlie Pendleton. Mother’s oldest brother. “Doc Charlie" was an Academy teacher and Dean of the College He had been through Theological School and had received a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He was at one time a house builder with his own company. During both world wars he was a top executive at the Cramp shipyards in Philadelphia, in charge of the training program. He was very quiet and didn't communicate much with us. Mother must have been happy to have

 had him next door, even though we didn’t see them talking to each other very often,

Anne however, spent much time there and at their home at lake Wallenpaupac, being Sally’s age and her good friend. Uncle Charlie built them a rowboat which they used at the lake. When Anne started studying voice, Uncle Charlie gave her a leather briefcase with her initials on it. Anne says that he was very good to her, a father figure, Later Marion and Ginny got to know him well when they were his students.

Uncle Charlie preached vegetarianism and raised lots of them in his gardens. He also was a very clever carpenter. He built a teeter—totter near our yard. It went up and down and also around and around. It was unique back then. He dressed very casually. For his daughter Sally's wedding he bought a new pair of sneakers, according to some sources.

He also built boats and Ginny remembers that he had a unique sense of humor. When she asked him why he built so many boats he replied, "To keep me from wine, women and cheap novels. When she was about to step on a centipede in class he said "Don’t do that.  You’11 upset the balance of nature.” Marion says that he took her under his wing when she became engaged to Peter. He lectured her on the proper food to eat. As we were growing up though he never seemed to be that friendly with us. Aunt Ruth, his wife, was much more communicative. Pendleton men then tended to be reserved. Or it could be that the noisy crowd next door was a little too much for Uncle Charlie to take. Perhaps too he thought we were a threat to his many projects.

Sally grew up with the younger half of our family. Her brother, Shawn, helped the older ones in their efforts to become adults. He often was a •protector” of the boys, valuable to have on our side. He taught Harriet and maybe some others how to drive. He ended up in the merchant marines.

Several doors down Alnwick Road lived Uncle Louis and two of the Pendleton aunties. Uncle Louis and the aunties were the brother and sisters of Grandfather Pendleton, and of Bishops W. F, and N. D, Pendleton. He was an author who wrote "The Wedding Garment", some other New Church stories, as well as novels including "Echo of Drums". Eileen remembers him taking trips to town to visit his publisher. Like the two B(shops, he had come north from Valdosta to the Academy when quite young and had stayed. When Grandfather died, he returned to Georgia and took over the Macon Telegraph for a short period. He went back up North when the paper was sold to its business manager.

He was a typically—reserved Pendleton male. I lived with him for a year or so when he was quite old to keep an eye on him. We hardly ever talked. I was in high school and studied at his house in the evening. He brought me hot chocolate without a word. Eileen remembers taking him violets which would get her some mints. Most of us took a crack at mowing his lawn with the same conversational results. He did come to 

our house occasionally and talk with Mother. Once when he was visiting our dog, Taffy, was attacked by another dog. It had Taffy by the neck. Uncle Louis, very proper in his 5—button suit, a long row of buttons down the vest and more of them on his shoes, walked over to the intruding dog and gave it a swift kick.

Aunt Zella and Aunt Emma lived with Uncle Louis. Harriet remembers that they were old—fashioned and ladylike. Both died years before he did. Uncle Louis died one night while I was "babysitting” him.

We didn’t see much of the two uncles who became bishops. For some of us our memory of Bishop W. F. Pendleton was the way he looked at his funeral. He was laid out very formally in his home on Alnwick Road. We didn't usually view bodies at funerals. However, his daughters, known as "The Aunties", wanted everyone to see him one last time and we were taken there, even though we were quite young. His beard was sticking straight up.

There were some other uncles who came visiting occasionally from out of town. A favorite of Harriet’s was the other Uncle Louis who was Mother's handsome bachelor brother. He would arrive around Valentines Day and bring a big box of candy, which Harriet figured had to be for her. She now concedes it might have been for everyone. Uncle Louis was a hotel manager and commuted between Saratoga Springs, N. Y. and Jamaica. Harriet describes him as a super person. He was quite handsome.

Uncle "Ooee” (Alvin) , Daddy’s bachelor brother from Glenview, arrived at odd times of the day with a whistled version of "My dog has fleas" to announce his presence. He "communicated" easily but he wasn’t very interesting. However, he was good for candy and nuts.

Uncle Bert Henderson of Glenview was married to Daddy's sister, Margaret, and was quite important to the family after Daddy’s death. He was a successful businessman, and I know for certain that he bailed us out a few times. He was at my high school graduation as his daughter, Alice, was in my class, He and Mother and almost everyone else expected me to get a Sons medal as I had the highest grades the last two years. But they decided for a change to base the awards on grades for all four years. I didn’t get one and didn't much care. But Uncle Bert was furious at the authorities. I was sure he was going to tear somebody apart.

Uncle Bert, Hugh and I liked to think that he saved our lives one afternoon. We were riding with him in the back seat of our car when Daddy lost control on a slick road and we had to stop suddenly. He put out his arms and we rammed into them, He talked about that incident often afterwards.

Another favorite uncle was Richard de Charms, brother of the Bishop. He was married to Mother's sister, Carita. Uncle Rick was a civil engineer in charge of the construction of huge bridges. One was 

over a deep river gorge near Rochester, N.Y., where we visited often. We watched this bridge under construction over several years. He would take us out on it when it was nothing but a frame. This scared us severely.

Another one of Daddy’s brothers, Uncle Fred, was for a long time the pastor of the Toronto Society. We visited him, Aunt Agnes and their daughter, Zoe, in Canada often.

Then there were some cousins who were older than most of us. They were greatly admired by the small fry. One was Sam Hicks. His Mother, Luelle, was another of Mother’s sisters. He became a medical doctor and visited us often while he was in Medical School at Penn. He believed that man should eat all the organs that animals possessed, so that all of the human insides would grow and prosper. When about to visit us Sam stopped at the Terminal Market in Philadelphia and bought “insides" for us. Not just liver. Any and all of the insides: brain, kidneys, intestines, hearts. Then he tried to make us eat them.

Two other older cousins were the Stevens brothers from Glenview, Marvin and Russell. Russell, who lived with us for a time, was the top running back on one of the Academy‘s best football teams. This of course made him a hero with the small boys. We were very proud that we got to play tackle football with him on the front lawn. Marvin and his wife, Bruna, live in Glenview and are still quite active there. Russell and his wife live there now, too.

There were lots of relatives who lived in Glenview. We saw them on frequent trips there. They included the Nelson aunties, sisters of Grandmother Gyllenhaal. Aunt Adah took care of Bishop Benade when she was in her twenties and there is a rumor that he had a romantic interest in her. But Aunt Adah wanted another of the early Academy leaders for herself and didn't get him. He married someone else. According to the yarn she vowed never to marry and didn’t. Aunt Adah could have changed church history if she could have worked things out a little differently.

NEIGHBORS WERE FUN

Growing up in the middle of Bryn Athyn we were surrounded by friends of all ages. When we weren’t roaming the fields or woods we were visiting in nearby homes. Most were the homes of Mother’s and Daddy's friends. They kept an eye on us while we played with their children.

The most important neighbors were the Hyatts. As Harriet puts it: "We grew up with the Hyatts. They still seem to be brothers and sisters to me. Most of the Hyatts were girls and all of them were very smart. They challenged our intellects and inspired us to try harder in school. Fortunately, they felt comfortable at our house. Lyris says our place was more casual than theirs. Kent, who was Hugh's close friend, also challenged us in sports to a very high degree. It was fortunate that he was on our side when we played football against the older boys in the front yard. Kent later was one of the best athletes in ANC history.

Just up the street lived first the Howards and then the Robert Coles. The Coles were our cousins. Mr. Cole, a chemist, helped develop Freon and its uses as a refrigerant and an aerosol propellant among other things. Mrs. Cole became head of the Girl’s Seminary. 

Dan Cole and Kent played on the football teams I was on when they were relatively young. Later with Hugh they played on one of the best teams in Academy history. Fresh out of the Army after World War II, Dan, Rent and I, from the houses on the three corners of Alnwick and Quarry Rds. married three of the lovely Edward Davis girls.

The Howard children were also our contemporaries. Mr. Howard taught at the Academy. Mary, a friend of Harriet, learned about hair—curling at our house. Mother used to roll Harriet's hair up in rags to make her long hair curl. Once she did Mary’s, too. Mary was so embarrassed by her appearance that she crawled home over the field on her hands and knees.

Two doors down on South Avenue lived the Ed Bostocks. Their offspring were also in our age group. Leonard spent much of his time at their home Others in our family liked to visit there on Sundays. Their newspaper had a funnies section. Ours, the N.Y. Times, didn’t.

The Bostocks had a summer home in the Adirondack Mountains. Leonard visited there often. They had horses. We used to stop by on our camping trips. That is where I learned that I should stay off horses. Someone talked me into getting on one after we had walked up the side of the mountain. As soon as I got on the horse, it ran all the way down the mountain and into its stable. I ducked just in time as it went through a low barn door, I haven’t been on a horse since.

 Further down South Ave lived the Geoffrey Childses and the Simonses, The Simons  house was important because that was one place 

where a radio was available late in the afternoon. That’s when the adventure stories were broadcast. Our radio wasn't available, because Mother didn't approve of the stories and because the piano was filling the living room with music. At the Simonses we enjoyed listening to "Buck Rogers". The Childses were across the street and a feature there was a rope swing, hung high in a tree near the house. The daredevils grabbed the rope, standing on the railing of the porch and then swung high over the lawn. A small girl named Ginny was probably in the way of the boys. She and Hugh paid no attention to each other then.

Down on Alden Road lived the Don Roses. On the opposite side of town in Stuart Hall lived the K, R. Aldens. There was a group of boys (not dorm students) who operated from Stuart Hall. The boys in our family belonged to that group. Another group was based at the Rose home. Those of us who belonged to the Stuart Hall group felt superior because we were geographically at least on a higher level.

Our family became very much aware of these two groups one Saturday afternoon when war broke out between them. The war was fought mainly with rotten apples, some from the Powell’s farm. The lids of garbage cans were used as shields from the thrown apples. The Rose gang headed up South Ave, towards the Academy grounds. The Alden gang protecting its turf headed towards the Rose gang. They met in our front yard. The Alden gang cut across both the long hedge and Mother’s garden. The Rose gang came up the driveway. There was quite a bit of damage to the plants and flowers. Mother wasn't happy.

Many in this group of active boys on the other hand later were involved in the famous circuses that were put on during several summers in the field above the Bryn AtHyn station. The circuses in a way grew out of the gangs.

In the Inn just down the street from us (on the point where Alnwick Road and South Avenue meet) lived Miss Francie McQuigg. We visited her often. She had grown up in Pomeroy, Ohio, on the Ohio River. Miss Francie loved to show us her collection of photographs of the floods for which Pomeroy was famous. Her room was also a "candy handout" location.

Miss Rita Buell, Dean of the Girl's Seminary, was a very close friend of Mother and Daddy. She lived a little further down Alnwick Rd. We visited her beautiful garden often when we were young. Then we got to know her well when she taught us at the Academy.

Mother's best friend was Aunt Elsie. Mrs. Paul Carpenter. She lived in what became the Rosenquist house across the tracks and high over the Bryn Athyn station. Later she moved to the big house on Alnwick Rd. at the top of Station Hill. Three Chimneys. It had a very large lawn. The Gyllenhaal boys had the job of mowing the lawn when we were old enough. Aunt Elsie had travelled all over the world. She had operated an ambulance in the Chinese—Japanese war. She showed us 

fascinating pictures and souvenirs from many foreign lands. Her husband had been president of a large corporation. Mother visited Aunt Elsie for tea and gossip. She enjoyed going there and getting "out of everything".

Two other families who lived nearby were the Raymond and Harold Pitcairns. If we knew they were very wealthy it didn't make much difference. Both families were friendly and very kind. The Harold Pitcairns were special friends of Mother and Daddy. Their children were closer in age to the younger members of our family. Hugh became good friends with John Pitcairn, his contemporary. Hugh became a special favorite of Mrs. Pitcairn. "Aunt Clara" sat with Hugh, who was quite upset, at Daddy’s funeral. The service was held in our living room and she sat on the floor with him. Later after I married Dinah she became my real Aunt Clara to me and a good friend.

The Raymond Pitcairn family was a bit older. Harriet and Leonard mixed socially with their older children. Mr. Raymond Pitcairn encouraged Harriet’s musical efforts. He also, on one occasion, showed interest in my vague attempt at art. (Mother required me to take samples of paintings to him). Perhaps he recognized that I was color—blind because he never asked to see any more.

There were minor catastrophes, however. As a friend of Michael Pitcairn I was sometimes invited to Sunday dinner. On one occasion we were served squab. Never having seen or carved one before. I jambed it with my fork. It flew off the plate and landed in a corner of the dining room on the spotless carpet. Perhaps I was subconsciously getting even with the hostess for what she did to the bananas. They were bought by the stalk and hung in a storage room. No one was allowed to eat them until they had all turned black. All was forgiven however when the ice cream arrived. It was the fancy, expensive brand to which nothing could be compared.

There was one activity at Cairnwood that some of us with two left feet didn't enjoy. It was the baseball game that was held regularly on the lawn near the Pike. Hugh and I didn't like baseball, and we were both sure the chauffeur, who refereed the game, was prejudiced. Leonard enjoyed this activity as he was a good player. Some of us went because the food afterwards was so good.

Glencairn was just being built then. It wasn't much more than a shell. Michael sometimes took his friends to see the room that was to be his. It was at the very top. We went up to the room one afternoon when it didn't have any sides and it was very scary. Michael never got to live there. He went off to war before it was finished and then was married and built his own home.

There were also some good family friends who visited us quite often. This was especially true after Daddy’s death. These visitors made sure that things were going well. They found that Mother always had everything under control.

Bishop de Charms kept a close eye on us. Harriet considered him a second father. He came in the early years to help Mother with various decisions. She often sent us to him for advice.

Among others to visit us were several of Mother's lifelong lady—friends. One of them was Lotte Greenup, who came originally from Macon. Miss Greenup had been Mother's accompanist during her singing career. She taught music on Green Street in Germantown. When she came to visit; Mother made cinnamon toast. Peter remembers she taught Peter to play the violin.

She was very important to Harriet. She gave her much career advice and encouraged her to go into music professionally. She put her in touch with the Academy of Vocal Arts when she heard they needed an accompanist. Harriet took a part—time job there in 1941 and has been there ever since.

Another lady visitor came from Canada. She was Miss Venita Roschman, a teacher, who was in school with Mother. I talked to her in Kitchener a few years ago. She died very recently. Her brother originally came to this country from Germany, discovered the Writings and wrote home about them. One of his brothers crossed the sea to get his kin off the "silly ideas" he had written about. But he accepted the ideas and sent for his sister.

THE YOUNGER YEARS

Our Parents Kept Us

Busy All Year

The Alnwick Road Gyllenhaals grew up at a time in world history that was both violent and difficult. History’s greatest depression and its greatest war occurred during this period. Our family was severely affected by both of these calamities. At the same time, it was a most interesting period in which to live and observe... most of the time.

Aside from the world's problems the family had problems of its own. There was turmoil, not much money and tragedy. Any of these could have made us bitter or discouraged, but they didn’t. Despite everything there was a great desire and effort to succeed, which must have been instilled in us by our parents. I’m very proud that all seven brothers and sisters became very successful people. They have had unusually successful marriages and maintained positive attitudes towards life. All have served the Church, the community and the country in a wide variety of uses.

The service of family members to the Church and the community started at early ages and was extensive. For example, Harriet played the organ in school and in the Cathedral while still a student, Anne started singing at various functions while still in school and kept it up for many years in every place she has lived. Eileen started dancing while very young and later taught it for many years. Leonard served the school while still a student and eventually was called "the most important layman in the Church’s history. Hugh was useful in several societies and ended up being an active worker for the Evangelical Committee. Peter has held many church jobs and is now on the Board of Directors of the Academy. I started the Academian, edited the Sons Bulletin and have been active in the North Ohio circle.

It would be difficult to recount the family history in exact chronological order. Instead, the interesting things that happened are covered under various general headings. To tie everything together however, there follows a short review of what went on during the thirty—odd years in this period.

 The family moved into the house on Alnwick Road when Harriet was about three years old and Leonard was a baby. By the time Harriet had started kindergarten, more babies had arrived, and the big house was filling up. The "nineteen—twenties" were peaceful, prosperous years. The things that concerned people then were illustrated by what Otho Heilman wrote in the Bryn Athyn Post: "Don't burn your trash on Tuesday, Impossible to write the Post. There goes the fire whistle again. Heath’s store: Use the paths to get there. Don’t cut across neighbors’  “lawns." That was in 1923, the year of an Assembly in B.A. There was no air conditioning. A room was cooled by blowing air from a fan over ice. Plastic hadn't arrived. Oil cloth was very useful. The Post reported in the "mid—twenties" that eight new houses were going up and that the town was becoming “a regular place.”

Our telephone number was “3 ring 11”. In May, a play, "Master Skylark", was put on by the Elementary School. Harriet was one of the little actresses. A little later the younger grades put on the "Three Little Pigs. The youngest little pig was known thereafter as "Porky". It was me. (Later the name was changed to "Jelly”). I weighed a little too much.

In the thirties the four older children finished high school. Harriet was by now an accomplished organist and played for morning worship at the Academy and at other events. Leonard became President of the Forum, an official Boy’s School student organization. Being its President was the top student job. I started the Academian and Hugh was elected president of his class.

Then Harriet headed for the Julliard School of Music in New York. Leonard graduated from Penn in 1940. I spent most of that year working for the Macon Telegraph and Hugh was a student leader and a senior in the Academy High School. The three youngest were getting bigger and bigger and moving up fast in the Elementary School.

Leonard and Ruth were married in April 1941, and Leonard joined the Seabees at about the time that war broke out in December, 1941. (The Seabees were the part of the Navy that was assigned the task of constructing naval bases and facilities.) I was drafted into the Army the day after I graduated from Penn in June, 1942. Hugh was in the Officer’s Training Corps at Penn and stayed in college a little longer before he became a regular and commanded a tank at the front. Peter joined the Navy near the end of the war. The girls were either in school or starting Jobs during this time, and helping with all sorts of jobs on the "home front".

Leonard came out of the service in mid 1945 after the war had ended. The rest of us left not too long afterwards. Then in summer of 1947, almost magically, there were four weddings in the family. Then, a few years later, two more.

All of this history was spread over three decades. Things that happened will be covered in  what follows, but not necessarily in chronological order. 

THE DIFFICULT PARTS

While we were growing up some rather traumatic things happened in the Bryn Athyn area. The earliest nearby tragedy was the train wreck on the Newtown line just north of Bryn Athyn. Quite a few people were killed or injured when this happened in the early "nineteen—twenties". Daddy took part in the rescue efforts and Mother told us that he came home white as a sheet. Harriet remembers his stopping at the house and saying he had to go back to get people to the hospital and help remove the bodies. Much later while walking along the tracks we looked for mementos of that wreck.

The burning of De Charms Hall much later was another traumatic event. Harriet remembers a "frightened" feeling and Anne remembers being terrified. Eileen remembers standing in a window at home and seeing molten pipes at the scene. Most of us remember the old building and went to school there. The community auditorium was on the third floor. Eileen saw "Pinafore” there. I was on the Bryn Athyn Fire Company then and was one of the last in that auditorium before it sank into the ashes. (I probably didn't tell anyone but I thought then that fires were fun). Daddy had always worried because the building was a fire trap, It burned very quickly.

Another trauma was even closer to home. The man who invented Ivory soap, whom we sometimes visited at the Inn where he lived, was killed by a car on the Pike in front of the school. We all but saw it. Earlier the children of the Randolph Childs family stayed at our house while their young sister, Rachel, was dying.

One year Leonard was kicked out of school when he bucked the Principal of the Boys’ Academy over some business concerning the Forum, the student group he headed. (Mother was furious — but not at Leonard,) When he was younger Leonard sometimes became delirious, when feverish, and one evening he jumped out of a second story window.

When Ruth came back from the hospital with Susan all the lights in the house went out. On another occasion someone poked an ice pick in a coil of the new Sears refrigerator and the house filled with sulfur dioxide. The effect of all these momentous events on us, however, was minimal.

Our biggest involvement with the medical profession was caused by the bad teeth that everyone in the family had. We knew our dentists very well. The first was Dr, Oestrich in Philadelphia. I grew up thinking that "Oestrich” meant "dentist". Harriet says that he pulled out the roots of her teeth, causing lots of problems later. Either he retired or we owed him too much money, and we moved on to Dr. Tony Creamer. He probably wasn't a very good dentist. “Aunt Clara" Pitcairn took Hugh to another dentist because she didn’t like his work. He loved to drill big holes and put in large fillings. We got to be quite friendly with him, however, and ran up some big bills there too. He remained friendly and attended Ruth's and Leonard’s wedding.

For more serious medical problems we depended mostly on Miss Phoebe Bostock. She was the "Community Nurse" and probably didn’t charge us. (Of course, we didn't have any medical insurance.) She maintained an "emergency room" at the Inn Annex just down the street. It was very handy. Another time, when Mother was in Church, Hugh grabbed something from Eileen and ran out on to the porch, stuck his hand through a window and cut his hand. Harriet ran down the street and got Miss Phoebe who bandaged him up. Harriet then passed out. When she recovered, she heard Miss Phoebe say: “Oh, these emotional children.” Miss Phoebe could handle almost anything, anytime. An exception was when Anne was hurt in an accident while riding in Ronnie Schnarr’s car. She fell out when the car was going around a curve and her ear was severely pierced by her earring. Mother took her to Miss Phoebe who then took her to Abington Hospital for five stitches. Anne must have been accident prone. Earlier she fell on a rake left with the prongs upright. She still has the scar. She remembers being pulled around in a wagon until it healed. Finally, both Harriet and I visited the hospital to have our tonsils out. Miss Phoebe wouldn’t touch that job either,

 We did have family doctors starting with Dr, Young, a homeopath.

Usually, however, when we needed homeopathic pills we went to Aunt Vida. Later we patronized Dr. Vanderbilt, a lady doctor. But there weren’t too many serious problems; Peter had an ear operation; I broke an arm and we all had to get fake vaccinations for smallpox. None of these emergencies were too serious, however.

The babies were born at home. I’m not sure if Miss Phoebe delivered them or a doctor did. I remember one occasion when we were taken to Uncle Charlie’s woods and told to stay there and not to go near the house. When we were allowed back home, we found we had a new baby sister named Anne.

Finances were also a problem area. It was necessary for the boys take part—time jobs while in school and full—time summer jobs at an early age, usually starting when juniors in high school. Considering that we grew up during history s worst depression it’s surprising that we got as much work and earned as much money as we did. One reason may have been that the jobs we took were pretty tough and not many young people wanted them.

Often the jobs were passed down from the older brother to the younger one. Included were things that had to be done every day around the buildings and homes in the area, such as lawn work. Also, all of the homes were heated by coal and we serviced a number of furnaces several times a day. There was a regular route. At each building we would carry the coal from the bin to the furnace and shovel it in. We also shook down the grates, removed the ashes and eventually carried them in cans out to the street. It was hard work considering that we began the jobs in our mid-teens. The route included the Inn, the Inn Annex, Uncle Louis’, Miss Buell’s, N. D. Pendleton's, the Carpenter’s and other homes. We always tended the furnaces late in the evening, before school in the morning and sometimes at recess. Often, we had to do it just before we went off to a school dance or on a date.

In the summertime we took over the yard work and lawn mowing at these same places. Unfortunately, no one had power mowers for us to use. It kept us quite busy in our younger years. The pay was about 25 cents an hour. When we became Juniors in high school Leonard and I went to work for the Academy in the summertime. The work consisted of scrubbing the inside walls and floors of all the buildings and cleaning up outside. Mr. Flack was the boss and was tough. Our foreman was Bert Freeman, a friendly black man, who had been very fond of Daddy. We were very fond of Bert. I think the pay was about $20 a week and it was tough work.

The girls didn't have the same opportunity to work outside the home, so far as I can remember. Harriet, who had become an accomplished organist when she was quite young, took over organist jobs at the school and the church when still a student. The other girls, however, were kept quite busy helping Mother keep the family going,

All of this helped with the difficult family financial problem. There wasn’t a mortgage on the house. Life insurance had likely paid this off. But there were many mouths to feed, and Mother did get behind financially. I remember once when I was quite young taking a check that Uncle Bert had sent from Glenview to the bank in Huntingdon Valley.. in a rush so that we could eat. In any case, all of us learned how to work hard when we were very young and this experience paid off in later years.

This is another group of pages from the memoir, with clips from the Bryn Athyn Post. Click to page through.

PLEASANT MEMORIES

Don’t get the wrong impression. Most of the memories we have of growing up are pleasant. There are hundreds of them: memories of our pets, our projects, things we did to entertain ourselves and of other experiences we enjoyed.

Some of us for instance remember an American Indian, who was married to the black lady who did our laundry in the early years. He visited our house on many afternoons, while she was working, and made it his job to entertain us. He carved "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Say No Evil” monkeys for us from peach pits. He made big, elaborate and colorful kites, which he flew with us. They were full of ruffles and artwork and went very high in the sky.

At about the same time we enjoyed visiting a lady artist when we went to see Aunt Vida. She had a studio/ bedroom in the Dining Hall. She was a college student from South Africa and was the Rev. Norbert Roger’s sister. Her room was full of pictures she had painted of dragons, which she loved to do. She did dragon pictures for us to take home and told us stories about Africa.

Anne remembers when we brought in an injured cedar wax—wing and made it a home in the “nursery”. She remembers tree branches and leaves all over the room. She says everyone cried when it finally flew away.

There are pleasant memories from our teenage years of the informal parties we had on Sunday afternoons, after the traditional date/ walks, or after Friday afternoon football games. The parties were popular, in part because we served Mother's tasty cinnamon buns and hot chocolate. On Sundays we’d listen and dance to the Guy Lombardo orchestra on the radio. Everyone enjoyed themselves because it was very informal and Mother didn't care if we made a mess and lots of noise.

There were also the picnics that Mother loved. They were often in the woods along the Pennypack Creek, sometimes on Three—Kid Island. The younger ones usually took part in these. The menu featured, of course, the “sticky buns", as some called her cinnamon buns, hot dogs and marshmallows, which we toasted on the fire. Sometimes one of us would bend a pin into the shape of a fishhook and try to catch some “sunnies”.

As happened then to any families, who concentrated on dogs as pets, the experience often ended in disaster. Dogs hadn’t yet learned about automobiles. They were seldom on leashes. As a consequence, there was a doggie graveyard in our backyard, under the apple trees. The gravestones were granite blocks left over from building the Cathedral. The names of the deceased were inscribed on the stones with melted tar from the road in front of the house.

The earliest casualty I remember was a beautiful big collie, a favorite of Mother’s. She was hit by a car on Alnwick Road but made it 

to the front was a door before expiring there. The most heart-breaking casualty was a mutt named “Yanks”. "Yanks" was born under the front porch of Glenn Hall, the girls’ dormitory. Daddy brought him home to us just after he was born. He was of very uncertain parentage, small, runty and mostly black. But he was lots of fun. He followed us everywhere and took part in all our games and adventures. He got his name from yanking at everything he could get his teeth into. He was completely undisciplined and disobedient. When he wasn’t busy playing with us he loved to chase cars. He especially loved to chase the Doering Grocery Store truck. He must have known there was food in it.

One day we came home from school for lunch and Mother had to tell us that he had chased the Doering truck for the last time. Cousin Shawn Pendleton had buried him in the doggie graveyard. Hugh and I stood at a front window and bellowed with grief for a long time. We of course blamed the driver of the truck for the accident, even though it obviously wasn't his fault. We decided to get even. One day while he was parked in front of the Inn Annex, we put tacks under the wheels of his truck. We followed the truck all the way around the “loop", but none of the tires went flat, The tacks were too small.

There were many other dogs and most of them ended up in the graveyard. But after "Yanks” they are hard to remember. As Marion has remarked: "Mother must have had lots of patience. Not enough money to go around and all those pets, too.” Incidentally, they weren’t fed canned dog food, just left—overs.

There were many things we did to entertain ourselves. Every once in a while, we went to a movie in Willow Grove or visited the amusement park there. We also listened to the radio. Late in the afternoon there were "soap operas" for kids. Later in the evening there was "Amos and Andy", a comedy team, and Lowell Thomas with the news. After the news we had to study. On weekends we listened to the "Hit Parade" of popular songs.

For several years there was an unusual show put on to entertain and occupy the children of the community. Actually, the event grew out of the "gang wars" such as the one that occurred in our front yard. It was a "Wild West Show” and a circus rolled into one. It was originated by the Roses and Walters but almost everyone took part. The idea was to keep kids busy and out of mischief. It featured cowboys and indians, with the little ones being Indians, the bigger ones cowboys. The shows were held where South Avenue and Alnwick Road come together, just above the station. The Bryn Athyn Boys Club of B.A. grew out of this activity.

Politics was also a form of entertainment. We were Democrats in a Republican town. Daddy was born and raised in Glenview where there were many Democrats and Mother was from the South, which was staunchly Democratic. Daddy was quite active at election time. In 1928 when Al Smith was running for President against Herbert Hoover, he traveled up to the coal country to get out the vote The children did their part by decorating a wagon with Democrat propaganda and pulling it around town during the 4th of July parade. (In a very hostile environment.)

OUT CAMPING

The camping trips we went on seem quite remarkable looking back on them from this day and age. The whole family went (including the dog) and those early cars were quite small. And they didn't run very smoothly. The secondary roads were terrible, mostly dirt or gravel. The main roads were paved, but only two lanes wide (The first super—highway was the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the late “thirties") We traveled at least a thousand miles during a typical summer. We lived in a tent and never ate in a restaurant. I don’t remember that any of us ever complained.

Our parents were adventurous and loved to travel. Daddy’s job allowed him to take time off in the summer. He worked very hard during the school year, however, and we didn’t get to see much of him then. The summer trips made up for that.

Starting out in the morning, the first thing to happen was an argument over where each of us was to sit in the car. Everyone wanted to be next to a window. Mother always let one of us squeeze in next to the window in the front seat. This was after the tent had been tied to the top of the car’s trunk and everything else secured to the roof or front bumper. Some suitcases were lashed to the running board.

When the time came to stop for the night, Daddy would ask a farmer for permission to camp on his property. We would buy milk and eggs from him. We never stayed at a motel. There were few, if any. Sometimes, the farmer’s cows would wander into our area. It didn't bother us. Once we pitched the tent on top of a family of snakes and that didn't bother us either. Not everyone could fit in the big tent. So there was a pup tent, just big enough for two boys to squeeze into. The smallest boys slept in the car.

Mother created the meals right on the spot, usually over a wood fire. There was always coffee. Ginny says Hugh remembered that we had to turn back once when we had forgotten the coffee pot. Later the wood on the handle burned off the pot and we had to grab it by the hot metal part. Peter remembers that we once caught a turtle and made turtle soup for supper.

Sometimes Uncle Charlie traveled with us. His family went first class, He built a very unique vehicle which he pulled along behind him. When traveling it looked like an ordinary box trailer. But at the campground the canvas insides folded up and out. There was a canvas roof. It was high enough so you could stand up inside the trailer. There was a bunk on either side of the trailer on the part that folded out over the wheels. The trailer had many other features. Trailers like it were built commercially years later and are very popular now. We had watched Uncle Charlie create the trailer near the rear of our property, over a long period of time.

Often our first stop would be at the Bostock’s summer home in Woodstock, N.Y., the famous place, where the hippies held their convention many years later. Nettie Bostock couldn't understand why we brought Yanks, the dog, along. After the Bostocks we may have headed for the Howards at Indian Lake, N.Y., or gone on to Rochester where Uncle Rick deCharms was building a bridge.

Mother liked to travel through New England and on to Quebec. Harriet remembers being on top of Mt. Royal and camping in a field outside of Quebec City. On one trip we went as far as St, Anne de Beaupre, far beyond Quebec City. It was very French and had a large cathedral. Here you had to leave your car and walk to see the sights. We always enjoyed listening to the natives talking French.

Mother's favorite destination was Cape Cod, Mass. We went there many times and had many Interesting experiences. Whenever there we headed for the tip end of the Cape to quaint Provincetown. Harriet remembers seeing a man come down the street selling water lilies out of a water—filled wheelbarrow.

On a trip to the Cape in the "thirties" we saw a total eclipse of the sun from the beach. We watched through pieces of window glass we had darkened with smoke and relived Mark Twain’s "Connecticut Yankee" story. On one trip we collected bayberries on the beach, cooked the wax out of them over a beach fire and made them into candles, about three inches long. We burned them for the fragrant odor at Christmastime.    

Much later another type of event took place on a trip to Cape Cod. Just before World War II began, Peter remembers that the family pitched a tent in the dark and then took off for town to see "The Wizard of Oz" Harriet and Ruth were on the trip but stayed in a motel. Leonard was working. At six o’clock in the morning the tent collapsed on top of everyone. The center pole had been planted in a hole.  

Returning with Daddy from one of these trips we ran out of both gas and money in Philmont, a mile from B.A., near a gas station. Even though we were within view of the Academy buildings, Daddy couldn’t get any gas on credit. We were about to walk home when an Academy employee came along and saved the day. That’s called "living from hand to mouth”.

Other frequent trips were to Uncle Charlie ‘s summer home at lake Wallenpaupack, N.Y. Eileen remembers a tent we stayed in on a wooden platform there. One night a bat got in the tent and chased everyone out. She also remembers that Hugh, Peter and some others, in a bravado state, decided to swim across the lake. Someone with a rowboat rescued them half way across. This, she remembers, was the year everyone was there except Marion, and also when Mother fell and hurt her thumb. The thumb was never quite the same thereafter.

One year in the "thirties" part of the family took a trip with Mother in the old Plymouth to see Boomama in Macon. She was in failing health and died a little while later. Leonard drove and Eileen and I went along. Grandmother Pendleton still lived in the big old family home on Hardiman Ave. Eileen remembers that there were fireplaces every room and negro girls came in and lit the fires. The house was one of several big houses on the avenue which had camelia bushes along it. Behind these houses there were small homes in which the servants lived.

Leonard and I attended a school dance there. Leonard was quite popular with the southern girls. They liked his northern accent. I was young and embarrassed, because the girls held your hand between dances. Such a thing was never allowed at an Academy dance. Everyone had to dance. The girls were very pretty but when they talked I couldn’t understand a thing they said. The deep southern accents were too deep.

Often we traveled to Glenview, where we had lots of relatives. Fora while this included Grandmother Gyllenhaal at whose home we usually stayed. Where the old Gyllenhaal house used to be there is now an empty lot, owned by the Church.

Some of us probably enjoyed these trips more than others. It depended on your age group. Among my memories is a visit to the Century of Progress (Worlds Fair) in Chicago in 1933. We also visited the Nelson Aunties who lived in the Swain Nelson house next door. Swain Nelson, their brother, had made his money in the nursery and landscaping business. His house was a very fancy one with fascinating artifacts in it. There was, for instance, a Chinese Mah Jong set made of genuine ivory he had bought on one of his many trips abroad.

The Nelsons also had a stereopticon, the TV set of the “twenties". You looked at pictures through what resembled field glasses and the pictures appeared to be three—dimensional. There were photos they had taken all over the worl. The Nelson aunties gave us our first taste of wine at a very young age.

The Nelsons had a large cottage on the lake in Palisades Park, Michigan. Much of Glenview visited this area, including most of our relatives. They were mostly girls, so Hugh and I had to find something to do that didn’t involve them. For a while we dressed up in black raincoats with hoods and charged up the sand dunes from a base camp on the beach, pretending we were soldiers.

THE SHORE

Everyone loved the seashore. As the family grew older and busier, with less time to travel, the seashore became the family’s favorite vacation area. Mother especially had always loved the shore. During the early years we stayed at Miss Buell’s cottage in Seaside Park, N.J. Her cottage was on Long Beach Island near the Atwater Rent property which was several blocks to the south. There was nothing but beach and dunes for many miles along the estate. It is now a state park. We roamed over the dunes by the hour. We pretended we were the pirates or indians who once were there according to books we found in the cottage.

The Wilfred Howards had a cottage across the street from Miss Buell’s. They owned a dune buggy, but it was monopolized by a group older than most of us. There were plenty of other things to do. One was to build fancy automobiles from the wet sand on the beach. We made a seat at ground level with a large hole to put your feet in. We built hoods, fenders, running boards and rumble seats. Beach litter became steering wheels, gear shifts, headlights, dials, etc. There was plenty of litter. The beaches were never raked clean as they are nowadays.

In the early morning, we went to the docks on the bay side of the island to meet the fishing boats coming in after emptying their nets. From the ocean beach we could see the nets offshore and the boats tending them. The fishermen gave us fish and crabs they didn’t want. At other times to get crabs, we'd take a row boat out in the bay and catch them. We'd lower a fish head on a string into the water to attract them then scoop them up with a net.

Another special treat was visiting the nearby bakery, something we never got to do at home. The big attraction was cream or jelly—filled doughnuts, a new product then.

Later Cape May, N.J., became the family's favored area. It was on the mainland, not on a sand island as Seaside Park was and had fertile soil. It was almost as far south as you could get in New Jersey. Because the climate was quite southern and because of the type of vegetation there were many unusual birds.

When Leonard and Ruth bought the Alnwick Road house from Mother, it was time for her to have a seashore cottage of her own. Ed’s family had always gone to Cape May. Harriet and Ed took Mother there to search for a house. They found one in Cape May Point, just south of Cape May. It is the most southern town in New Jersey. Leonard went down to help with the bargaining and to seal the deal.

Mother loved Cape May Point and her cottage. The house was quaint and near to the beach.   According to Harriet it was the love of her life. Harriet and the rest of us have regretted that she didn't have it sooner and didn't get to spend more time there. She rented it for part of every year to pay the taxes. Harriet was the agent, placed the ads and made the arrangements. For this Mother gave her a beautiful present 

each year, something very nice. Harriet says that this reminded her that we always had nice things; silver, linens, clothes, flowers. She has always wondered how Mother managed it.

Anne and Al came to love Cape May Point too. When it came time for Al to retire they bought a retirement home there. Not only are they in New Jersey's most southern town, theirs is the most southern house in the state. To get to it you simply take the road out of town and head south along the beach. When you can’t go any further you’re at Anne and Al’s.

Everyone had a good time at Mother’s seashore house. Hugh and Jinny arrived there once on the yacht belonging to their friend, Joe Anderson. Jinny can remember the distinctive smell the place had. Not everyone got there by yacht; sometimes it was by bus from Philadelphia. Eileen remembers taking a turtle home on the bus.

One Spring, according to Ginny, when family members went down to open the house for the summer, they found a mother raccoon and her babies living in a closet. By the time someone came to get rid of them the mother raccoon had dragged the babies to safety over the roof.

Mother was quite brave to take on a cottage so late in life. But then Mother was never lacking in courage and she loved the shore and the cottage. She loved the ocean, but never learned to swim in it. Eileen used to hold her hand while they were bucking the waves. She worried she might accidentally let go.

Mother enjoyed it when everyone was having a good time at her seashore home and wanted to make sure they were really vacationing. On one visit, according to Ginny, she and Mother were upstairs making beds, when Mother said; "1’m making this bed up for you and that one for Hugh Ginny said: "But we like to sleep together.” And Mother answered "But you’re on vacation. You don't have to.”

This is a group of three pages from various seashore trips.. Click to page through.

THE LEARNING YEARS

Education - By Any            

Manner or Means

Life was enjoyable in the house on Alnwick Road when we were young. We were usually carefree and full of fun. But it couldn't stay that way. We had to "grow up!' and think seriously about getting educated. And although we didn't suspect it then during the period just ahead we would all become involved in World War II.

Between those early years and the intense years, later were the “growing up" years. They were probably pretty much the same for all of us. There were a number of ways to tell just how far one of us had gone in the process. One way was to observe where that person sat in church. Seating arrangements were very much proscribed then. You sat in the row assigned to your family until you felt you were old enough to strike out on your own.

Construction of the Cathedral was going on at about the same time our family was getting started. The building was dedicated the year the family moved into the Alnwick Road house. When services began the authorities seemed to assign the seats nearest the front to those who lived nearest to the church. Maybe they believed that those who lived nearest the church would be less likely to be late for the services and disturb others.

Our row was the fourth from the front on the right-hand side. The Raymond and Harold Pitcairn families sat in the front rows on either side. The Howards had the row behind us. The Hyatts were in the fourth row opposite us and the Glenns in front of them. All of these families were immediate neighbors of ours and of the Cathedral grounds.

When we grew older this seating arrangement wasn’t very comfortable for some of us. Perhaps we thought that people were staring at the back of our necks. When we were younger that didn’t matter. What we wanted was the seat next to the aisle. That seat was less confining and you had something to put your arm on. Eventually most of us fled to the back seats or to the balcony. Perhaps one reason for moving away from Pew 4 was an elderly lady who sat in front of us. She often came close to fainting during the service. Her friends kept waving a fan at her to keep her conscious. It was said that she wanted to die in church.

Another indication of the progress we were making in “growing up" could be found in the nature of our social life. When quite young our social activity consisted of an occasional birthday party, a very tame elementary school function or a trip to the Franklin Institute or the Art Museum. Better still there might have been a trip to Mrs. Heath’s store on South Avenue for a dixie cup of ice cream. When we became

teenagers the trip for refreshments would be with a friend to Brown’-s Drug Store in Huntingdon Valley for a large ice cream sundae.

During the high school and later years Mother encouraged us to entertain our friends at home. Harriet remembers dances and parties that were very formal. The girls wore long dresses and the boys coats and ties. Mother would go to Mrs. Jarrett's nursery for cut flowers for the table. She could entertain the young people in a delightful way and would use the real silver which was otherwise tucked away in its box.

In the Fall the grown up "settlement boys" might be seen at the Bryn Athyn railway station, checking over the piles of luggage arriving from around the U.S. and elsewhere. The "away" girls heading for the Academy shipped their belongings ahead of time in large trunks. Checking them was one way of getting an idea of who was going to be in the girl’s dorm in the coming year. This was important because for many of the high school boys social life revolved around Glenn Hall, the girl’s dormitory. After church you tried to walk one of the girls back to the dorm because there'd always be a party there before Sunday dinner. The party, mostly dancing, was in the basement social room of the dorm. (One Sunday the dates arrived from church to find a cow standing serenely in the middle of the party room. No one ever found out who put it there.) 

Later on Sunday afternoon the thing to do was to take a dorm girlon a walk along the Pennypack creek. It was decreed by the dorm mother that three couples walked together. Sometimes the assistant house mother happened to take a walk at the same time. She knew which couples to keep an eye on. Returning to the dorm late in the afternoon there was another party with dancing. On many Sundays some of the couples came to our house instead for Mother's cinnamon buns and dancing. This was very popular with the young people. Perhaps the settlement girls didn’t like all this but then they were dating the dorm boys and taking them to their homes.

At other times, on the weekends, the boys and girls would go on picnics in large groups, either along the Pennypack or Neshaminy creeks. A favorite song at these affairs was "Heavenly Father", not because anyone was feeling very religious but because the harmony was fun.

There were also school dances once a month. They were always very formal and it was customary for the boys to have gardenia corsages ($5) delivered to the girls. Farenwa1ds in Jenkintown got a corner on this business when they bought an ad in the first issue of the Academian. For a while to save heating costs at the Assembly Hall the dances were held in the auditorium on the third floor of the old De Charms Hall. During one of these dances everything was called to a halt. The Jitterbugging had threatened to collapse the floor. That was the year when the popular song was "The Assembly Hall is Closed” to the tune of a school song. Usually everyone danced during each of the numbered dances. The exception was when there was a Joe Louis fight scheduled and many of the boys were in the back hall listening to the radio.

Typically, a boy would arrange for a date months ahead of time for these dances or any other event. He might do this by meeting one of the girls in the doorway between the boys and girls schools on the second floor of Benade Hall. Or he might ask someone at one of the dancing classes, taught by a lady who was an expert in ballroom dancing. Perhaps the girls enjoyed these lessons even if the boys didn’t. The main thing I remember is that the girls had sweaty hands.

Leonard’s social life turned out quite differently. In 1933 when he was barely getting adjusted to high school social life the Davis family moved from California into the big house on the Pike above the drug store. Immediately there was a new candidate for the prettiest girl in town and Leonard forgot all the rest. Ruth says that they hit it off immediately but that she did date other boys. I attended a party at the Davis house shortly after they arrived. After that night I always thought of Ruth and Leonard as an accomplished duo. Leonard never spent much time at the Girls Dorm.

When we were even older, we demonstrated our maturity by visiting the Civic & Social club for a beer. The club was located beneath Heath’s store and you entered from the rear, down a path from South Avenue. I drank my first beer there at a much—too—young age. It was at a Sons of the Academy affair to which boys still in high school were invited. Another unfortunate step towards becoming a man was to start smoking real cigarettes instead of the cornsilk variety we smoked when underage. Hopefully neither of these two accomplishments are now a sign of growing up.

Our approach to national politics also began to mature as we grew older. The 4th of July float was gone. Instead we announced that we weren't going to listen when the whole school was taken to a Republican rally in Philadelphia.        Later to really make our views heard, when

Roosevelt was re—elected in 1936, a schoolmate and I made the fire whistle ring. The button to operate it was on the outside of the Fire House on Buck Road. One of us put his finger on the button and the other put his finger on top of the other's finger and pushed. It’s about time one of us confessed.

SPORTS AND US

Except for Leonard the boys in the family weren't especially talented as athletes. If the girls had any athletic talent, (other than Eileen, the dancer) there weren’t many opportunities for them to show it. Girls were restricted to going to dancing class and playing field hockey so far as I remember.

The sport that involved all the Gyllenhaal boys was football.

There were several reasons for this. For one we all had gained experience playing hundreds of games in our front yard. The games also built up our interest in the game so that we were anxious to play when we entered high school.

Football was by far the most important sport at the Academy. The entire community was interested in the team. Because of the relatively small number of boys who wanted to play it wasn’t too hard for almost anyone to do so. If you were content to play in the “line" and were fairly big you didn't need much athletic ability.

The football tradition at the Academy goes back to the beginning of the century.  Some of our relatives were involved in its history, Uncle Fred Gyllenhaal, Daddy’s brother, was on the first team in 1900. That team played two games. There was a successful team in 1903. Uncle Charlie Pendleton was player/ Captain and the coach. He did lots of coaching later on in his career at the Academy. Marion remembers him talking about taking the team to games on the train. They played city high schools including Central High, Frankford and West Catholic. I don’t know of any other close relatives who were involved in football at the Academy until Marvin and Russell Stevens arrived in Bryn Athyn in the 1930s.

It was about then that the Alnwick Road Gyllenhaals began playing football in the front yard. These games began when Leonard was in the early high school years and probably continued well into the late thirties In addition to the boys in our family those involved included Russell, Crary Bostock, Leonard’s classmate and close friend ; Rent Hyatt, Hugh’s classmate and “Buz” Purdy who lived behind Uncle Charlie’s house and was then George School’s backfield sta. George School was the Academy team’s arch rival.

For some reason the competition was always uneven. The game was always the "big kids" vs the "little kids". It was meant to be "touch" but it was usually rougher than that. Sometimes, even some of the Hyatt girls were involved. Anne remembers that she played “center" on some of the "little kids" teams. Her instructions were to center the ball and then lie flat on the ground in order to stay out of the way. Lyris remembers seeing Leonard play in these games but I think she and Harriet were too grown up or too dignified to take part. The games began after supper almost every night in the Fall and continued until it was too dark to play.

Kent was the star of the “little kids" team. He was big and tall and talented. He must have learned a great deal during those clashes because he ended up as one of the Academy’s greatest players on one of its best teams. During one front yard game Kent jumped to receive a pass. His head hit "Buz” Purdy in the jaw and broke it in six places. "Buz” fortunately recovered. After playing for George School he was a star football player and baseball pitcher for Cornell University.

A little after this juvenile epoch in football history the "Bone crushers" and "Meatgrinders” were formed. They probably weren't an official undertaking, but they did involve all the elementary school kids who were interested and the teams were organized by adults. It was tackle football, complete with pads, helmets and uniforms. The two teams played a series against each other on the ANC football field. Hugh and I both took part.

In the "thirties" football at the Academy was very important. The teams played the schools in the InterAcademy League. Sometimes they did very well. For some making the team was tremendously important. For me getting on the first team was far more important than making the honor roll. Perhaps this was because Leonard, who played end, had been such a great player.

Probably the most important game he played was against Episcopal Academy the afternoon after Daddy's funeral, which took place in the morning. The game was at Episcopal Academy, a fancy school on the Main Line. Leonard caught two touchdown passes to give our team a tie against a much better team. I watched the game from the bench in a negative emotional state. I came home feeling that everything was going to turn out "OK", however.

Hugh was a guard on the team that Kent captained. It was one of the best teams in ANC history. Hugh told Ginny that the only reason he made the team was because there were only eleven players but this wasn’t true. I was at Penn then but I saw all of the games. Hugh was a very scrappy player. The line was powerful both on defense and on offense. Hugh played guard both ways.

Because Leonard played end, I decided to be an end too. One of the first passes I tried to catch during practice hit me in the face. I switched to tackle. Because I was tall and fat enough to be called "Porky”, I made the team as a Junior. As a senior I moved to center because there was no on else. The running backs then were five yards behind the line and you had to "lead" them with the ball. I never learned to "spiral" it so I grabbed it by the end and flipped it back end over end. The backs thought that was better, at least, than having the ball miss them altogether.

Peter went out for football when he was a freshman. Up until then, Mother had never seen a game in which one of her sons was playing, even though she lived a block away. The squads were much bigger when Peter played. When the ANC played Dobbins Tech she decided to walk over to 

the field and see what it was all about. There was no chance that Peter would play. But he did. She never went to another game.

We all learned a lot from football. We learned to take a beating and keep trying. to "stick with it".

There were other sports. There was baseball, but none of us was involved with on the high school level. We did play some baseball while in elementary school, however. The games were on the lawn below Cairnwood, arranged by the Raymond Pitcairns. Their chauffeur was the umpire and coach. We were sure it was his fault when we struck out. I hated it but went because Mother told me to and because the food that was served afterwards was good.

Leonard didn't play baseball, because he was very much involved in track. Because of his speed he was the key man on an Academy relay team that was very successful. It fared very well in several Penn Relay competitions. Later Leonard was on Penn's track team.

There were some minor sports. Peter was on the fencing team. And when I was in the early high school years boxing was a required gym course. The instructor was a psychopath. He enjoyed seeing the stronger kids beat up the "sissies” of which I was one. I hated it.

All that aside, however we were lucky to attend a school that was small enough so that we could all be active in athletic contests.

HIGH SCHOOL DAYS

There was, fortunately, more to life at the Academy than sports and social life. The academic part of school seemed easy for everyone in the family. So far as I know we were all good students. This made it easier for us to go on to some form of advanced education.

We went through the Academy in two shifts, the older four in classes that were two years apart in the thirties and the younger three in classes just as close together but about five years later, during the forties, the war years. All of us were very much involved in school extra—curricular activities.

Harriet's activity was, naturally, the contribution she made to the school with her piano playing. As noted earlier she was for many years the school pianist, as well as the accompanist for the Whittingdon Chorus.

Leonard in his Senior year had the most important job in the Boys School. He was President of the "Forum”. This was a meeting of the entire student body, which took place each week during the last period on Friday. They heard speakers, debated and made 

Leonard in his Senior year had the most important job in the Boys School. He was President of the "Forum”. This was a meeting of the entire student body, which took place each week during the last period on Friday. They heard speakers, debated and made 

decisions, with all procedures taking place under Robert's Rules of Order Leonard ran the meetings and tried to keep order.

 Hugh had two important jobs in 'high school. He was elected President of his Senior class and also was the third editor of the Academian. He was kept very busy.

The Academian, the first student newspaper, still going after 50 years, involved our family in a typical way: an unusual contribution on Mother’s part. Bruce Glenn and I decided to start a monthly student newspaper in the summer of 1937. We went to Dean C. E. Doering for approval because we wanted it to be official and wanted to sell advertising. He turned us down cold. He didn’t want to take a chance financially, We then went over his head to Bishop deCharms, on Mother’s advice. He approved of the idea, encouraged us but couldn't offer any financial backing or make it official.

We had to operate on credit as advertisers don't pay in advance. We wanted to mail the first edition to everyone in the church and solicit subscriptions. The school wouldn't guarantee the printer in Rockledge that he would be paid. Mother did. The printer didn’t know that Mother didn't have a nickel. She also was the only one to really encourage us to go ahead with the project.

We went into business in September, and I was the first editor. We made a surprisingly large profit at the end of that first year. ANC officials said the profit should be given to the Academy, not kept over to start up the following fall. We agreed to do that after we had held a staff party. We made it a big party, invited all our friends and by the time the affair was over all the profits had somehow disappeared.

Anne graduated from high school with honors in June 1944. She played field hockey and loved archery and volley ball. She remembers that she had lots of dates and went to lots of parties. There were no cliques in her class and no cruising in automobiles as there is now. She composed the class song by writing new words to a hymn. While still in school she took private singing lessons with Jackson, a professional voice teacher. In the Summer of 1943 she traveled, with Mrs. Jackson, to the Princeton, N.J. estate of a wealthy 94—year—01d lady and gave a concert. She was only 17.

Peter was very busy during his high school years. He must have studied very hard because he was aiming for engineering training. At the same time he studied violin. 

What Peter really wanted to do was join the Navy. The war was still going on. To get ready he took a course in radio, as a government trainee, at Dobbins Tech in Philadelphia. In March 1945, he tried to enlist. He was turned down because he was under 18. During his high school years, with his brothers away, Peter was the male head of the family. He stood up with Ruth and held Lenny when he was baptized. He played the "head—of—family" role in many other ways. He finally got into the Navy in April 1945, while still a high school senior. He came back briefly for his Graduation and the dance in June of that year.

Eileen, while still in high school, took private dancing lessons with Miss Florence Roehner. She danced at various recitals during her high school years. In June 1943, she gave her own. recital, while 17 years old. According to Mother’s diary, she danced "exquisitely".

ON TO COLLEGE

It was always assumed in our family that the four boys at least would get college degrees, regardless of our poor financial condition. In those days, most girls didn’t plan to go to college. Nationwide there were eight boys in college for every girl enrolled. Mother, however, was determined that her three daughters, too, would get advanced education so that they would have interesting professions or artistic skills. It was also part of her plan that when we left home, we would get along well with the new people with whom we would be associating. Mother and Daddy had both held jobs and attended school outside of a sheltered church community, such as Bryn Athyn was then. Mother taught us that it wouldn't be a problem for us to do the same thing.

Harriet was the first to start on this educational program. She spent time in the Academy College but most of her post—high school time was spent studying the piano with private instructors and at special schools. She set an example for her younger sisters, Anne and Eileen both developed their musical talents in much the same way as Harriet did.

Leonard, after a year in the Academy College, entered the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1936. Possibly his choice of careers was influenced by Uncle Richard de Charms. On our Summer trips we almost always saw one of the many construction jobs he supervised, usually bridges over river gorges.

It wasn't easy for Leonard, financially, He had a scholarship to cover the cost of tuition for each of the three years he attended the University. It was the Fairchild Scholarship which was awarded for merit. During the summers he worked on the early construction of Glencairn. It was heavy labor, but it tied in nicely with his career objective. During the school year, although he was taking a tough course of study, he sometimes held down as many as three part—time jobs. One of them was parking cars at evening events on the campus. He had to stay until the event was over and he got home late. But he was able to do his homework in the parking lot while waiting for the event to end. He still was in debt when he graduated with honors in 1940. Part of the debt was paid off with the cash wedding presents he and Ruth received. He made two honor societies, but it wasn't a happy period for him according to Ruth. He probably didn't have enough time to spend with her.

With Leonard’s three years at Penn began a long relationship between that institution and the Gyllenhaal family, After his 1936 enrollment, one by one, his three younger brothers enrolled and were eventually granted degrees, Later his two sisters, Anne and Eileen, held jobs at the University. The four degrees were financed by all manner of means. It makes an interesting story.

Part of the story involves a rough and tough Jewish man, whose name was Sol Fine. He was the owner of a small restaurant, "Sophomore Sol’s Cafeteria" on 34th Street, opposite the campus. It was strictly a

"hash house" but Hugh and I ate all our meals there, both because it was cheap and because we didn't have to pay right away, if we were broke.

Hugh has said that he got through Penn on three hoagies a day at Sol’s. The "tabs” we ran up were often paid off by waiting on tables and washing dishes. Sol was also good for a loan when needed. When Peter studied engineering at Penn, he was far too busy with his studies to hang out there, but he still visited Sol’s occasionally. Peter says he got through Penn on a chocolate bar and an occasional visit to Sol’s.

Sol became a family friend. If Mother wanted to contact Hugh or me, she would call him and leave a message for us. There was no other place where this could be done, and we were usually on the campus late every night. Mother and Sol got to be good telephone friends. He was usually unshaven and looked tough and spoke tougher. He had two sons whom we never saw. They were much younger than we were. We heard later that one became a doctor and the other a lawyer. Sol adopted many students over the years. He wouldn't have admitted it, but I think he was very interested in seeing his "adopted" sons graduate and succeed. Mother came to my graduation. The only place on campus she wanted to visit was Sophomore Sol’s. They had a little talk. Sol was thrilled that she came and Mother said he acted quite differently with her than he did with us. I still owed him money when I graduated. I repaid him when I was in the Army.

It should be noted that Sol’s restaurant was not the same as Smokey Joe’s which was nearby. Smokey Joe's was a bar at basement level. It had a sawdust floor and was visited by many Penn students especially from the nearby fraternities. Usually none in our family could afford to spend money there. It was a place to have a beer and relax. It became famous nationally over the years. It was featured on a St. Elsewhere TV segment. One of the doctors met his wife there according to the script. When we were at Penn the girls in Smokey Joe’s weren't the kind to whom most would propose marriage.

Leonard had a scholarship, So I applied for one too when I signed up for my first year. It was called a Senatorial Scholarship and was paid for by the government, supposedly for bright students. I went to the Penn campus for an interview and was interrogated by the football coach, George Munger. I didn't get a scholarship.   I got to know Coach Munger quite well a few years later. He told me he had been looking for a big tackle and found one at the Hill School. Penn did however let me charge the tuition until after graduation.

There was another government program that did help us, however. There were federally-subsidized campus jobs. Hugh and I had them and probably Leonard too. Mine was in the campus post—office. The postmaster, Larry Potts, eventually rented me a room in his house near the campus for almost nothing. This sort of thing made us self—sufficient.

Another source of income for Hugh and me was the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin for which we were,at separate times, the paid campus correspondent. Before starting at Penn, I had worked as a copy boy for the Bulletin. I got the job indirectly through Grandfather Pendleton,

He had owned the Macon, Georgia, Telegraph, and after his death it was taken over by his business manager who Mother knew. The year before going to Penn he took me on as an unpaid apprentice reporter. The owner of the Bulletin was a good friend of his and he gave me the copy boy job as a favor to his friend.

The Macon Job during the previous school year was a valuable experience. I lived on $20 a month, supplied by Mother. The copy boy job on the Bulletin was valued and hard—to—get. It was usually given to young men with influential parents. One of my fellow copy boys was Livingston Biddle, a member of a prominent Main Line family. He later became a noted author. I was on duty when World War II began. One morning I tore a story off the teletype, which began: Germany has invaded Poland by land, sea and air. That was the beginning of the war in Europe.

The campus correspondent job paid 23 cents an inch for anything actually published. This tied in nicely with the job of editor of the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper, a position both Hugh and I held. We found we could write inflammatory editorials and then write news stories for the Bulletin about the editorials. Actually we felt very strongly about the stands we took. Having our ideas written about in a city—wide newspaper helped the cause we were pushing. Most of the stories related to our belief that we should become involved in the war in Europe against the Nazis.

Leonard and Peter as engineering students led a different type of campus life than Hugh and I. Our courses were considerably easier, requiring much less homework and our interests quite different. Mainly we were interested in the Daily Pennsylvanian. Here again Mother's understanding of how the world works was responsible for us going as far as we did on the newspaper.

The Franklin Society was a student organization which controlled the Daily Pennsylvanian. The Society membership was restricted to members of fraternities, mainly those whose members came from the Main Line of suburban Philadelphia. Therefore, it was impossible to belong to the Franklin Society or to get a management job on the newspaper if you didn’t belong to a non—Jewish fraternity.

It was necessary that I join a fraternity if I wanted the editor’s job. I couldn’t afford the cost of fraternity membership. Some football players had the same problem in making the team. They joined a fraternity with very cheap dues: $80 a year. (This fraternity was also next door to Smokey Joe’s. Mother somehow found the money for me to pay for just one year. I became a fraternity man, technically. Later when I became I quit. The fraternity still sends me mail; it still wants money.

Later, especially after Hugh entered Penn, the students interested in journalism took over control of the publications. We even elected a New York Jewish boy to the board of the Pennsylvanian. It was a first in history.

Everything changed on the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and we were suddenly at war. I was called up temporarily by the State Guard. I returned to graduate in June 1942. Hugh belonged to the officer s training program (ROTC) on campus and was exempt from the draft.

After I graduated Hugh took over as Bulletin correspondent and later became Editor of the Pennsylvanian. I don’t know too much about what went on when he was editor as I was in the Air Corps then. His editorial policies were quite outspoken however. Someone sent me a Bulletin story that Hugh had written about a group of students that threw him into the Schuylkill River because of an editorial he had written. He made a point of attacking the established order of things back then, as he did later. Hugh was called up as an officer in the Army before he graduated, He returned and got his degree when the war was over.

ARTISTIC TRAINING

Anne, Peter and Eileen, while still in high school, were well advanced in developing their artistic talents. They were doing this with private teachers. It soon became necessary, however, for them to develop professions and get started with more formal education.

After graduating from high school Anne had gone to work for the Naval Aviation Supply Depot in Philadelphia. At the same time, she was taking lessons from Mrs. Munday who came from New York. She then entered the Taylor Business School and took a complete 13—month secretarial course. When graduated she took a position at the University of Pennsylvania as the secretary to the Assistant Librarian. She enjoyed being on the campus and taking part in many of the activities, including going to the football games.

She also studied voice with Irene Williams in Philadelphia during that time. She describes the experience this way: “Irene was a frequent guest of Nelson Eddie, singing with him often, in earlier years. She was very good to me. She would take her students to visit many prominent people and we would perform for their guests and teas. It was fun and also gave you the much-needed experience of singing in front of an audience.”

"0ne of her students who often had his lesson before me was Mario Lanza. He claimed, of course, that he was a natural, never had a lesson in his life. She fed, clothed and started him on his career and he never gave her any credit. I used to be thrilled when I listened to him. He was not very friendly and seldom spoke when I met him coming out of his lesson.”

The University job ended when she met and married Al but her musical talent and voice training enabled her to sing professionally while she was raising her family and for the rest of her life.

Peter, while still in high school, studied violin with Miss Lotte Greenup, Mother’s good friend. He became expert and has played with the Bryn Athyn orchestra ever since. He entered the Navy several months before his class graduated from high school, but the Navy let him return home in time for the ceremonies. Peter then was enrolled in the Dobbins Vocational School to study electronics five days a week under a Navy program. By the following Spring he was hard at work for the Navy.

Peter got out of the Navy in July 1946, and after a year back at the Academy enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with an engineering degree.

Eileen also started her artistic adventures while in high school, studying dance with Miss Florence Roemer. By 1943 she was giving recitals. Eileen taught dancing to young ladies for many years,

Eileen also went to the Taylor School of Business, graduating in April of 1949. She also then took a job at the University of Pennsylvania. She was secretary to the assistant dean of the College. Her marriage to Gordon ended this job.

Eileen and Peter were getting their careers going while their older brothers and sisters were starting families. Before this, however, everyone in the family was involved in one way or another in World War II. This will be covered in the next chapter.

THE WAR YEARS

Entire Family Involved

In World War II - Completely

Our family was totally involved in the Second World War. It was a dangerous time. At war’s end all four sons were in the service and three were overseas. The war dominated the lives of everyone including those at home Life was very different from what it had been. It was difficult for anyone to make plans for the future because, until the last few days, it seemed as though the war would never end. It kept the family distressed and our lives uncertain.

But you would never have known it from reading the detailed diary that Mother kept during those years. When home on leave you would never have thought that she was worried or under any kind of strain. In the letters she wrote to us, religiously, she was always cheerful. Her attitude was illustrated when she wrote in her diary: "Hugh and Patton crossed the Rhine today” , as though they were going on a boating trip. The following story of the family's journey through the war is mainly taken from Mother’s diary.

The war was more difficult for Mother, in many ways, than it was for her sons. We knew where we were and what was going on. She sometimes didn’t. Apparently, she often went several months at a time without hearing from any of us because of the way the mail was handled. (No telephone calls; you seldom called long distance in those days.) She followed Hugh’s very dangerous combat duty in Europe by following the news reports. She kept a scrapbook of newspaper stories about his outfit which she gave him after the war. According to Harriet Mother didn't worry very much because she had complete trust in President Roosevelt. She always listened carefully to the talks he made on the radio the “fireside chats".

The war was part of our lives even before the Pearl Harbor attack resulted in the U.S. becoming involved. Bryn Athyn had formed a civil defense unit, armed with shotguns.   Some of us joined and learned to shoot a little and march a lot. But it was quite uncertain if the U.S. was ever going to enter the war.

Cousin Red (Philip) Pendleton and I joined the Pennsylvania State Guard and Hugh joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps at Penn. Most of us were at home on December 7 1941. when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It was on a Sunday. We heard the news on the radio, just after lunch. That afternoon the State Guard was called up for two weeks to protect some bridges from saboteurs who, fortunately, never showed up. Leonard volunteered for the Seabees, the Navy's construction outfit, shortly after Pearl Harbor Day, By March he was building airports overseas.

It was no longer a question of whether or not we would enter the war. We were in it, and the nation came into a patriotic mood. Hearts were beating a little faster. Everyone wanted to be part of the war effort. More and more servicemen were headed overseas and the popular song was "I'll be Home For Christmas if Only in My Dreams" by Irving Berlin.

A college deferment kept me at Penn until I graduated in June 1942. The next day I reported to the draft board and left immediately without even a toothbrush for basic training in Mississippi. Mother began her war diary on October 19 1942, with a note that she had gotten my birth certificate corrected. The doctor had made a mistake. According to my birth certificate I was too young to be in the Army. But I had to stay in and my first assignment was to an Air Corps radio operators' school in Sioux Falls, S. Dakota. Bob Carlson, who was married to cousin Barbara Gyllenhaal, was in the same school as was Bruce Glenn. Bruce married cousin Alice Henderson while we were there and many of the relatives came from Glenview for the wedding.

Back home, on Nov, 29, Leonard and Ruth's baby Susan was baptized. She had been born that Fall in Bethlehem, Pa. Ruth still lived there while Leonard was away. He had been working for the Bethlehem Steel Co. Now he was in the Navy working on Liberty Ships in Bayonne, N.J.

In early February I began training as a radio operator-gunner on B-17 bombers at an airfield that was strangely placed in a valley surrounded by mountains in Idaho. The Commanding Officer of my unit, part of the time, was Jimmy Stewart, the movie star. He was popular with the men because he brought lots of pretty starlets up from Hollywood. They put on camp shows for the flyers.

In early March 1943, Leonard who had left for a foreign shore telegraphed Ruth, "Arrived destination accommodations very splendid, work interesting. Later, according to Mother, he wrote Ruth that he was on Island X, "Not the smallest- not the warmest.” Mother was sure it was Greenland, Actually it was Labrador and he was building an air field which would be a fueling stop-off for planes headed for Europe. It was an ideal job for him.

In March I wrote from Idaho that I couldn’t go overseas on an air crew because I had flunked the vision test. That may have been the reason, but I was also considered a "Jinx" by some. I washed out of one crew when I got the mumps and the crew perished not long afterwards when shot down in Europe. I survived a crash landing of a B-17 bomber and was on another one that went out of control and almost didn't make it safely to the ground. In any case I was reassigned as an instructor and took new radio operators up to learn the ropes. Several times Jimmy Stewart was instructing the pilot on the same plane.

I kept this up for several months. One morning they failed to wake me up in time to take a young radio operator on his first training flight. The plane hit one of the mountains. I was assigned to take his body to his home in Mississippi and got leave to go home afterwards. Mother’s diary notes that I had taken a body home but apparently, I hadn’t told her the circumstances.

I then applied for Officer’s training. I appeared before an OCS board and was surprised to find one of my fraternity brothers on the board. He said: "You don't want to be an officer. I’ve got a better idea. He arranged for me to go to Kenyon College, a fancy college in Ohio, to study French. The idea was that we’d go into the military government in reconquered France. It was a fun assignment while it lasted. After a few months the idea was abandoned, and we had to leave.

By this time Ruth was back in town with Susan. Rationing was in full swing. The diary says “Asked for more gas — turned down.”    They were having air raid drills in Bryn Athyn. Extra heavy curtains were made for the whole house. When the siren went off, they would draw the curtains and turn off the lights. They took these drills very seriously and followed all the rules. Anne remembers they were often afraid it might be a real air raid warning.

In June 1943, Hugh was called away from Penn for active duty at Camp Meade in Maryland. He was then moved to Alabama. After about a month he was back at Penn because the Army wasn’t ready for the ROTC students.

Mother got to take care of Susan while Ruth spent a week with Nancy Ebert in Pittsburgh. That was the beginning of a very successful career of babysitting grandchildren, a job Mother loved to do. She was of course involved in much more than babysitting during the war. Her intense activity during those years would make a story in itself. In addition to having four sons away in the armed forces to keep track of there were grown or growing daughters at home, plus the grandchildren, whose father. was away.

Mother wrote to her sons religiously and sent us everything she thought we needed, from tobacco and talcum powder to sox and soap/ She also sent us Time and Life magazines keeping track of the many address changes endlessly. She wrote faithfully and it appears from the diary that we wrote home often. Perhaps we did this to keep her from worrying.

Her sons were eventually spread all over the world and almost always were on the move. She kept track of them with pins on a map. She followed the events of the war by reading the New York Times from cover to cover every day. She always had the Lowell Thomas news broadcast on the radio.

Eileen recalls that Mother heard a story of a fisherman’s wife who was worried about her husband when he was at sea. On stormy nights she would put a cauldron in a tree, sit in it and rock as though she were at sea, like her husband. In a similar vein Mother would take all the newspapers and magazines and put them next to her bed on the floor when she couldn't sleep. She would read stories about the war and feel as though she was with her sons. Perhaps she wasn't as calm and collected as we all thought she was.

Before he went in the Navy Peter was also very involved in following his brothers at war. He too read the N.Y. Times and had discussions with Mother about the war. He wrote his senior essay about the coming Allied invasion of Europe. It was full of pictures, and he had the whole operation plotted. Mother had given him lots of the material she had collected. He turned the essay in on June 6, the day the invasion began. Peter was so anxious to do his part in the war that he tried to enlist as a Navy rear gunner when he was 17 years old. They wouldn't take him because of his age. Mother was just as happy, as he was needed at home. For instance, she sent him each night to make sure that pretty little Susan was securely tucked in.

Eileen, who was still quite young and a popular high school girl, made a unique contribution. She very faithfully wrote letters to her brothers. They were special. I remember showing them to some of my friends who didn’t have “ a sister Eileen.”

Next to taking care of Susan Ruth's big job during the war was putting out the "Communique". The "Communique" was a publication sent to every General Church serviceman, giving news about home and about other men in the service. It was very welcome to G.I.s and very useful too. Through it I learned that Louis Carswell and Michael Pitcairn were in Manila and we got together.

In the Fall of 1943 Leonard came home unexpectedly on a two-week leave. He then went back to Labrador and then returned home again on another leave. Hugh was back at Penn, and I had started to live the good life at Kenyon College. But just after Christmas things weren’t going to well on the home front.  The furnace exploded twice, and the water heater began to leak. "Such a mess", Mother wrote.

Harriet’s career was progressing nicely. The opera school where she worked gave her a raise and recommended that she go to New York to study opera there. She took her first lessons with M. Bose. Eileen had started to take dancing lessons and danced her first solo. Peter was doing well with the violin, although he obviously rather would have been fighting in the war. Anne, still in high school, missed an audition because she found that you can’t sing with laryngitis. Harriet and Anne were also kept busy using their talents to entertain the troops. Anne sang at the Valley Forge Military Hospital and Harriet entertained at the Ft. Dix, N.J., army base several times.

At this point in the War it seemed to many that it would go on forever. I remember that I seldom, if ever, thought about what I might do after the war. Things were looking up in Europe but the end of the conflict in the Pacific seemed years, if not decades away.  None of us were made to be soldiers and life was frustrating, It was frustrating too for everyone at home.

MOTHER STILL CONFIDENT

In January 1944, Hugh, while still at Penn, volunteered for officer’s training in the Tank Corps. He started in February at Ft. Knox, Ky. Leonard reported to a base in Rhode Island where he studied diving in preparation for work in the English Channel. He came up with another leave in February. He was dropped off at the Willow Grove air base and walked home from there.

In the Spring Leonard, now a Lt. J.C., became chief engineer on the construction of a naval base for training Seabee officers at Camp Endicott. I had moved to Camp Crowder, MO, for training in Signal Corps work.

At home Anne graduated from the Girls’ School with honors; Eileen started taking jobs around town to earn money to buy records and Peter’s violin teacher became enthusiastic. Peter also began studying radio at Dobbins Vocational School in Philadelphia. Mother took in two small children, 3 and 4, for the winter. Ruth moved into the Carpenter house in July and Anne started working at the Naval Aviation Depot.

In August Hugh arrived home on leave, and someone named Ginny Childs also arrived in town. She was to stay at Kintner’s but they were away and she had to stay at our house. Mother: “They had a grand time." Afterwards Hugh reported to a tank outfit in Camp Campbell, Ky., which then moved to Ft. Riley, Kan. The two small child boarders were creating more and more trouble for Mother and it didn't help that she fell and sprained her thumb.

In September Leonard was home for a pre-embarkation leave. Ruth and Susan moved in with her parents. Harriet had her tonsils out and Eileen had a tooth pulled. In October Leonard had a narrow escape when an ammunition truck exploded. This was also the month when Hugh and I got together for the only time during the war.

There are two differing versions of this encounter. One version is in Mother's diary and it goes like this: "Letter from Hugh — says he met Charles in K.C. — spent the night at a friend’s house - the boys always meet Penn boys wherever they go. Went to a nice party -spent part of Sunday together.”

Here’s what actually happened : In October Hugh was in Kansas waiting to be shipped to Europe and I was in Missouri heading for the Pacific. I got a call from Hugh to meet him on the weekend at the Hotel Meulebach in Kansas City. I hitch—hiked arriving Saturday afternoon. I was told at the desk that Hugh had a suite on the top floor. The crew of his armoured tank had driven him there in an army personnel carrier. A party was in full swing. There were some Penn boys we had known but most of the guests were C.I.s Hugh had met in the street in front of the hotel and members of his tank crew.

One of the guests, whom Hugh met in the lobby, was an English colonel. He and Hugh had a long, spirited conversation about some important issue. Hugh and I managed to have some long conversations later in the evening. They were light—hearted and enjoyable, not serious. But Hugh did tell me all about Ginny.

In the movies the meeting of two brothers headed for the war zones would have been handled quite differently and been very dramatic. This was more like a party at Smokey Joe’s after the last Daily Pennsylvanian proof had been read.

In late October Mother received “APO cards" from both Leonard and me in the same mail. The cards were sent from an Army Port of Embarkation and gave an address to use when writing someone going overseas. Leonard Jr. was born a few days later on Nov. 4, Hugh’s birthday. His father was on the high seas headed for Hawaii. I left San Francisco at about the same time with a small Signal Corps outfit on a tramp steamer,

When our ship finally found land thirty days later it headed up a river. It was in Papua, New Guinea. It was a staging area for a trip further north, behind the combat troops, to set up communications. New Guinea was by far the most interesting place I visited. Heading up the river there was dense jungle on either side. When we landed and were transported to our area, we found ourselves surrounded by jungle with thousands of birds in the trees. On the ground were flowers of all colors. I assume now that some of them were impatients, my favorite flower. They originated in New Guinea.

We were a mile from the beach. One day I took a walk along the beach admiring the flora and fauna when I heard a voice say "hello”. It came from a palm tree. A native was perched in its branches. He spoke perfect English. This was the British part of New Guinea, and the man had been trained in England. He had taught in a native school until the Japs had taken control. He was waiting for the school to reopen now that the Japs had been driven out. 

One day a British sergeant and several American officers stopped by our camp and asked if anyone wanted to go into the interior of the island to see a native celebration. The British sergeant had been invited by the chief, and the natives wanted some Americans to come along. I was the only one in the outfit interested! Everyone else said it was too hot.

We went by jeep on a jungle trail about 33 miles inland. We came upon a large village of straw huts with a clearing in the middle. The natives were assembled in front of their "King" who was dressed in a fantastic costume of many—colored feathers. His two wives were by his side, dressed demurely. Shortly after we arrived, there was a wild dance by many natives, all male. They too were beautifully attired with colored feathers. They were celebrating the return of some of their fighters who had engaged the Japanese further North. They had fought along side the British units.

After several weeks, we left the area and headed north on a landing craft which had engine trouble. The rest of the convoy outran us. We went up the coast slowly and very close to shore for safety. The scenery was exquisite. After two weeks we reached Leyte, the Philippines, fortunately after all the fighting was over.

At home Mother and Peter were painting the living and dining rooms. Leonard, Jr., was baptized and Peter stood up with Ruth in Leonard’s place. According to the diary: "Susan sat on the front seat with Eileen and me and was so adorable; talked, of course, in a ladylike little way.” Susan made coming home on leave especially enjoyable for her uncles. We all went to see her as soon as we arrived.

On December 21 Hugh and Jinny announced that they were engaged. It was at a lovely party at our house. Hugh was home for Christmas and then left for Europe, in charge of fifty men. Later in the month, he was on the front lines with General Patton.

 Leonard for Christmas sent Ruth some pearl earrings from Hawaii. My Christmas message apparently was a forlorn letter. I liked New Guinea, but it didn't seem like Christmas. By February Mother knew for certain that Hugh was with General Patton's 4th Armoured Division and was commanding a tank on the front lines. His division relieved the garrison at Bastogne. After that according to Mother’s diary the newspapers were full of the division breaking through at Trier.

Mother had been getting lots of mail from Hugh. He must have figured that she was worried about him. Ginny had probably been getting even more. It was a difficult way to spend the first few months of being engaged.

It was on March 24 that Mother wrote: “Hugh and Patton crossed the Rhine.” I’m sure that Hugh got across first. I never heard Hugh describe any of his combat experiences. But he did tell Emily that “I only shot horses, not people. Emily, who loves horses, says she wished then that he had shot people and not horses. Hugh told Ginny that he only shot one person; that he usually shot over the enemies heads. 

At about the same time my outfit arrived in Manila in the Philippines. The city had been almost totally destroyed by bombings. There were many ruined buildings but very few people. The Japs were still in parts of the Walled City in the center of Manila. We set up a communications center for American forces in a building that was half in ruins. 

Several of us in the center decided to do some exploring. We borrowed caps from some officers to get through the lines around the Walled City, (Only officers were permitted.) We found a ruined bank and in the basement lots of money. Unfortunately, the money was printed by the Japs for use in the Philippines and other countries quarters and was worthless. We took it back to our living quarters and organized it into packets of about 33 different pieces. We sold them as souvenirs to the sailors who were coming off the ships for one—day shore leaves. The packets sold very well.

Soon when our Signal Corps jobs began taking too much time. We organized some Filipino boys to do our selling. They were surprisingly honest. I made enough to buy a brand new car after the war. (I still have some of that worthless money, if anyone is interested.) At about the same time Leonard headed for Guam. On this trip he was dumped on the wrong island and had to pack up everything and move to another one.

In early April Peter took the first steps towards joining the Navy. He passed his complete physical. He also passed the Eddy test. He was enlisted as a Seaman 1st Class and on April 21 took the Trail Blazer to Chicago. He later wrote Mother that he had a wonderful time on the trip. Five other boys accompanied him, Ginny met him at the terminal, He then began his training at the Great Lakes Training Center.

In June Hugh moved to the Sudentenland. Peter came home for several days for the dance and graduation with his class “well and happy", according to the diary. Anne went out job hunting. She started with a part—time job on a Polish newspaper. The next day she interviewed at the University of Pennsylvania for a job as secretary to the Librarian. Fortunately for Al she got the job. That's where they met.

As the war wound down Hugh got to spend some time in "Gay Paree”. Peter ended up in Gulfport, Miss. Hugh spent two months at the Sorbonne. The Japs surrendered in August, V.J. Day was Sept. 2. Peter was still in Mississippi; Hugh in Paris, and Leonard and I in the Philippines. Leonard at one time tried to find me in Manila, but my outfit was too small for anyone to locate. All of us were now very anxious to get home. 

Peter could have gone to radio school if he would have signed up for three years. He didn't. Hugh had to leave Paris, return to Germany and ended up as the "mayor" of a small town in Austria. Leonard wrote that he might be going to Korea.

Things were happening at home, too. In October, Anne graduated from her business school, officially; Mother put in an order for the car I wanted to buy and she got rid of the two children she had been caring for “I am free again", she wrote.

In November Leonard, instead of going to Korea, headed home on an aircraft carrier and got home in early December. Peter was back at the Great Lakes Center in Chicago. Hugh remained a mayor in Europe, and I was waiting for transportation across the Pacific.

In early December Hugh was moved to the Czech border to open a school there. Peter thought he might go overseas after all. I boarded the liner SOS, Monterey and headed for the U.S.

The Monterey landed in San Francisco on Christmas Eve. It was foggy and the first hint we had that we were near San Francisco was when we looked up and saw the Golden Gate bridge above us. About 3,000 troops were told that they had to stay on board until after Christmas. (The city fathers didn't want us in the streets.) We rioted. The national press came aboard and took a picture of some servicemen they had coached to look forlorn. We were lying in our bunks. It was the first time my picture was in hundreds of newspapers from coast to coast. (The second time hasn't happened yet.) I finally got home Jan. 10. 1 then headed West again for, among other reasons, to check out the girl Hugh was engaged to marry. When I used to play with the older boys at her house, she was a very small girl.

After the first of the year Hugh, who always knew how to manage things, spent 10 days on the Riviera. Mother visited Peter at his Navy post in Chicago and reported: "They're working him too hard.” He later moved to the West Coast and was on several different ships. He was out of the Navy by July. Hugh too before long ended his European stay and arrived back home.

HAPPY ENDINGS 

Seven Pretty Weddings

Four in One Summer

“Love and marriage” in the Gyllenhaal family was very much restricted by the war. Leonard and Ruth managed to get married before the United States became involved and Hugh and Cinny became engaged in the middle of the war. But nothing at all like this happened to the other five members of family until the war had ended. Then romance swiftly took charge with the happy result that there were four weddings during the middle four months of 1947.

As noted, the first serious romance in the family began, well before the war, in 1932. It began when the Fred Davis family moved from California to Bryn Athyn, Leonard and Ruth got to know each other immediately. They liked each other very much from the start, and before long they were in love. After Leonard graduated from Penn and was established in a job, they were married. The wedding is nicely described by Ruth:

"We were married on April 19, 1941. It was a very hot day. The Cathedral was decorated with forsythia. Joan (her sister) was our only attendant. I was 24. Leonard was only 23, because he was born in September and I was born in February. We went to Lake Wallenpaupack for our honeymoon. Afterwards we settled into our little apartment in Bethlehem, PA, where Leonard was working for a steel company. Leonard was in their “loop course” meaning that he worked in a different part of the plant every month.

"The plant was on strike the week we were married and the young engineers were locked up inside. Leonard escaped by jumping out of a window the day before we were married. I sewed for the Moravian Red Cross. The war was on in Europe. Susie was born on Sept. 23 1942, in Bethlehem. Leonard was working on liberty ships in Bayonne, NJ at the time. One of his friends drove me to the hospital. When Lenny was born, Leonard was in the Navy in the Philippines. (Peter stood in for Leonard at the baptism.) When Martha was born, Leonard was home, but he left the minute she arrived, to go off to Canada with Nathan Pitcairn to look at the Steeprock mines. Nathan always called her Miss Steeprock. "

Hugh and Giinny became engaged while they were with the family at Wallenpaupack. Ginny says it just sort of evolved. They announced the engagement on Dec. 21 1944 at our house. Hugh was on leave from the Army. He had picked up Ginny in Michigan and traveled to Bryn Athyn by train. Quoting from Mother’s diary: "Hugh and Ginny announced their engagement this afternoon. They arrived Monday night on the last train, after a terrible trip. Hugh had wired last Friday that they were coming. Tuesday night Hugh asked what I thought of their announcing their engagement. Then we planned the party – about 25 people – had a

 lovely time. Jeff and Olivia (Ginny’s parents) sent a beautiful red and white poinsettia and corsages. Hugh got Ginny a brown orchid — all very lovely. Dear little Susan came looking as beautiful as ever.

"Dec. 23, Hugh went to Ft. Meade tonight. Ginny will stay until Tuesday.”

"Jan. 3, Hugh spent Christmas day at home — came late Sunday afternoon, left late Monday, He phoned Ginny Tuesday night and again Friday night in Saginaw. He left Friday night. Don’t know what branch or anything.” A month later Hugh was commanding a tank force on the front in Europe.

After the war ended things picked up quickly in the romance department. By February 1946, life In the house on Alnwick Road had entered the post—war period and it was quite different. This becomes evident when you read that Anne and I gave a "rip—roaring" party together that month. Before the war Anne and I were in quite different social and age groups. Drinks were served: probably “Southern Comfort", a weak liquor which was all you could get. Mother wrote: "They had all the young people and had a wonderful time.”

Dinah wasn’t at the party. Our romance began later. Actually, on the first full day I was home I talked to Dinah and her cousin, Judy Pitcairn; on the sidewalk in front of our house. I remember the meeting distinctly and that she was very pretty and charming, but seemed to be a whole generation younger than I.

Later we ended up in the same social group. That group was made up of the younger ladies, whose contemporaries were still in the armed forces, and the older ex—servicemen who were the first to come home. Dinah and I dated for a while; I fell in love and was taken completely by surprise when I asked the prettiest and nicest girl in town to marry me and she said  “yes" . Mother was taken by surprise too. She thought I was dating Dinah's sister, Anne. (Kent was.)

In April Mother wrote in her diary: “ Harriet had two dinner dates with Dr, Edward Engelhardt another next week. Supper party next Saturday — he will probably come out.” That was the last entry in Mother’s diary until the following January. Life around the Gyllenhaal house must have gotten too busy to allow time for keeping a diary.

Harriet had met Ed under very romantic circumstances. Harriet writes: "We had seats next to each other for the Met Operas in the Academy of Music. (I was music critic for the “Music Courier" magazine from New York.) It took him a while to get up his nerve to speak to me. On our first date he invited me to go to the Franklin Institute.”

"Ed was born in Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana, (His father was a mining engineer for Alcoa.) He came to this country when he was 4 years old. They lived in St. Davids, next to Bryn Mawr. He went to Lower Merion High, Haverford College (got a B.S.), Wisconsin University (got a PhD). He started working for Sharpe and Dohme about four years before we were married.

Anne and Al’s meeting was also in a cultural setting and very romantic. Anne was working in the University of Pennsylvania library, when Al returned from military service and resumed his education at Penn. To quote Anne, who at that point was planning on a career in musicals: "One day this good—looking young man came into my office looking for a lost item in the Library. I had the Lost and Found in my office. This changed all my plans and all I wanted to do was get married. Al was getting his Masters degree in Psychology.”

In the spring of 1947 Eileen, a senior in high school, appeared in Pinafore. Eileen’s Senior Prom dance was held at the Huntingdon Valley Country Club. Mother wrote: "She looked very lovely. Her romance was still a ways off, however,”

By now there were four engaged couples in the family — all planning to marry in the immediate future. In her diary Mother speculates as to just when the weddings would take place. As it turned out there were four weddings within four months between June and October 1947.

Hugh and Ginny's wedding came first, on June 13. They took the old, beat-up Plymouth on their honeymoon to the shore. As they left, part of the roof was hanging over the front door. Ginny still remembers the look on the doorman’s face at the Haddon Hall hotel when he opened the door to let her out. The car was really "a heap".

Hugh and Ginny lived in Pittsburgh at first. Ginny says she knew nothing about being a housewife. She spent the whole first day in Pittsburgh experimenting with coffee-making. Like Dinah, she learned to iron after the wedding.

Photos of Hugh and Ginny on honeymoon in car here

The next wedding was Anne and Al’s and came on June 27. Quoting from Mother’s diary: "Anne and Al were married in a quiet, beautiful ceremony in the chapel. Bishop de Charms married them. All of his family came.” Harriet played some Lohengrin and the Mendelssohn at the end. Eileen stood with Anne and Bud (his brother) with Albert. It was very sweet, simple and touching. We had a beautiful wedding cake, wine, and ice cream.” Just the immediate families, Anne and Al left for the shore where we had a cottage.

They lived after their marriage in an apartment on the second floor of the Alnwick Road house. It was made up of the closed-in porch and the master bedroom.  Mother moved into the other bedroom. They worked hard to fix the place up. According to the diary: "Anne and Al are doing their own cooking now (on the porch, in a stove that burns coke, certainly have fixed up their apartment beautifully.” For some reason Dinah and I got the third floor apartment. We must have asked first.

From the diary on August 7: "Harriet’s wedding (Aug. 2) went off beautifully — not a hitch — 100 outside guests — perfect weather — the church was beautiful, and the wedding party looked lovely. Someone from outside remarked that they'd never seen so many handsome people at a wedding before…H. and E. went to the shore.”

Dinah and I were the fourth couple to get married in 1947. Quoting from the diary: “Chas and Dinah duly married on Sept. 27. Lovely wedding. Anne sang and was bridesmaid. They have been through Canada and New England and are now at home fixing up the apartment.” Hugh came for the wedding.

In keeping with the family tradition, Peter and Eileen planned their weddings a month apart, about four years later. Peter, back from the Navy in the summer of 1946, had entered Penn after a year at the Academy College and was still a student when he got married.

It was Peter who kept the old Plymouth going. Just after the war he rebuilt the engine. He made good use of the old car. He courted Marion in it. They used to lift up their feet when they went over a puddle because there was a hole in the floor. They decided to get married while at the seashore during a hurricane. They were married on Nov 2, 1951.

Eileen and Gordon were married about three weeks after Peter and Marion. Gordon, appropriately, proposed while they were on a bus trip to the shore. They were married during a blizzard on December 15. Anne and Al were living in Wellsboro then. Anne was to be a bridesmaid but couldn’t get to Bryn Athyn. Dinah filled in.

As 1952 got underway Mother finally had seen all her children married. She wasn't content just to sit back and watch them succeed in careers and in marriages. She began a career of babysitting. She babysat for Harriet twice a week. She took the bus from the corner to the station, the train to Jenkintown, where she changed trains to get to Harriet’s house. Harriet says she enjoyed getting away from Bryn Athyn and met interesting people on the way. Mother, from time to time, probably babysat all of her grandchildren.

By this time each of the seven families were well established and looking forward to the interesting lives and the successful families that were to come along. The things that happened after all this are the really important stories to the next generation. At the same time, perhaps, it is good to take a look back, once in a while. 

This is a group of five pages, starting with Peter and Marion's wedding, then Hugh and Ginny's wedding. Click to page through.