I've moved!

A new address for me. I am now in a new and wonderful place, and since September.

Marylee M. Armour
Park Terrace C-11
2981 Town Center Rd.
Baldwinsville N.Y. 13027
same email: armourm@verizon.net

In September 2009, I left the house that George built for us and moved into Park Terrace, a home for Senior folk, just outside of Baldwinsville, New York.

Park Terrace is a twenty minutes drive from Liverpool. However, I have given up driving and gave my car to my grandson, Stephen.

Before we found Park Terrace, Jean took our longtime friend, Betty Lindquist and me to visit several Senior facilities. Some had no openings. Others didn't appeal to us.

When we visited Park Terrace, we all agreed that I had found my new home.


George and I came to Liverpool from our home in Philadelphia. We both had worked for the Signal Corps Inspection Agency, but at the end of World War II, that work was ending.

It was interesting how George and I met. I was the editor of the monthly periodical for the Inspection Agency. I was also a two-fingered typist. Because that method disturbed the rhythm of the other typists, I was moved to another room. My office had a spacious window and desk. No mind that the room also had a number of filing cabinets.

Another desk was across from mine, and to that desk, George Armour regularly came in from field work, with the need to type his report. George also typed with two fingers.

An office secretary would have typed George's report, but he liked to do his own work to be certain it contained what he needed.

After work, and on week-end George and I, and other young workers had fun activities. We had suppers together, picnics, roller skating, hiking, bowling. George and I began to pair off.

When the company moved its office to Philadelphia George and I were assigned to go. We decided we would get married. George' Uncle Herbert, a Baptist minister who was very close to George, married us in a friend's home. (Miss Craven), a member of Uncle Herbert's church. My mother Madeleine L. Manson and my brother, Joseph Thomas, age 6, came from Indiana to our wedding.

George had been in contact with the new General Electric Company outside of Liverpool. He sent a letter correcting information that had been in a journal, an important disclosure. He was asked to come for an interview, and was accepted to head a Quality Control division in Heavy Military equipment, doing work for the government that was secret.

The first day that we came to the Liverpool area, we had two blessings. As we drove up First Street, we saw a sign in an upstairs window that advertised an "Apartment for Rent." We stopped and rented it immediately. Driving around the village later, we found a vacant lot for sale. In due time, we bought it. Three years later, that lot held our new home that George built, almost entirely by himself.

To build a house in addition to his daily work was a challenge, but George worked on the house every day after supper and until dark. He worked every weekend from sunrise to sunset.

George's father, John Armour had retired from management in the telephone company. He and my sixteen year-old brother put on all the roof shingles. Regarding the roof project, "Pop" said the only way he could work with teenager David was to let him be the boss. The work was successful. (An aside: John Armour was a manager at the Telephone Company in New York City. One time the union workers went out on a strike, and management had to operate all of the turbines and other equipment that allowed the phone calls to go through to their destinations. Because it was a 'round the clock job, cots were brought into the large basement so that the off-shift managers would have a place to sleep!)

While George and the family did much of the construction of our house, we had the basement dug by a professional outfit, and as I recall, two men built the cement basement walls. We also hired out the plastering done, and a professional company built the driveway. George laid the cement floor in the garage by himself.

Three years after George started to build a house for us, we moved into our finished home. The date we first slept in our new home was September 1, 1950. From the time we first started the construction project, and the time we moved in, we didn't ever go to our camp on Fourth Lake in the Adirondacks.

A neighbor woman, across the street gave us a set of living room furniture. It was in good shape, but she said she was ready for something new. We, of course, had much furniture to buy.

Now in December, 2009, a woman friend of Jean's and Larry's who has traveled with Jean and Larry to far-off places, has bought the house that George Armour built.

George and I felt blessed that George's Uncle Herbert Agate willed his family camp to his two nephews, George Milton Armour, and Rev. Herbert N. Baird. Even with a walk-in-trail, the camps have been enjoyed by quite a number of people over the years and from very early days.

I own all of the camp and property now. We bought Herbert Baird's portion of the property.

In the mountains, Aunt Ellie, Uncle Herbert's wife, in early 1900, recovered from a lung disease and lived a long life. She even shot a deer once for the family food. A nearby camp owner dressed the deer. Aunt Ellie's mother and Edna at age ten paddled a canoe to Old Forge (8 miles) (every week) to get family groceries. In the early years the camp was accessible only by a steamboat. In this year of 2009, a road is available to reach the camp property, but the camp still has only a trail to reach it.

George and I had an interesting life together, especially after his retirement. We enjoyed our camp near Old Forge, traveled in the Adirondacks, we had trips in our boat even on the ocean, we tented, we spent the winter in Florida, near relatives.

And I also had an interesting life before my marriage to George; in fact, while in the Civilian Air Patrol, I once was flown over Cleveland, Ohio to drop hundreds of leaflets warning people of a possible air raid. I rode in the second open seat. The raid didn't materialize. I still have pictures of that plane, showing me, in my Civilian Air Patrol uniform, standing beside it.

George insisted I go to college and finish my degree, and then go on to a Master's. He also prodded me to keep at my book, HeartWood.

I think we truly receive what we seek. I have met interesting people everywhere I have lived and still find life enjoyable and rewarding at age 85. I am grateful for every day, its challenges and its pleasures. I hope you are also.

I am grateful to have a daughter, who gives much to a community and to all those whom she encounters, also to have a son-in-law who is equally supportive of people and needs in his work, also a grandson who has a home in Rochester, New York and who continues his higher studies at Rochester Institute of Technology. He's working toward a doctorate.

Everyday that we wake is a good day, a gift of God's love, and perhaps a hint that we are still in the Creator's work force.