My Story
CHAPTER ONE
My parents, Ed Bergeron and Lucy Nevola, met after the end of World War II in 1945. They met while working at the Shepard's Company, a department store in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. The store occupied three city blocks and went bankrupt in the 1970s. Since it opened in 1880 it had been an icon of one stop shopping. My mother's role, I believe, was a stenographer. And my father was a salesperson in various departments of that store.
They were married in June of 1947, and I arrived on March 23, 1948, which was the same birth date as my father, which is a rare occurrence.
In my newborn and toddler years, we lived in different arrangements although I do not remember anything about those. I do remember hearing something about living with my grandmother, Mary Woodbine, on my father’s side.
We moved to a third floor flat (as they were known back then) of a three-story apartment building on Park Avenue in Cranston, Rhode Island. My sister, Jeanne, arrived in March 1950. Our family of four people lived together on that floor for a couple of years.
If you believed in a “climate crisis”, the 1950s were the years that gave you the evidence that shaped your opinion. Starting in 1954, hurricanes hit Rhode Island, sometimes right after the other. Nobody used the term back then of climate crisis or climate change like they do today. But Rhode Island felt the impact of at least six major hurricanes in the 1950s and they were destructive and deadly.
The one that comes to mind is when Hurricane Carol hit in August 1954. I was six at the time, Jeanne was four and my mother was pregnant with my brother John who was born just a month later! My father had to work that day downtown in the department store to protect their “assets,” and my mother needed to stay here on the third floor of this building to protect our family assets – Jeanne, me, and John too! When it came ashore, Carol was a Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds near 115 mph. Over fourteen feet of water flooded the downtown Providence area. Thousands of homes were destroyed, and power was wiped out statewide for days and weeks. Tragically many people died.
As the wind blew stronger and howling louder, my mother told us to get underneath the kitchen table, which she pushed against the wall, and then covered the table with a large tablecloth, or a large heavy blanket.
And I am glad! Because as the howling got louder and the building shook, something came flying through one of the kitchen windows by the table, shattering the glass everywhere. She had put us underneath the table to protect us from flying glass, roof shingles or debris that were everywhere in the sky. If she was afraid (like us under the table), I did not know it. Moms can be like that sometimes. During the height of the storm, they are steady and resolute. Once the storm passes that is another thing altogether. I am quite sure my father heard something from her about whether he should have been home instead of protecting the Mr. Shepard's store. Lesson learned about priorities, I guess.
These days when politicians (mostly) issue doomsday prophecies about the current climate crisis, I remember the hurricanes of the 1950s – there were more of them (six in total that impacted Rhode Island) and they were violent. Hurricanes still happen obviously but I have not seen six hurricanes pummel a small area in such a short period of time as back then. Was the climate worse then? Is it worse now? The climate is always changing and always will. But the Lord is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow – He never changes.
CHAPTER TWO
Our young family lived in that apartment building for a few years before moving to a single-family house on Doric Avenue close to where we lived. On Park Avenue, we started out on the third floor and then with an “upgrade” moved down to the second floor. The rent was a little bit more, which was okay, I guess. I know my mother was thrilled with the upgrade. Less stairs to climb and closer to civilization.
During that time, my mother wanted a clothesline from our apartment to a tall, wooden utility pole that was on the rear of the property. Since there was no clothesline in place, my father had to climb that telephone pole up at least one story, or two, to get that clothesline rope around it, and then back up to the apartment. I found out later that he hated that job. He had only one functioning eye, so distance and height were difficult for him to judge. I do not blame him for not wanting to climb that high. I wouldn’t either. He did not like it, but he did it.
And it taught me a lesson. Sometimes in life, we must do hard things, whether we like them or not. But when we accomplish those hard things, it gives us confidence that we can do something even harder the next time.
There was another lesson I needed to learn back then. My sister, Jeanne, had a play set of kitchen plates, dishes, and stuff like that. I do not know why, but I seemed to enjoy flying them off the porch in the back of the house. And they invariably broke, and she invariably cried when my father got home from work. I had no excuse (there was not anything that I could think of), so my father decided that I needed to understand the consequences of breaking stuff that was not mine and causing my sister to cry. When that happened, a painful spanking would result. Worse yet, I had to watch Jeanne smile as if she had won the war (she did). Lesson learned. Do not make your younger sister cry for anything. If you do, chances are you will be punished, and it will hurt.
By the mid 1950’s, big TVs in wooden cabinets were starting to show up in homes. Somehow my father got a used, black, and white tabletop 9-inch TV set. Did it come from a floor model at Shepard’s? I do not know but it did not matter. We were rich! This small TV sat proudly on a small table in the living room in that second-floor apartment. On Sundays, we would watch NFL football with YA Tittle as quarterback, Frank Gifford, and other great players with the New York Giants. We would sit down together with a blanket over our heads and TV, to block out the sunlight coming in from the windows. TVs were not high quality back then, but the Giants were. I remember those moments with my dad, and I have loved football ever since that time. Nothing better than Sunday afternoon football!
CHAPTER THREE
Park Avenue was a busy street with trucks, cars, and pedestrian traffic going in both directions. There were not many stores or gas stations as I recall. And there were no fast-food restaurants or shopping centers either. Nor were there any places like Starbucks, Target, TJ Maxx, or Home Depot. Just mom and pop shops and a special place called Dolan’s Drugstore near where we lived. I would spend as much time as I could outside playing and taking it all in. And talking to a telephone pole in front of our place. Sounds weird I know but I had a reason for what I was doing – although nobody else on Park Avenue understood.
Besides that, 9-inch television, our apartment had another high-tech device, a party line telephone. The phone would ring and mom or dad would pick up the handset and start talking. There was real conversation taking place somehow even though I could only see one person in the room.
It was a mystery to me, and I did not understand how it worked. But I did know that other people could call you, or you could call them, and you would talk into this instrument just like they were there. Curious as I was, I asked my parents at the time, “How does this work? Where do the words go?".
I got some kind of answer, but it had to have been simple because I was just a small kid with no background in that kind of science. What I did get out of it was that the words they were saying would travel to the telephone pole in front of the house, and that it would then travel further over the wires to other poles and then to somebody else's house. I thought the magic had to be in the pole. That was the secret to the entire system.
My parents were clear that I could not use the phone – a party line phone required special procedures and protocols. So, I did the next best thing I could imagine – go to where the magic was. My parents and pedestrians on Park Avenue would find me standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, talking to the telephone pole, face to pole as if I were talking to somebody right there in front of me.
Traffic on Park Avenue changed quite a bit over the next several years when Interstate Route 95 was built. Until then, Park Avenue was the place to be. There were tall wooden telephone poles all along the road, providing many places for me to have conversations with other people.
Twenty years later while in graduate school at the University of Rhode Island (URI), I studied digital communication technology and computer-based voice processing systems. That education eventually led to a professional career in those same fields. Although I never heard back from the people I was “talking” to on Park Avenue, I was sure it must be working. Everyone seemed to smile as they passed by so it must have been working. At the very least, that weird behavior led to a challenging career in digital voice processing systems. Something people considered very weird as well as the goal was to teach computers how to talk and understand English.
CHAPTER FOUR
Back in 1955, I was seven years old and life seemed rather good. Other than when the word “hurricane” was heard on the radio. The mood in the house changed then as preparations began for what could happen if windows broke, power was out, food was spoiled, etc. I was sure glad I did not have to consider those problems. Overall, I did not have much responsibility other than to take care of my schoolwork, probably a few chores, and somehow not tease Jeanne or knock John over.
One of my jobs was to dispose of the household trash in a “burn barrel” in the backyard. It was nothing more than a rusted out 55-gallon drum that smoldered all day. Recycling was not a word yet nor did anyone know anything about an “EPA.” As far as I can tell, anything and everything was thrown in that nasty barrel. Chicken bones, newspapers, cooking oil, broken toys all made it into that smelly barrel.
Life was easy until it wasn’t. Little did I know that a new crisis was unfolding quickly, and it wasn’t the weather. It was the polio epidemic.
Polio was a national health problem but in 1955, the disease claimed over four hundred victims in Rhode Island alone, giving the state the third-highest polio rate in the nation. The situation was so severe that schools in Providence and elsewhere were delayed reopening until after summer ended.
Polio is an aggressive disease that attacks the central nervous system and can lead to paralysis. Children are highly susceptible to the disease, and although rare it can also be contracted by adults. President Franklin D. Roosevelt contracted the disease at age 39 and suffered paralysis but was able to partially recover, though he remained disabled for the rest of his life. Polio epidemics were common back then and highly feared and for good reasons.
In the first half of the 20th century, summer was a dreaded time for children. Although we could enjoy the long days of being outside and playing with other kids, summer was also known as “polio season.” Children were among the most susceptible to the disease as it spread by infected food or water (i.e., swimming pools) and other kids sneezing around you.
I remember my parents being afraid that their three children would get polio and require iron lung machines just to breathe, being permanently crippled, or, worse yet, even dying. The phrase “shelter in place” was not used back then but that was what everyone did. Stay inside and away from other kids.
Radio broadcasts, newspaper articles, magazines, stories, and conversations over the backyard fence regarding polio were ongoing, and a frequent way of life. It seems my mother did worry about it and sought help by going to St. Matthew's Church where I attended school. It was a Catholic church, not too far from where we lived on Park Avenue. It was my first introduction to a faith experience back then. It scared me to go there to be honest. I didn’t understand what the priests were saying as they spoke in Latin. The standing, kneeling, sitting, and bowing was confusing. But the church was full oftentimes because people, like my mother, were afraid and hoped that God would help them.
Then one day, the story broke that Dr. Jonas Salk had created a vaccine to protect people from polio and it was clearly an answer to the prayers of countless people. By 1956, Rhode Island successfully inoculated over 150,000 children, causing polio cases to plummet to just nine that year and zero the following year. Dr. Salk was a hero!
Another researcher, Dr. Albert Sabin later created an oral vaccine which was economical to produce and very easy to administer on a sugar lump to children which was used worldwide in the 1960s. Kids would gladly take the sugar cube rather than a scary needle injection in their arm. Interestingly, the Sabin vaccine inspired the popular song featured in the film Mary Poppins whose refrain states, “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down....”
At this point in time, I had survived hurricanes, dad’s punishment for throwing Jeanne's toys off the porch and polio. What else could possibly happen?
CHAPTER FIVE
My formal education began at St. Matthew's Parochial School when I started kindergarten. I was six years old at the time. From then on until I graduated from Hendricken High School in 1995, I was the perpetual youngest person in the class. I don’t recommend that experience to anyone!
As with most students at that time, we walked to school uphill in both directions. Although people did not believe it was possible, the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher sketched that possibility. And I still have that lithograph framed at my house!
Going from home to school and going from school to home was always uphill and involved snowstorms, hail, and certain people.
I often dreaded walking home, because somewhere along the way, a guy by the name of Joe Duffy would stop me. He would be hiding behind a bush or something, and when I got there, he would jump out and smack me around a little bit. He was a bully, and he enjoyed doing it – every day.
Every day I went home, bruised and crying. Until one day when I walked up the stairs to the second floor in the house and hoping to get a sympathetic ear for my mother, I got something I did not expect. She really laid into me verbally. She said, “I watched the whole thing from the front, and you let him hit you. And I am telling you now, you are never going to let that happen again. If you let him hit you, when you come home, I am going to hit you again.”
And I am thinking, wow, this is what they call a mother? I did not expect that response.
Then she told me what to do, that the next time he approached me, I was to haul off and whack him as hard as I could in the nose and see what happened.
On the next day, sure enough, I am walking home, and there appears Joe Duffy suddenly out from behind a bush, and I remember what my mother said. Although I could not see her, I suspected she was watching from the front of the apartment building. What a crisis of belief. Get smacked around by Joe Duffy or get smacked by your mother. Tough choice for sure. But with my eyes closed, I just hauled off I whacked him as hard as I could in the nose. And voila. He started crying.
With his nose bleeding, he ran away, not saying too much of anything. And I went home, proud as I could be. My mother looked at me and gave me a hug. All was well and life was good once again. And, you know, from then on, Joe Duffy never bothered me again. Ever.
My mother taught me a good lesson. Bullies are bullies because people let them be bullies. Unless you want to be their victim, you must knock that sucker down and keep doing it until they leave you alone.