Lefty Parent » jane elizabeth roberts

Jane (and Eric) Go to Ann Arbor

Cooper Zale — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:23:08 +0000

Jane Roberts as a young adult

As I get older, I am more and more amazed about the story of how my mother, Jane Roberts, decided to go to Ann Arbor. An unlikely odyssey in 1946 for a single young woman of 23, but one that started a chain of events that led to my birth. Thirty-two years later in 1978, I would embark on my own odyssey to Los Angeles, coincidentally at age 23 as well.

Based on her telling, Jane had had a childhood mixing idyllic joys and adventures with some difficult family relationships, particularly with her mother Caroline. Jane was the first of three children, her brother John just two years younger and her sister Pat born to an entirely different generation 14 years later.

Brother John, Jane & mom Caroline

Caroline was an outside-the-box character as well, a highly talented person in an era when most women played second fiddle to men. She lived large and seemed to pretty much take the world by storm, with talent, charisma, drive and general chutzpah. If you had made a movie of Caroline’s life, you would have wanted Bette Davis to play the part.

The tales my mother and my aunt Pat told of their mother (some probably apocryphal) included:

* She was secretary to Wendell P. Endicott, the owner of the Endicott-Johnson shoe company.

* With no education beyond high school herself, she worked her way up to become president of the Binghamton New York PTA and a force in local Binghamton politics.

* People would say to Jane, “Your Caroline Roberts daughter…you must be so lucky to have a mother like that!” (Jane did not feel lucky in the least!)

* She and her sisters were all excellent swimmers

* A lifelong Catholic, she would attend Masonic temple events with her husband George (who was a Mason) and not reveal her religious affiliation until well into the evening, presumably after all the other wives were enamored of her.

* She gave great parties, entertaining her guests by playing the piano and singing.

* She had to marry George Roberts when she became pregnant with Jane.

That last item, if in fact true, may have set the stage for a very difficult relationship between mother and daughter. My mother shared with me, on numerous occasions, that her mother (Caroline) did not love her and did little or nothing to support her. Jane carried this wound throughout her life.

Jane (right) and her doubles partner

Jane grew up talented as well, like her mother. In pickup baseball games as a kid, she was always the first pick. In high school she focused her athletic prowess on tennis. Teaching herself with never a coach or a lesson, Jane became a local amateur champion, winning city championships and the prestigious Watson trophy at the IBM country club tournament. She graduated from high school with great grades and excellent scores on her New York State Regents exams. She was accepted at the Syracuse College art school and attended for one year.

Jane was smart, talented and good looking and had an abundance of men in her life. The two most significant for this story were Jim Fischette, who she was engaged to marry, and Eric Zale (my father) who she eventually did marry. As my mom and aunt Pat told it to me, the events played out as if right out of the soap operas. Jane got engaged to Jim, a handsome guy from a rich Binghamton family with plans to go to law school and become an attorney. At the same time, Jane befriended and dated Eric, the sports writer for the Binghamton paper, who covered her tennis triumphs. Caroline did not like Jim because she felt that he and his family were rich snobs.

Jane and Jim

After pressure from her mother, Jane eventually broke off the engagement with Jim, a decision for which he never forgave her and she later told me she regretted making. But in the wake of that decision, after returning from his service in General Patton’s army in World War Two, Eric presented Jane with an unorthodox proposition.

Eric had been admitted to the undergraduate program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He proposed that Jane come to Ann Arbor as well, not to marry him, but to live there a year on her own to get residency, and then he would pull strings to get her admitted as well. This academic tag team was not the typical proposition a young man made to a young woman in the late 1940s. But Eric, later my father, was a unique character himself. He was probably even brighter than my mother but as shy as she was gregarious. He was exceedingly cleaver and creative and never planned to live life by the standard rules that governed others. Years later, he told me that he often felt like an alien form outer space trapped here on Earth.

Eric as a sportswriter in Binghamton, NY

So Jane accepted Eric’s proposition and they headed off in his car to Ann Arbor. Eric started school at the University and Jane got room and board living with a family and taking care of their young kids. She worked other part time jobs to earn money. And so it went for the year until Jane got her Michigan residency and, as Eric had promised, was accepted into the undergraduate program to study sociology.

I still shake my head when I think of the decisions they made. That Jane would leave her family and her world of friends and head off 800 miles from Binghamton New York to Ann Arbor Michigan with Eric, not as husband and wife, but as two individuals looking for the best path forward in their lives. Did they have a plan at that point to eventually marry? They are both dead now and I never found that out. But it was several years later before they finally did marry each other.

Jane & Eric in Ann Arbor in early 1950s

What I take from this story is that my parents pursued unorthodox paths for their own enlightenment which eventually brought them together and led to my birth. They had not led their lives so far by the book, and they would raise a child in no less of an unconventional way.

Cross Country Train

Cooper Zale — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 06:01:12 +0000

My dad never actually said “life, at its best, is an adventure”… but I know he believed it with all his heart. I have had wonderful adventures in my life, including on various trains. And I have always done my best to hold back any anxious misgivings and give my kids the same opportunity.

In 2002 our son Eric, at age 16, accompanied his 78 year old grandmother Jane (my mom) with her growing dementia, on a train trip from Los Angeles across the country to visit her other son (my brother) Peter and his family in Cleveland Ohio, her brother (my uncle) John and sister-in-law Ruth in Binghamton New York, and her godson Tom and his family on Long Island.

My mom so wanted to go “back east”, thinking that returning to a place where she was before she had lost much of her mental facility could help her recover that which she had lost. I saw her quest as quixotic, but I still admired her drive to be whole again. She could have done a non-stop plane flight alone to any given destination, if someone was at the airport gate on the destination end to pick her up, but she still had a fear of flying and some of her flights would have involved plane changes which there is no way she could handle. She was comfortable with the train, but due to the extent of the dementia, could not negotiate the big train change in Chicago’s Union station on her own.

Since neither my partner Sally or I or any other adult was available to accompany her at this point in time, we thought to send our son (her grandson) as her travel partner and chaperone. It was an interesting duo, with each contributing certain capabilities and status to the paring. He was intelligent, caring, understanding of his grandma’s situation, and judged by us capable of negotiating the trip. But he was a minor and in the official judgment of the world they were traversing, not capable of taking the trip on his own, without special provisions. She was, in the official view of Amtrak and anyone they encountered along the way, his accompanying adult, even though he in fact was the more responsible party.

So we got the tickets and prepped our son as best we could with information “cheat sheets”, talks about changing trains in Chicago’s big, crowded Union Station and how to handle various emergencies, and that technological device that really made the whole thing possible – his cell phone. We took them to Union Station in Los Angeles and put grandma and grandson on the Amtrak “Southwest Chief” from Los Angeles via Albuquerque New Mexico and Kansas City Missouri to Chicago. We gave them both a kiss, wished them “bon voyage”, and watched their train pull out of the station to begin their adventure together.

So I recall that we got a call from our son somewhere along their journey to the Windy City that things were okay so far and then again when they had successfully boarded their second train, the “Capitol Limited” in Chicago that would take them to Cleveland, where my brother would pick them up. Our son really relished his role and rose to the occasion, sounding so relaxed, responsible and in control on the cell phone conversations.

Their journey went without any significant hitches. After spending several days in Cleveland they again boarded the “Capitol Limited” to Syracuse New York where my Uncle John and Aunt Ruth picked them up and drove them back to Binghamton for several days stay before returning them to Syracuse for the next leg of their journey to New York City and several more days with Jane’s godson Tom and family on Long Island. The Binghamton leg of the odyssey was highlighted by a car trip to Jane and John’s childhood home of Watkins Glen and a memorable walk down the gorgeous glen itself, a rushing stream tumbling over rocks and through tree shaded grottos traversed by a foot path which was a sort of thousand-step staircase. The New York City leg featured Tom taking Eric, without his grandma who stayed with Tom’s mom (her dear friend), to see Eric’s first (and only to date) Broadway musical, “Les Miserable”.

The return journey took our grandson and grandma from New York City back to Cleveland for a two day respite with our son’s Uncle Peter and family again, followed by the train back to Chicago, the big train change there, and the return journey to Los Angeles, where Eric’s mom and I excitedly and gratefully picked up the two intact travelers.

The trip was judged by all a success. Eric had brought his video camera along and took some very memorable footage of his grandma throughout the trip, particularly the walk down Watkins Glen with Uncle John and Aunt Ruth. It was the most extensive and most candid recording oh her before dementia completely overwhelmed her personality. Eric came back more self-assured and ready to embark on new adventures without us or his grandma that would further push the envelope of his own liberty and agency to chart his own course.