I heard my mom quote the last line in this famous Robert Frost poem dozens of times. Alma always presented it with a chuckle as if it were tongue-in-cheek. I never read the poem and always thought the phrase "provide, provide" was humorous.

Once you read the poem – as I recently did - you’ll realize that it’s not tongue-in-cheek at all; it is a very pragmatic view of growing old.

Mom always accepted life head on and made pragmatic decisions. With apologies to Frank Sinatra, "she did it her way".

Because I don’t possess the money to “provide, provide”. I can only hope that love abides, so here is my take on a revised version of the poem for those of you in similar financial circumstances.

Ascend, Ascend!
Dear Lord amidst heaven abound
Hear my prayer, my earthly sound.
When my eyes dim, my body cold,
Don’t entomb me in a rock hold.

Don’t roll that stone across my door.
I pray that You have plans for more.
Send a chariot, vibrant light
Lift me gently into the night.

Receive me, Lord, with open arms.
Receive me, Lord, to hear Your songs.
Receive me, Lord, to feel Your kiss.
Receive me, Lord, for holy bliss.

A prayer? Yes, yet I insist,
Treasure me in eternal mist.
When it is time, no need to rush,
May my carriage be velvet plush

Place my bones in a Viking ship
Set it ablaze and let it drift.
The Milky Way has room to roam.
Send Your angels and take me home.

Your home wherein time never ends
Rooms of star dust. Ascend, ascend!

Peter John Ingersoll 3/21/2020

Tony and I were best friends in High School, Cazenovia, and I was welcomed into their beautiful home as one of them. Alma often made sure the cold cut drawer was full so when we cane home late, we could make huge sandwiches. We used to toot around in Their ‘67 Chevrolet SS. She was kind and fun, and seemed to understand the joy and confusion co-mingled in the minds of teenage boys and their quest to solve mysteries with very few clues. I enjoyed her laughter, and always appreciate how comfortable and appreciated she made me feel. Those fond memories will stay with me always. 

Hello and a heartfelt embrace to the dear family of Alma Otley Ingersoll Hix - Claudia, Lisa Julie and your families - And especially Paul, Tony, Chick and Peter whom I have known since I was in diapers. And to your families as well. Now we span children’s children’s children.

This is Dave Stocker in Illinois 62 years old and still feeling the recent joy of reunion in August with Paul and Sarah here en route to back East. Their trailer was pulled up close by our house at The Compound on Rural St. We sat, cooked out and told stories in our drive for three days as we watched the dogs circulate. Second Morning, Paul dialed Alma and there she was on FaceTime  to see us and say, “ There’s my boys!” I am so grateful to Paul for this moment. 

And I think of you all as part of many experiences and places, big snow in Cazenovia, Wayne, PA. We stayed in a tent platform before the first cabin, beach combing for arrowheads and dragging sunken rowboats back to shore at the River. The Bohemian Queen, bouncing really far across the Bay with Frank in the Boston Whaler, epic prison break games after dark & collapsing in a room with gym mats and a rope swing off the rafters!!  

Tony and me off to Europe found ourselves a few degrees above the Arctic circle and utterly sleepless in a bright orange tent and then in Venice the day Nixon resigned! A boisterous American tourist was so happy he bought us dinner!  My first try at grad school in Dallas it meant a lot to be close to Charles and Margaret- friends in what seemed a distant land. 

Peter, I remember the sound of your guitar from way back in Philly. I dreamed of becoming a cabinetmaker-guitarist. I did it man. (and later you turned up living with Paul in Aurora, IL)...seeing Claudia and Peyton  .was it up the Housatonic as I headed out of New Haven to live in the midwest thirty years ago. and here I still am. So many stories like the flow of rivers and tides of the ocean. I have these great memories through the gift of Alma’s friendship with my parents, Pat and Jim Stocker.

Alma left a deep impression on me and affected my life in a big big way. She gave me a kind of permission to be a boy, and I always felt just wonderful in her company. It would be with great joy that Carrie and I might have the chance to see and greet any of you and offer safe mooring here just west of Chicago or let’s meet by bigger water somewhere and, please let it not be too long.

Thinking of you all with gratitude, love & deep peace.

Dave & Carrie Lee Stocker

Dear Tony, Charles, Paul and Peter,

We were so blessed to have known Alma for a very long time and to have shared many events together at all the various stages of our lives.

Jim and I first knew Howie Ingersoll at Cornell. He had been dating a sorority sister of mine and they had parted ways and he kept “hanging around the house” where everyone knew him. I too was “hanging around the house” because Jim had graduated and we were committed to each other. I was “on duty” at the telephone of the sorority on Friday and Saturday evenings. Howie and I did a lot of talking and spent a lot of time together, always as good friends. Later I came to regard Howie as the brother which I never had.

We reconnected at a Reunion at Cornell and discovered that he and Alma lived nearby in Wayne. We were in Media and quickly began to bring our young families together;I think the first time we stayed at Bohemia was when Dave was 1 1/2 yrs. old, 1958. I think we have pictures of Tony and Dave running around on the uneven ground. I remember your big house in Wayne with your two aunts living on the third floor. Very briefly Alma and I even did some design work, remodeling plans for people. We even entered a GE kitchen design contest!

In 1964, we moved to Menlo Park CA and that’s where we were when we learned of Howie’s sudden death. Jim was making monthly visits to Scott Paper Co. in Philadelphia at the time. Seems very strange now, but we did not fly freely, nor did we talk endlessly on the telephone in those days. In our extreme despair after Howie’s death,Alma and I wrote very long letters back and forth for a long time. (I returned the letters she wrote to me recently in Estes Park). It was the first young death in our lives and shockingly sad for us too.

Jim saw Alma each month for the next year on his visits to Philadelphia and and said I’d hardly recognize her, she was so thin. She set a date to visit us (likely May) and I saw her come down the ramp in the airport on the arm of a man whom she introduced to me. They kissed as they part and she said……… ”Well, I WAS going to wait until later tonight to tell you that you’ve just met the man I’m going to marry”………Frank Hix. They were married in late June I think!And the rest is history!

We were lucky to continue our close relationship and got to know Frank well and loved him also. Through the various moves for GE, almost to Scottsdale AZ and Syracuse NY and Westport CT (we visited there too) and our move back to Rosemont in 1967 and then to London 1971-1976 we stayed in touch. We probably met at Bohemia several times. In London Frank and Alma visited us, more than once. We shake our heads now in wonder (you two must have been 15 and 16?) but Tony joined Dave and traveled throughout Europe by Eur-Rail ending up in Monaco w/Prince Albert, for Stephanie’s 17th birthday as I recall. Wow!!Quite an adventure.

At some point Alma preceded Frank in moving to Estes Park to run the insurance business and we visited them there, I think, soon after we returned to the US in 1976. At some time we sailed in the Caribbean several years together, bareboat out of Honduras (w/the Raymonds and Kilbournes). And then we investigated the western part of US together, first adding Joanne and Ken Tunnell from Cornell, and then Lynn and Dean McEwen tour traveling group. As best as we can reconstruct these decades the travels were: Durango and the four corners area w/the railroad ride in 1997 and Chaco Canyon;we were in Mendocino, north of San Francisco in September 2001 (we continued w/our travel plans once we learned that all family members were okay) Fort Ross, Calistoga, Lake Tahoe, Sacramento;Mississippi steamboat Memphis to New Orleans where the MacEwens had lived (we had extra historical tours with Lynn) in 2003;the Columbia River for Lewis and Clark anniversary trip in 2005;Portland, Maine and St. Lawrence River to Quebec w/Taulk Tours in 2007;Southern Oregon, Ashland, Crater Lake, and the coast in 2010;Nova Scotia and Halifax in 2012. The list is not totally accurate but the trips were really wonderful!

During these years, with the Hixes in Estes Park and the Stockers in Menlo Park CA, we joined Alma and Frank on Stanley Steamer Rallies twice, out of McCall, Idaho, and out of San Luis Obispo, CA. Jim was in charge of “finding water” along the highway for these five day adventures. Frank’s cars were considered “the best”. We never had any problems at all!He was an expert and the most respected leader of the Stanley owners. We also joined them one year at Monterey CA where he had been asked to exhibit one of his steamers. As I recall they dressed in their period clothes, as we knew they did in Estes in their historical tours in the 12 passenger red steamer!!

We had many wonderful times with these dear friends. Whenever we reunited, we never missed a beat, it was old times as if we’d been together always. We loved them Alma and Frank dearly, such wonderful lifelong friends and are lucky to have so many lovely memories.

Pat and Jim Stocker

November 2019

Simple premise: pen, paper and stamp.

Anyone who knew Alma occasionally or frequently received clippings in the U.S. mail with an O.M.G. hand-written address! Clippings from the New Yorker, NY Times, National Geo and many other sources. These clippings usually had a sticky note of explanation such as “Thought this was interesting” or “Can you imagine?” followed with a simple signature – Love, Mom.

My favorites were the cartoons from the New Yorker – that’s all I read from the magazine anyway.

All of us growing up saw her around the round kitchen table processing checks, opening mail, reading correspondence from her friends with her tools laid out before her. Letter opener, pen, paper, envelopes, stamps, sticky notes, stapler, stapler remover and her ever-present address book filled out mostly in pencil but with some spots of white out, plus her calendar. That’s it.

She always softly hummed to herself as she sorted, wrote and sealed the envelopes.

She communicated with a large network of friends, family, vendors and business associates with those blunt, pre-digital instruments. She held the family together with those simple tools and a couple of additional ingredients. Ingredients like: parties, food, libation, jokes, gatherings and especially her stories. Mom believed that in a room full of people there should never be dead air. A story must be told – the funnier the better.

Stories about growing up on Bohemia. Stories about her funny Danish relatives. Stories about the successes and escapades of her children and stories about her parents and her siblings. Stories set up jokes and jokes led into more stories. It was a never-ending carousel of images and laughter. Light particles swirling in the room; a spinning prism; little windows illuminating faces with laughter and warmth.

The Ingersoll/Otley/Hix/Hamilton clan are a loud bunch simply because that is the only way to get a word in edgewise. 

Like a jazz trumpeter, Alma was able to use circular breathing to hold a continuous note, a continuous story without ever taking a breath. Cracks between sentences were hard to anticipate and when one did pop up, we all had to be ready to pounce on the opportunity – and pounce loudly to assert ourselves into that nano-second.

Dad was a good sport about mom holding court his whole life. He was naturally taciturn and was happy to let mom be the center of entertainment. Good personality match and wise marital strategy!

I remember him clearly sitting at the end of the table with a smile of amusement on his faceshaking his head listening to all of us talk about our escapades, escapes from the arms of the law and other bone-head stories, yet still he kept his opinions to himself. If you asked dad a question, he would give you a direct answer, but faced with Otley mayhem and revelry, he wisely chose to be a member of the audience.

Mom patterned her story telling after her mother, Gammy – who was a fearless kidder of the rich, famous and self-important. She charmed everyone with her wit, candor and punchlines. Her practical jokes were legendary. No one was immune.

Mom patterned her work ethic from Pop Otley, her father. He too ran business in exactly this way. Hand written letters.

Pop and Gammy were generous to the extended family and mom and dad incorporated these family traditions into their approach to our family.

When mom cleaned out her files in Estes Park preparing to move to their Ptarmigan home, she send a hand-written letter from Pop Otley addressed - that is speaking directly to me on my 1st birthday. I had never seen this before. This letter was included in a whole box full of report cards from grade school and other memorabilia. I am so grateful mom saved this letter. The letter is on Kelly for Brickwork stationary and I can hear Pop’s fountain pen scratching the paper and hear his voice on the page.

Pop and Gammy sent every grandchild $100 on their birthday. The tradition of loving and supporting a large extended family is a legacy that was started with Pop and Gammy Otley and continued with Alma Otley Ingersoll Hix and our beloved father, C. Frank Hix. The same traditions can be seen in the vast and growing Hamilton/Bowden clan.

All of us who knew Gammy and Pop and Alma and Frank have been enriched and entertained and welcomed. Let the new stories begin and the legends remembered!