Faith Works 3-15-24

Faith Works 3-15-24
Jeff Gill

Trying to remember, and not always succeeding
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Jersey City is a mystery I will likely never solve.

I've driven through it a few times, as many do and never notice it. If you're going from the Newark (NJ) airport into Manhattan, you'll almost zoom over it on elevated roadways. It's a city of some 300,000, just a bit smaller than Newark which is New Jersey's largest city, both in the shadow of New York City.

My father, who died four years ago this week, graduated from Iowa State in 1956 and got a job in Manhattan. He lived in Jersey City for that year, taking public transit and sometimes walking to his job on the other side of the Hudson, the Statue of Liberty on his right hand heading into work.

He talked about it once in my presence, actually to a group of children I was part of, explaining the meaning of the Statue of Liberty and of freedom to us. I never found out the company he worked for, where their offices were, or what he did.

Ron Gill grew up in a small town in western Iowa, attended a state school, and a day trip to Council Bluffs let alone over to Omaha was a big deal. He got a forestry degree, went west into national forests for his summer training, and had been through Los Angeles where an older sister lived, on his way to Portland, Seattle, then up into the Cascades. What I'm saying is he had seen big cities, but he'd never lived in one.

It may have been too big a leap, from Ames, Iowa to Manhattan and Jersey City. My impression, admittedly vague, is that it didn't go well. It had something to do with importing lumber and building products, and he ran back and forth a bit from the office to the docks, keeping accounts, checking invoices, "struggling to understand" how the business worked he said, but "glad to get back to the Midwest."

After his year in New York, he got a line on a sales job back in Chicago through a college friend, with the Edward Hines Lumber Company, and was happy to return west. He would work in the lumber business in the Chicago area the rest of his career. Not long after getting semi-settled in a YMCA residential hotel in LaGrange, he met another resident on the women's side, went to a football game at Wrigley Field with her (look it up!), met her parents at Thanksgiving and married her the next July. They were together 62 years.

During his last year, when I was back home I asked Dad about Jersey City. He was vague, and dismissive, and in retrospect, I think he was finding it hard to remember what I was talking about. "I wasn't there long."

Yes, but that first year after college is a big deal. He looked at me, puzzled; "I married your mother within a year of getting back to the Midwest." He went on to tell me familiar stories I knew well of that next year. But of the fall of 1956 to the fall of 1957 I was fated never to hear more of from him again.

It's a familiar reminder: talk to your parents, your grandparents if you still have them, older family members in general, while you can. It's good advice. No matter how well you inquire, you'll still have questions when they're gone, but it does feel good to know you did talk, there were new stories, that there were some puzzles made clear when you still could.

My point here is to press the urgency back even further. Don't wait too long. Memory is a funny, tragic, fleeting thing. Ask now. Take notes. Don't wait.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not always sure how far to trust his memory, either. Tell him what you've forgotten at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.