Mary Jane Cole

When my father graduated from college (Penn State 1911), he joined the regular army as a lieutenant in the Coast Artillery. When I was born in the hospital in Manila, February 6, 1916, he was stationed on Corregidor Island in the mouth of Manila Bay, Philippine Islands.

Because the first World War was starting my father had to return to the United States right away leaving my mother to pack up the family (I had a brother, James Irvin Thomas-Stahle, born April 7, 1914 in New Jersey) my aunt, Mother's sister Alice, who looked after Jimmie while mother was in the hospital. Mother was very sick with Dengue fever and another fever that caused all her hair to fall out. Never mind, it came in again curly and she survived.

At that time there were no airplanes, all people had to travel by boat. In 1917 the USA had combat troops in Europe and declared war on Germany. My mother went home to State College, Pennsylvania where her own family lived. She rented a house there until Dad returned from war. He was then stationed in Massachusetts and enrolled in MIT to get a masters degree in engineering. We lived in Medford a year. My earliest memories are of sliding in the street in front of our house in Medford. The grounds around the house were terraced and we were not allowed to slide there.

From Massachusetts we moved to Fort Ward, Washington on Puget Sound across the bay from Seattle. There we lived on a real post in one half of a double house with a large porch. Our dog was "Rusty" an airdale. We had a swing with long ropes up into a tree. When pushed we could go high, high up into the sky. The bay often had big logs floating in it and Dad made paddles for Jimmie and me. We each rode a log and paddled around our seashore. Dad's next assignment was Fortress Monroe, Virginia. To get there Dad purchased a Ford chassis and built a camper on it. It looked somewhat like a conestoga wagon with hoops over the top and a canvas cover pulled taut. There were two canvas cots inside that folded up along the sides while we traveled. Mother and Dad had a tent that had to be put up at each camping site. Rusty , our dog, shared the space with us. He was a great rabbit chaser and loved to get out to run. He never caught one.

Fortress Monroe was built under the supervision of Robert E. Lee before the Civil War. It was a walled fort with a moat around the outside edge. Inside the walls were barracks for troops, a large parade ground, many houses for officers and a railroad terminal for the Quartermaster Corps. Our first year we lived in a large apartment house near the warf and hotel where night boats from New York and Boston stopped. That year Dad went to radio school. The next several years we lived in a double brick house right on the parade ground. Dad was a Coast Artillery officer and that is why we were stationed on the coast so much. There were batteries of big guns at Fort Monroe and target practice was a regular event. The fort was located at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay across from Norfolk where the navy has a big installation. When they had target practice windows in every house rattled and shook. The navy would tow targets and the gunnners would try to hit the moving targets The guns crouched and when they fired they lifted up and forwaard. They were huge black iron tubes and the shells were 4 feet long with pointed heads and brass cartridges full of powder. It was glorious at night to see the search lights cross the skies looking for targets. There was anti-aircraft practice too. Fort Monroe was a wonderful place for kids. We had bicycles and we rode all over the post. There was a parade every week and we marched along with the troops at the side of the parade ground to the music of the band. We learned to stand up straight and obey orders. The commanding general lived in a huge house on the shore. There was a band stand on the lawn where we had band concerts regularly. We used to chase the fireflies while we listened to the music. Sometimes we went crabbing from the wharf. You tied pieces of salt pork along a strong cord and let that down into the water. The crabs crawled up the string and you had to be careful that they didn't crawl off onto your fingers. Jimmie was a lot better at this than I was. When Grandmother visited she went crabbing with us. She was a good sport. There were a lot of children at Fort Monroe. We had a maypole, we went to dancing school, but there was not a regular school. Mother taught us Grades 1 to 3 by the Calvert system then Jimmie and I went to school in Phoebus to a Roman Catholic school. We went by bus and I remember hiding under the seats so we could return to the post and skip school. Our last year in Virginia we lived on the Fill where the houses were temporary and every word spoken in one half could be heard by the residents in the other half.

From Virginia we went to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where the Command and General Staff school is located. I went horseback riding with my mother, had ballet lessons, and was the frog in the fairy story. We lived on the second floor of an apartment house where Jimmie let a garter snake loose in my room. We were stationed there only one year. While we were in Kansas we attended the National Livestock Show. It was fabulous - huge draft horses and bulls. Those animals were the prize examples for the entire country. We left Kansas touring in a Wyllis-Knight brougham. We were on our way to Pike's Peak. Mother put a big canvas duffle bag in the middle of the back seat, separating Jimmie and me so that we couldn't fight. That tour was shortened because we children wanted to go to Grandmother's for the summer, not just tour around the scenery of the west. I've regretted that ever since for we missed the Grand Canyon. But we did visit Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon, Salt Lake City, the Petrified Forest, and other parks. At Yellowstone a bear visited our camp and stole a whole rasher of bacon. We had gone off to see Old Faithful. We lived for eight years in our next home. It was in Michigan, East Lansing where Michigan State College is located. Those years were during the depression but we didn't know it. For one thing,we stayed in one place for eight years! The longest stay in one place I'd ever experienced. We wore knee high laced up boots, clamp on roller skates and ice skates, bloomers for phys. ed and sailor collars on our middy blouses with carefully pleated skirts. Boys wore plus fours. When you were fourteen you could get a drivers license. We had a model A Ford with a rumble seat and we went to every basketball game our high school played in. They were champs! Our Dad required us to be able to change a tire, patch a puncture, before he would allow us to drive. We had to tell where we were going, why, and when we would be home. Very often our Mother would drive us.. It was great. We had a mounted Girl Scout Troop thanks to the U.S. Cavalry and a very understanding Colonel in command. . Mother was the leader and because Michigan State was a relay station they had horses, also men who took care of the horses. We girls didn't even have to clean the leather. Michigan has a lousy climate. It is very cold in winter, hot in summer, and it rains a lot because it is between two of the great lakes. It is very flat until you go north. But these yearsin Michigan saw a great deal of change for me. - the years between junior high school and sophomore in college. In those days junior high school did inot exist - it was simply 7th &8th grade - we were still little kids. We had sleds, bicycles, roller skates, ice skates that clamped onto high top boots and kept coming off. My mother didn't want me to grow up - I had sausage curls put up in rags at night. I could go to a dance with my brother but I couldn't have a date with the college freshman who lived down the street. Once I ran away from home and had my last spanking with a Sam Browne Belt. My greatest sorrow was that I was not a pretty girl. In our class there were four couples who always went around together. They were considered the bees knees. They were in the school plays, the girls were the girls basketball team, they had automatic dates for proms, WOW! They also had good grades. Then there was a layer of other nice girls who went to games in groups, occasionally had dates, and were lots of fun to be with. However when our class went to a lakeside dance hall I was allowed and had a wonderful time. How I loved to dance! The teen years are really a marvelous time of life. Its a time for change, reaching out and drawing back, trying so many things (without responsibility really) to find what is right for you. I was fortunate to go to a high school where most of the kids were children of the faculty of a state university. We had the same values, the same opportunities, the same standard of living. Our church was called United - all sorts of religious groups were represented. The Roman Catholics and the Episcopalians were the only denominations which did not join. They went three miles to Lansing to church. Our Sunday School was a big social group - I can't remember learning a thing about religion. What I did learn was taught in the Girl Scout Troop: honesty, loyalty,doing ones best, and gaining a little self confidence because I could ride a horse and was a leader of our troop exercises.brother and I attended Mich Because of the Morrill Act children of army personnel can go to any Land Grant College tuition free. Michigan State, Penn State, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are all Land Grant Colleges. Although Jimmie was 2 years older, he was only one year ahead at school. He played drums (listening to the radio) and keeping the beat. He played the timpani in the high school orchestra and later earned money for college by playing with a jazz band. My musical effort was to sing in two of the school plays. One was called "The Belle of Baghdad". I can't think of anyone less likely to be from Baghdad. I was so scared I forgot the whole second verse of a major solo. There were about ten or twelve girls who were very close friends. We did everything together. I think the Girl Scout Troop was the nucleus that held us together. Dad taught us map making for a Girl Scout badge and we went out on the back roads with our measuring chains, eye levels, and mapping boards. It was fun. Every summer we had a horse show and the Troop put on an exhibition. We wore white jodphurs, white shirts, green sleevless jackets, green ties and berets. The Red Cedar River flowed through the Michigan State College campus so we learned to canoe. The college held a festival every spring and the fraternities each had a float in a procession that floated down the river. Alsost all the activities of the college were open to the community and there was somethiong going on all the tiime. I remember Al Jolson in the first talking picture. I remember presenting a bouquet of flowers to Amelia Earhart in a downtown (Lansing) hotel. I remember going to concerts with my mother, hearing the Vienna Choir Boys, Paul Robeson,others. Every summer we went to Pennsylvania for vacation. Dad could not always stay. Dad and Mother bought an old farmhouse east of Pine Grove Mills along the mountain. We called it Eighty Acres Each summer made some improvments We had an old hand dug well and pulled our water up by the bucket The out house was a three holer called Wesley Chapel. We had an old wood burning iron stove by the back porch. To take a bath you built a fire, warmed a bucket of water, quickly poured the warm water into a bucket with holes in the bottom, pulled it up on its frame and quickly got under to shower. You didn't use much soap because you didn't have much time to rinse before the water gave out. The year of the bank moratorium when Roosevelt had all the banks close, Jimmie and I set out from State College to East Lansing at the end of summer. Each of us had his allowance check (mine was $19.19) and not much else. We got to Erie, Pennsylvania and needed to fill the tank with gas to continue but noone would cash our checks. Boy, were we ever in a fix. Finally a good hearted man gave Jimmie a dollar. Gas was six gallons for a dollar so we got enough gas to get to Jackkson, Michigan where we had friends who loaned us enough money to get home. That was a really scary trip. But I don't really think it made me any more level headed. At least we sent the dollar to the man in Erie. My class has had a reunion almost every year since our 50th., but I've never wanted to go back. Those years were special. I don't want to see what age and life has done to them all. I remember them as they were in an age of hope and carefree happiness. Young people don't have those golden times now - or maybe they do, and adults are so caught up in fractured lives they don't recall the optimism that goes with youth. Radio and TV play a part in depriving us all of a time of un aware ness, of self awareness, a long leisurly time to grow up, to become a cohesivie whole.

In the spring of 1934 Dad was ordered to Fort Totten, New York to prepare for assignment to the Philippine Islands. Jimmie and I were given the choice of staying or going. We chose adventure. At Fort Totten Mother had a formal routine - call on the Commanding General and his wife, call on all other officiers and their wives who rank your husband, entertain any who entertain you, leave cards. In the meantime organize your furniture, what to take, what to store, purchase clothing suitable for a tropical climate, vaccinations, teeth in good shape, on and on. We had a stryker, an enlisted man who took care of the furnace, polished the brass and leather. I wonder if they have this position now. We had a beautiful house right on the bay. It was standard army design: a double house with a wide porch on two sides,a living room, dining room, hall, kitchen, pantry, maid's room (we didn't have a maid) three bedrooms and bath upstairs and an attic.

We sailed from Brooklyn Army Pier just a few days before Christmas and reached the Panama Canal on Christmas Eve. We even had a Christmas Tree on deck, also a full moon. It was really beautiful. We spent New Year's Eve in San Francisco. While we were in San Francisco we visited some friends who lived on Angel Island. We saw lots of quail so tame they came right up to the house.

I don't remember stopping in Hawaii but I suppose we did. I do remember Guam where we went to the officer's club and a little lizard dropped from the rafters right onto our table.

In the Philippines we were stationed on Corregidor topside. Our apartment was on the second floor of a concrete building with a wraparound porch, sliding panels made of sea shells set in wooden frames for windows. When these windows shook it was because of earthquakes. We had a central living/dining room with sliding panels for diiividers, three bedrooms and two baths. To take care of us were a Chinese cook, a Philipino houseboy and a lavendera (laundress). They must have lived bottomside, I never knew. We had lizards in the rafters of our house, and a gekko that our cook thought brought good luck. Corregidor was laid out on three levels: Topside were the barracks, the movie theatre, the parade ground, officer housing. Middle level were junior officers housing. Bottom side were the native barrio, the pier for the motor launch, quartermaster corps and the base of the railway which carried freight and passengers. The cars were open streetcars run by soldiers. The island was heavily fortified and was in a state of readiness and preparation for war. Corregidor is shaped rather like a poliwog: about midway was Malinta Hill which was hollowed out to make a place for troops, ammunitiion and everything to provide for a safe retreat for personnel in case of attack. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the Japanese forced the Americans to surrender their stronghold. There was a large group of Navy and Army college age youngsters in the Philippines when we were there, and we had a wonderful time. The central gathering place on Corregidor was the officers club which had a swimming pool, a golf course, tennis courts, and a dance floor. There was also a bar. when we swam at night light gathered along the body as it does on ships crossing the ocean. On one occasion we went fishing with natives in an outrigger canoe. They caught octopus as well as fish. There was a launch for the mainland every day so you could shop in Manila at will. When August came we had to start back to school. We danced our way through Hawaii, San Francisco and Panama. Several West Point cadets joined us in California. It was an unforgettable time.

As a sophomore at Penn State I had no idea what I might do as an adult, for life. So far I had studied vocal music but that was because my mother had sung and wished she'd done more with her music. Now I chose Liberal Arts as a safe haven and in 1938 graduated. By my junior year I had transferred to Landscape Architecture and in 1939 graduated again with a B.S. Perhaps by then I had grown up a little but a very little. My first real job was as a draftsman for a Landscape Service Company in Framingham, Massachusetts. My parents were living in Bookline, Mass, my Dad being P.M.S.& T at M.I.T. (Professor of Military Science and Tactics). I wasn't particularly excited by drawing foundation plantings for small houses, so when my parents moved to Washington, D.C. I also moved - to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for a couple of years, then to Georgetown,D.C. to work for Rose Greeley, one of the most renowned Landscape Architects in the business. That was a job.!. It gave me a chance to see the real value design could make in a property. We did public housing, private gardens and large estates. Then BOOM ! there were no more men to do planting and heavy transport - they were all in the armed forces. In 1942 I applied for and was accepted as a draftsman in the Camouflage Section of the Army Engineer Corops at Fort Belvoir, Virginia for the princely sum of $2000.00 a year. On the 6th of February 1943 I married Architect Preston M. Cole from Dedham, Massachusetts, who was also in the Camouflage Section. Preston entered the Marine Corps shortly after our marriage and once again began the trek from school to school-- The United States Marines at Quantico, Virginia, The museum of Natural History in New York City, Photo Intelligence in Washington, D. C., the Marine Air Wing at Cherry Point, North Carolina, and then the orders came to report for overseas duty. The officers crossed the continent in troop trains, The wives kept pace, driving the same route and arriving finally at LaJolla, California. There we waited until the men sailed for the Pacific Theatre, then we drove home,' That was the end of one year stands. When Preston came home from the wars he wanted to settle down in one place and stay there. We chose Woodstock, Vermont because there was no resident architect, it was halfway between his family in Dedham. Mass. and mine in State College, Penn., it was near an ivy league college and it was a very attractive New England village. But mostly because Preston used to come there for skiing. Besides, a local inn owner needed an architect. we stayed forty eight years. Preston designed the high school, the local bank and many beautiful homes. Mary Jane ran for School Board, became a librarian, sang in the choir and joined the church. They had four beautiful children. It says in the Bible: Every good tree bears good fruit but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus by their fruit you will recognize them. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. Serve others Thank God Smile Love Give Help Pray Share