When we first got married, Jo Anne and I lived in an apartment on Northwood, which is just off Skinker. Our granddaughter Jenn lives right near there now.
Then we moved to Kirkwood, where we bought a house. It was less expensive than the equivalent in a Jewish neighborhood. We moved there because Jo Anne was working with another married OT who lived there, so we thought it would be OK. Jo Anne was pregnant with Helen. But we didn’t have a lot in common with the neighbors; there were a lot of transients there; people who had been moved in by their companies and moved out again.
Jo Anne was really unhappy there; it didn’t affect me that much because I was at work most of the day. Jo Anne’s mother decided we shouldn’t be in Kirkwood. She found someone who helped us find a place in Clayton, on Buckingham Drive. I guess it was in January of Liz’s first year, and Liz fell down the basement steps shortly after we moved. Good thing she was tough! When we first moved in, we rented the basement to a woman who worked at Famous Barr. She helped take care of the kids in the evenings, getting them to bed and helping Jo Anne.
When we moved in, we got a carpenter from Millstone to do some remodeling. We had gotten some money from Jo Anne’s grandmother Duffy to redo the kitchen. The carpenter made a lot of changes there which we really appreciated, and we were quite happy in that house.
The Buckingham house was our home for forty years.
After Buckingham, we moved to a condo in downtown Clayton, on Meramec. We moved to the condo because Jo Anne was having trouble with the steps in our Buckingham house. I was working in Clayton at the time, so we wanted to stay in town, but thought it would be fun to live toward the center of town. When I was 80, Jo Anne asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said, “A Segway.” And she got it for me. I rode my Segway to work and around Clayton. We went to the local coffee shop every Saturday morning. I would take the Segway there, and Jo Anne would walk or drive. I just parked the Segway in front and went in and ordered.
We lived at the condo for 15 years, and then we moved to The Willows in 2022. I haven’t taken an active part here, but Jo Anne has. My only real involvement here is bridge, which I play every other Monday.
Finding a temple
Growing up I did not have much in the way of religious feelings. I observed parts of the High Holidays and had Passover at Aunt Rose’s. After our marriage, it still didn’t play much of a role until Jo Anne got pregnant, and then we had to think about what we were going to do if we had a son – would there be a Bris or what – because I respected my parents’ feelings, especially my father’s. So we joined a congregation and were there for a little while.
Jo Anne went to speak with the Rabbi, and maybe he was having some emotional problems of his own, because he got upset that she wasn’t going to a Jewish doctor. This was a Reform congregation! We decided we couldn’t deal with him as a Rabbi, and we went to a United Hebrew instead, where the Rabbi was much more reasonable. However, when I went to my first High Holiday service at United Hebrew, I didn’t see one familiar face in the congregation. I felt like a raft bobbing away in the ocean; there was no connection whatsoever. So we decided that we had to make another change.
A number of our friends had joined a new congregation called Temple Emmanuel, which was just starting up. They didn’t have a building, so they met at people’s homes and held High Holidays at a small chapel. We decided to join there instead. It was a small congregation, with maybe 500 families, and five of those families were on our block in Clayton. Because it was a small congregation, everything was done by volunteers. I didn’t mind volunteering and working and getting to know people there. We belonged there for forty-some-odd years.
I don’t know that Temple Emmanuel was the best congregation for us, but that’s where we stayed. Later we went to Shaare Emeth, because that’s where Liz’s family belonged.
When my mother died, I went back to United Hebrew to say Kaddish. United Hebrew was one of the few nearby congregations that had morning services. It didn’t always have a minion, but that was okay. I was able to go five mornings a week, which felt good to me. I knew it wasn’t necessary that I do this; my father was already going and saying Kaddish, but I went out of respect for him. About that time, my dad told me that I wouldn’t have to say Kaddish for him, because he had paid the Shamash at his temple to do it.
Playing softball and football
The first time I went to work for Millstone it was in the summer of ’56. I was trying to find out if there were any softball teams, and there was a fellow there who said there was a group of guys who got together and played softball on Sunday mornings. I decided to join them. Fortunately, one or two lived close to me so I could get a ride to the game. I got involved with this group playing softball and tag football in the fall. I was happy with this group, but I don’t know how happy they were to play football with me; some said I played too rough – not that I played dirty, but I was not intimidated by someone who was 50 pounds heavier. If I had to block them out of the way I blocked them! Later on I played softball in shorts, and I tried to convinced myself not to slide. Just my innate nature, I would slide into that base even if I was wearing shorts! I had many raspberries on my thighs, but that’s the only way I knew how to play.
Bicycle trips
When Helen was fifteen, she decided she didn’t want to go on family vacations anymore. But she had just gotten a bike and decided that if we went on a bike trip, she would go with us. We found out that Wisconsin had bike trails, and each county had maps of the bike paths – they were usually on county roads, not heavily travelled. I got a book with the county maps and other literature, and planned a trip so we could do some biking, but it wouldn’t be all biking.
We would stop at a motel, and the next morning, I would get someone from the motel to follow my car out for about 10 or 15 miles. I’d leave the car there; in the car was a cooler with our lunch. And then we’d all bike to the car and have lunch, and whoever wanted to would ride to the next stop – our stops were about 25 miles apart. Helen and I and sometimes Liz would bike to the next motel, while Jo Anne and Amy would drive there. It was a wonderful trip. I had planned it so that we weren’t biking every day; we would bike one day and then stay in the hotel and drive around in the area and visit. One of our stops was in Baraboo, Wisconsin, very close to the Wisconsin Dells. I remember there was a circus museum there.
So this was the start of other biking trips. After that, Jo Anne and I started going on bike trips together. I enjoyed them an awful lot. We had some friends who were interested in biking in Door County, Wisconsin, so three couples went there. I think we had three cars so that we could shuttle cars ourselves and bike whatever distance people wanted to, and that was a good vacation. I remember sitting in the North part of Door County when Nixon resigned as President.
On the way back from that trip, we checked in with the kids by phone, and we found out that my parents had gone to Mayo Clinic; my father had gotten very sick. We went to Milwaukee, and Jo Anne flew to Mayo to be with my mother; I brought the car home and then I flew up to Mayo and she came home to be with the kids. My Dad was quite sick at Mayo, and it was very hard on my mother. He always blamed her death on what that had taken out of her. She had had a heart attack before their 50th, which was in 1971. I remember at the 50th they had a throne for her to sit on so she didn’t have to move around that much.
Our bike trips were mostly with bike touring companies because they would shuttle your luggage from one place to another, and all you had to do was to get on your bike and ride. We took those trips for 15 years. We had several trips to Europe and met a wonderful couple from Boston, and another time we had a trip for JoAnne and some of her female friends who were physical therapists or occupational therapists, and the four women and I went back to Wisconsin and again. I remember one time we checked into this small motel, and the man looked at me – one man with four women checking into two adjoining rooms – he couldn’t figure what was going on! It was a lot of fun.
One trip in Europe we stayed at a whore house! On about the second or third day of the trip, we were in Belgium, there was a casino there. We got to the hotel, and they didn’t have enough rooms for us. They were trying to decide what to do, and the tour company took us to this little place that had three rooms – downstairs there was a shelf with liquor on it. We went upstairs, and the first room which we came to (which we didn’t take) had a round bed, and the second room had a bidet in one part of the room, and a good-sized bed. We took that one; we never saw the third room. It turned out there was a big bureau in our room was hand crafted with erotic designs. The only light in the room was a black light, which we discovered only after we had showered and changed and put our wet biking clothes on the windowsill to dry. When we came back that night, we could see the black light shining on our underwear.
The next night, they put us in a girls’ Catholic dormitory, where we slept in cells. I think it was a gymnasium, with people sleeping in sleeping compartments that were partitions, with no roofs over them or walls between them. Everybody was snoring.
With things like that happening, going on a fancy trip never appealed to us; we sort of liked the rough and tumble.
Other travels
We stopped biking with the advent of our grandchildren, because that didn’t give us time to get in shape to go on biking trips. I still think about going on one. We’ve also gone on two safaris which were wonderful, both to Tanzania. They weren’t the fancy ones; we didn’t get champagne dinners. We saw all the animals and got some wonderful pictures, and I liked the first one so much that JoAnne and I went back with Helen and Danny about a year and a half later, and basically did the same tour, at a different time of year. I think it was better because Helen and Danny were wonderful travelling companions. We also went with Helen and Danny to Costa Rica.
We also took some trips with Elder Hostel. We took the grandchildren on different trips, depending on their interests. We also took some by ourselves, including one that was all about mysteries, and another on Burt Bacharach and the Beatles. In addition, we took a river cruise down the Ohio.
Volunteering
I did different types of volunteering over the span of my life.
I was on the board of Judevine Center for Autistic Children, and this was prior to having an autistic grandchild. I didn’t get involved with any of the clients, which may have been a mistake, but I felt I was doing a service.
I was on the board of the Temple and worked on the Finance Committee. I was treasurer at one point. I was very frustrated there because the temple leadership was pretty tied up, and I was low man on the totem pole. There was a Dubinsky and a Dobinsky, who were cousins, and they controlled the temple leadership.
Jo Anne was very active at Cancer Family Care, so I was on the board there and volunteered as her assistant.
Later, I got involved with Support Dogs. We started because our eldest grandson Jeremy was always looking over the fence at our neighbor’s dog. They couldn’t have a dog at his home because his father was allergic. So we contacted Support Dogs, and got a Granger, a golden retriever. He was about a year old; he’d been puppy trained but couldn’t be used as a Support Dog because of some elbow dysplasia. We were lucky to get him, and Jeremy fell in love with him. The dog was wonderful for all our grandchildren. Here was a dog I had gotten as a gift from an agency, and they had trained him, so I felt we owed them some services.
Granger and I went to class, and we became a therapy team. I took him to a school for challenged children. He loved it, and it didn’t take a lot on my part, all I had to do was give the kids a tennis ball to throw, and Granger would bring it back.
Jo Anne became involved and went to class with Granger, as well. She started by taking him to nursing homes. I went with her occasionally and I realized, watching her, how wonderful she was at working with these elderly people and tuning in to them. It was a talent I didn’t have. I could take the dog somewhere and let them pet him, but I didn’t feel that I was doing that much. I felt I wasn’t involving myself with the patients, so she took over.
Jo Anne took Granger to nursing homes, Children’s Hospital, and Siteman Cancer Institute. Eventually we got our first Shih Tzu, Jin Li. Because she was small; Jo Anne could pick her up and put her on a bed, so it was a much better experience for the people she was servicing. We got a second Shih Tzu, Charlie, and trained him, and ultimately got a third one, Cookie, who was in training just before the pandemic hit.
One of my favorite volunteering jobs was working at the food pantry with Jeremy. I’d pick up Jeremy from his place in Overland. He and I would box up food, and after we finished there, we’d go to lunch.
I also volunteered for AARP, doing tax returns. I did that for a lot of years as well.
Why I wrote this book
The stories in this book are things I’d like to tell my grandchildren. I would like them to know me a little better. I can think of nothing better than walking in the woods with them, talking about my family. I don’t know that I will know them when they’re at an age when this will be important to them, and, if not, I hope they’ll have this book to look back on.
The Felson Family 