Tuesday, October 16, 2018
These are some facts that Bruce shared with me on January 23, 2014:
Bruce was born in 1923 and would have been 96 yo March 24, 2019. His dad was a merchant and ran a 3 story brick general store on main street in nicholville that also had a post office and drug store. In 1924, when bruce was 1 his family had gone on a trip to see John Brown’s grave in Lake Placid and the store burnt down. His dad rebuilt the store in 1925 and sold the store eventually when bruce was 15 years old. When bruce was 16 his mother died of scarlet fever. (I am remembering this part from a conversation I had with bruce 15 years ago, but bruce told me that his mom caught the fever from him or vice versa and I want to say that he could not attend her funeral because he was sick). He said that nicholville was very busy back then with 20 farms between there and Potsdam. Many people were farmers and grew dairy cows. There were butter factories in the area at the time. He mentioned that he had a lot of respect for the Amish people in the north country because they go by the old ways and they come together to work as a community. When he was a kid they had 3 cows in a barn behind their house and always had a couple of hogs. He would have cream on his cereal in the am and his dad would butcher the hogs. His dad had made a smoker and would use corn cobs and other stuff to smoke cure hams. They also had an ice house because they did not have an electric fridge until ~1930. They would cut ice off of a pond on a farm that his dad owned. He still has two of the ice tools.. a hand one for men and then one meant to be used behind horses. He said they used a one-man saw to cut the ice. The farm his dad owned was 2 miles up the road from where bruce lives now. It was 108 acres and the one boundary was down the middle of the st. regis river and it went to the other side of the road. He said it is all grown up in woods now. Before his dad owned it they farmed hops there and there was a large maple sugar bush there. There was an abandoned building on the farm with a black smith shop on one side and then built on was a school house. He remembers seeing a blackboard in the school house that ran the length of the wall that was painted lumber. They would write on it with chalk. He himself went to 8 grades in Nicholville in a building that they have since torn down and put a fire station. Then he went to high school in “The Falls”.. ie st regis falls. He said school was not his favorite and he was not that interested in it… he should have been, but was not. So,he went into the army when he was 18. First it was off to Niagra in New York, then Biloxi MS where he did his basic training, then to Camp Davies in Augusta, GA then to 2 camps in Minnesota. In 1943 he travelled on board the queen Elizabeth with 10000 soldiers to Glasgow, Scotland. He said it was like a floating city. The QE was too fast for the German U boats and they zigged and zagged so they could not find them. From there they went by railroad to Sherwood Forest north of Nottingham and then to France. (again, remembering from an earlier conversation, but Bruce flew in behind enemy lines on a glider in France. They would land on matts in fields and deploy from there). After the war he went to a fort in Denver Colorado (I think it was Buckly AFB), the to Amirillo Texas where he was discharged.
I met Bruce because my grandfather George Sullivan (who shared Bruce's birthday) had a camp at Lake Ozonia near Bruce's County Line camp. My grandfather loved and respected Bruce. I have a lot of fond memories of going to camp and visiting with Bruce. He was one of a kind. A bit of a hermit, but such a warm and friendly man. A true American hero that but a few knew. I will miss talking with him on the phone.
