The Circle of Time - Please Donate

A little over a century ago my mother's father worked on the building of the Panama Canal and made enough money to put himself through medical school at Vanderbilt University.  Shortly after graduating and after a stint as a U.S. Army doctor ironically stationed in Hampton, Virginia, he returned to Panama (with an interlude in Honduras where my mother was born) working for United Fruit Company's Medical Department to provide medical services to both company employees and local inhabitant free of charge.  Now, the circle of time has closed and my nephew (pictured above) is working in Panama for the Peace Corps.  As part of his effort for underprivileged my nephew is seeking donations to finance a project that will help needy residents.  I hope readers will consider helping out by making donations to this effort.   Here are details on how to make a donation:

This project’s webpage can be viewed by going to www.peacecorps.gov/donate and searching by project number (14-525-005) or my last name Godburn.  

 Here is a message from the Peace Corps about the grant being sought:

We are excited to tell you about Matthew Godburn’s Peace Corps Partnership Program project.  Since its inception in 1964, the Peace Corps Partnership Program has helped thousands of Peace Corps Volunteers implement community-initiated projects worldwide.  Now Matthew is taking on a new Latrine Initiative project in Panama that needs your support.

This project, developed to address a pressing community need, will be implemented by both Matthew and local partners.  This project will benefit the people of the community for many years to come. 

In order to begin implementation, Matthew must raise $1,300.60 from friends, family and other interested donors.  Matthew and the people of the community are asking for your assistance to turn this project into a reality.

I continue to think of my late mother and her youth in Central America.  If you are able, please donate to my nephew's project.   Below are photos of what is left of the hospital where my mother was born and a scenic vista that she would have known.

Former hospital building in Puerto Castilla where my mother was born.

View across Trujillo Bay that my mother would have known

The Passing of a Generation

Yesterday I received the news that the last of my late mother's sisters has died (my aunt is pictured at left in the family passport photo from 1930 - my mother is the youngest child in the center).  There is no one left now who remembers first hand the remarkable and unusual lives my mother's parents and that she and her sisters experienced.  Like my mother, my aunt was born in Puerta Castilla, Honduras, which at the time was a model town built by United Fruit Company ("UFC") which thrived until a banana blight struck after my mothers family had moved to Puerto Armuelles, Panama.   My grandfather was the head of the hospitals in locations and as such was among the most important men in both places.  Despite United Fruit Company's many faults during the years that it was the de facto ruler of much of Central America, it did one thing right: the medical department treated everyone in the towns regardless of whether they were employed by the company.  As a result, medical care was significantly improved.

Today, Puerto Castilla is a container ship port and little remains of the 1920's town (pictured below at upper right) save and except for the former hospital building.  The structure in the upper left of the photo was the UFC built and operated school where my mother and her sisters began their education - in Spanish. 

Despite my entreaties that they write down their memories of this time that seems so remote, neither my mother or her sisters did so.  Hence my effort in some small way to keep the story alive via this blog and the assistance I gave three years ago to a Costa Rican publication that did a piece on the UFC medical department.   Here are some brief excerpts from my aunts obituary:

Catharine "Ann" Lopushinsky was born June 3, 1925, in Puerto Castilla, Honduras, to Dr. Bruce M. and Mary Azelie Hibben Phelps. Her early childhood years were spent in Honduras with her family. While she lived there, she learned to speak Spanish fluently. Ann attended Marymount Boarding School for Girls in NYC for grades 4-8. She later settled in Lowville, NY, with her family, where she finished her high school years.

During the '70s, '80s and into the '90s, she was an active member of the Red Cross Disaster Action Team. She responded at all hours of the day and night to fire calls in Syracuse, aiding those who lost their homes and needed assistance in housing, clothing and food. She also participated in Red Cross National Disaster Relief efforts. The longest one was in Puerto Rico for three months, during the mudslides. She stayed on there because she could speak Spanish with the residents and helped them to receive the aid that they needed.

Throughout her life, Ann loved gardening. She maintained extensive gardens in Liverpool and Syracuse, including an English garden, and belonged to the Rose Society. Her most favorite flower of all was the Hybrid Tea Rose.

Ann was predeceased by her beloved husband, Michael, and her sisters, Mary Alice Isachsen and Marion Hibben Hamar.

 
May they all rest in peace.  Oh, an in a bit of irony, my late sister's son is currently in the Peace Corps - in Panama.
 

Panama Upgrading Canal - A Past Family Connection

This post has nothing to do with gay rights or politics, but given that my mother's father worked on building the Panama Canal and made enough money to put himself through medical school and ultimately invest in Central America, I continue to follow events in Panama and Honduras. Thus, it was of interest that Panama is in the process of doing a major upgrade to the Panama Canal which when completed will double the amount of goods that will be able to transit from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean and Atlantic. Here are highlights from the New York Times:

About a mile long, several hundred feet wide and more than 100 feet deep, the excavation is an initial step in the building of a larger set of locks for the Panama Canal that should double the amount of goods that can pass through it each year.

The $5.25 billion project, scheduled for completion in 2014, is the first expansion in the history of the century-old shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific. By allowing much bigger container ships and other cargo vessels to easily reach the Eastern United States, it will alter patterns of trade and put pressure on East and Gulf Coast ports like Savannah, Ga., and New Orleans to deepen harbors and expand cargo-handling facilities.

The new third set of locks will help eliminate some of those backlogs, by adding perhaps 15 passages to the daily total. More important, the locks will be able to handle “New Panamax” ships — 25 percent longer, 50 percent wider and, with a deeper draft as well, able to carry two or three times the cargo.

The expansion is being financed with loans from development banks to be repaid through tolls that currently reach several hundred thousand dollars for large ships. The project is huge by Panama’s standards; among other things, the country’s largest rock-crushing plant has sprung up, almost overnight, to turn the mountain of excavated rubble into sand and stone for the concrete.

Like the construction of the original canal, an engineering masterpiece that opened in 1914 after 10 years of work by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the expansion project is a daunting task, but for different reasons. The corps had to tackle tropical diseases that had killed thousands of workers during an earlier failed effort by the French. It had to excavate — and, crucially, dispose of — tens of millions of cubic yards of dirt and rock. And it built locks that were then the world’s largest.

Deeper approach channels are being dredged on both coasts. And on the Pacific side, crews are excavating a long channel that will connect the new locks to the Culebra Cut. The channel through Gatún Lake is being widened so that larger ships can pass each other.

The new locks, which will account for about half the cost of the project, will work on the same principle used by the existing ones: moved solely by gravity, water is fed into or emptied from the chambers, raising or lowering the ships inside. But the new locks will use a different kind of gate at the end of each chamber, which should make maintenance easier and less disruptive. They will also have a feature found on some canals in Europe: three shallow basins next to each lock that will store water and reuse it. With the basins, the new locks will use about four million fewer gallons of water for each ship’s passage through the canal than the much smaller existing locks

The water-saving basins, with an elaborate system of culverts and valves to divert water to and from the chambers, may be the project’s most technologically challenging part. Operators will use computer controls that are a far cry from the electromechanical ones, with brass and glass indicators and chrome valve handles, that were used from 1914 until just a few years ago. Despite the system’s complexities, Mr. Quijano, the canal authority official, insisted that the authority was capable of carrying it out successfully. “We have not invented anything that has not been invented before,” he said.

It's an amazing project and perhaps one day I will get to visit Panama. Who knows, given the way the USA under the GOP is rushing towards backwardness and is lagging behind many Latin American nations on LGBT rights, the boyfriend and I might even retire to a country like Panama.

Mary Hibben Phelps Isachsen - A Tribute to a great Lady

The boyfriend and I are back from Washington, D.C., and I wanted to continue my tribute to my late Aunt who died on Friday. She was a great lady and a lot of fun. She played a huge role in my childhood and she will be forever etched in my memory and in my heart. Ironically, her late husband grew up at the same orphanage as the one where my father and his siblings spent their childhoods - his widowed mother was a house mother at one of the dormitories. It was through my father that my uncle and aunt met. In her younger years she was a stunning beauty and served as a Wave in World War II. I will miss her so deeply. Here's a portion of her obituary from the Troy New York newspaper that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of her amazing life :

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Mary Hibben Phelps Isachsen, 88, of Sixteenth Street, died on Friday, May 27, 2011 at St. Mary's Hospital. Born in Panama on May 3, 1923, she was the daughter of the late Bruce and Azelie Phelps and beloved wife of Dr. Nils O. Isachsen who died May 6, 2009. They were married for 60 years.
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Mary was a graduate of Marymount Academy and Syracuse University. She was a veteran of the U.S. Navy, serving as a nurse during World War II. Mary was a Mico Biologist with St. Mary's Hospital in Troy for over 35 years. She loved sailing and gardening.
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Survivors include a son Bruce Isachsen (Jennifer) of Ballston Spa, a daughter Sara Ann Hines (Tom) of Lansingburgh, four grandsons Eric Hines (Kimberly) of North Carolina, Justin Hines of Lansingburgh, Ryan Isachsen (Cassi) and Evan Isachsen of Ballston Spa, a granddaughter Caitlin Isachsen of Ballson Spa, a sister Ann Lopushinsky and several nieces and nephews. Mary is predeceased by a sister Marion Hamar.
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I truly feel that an era is passing. Only my aunt in Syracuse remains from that generation. I know that life gores on, but it is so hard to see wonderful individuals pass on. Again, my condolences to my cousins. They are traveling down a road all too familiar to me and my siblings.

Family Sadness - The Loss of a Favorite Aunt

This weekend - which was supposed to be light and cheery - has taken on a somber aspect. I just received a call from my sister to advise me that my mother's oldest sister (pictured at far right in the family passport photo above - my mother is sitting in my grandfather's lap) died last night. As a child growing up, she was a favorite of mine as we summered at the family lake house on Brantingham Lake in the Adirondack Mountains. Like my mother, my aunt, Mary Alice Phelps Isachsen, but always known as "Mickie" within the family, had a long and adventurous life having been born in Panama, lived in Honduras, traveled on United Fruit Company's "Greet White Fleet" ships, and then went on to have a long career in the medical field.

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I had not talked to her in a while and wish I'd had the chance to speak one last time. Among other things, I wanted to tell her about a cruise the boyfriend and I will be doing in the fall in the Mediterranean. She and her late husband cruised regularly (my cousins sometimes stayed with us so that my aunt and uncle could have an adult get away) and first stirred my interest in ships and the sea. One of the last treasured vacations my dad had before his illness confined him from traveling was with my aunt Mickie and her husband and my mom down at the quaint village of Ocracoke in the Outer Banks where they had a wonderful time.
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I will miss her greatly and my heart goes out to my cousins in this time of grief and loss.

The Banana Chronicles - A Part of My Family Heritage

Months ago I was contacted by a journalist in Costa Rica working for an online magazine, Neotropica, that was going to do an issue on the good, the bad, and the ugly of United Fruit Company's activities in Central America during the first half of the 20th century. I was contacted because of a post I had done on this blog that referenced my family's ties to Central America - particularly Honduras where my mother (the smallest child in the photo above) was born and Panama where she later lived. The magazine issue is now up online and can be found here. The story on my grandparents (pictured below in 1922), which includes a number of family photos from the 1920's and 1930's that I furnished to the publication, begins on page 17 of the magazine. My mother still holds investment interests in both Panama and Honduras and I hope to visit both countries someday.
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United Fruit did many unfortunate things during its de facto rule of Central America. However, I remain convinced that the Medical Department of which my grandfather was a member, did much good and that the medical personnel had the best of motives. I'd be interested in hearing readers' thoughts.

Melancholy Sunday Afternoon

UPDATED: With the help of our friend Rob and the boyfriend - who being "Martha Stewart" at all times - came up with a great place for the corner chairs and the boyfriend just happened to have spare fabric to cover them. The finished work on the chairs next to the boyfriend's century plus old Austrian chandelier is shown above in the great room. The chairs proviide another discrete conversation area and tie in with the traditional/asian theme of the room which measures 25 by 30 feet.

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*The boyfriend and I are back from a trip up to Charlottesville to help move my mother out of her own place and into an apartment in one of my sisters' home less than 15 minutes from where my mother has lived for the last six years since leaving Virginia Beach before my father died. She seems happy with her new place which has just been remodeled and which affords her ground level access. A lift is being installed so that she can access the main floor of my sister's home as well. It is so, so hard to see one's parents age and begin to fail (the photos is my mother 60 years ago). The trip was uneventful and everything was accomplished that we needed to get done and I will feel far better not having my mother living alone.

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Nonetheless, I find myself with an overbearing feeling of sadness. I'm not sure exactly why. Perhaps it's from memories stirred both by pieces of furniture, photos and other items each of us siblings took since the new apartment is far smaller than her former three bedroom two bath home. Items that we brought back to Hampton include the heavy iron bed frame from my parents' former bedroom in Virginia Beach, another Chippendale corner chair that my dad made from an expensive historic reproduction kit years ago (he made a total of seven: one for each of his children and one for himself and my mother), assorted photos, and a rugged solid Honduras mahogany shipping chest that my grand parents used to ship dishes from Panama over 70 years ago. Figuring how to integrate things into the house will be a challenge since the boyfriend had it beautifully furnished before I moved in some of my meager possessions. Other items - a TV, lamps, artwork - will be transported to the house I own in Norfolk and rent out to tenants.

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Another item I brought back is my 7th grade wood shop project that my mother had kept all these years - a cherry salad bowl that I made on a wood lathe. Ironically, 7th grade was the year that I seriously began to realize that I was "different" and had attractions to other boys. Much has happened over the intervening decades - high school, college, law school, marriage, three beautiful children, finallt "coming out", being fired for being gay, a horrific divorce and bankruptcy, a tumoultuous relationship with my ex-boyfriend and now two years with the boyfriend (Friday was our anniversary). At times I truly don't know what the point of it all has been. Other than my wonderful children, have I made any difference in the world? I really don't know.

Yet More Catholic Church Horrors

My Google search agent on sexual abuse and the Catholic Church is blowing up my in box of late. Not a day goes by where there is not some new revelation - many shocking and showing a level of depravity and dishonesty on the part of the Church hierarchy that is difficult to fathom. Yesterday's results were no exception. First, there is the story out of Spain about the Bishop of Tenerife who blames the victims of sexual abuse for their own victimization. Indeed, the good bishop alleges that 13 year olds want to be sexually abused and seduce the predator priests. What's even more disturbing is the fact that this false holy man has suffered no adverse consequences for such disgusting and sick statements. Here are highlights from Typically Spanish.com:

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[Bishop] Bernando Álvarez said that there are 13 year olds who are wanting to be abused, and 'if you are careless they will provoke you.' . . . He said that on occasions the abuse happened because the there are children who consent to it. There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you’, he said.
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Regarding homosexuals, the Bishop said that homosexuality was something prejudicial to the people and to society, and that we would pay the consequences in the long term. The Bishop claimed that both abuse of children and homosexuality would lead to future problems in society ‘as has occurred in other civilisations.
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WTF? What planet is this guy from and why is he still a bishop? Then there is news out of Memphis, Tennessee where court files have been unsealed that document incredible callousness and malfeasance by Church officials in continually reassigning 15 known sexual predators to positions where they could prey on additional victims. I can only ask myself how anyone can continue to financially support the Roman Catholic Church when confronted by such damning facts? Here are some highlights The Commercial Appeal:
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A judge on Tuesday lifted the seal on the files after lawyers for both sides spent a year redacting the names of victims from more than 10,000 pages. The documents show that at least 15 priests have been accused of sexual misconduct over about four decades in the Memphis Diocese. Some had been accused of sexual abuse elsewhere and had been moved from one diocese to another. . . . even a cursory background check would have shown that Duran had sexual issues involving minors in St. Louis, Panama and Bolivia, his native country.
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"The Southern Dominican Province knew Duran had committed prior acts of sexual abuse before placing him in Memphis and therefore should never have placed him here," attorney Karen Campbell, representing "John Doe," said in court papers. "Additionally, a review of Duran's résumé with a 31-year gap should have alerted the diocese to inquire into his background. This is exactly the type of information that should have raised a red flag to church officials that this was a pedophile priest."
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In many ways, the case of Father Juan Carlos Duran -- with frequent moves and silent superiors -- stands as an example of how child sex abuse was allowed to thrive for decades in the Catholic Church.
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The Bolivian-born Duran was expelled from the Franciscan Order in 1985 for sexually abusing a boy in Bolivia. Duran, however, was accepted by the Dominicans, who knew of his past yet moved him to assignments in Panama, Miami, St. Louis and Memphis with good references.
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"Revelations of thousands of cases of clergy sexual abuse have shown that the Catholic hierarchy had a standardized method of responding to reports and accusations of clergy sexual abuse," said Thomas Doyle of Virginia, a Dominican priest and addiction therapist who has testified as an expert in many abuse cases. "With rare exception, the alleged perpetrators were surreptitiously moved from one assignment to another with no warning to the receiving parish or community."

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The unmitigated gall and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church in getting politically involved to deny gay citizens of civil legal rights given this systematic - and yes evil - pattern of malfeasance and indifference to the safety of minors is mind boggling. Again, why does anyone continue to listen to these morally bankrupt men?

Weekend Retrospective and Thoughts on A Bygone Time

The boyfriend and I are back from Charlottesville after an uneventful drive back - the Interstate between Richmond and Williamsburg was nasty - and I feel much better having visited my mother (pictured at left around 1950) who seems mentally pretty sharp and able to get around her home using a cane. It is very hard to se one's parents fading from their former selves. It happens to all of us, but it is not easy nonetheless.

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While visiting I got copies of some old photos from my mother's first home town - Puerto Castilla, Honduras. Today, the town is a container port and other than the hospital building nothing remains of the 1920-1930's town shown in the pictures below. I am working with a writer in Central America currently who is writing a story on the good things done by United Fruit Company which is often looked badly upon for its political role in Central America, much of which occurred after my mother's family left Central America prior to World War II. My grandfather was a surgeon and hospital administrator for UFC and worked to bring need medical care to the locales where he worked. I hope readers enjoy the photos.

My grandmother and my oldest aunt.

Puerto Castilla, Honduras Hospital at right and school in upper left.

My mother's first home.

My grandfather at left sailing.

My grandfather - WWI based on the uniform

My Adventurous Grandparents

I have done several posts about my family history, including my mother's side of the family and the years that she and her parents lived in Central America. One of the old photos I found recently stashed away in an album is posted above. It was taken in 1922 in Almirante, Panama, where my mother's oldest sister was born a year or so later. A year or so after that, my grandfather was transferred to head up the hospital in Puerto Castilla, Honduras, where my mother and her other sister was born.

Sadly, my mother's father died when I was 11 and my grandmother suffered a devasating stroke about five or six years later. As a result, I never got to know them as I would have liked - they were unique, unconventional and adventurous individuals. It would have been so interesting to have been able to ask them all the things I would now so love to know about them and their lives. In the photo (which enlarges with a left click), my grand father was 35 and my grandmother was 26.