Driving Ms. Susie
The oldest members of our group in Ireland this week are Pete and Susie Jones of Wabash, Indiana. Both were teachers in Kim’s home town. Susie was Kim’s choir director at their Presbyterian church. That connection lasted over the years as Kim wandered to Los Angeles and then New York, pursuing her musical theater career. Kim had dwindling family connections in Wabash, but Pete and Susie were a strong and important anchor to a home that remembered who she was and from whom and whence she came.
The big company in Wabash was and is Ford Meter Box, a faceless, but ubiquitous appliance in homes across America. Metering water may not seem a glamorous business, but when you do it well for 120 years, it becomes a solid part of the community, and in this case, the town’s premier employer. It’s a privately-held company owned by the Ford family (Edwin, not Henry) and its last leader was Richard Ford, who died in 2014, but was a big part of the glue that keeps Wabash together. He was a philanthropist and community leader by nature, and a music fan by passion. His cabaret inclinations kept him close to Kim and tied him to Susie and her musicology. Pete was his trusted community whisperer. That all worked to further solidify the bonds between Kim and the Jones family.
The Wabash community is especially enlightened in terms of the arts. Between the Ford Meter Box Company and Eugenia Honeywell’s Foundation (Wabash was Home to Honeywell in its earliest years), the town acts as a regional hub for theater and music with the Honeywell Center being an impressive venue by any performance standards. Susie, as the long-time town music teacher, is a fixture in that scene and she has drawn Kim in close to assist at the practical level of theater production. In fact, Susie wrote two historical musical shows around the town history of Wabash called Wait Til You Get to Wabash (an Erie Canal pioneer saga) and Light Up the Town (the history of Wabash becoming the first electrically lighted city in the world). Naturally, she called on Kim to come out to Wabash to direct and choreograph both shows (twice for Wait Til You Get to Wabash). Kim literally lived with Pete and Susie those summers in Wabash, so much so that Pete would even dog-sit Kim’s pooch Cecil.
The Jones family (now extended to include daughter Kate) are part of our extended family and they represent Kim’s Wabash in loco parentis, an important role to Kim. So, I have made a point of getting to know them all over the past decade and am a full endorser of the place they occupy in our lives. My particular closeness has been with Pete who, like me, writes for pleasure and to inform his comrades. He is a font of wisdom and a pleasantly inquisitive sort who is always a valued dinner partner to whomever he chooses to lite next to.
This trip it has so happened that Susie has spent a good deal of time in the van I have chauffeured on the chicane of Irish toads we have traversed. Like Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy, Susie and I got off to a rocky start due to my pushing the limits with some jokes that were more appreciated on Wall Street than in the Wabash Presbyterian Church on Hill Street. But Susie is a woman of the world. As a teacher, I venture to suggest that she has probably heard and seen it all. I can’t be the first bad actor she has been forced to contend with.
At the Dance Night and the Sing-Along Night this week, it is fair to say that Susie was an actively engaged participant. Pete shows the wisdom of his 83 years by staying off the dance floor (as do I) and out of the harmonization (something I haven’t learned how to do just yet). Susie was dancing a merry gig last evening, getting thrown hither and yon by the likes of Matthew and Phillip (the former an ex-musical theater person and the latter just an enthusiastic joiner). She belted out a rendition of Molly Malone when no one else could remember the words. She herself was truly “alive alive oh!”
I’ve spent some time thinking about the Jones Connection we are lucky enough to have in our coterie. I am struck by the number of instances when other members of the group have mentioned that their favorite part of the day was sitting next to and getting to know Pete or Susie. It is not hard to understand. Besides being wonderful and interesting people who have parented an equally vivacious and fun-loving daughter, they are a slice of Americana that we all miss and need in our lives. There is a part of us all that still lives in a Wabash and wishes that life and circumstance made us less about our smart phones and more about waving to passing friends from the porch.
I listen to daughter Kate go on and on about how thankful she is that we choose to include her and her parents in our band of traveling misfits and over-indulgers. All I can think of is how fortunate we are to get a small portion of Sir Pete, Dame Susie and Princess Kate to enjoy and share with our friends. It ups our game and makes us all seem more worthy just to have them in our midst.
Tomorrow morning we will depart Westcove at 6am and drive three hours to Shannon Airport. I’m not sure who will sit where, but I would be honored to drive Ms. Susie wherever she needs to go.