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Wanna act? Play music? Or just help out? – contact Activity Director Taylor Clodfelter

Never Forgotten: Charles Herbert Hough III

JANUARY 15, 1943 – DECEMBER 4, 2022 (by Pat Simpson)

Over the last few years here at Independence Village our Forever Young acting group has put on several plays, the last one being the Readers’ Theater version of Dickens’ “Christmas Carol” in December of 2021, in which Herb Hough convincingly played the role of Scrooge. Not only could Herb act, he could sing, as he did during the reception at our wedding (June Cheek and yours truly) last May, along with the sweet tones of Joe Hardison’s violin.But sadly, Herb had many health issues. Charles Herbert Hough III, age 79, of Raleigh, North Carolina passed away on Sunday, December 4, 2022. He will never be forgotten by those who knew him. Herb was born on January 15,1943 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania – the same day the giant Pentagon building was dedicated in Arlington, Virginia. Bethlehem, a city of currently 75,000 people in eastern Pennsylvania, was

founded in 1741 by a group of Moravians from Germany whose strong work ethic, integrity, sense of responsibility, emphasis on quality, discipline, and a sense of teamwork may have all had an eventual positive influence on Herb.Herb was the second son of Charles Hough Jr. and Mary Francis Smith.  They lived in Bethlehem through 1961 where Herb grew up with his older brother Wilmer.After he graduated from Bethlehem’s Liberty High School, Herb went on to study at Penn State and the University of Southern California, where he graduated with a Master’s in Business Administration. When the Vietnam war came along, Herb was

commissioned a Lieutenant in the US Navy and served as a Surface Warfare Officer on the destroyer USS McKean (DD-784). Following his service in the military, Herb embarked on a 30+ year career in international Sales and Marketing with IBM where he lived and moved with his family all over the world.  (Long Beach/San Jose, CA, Flint Michigan, Raleigh NC and internationally in Hong Kong, China.)  Following retirement, Herb kept himself busy by opening and operating a shipping and packaging business in Raleigh, NC.Herb married Karen Emily Kinney in the summer of 1967 and would eventually go on to raise three children.  Eldest daughter Taryn Alyssa Hough born 1975, middle son Chapin Brent Hough in 1977 and youngest son Brandon Todd Hough in 1979.Herb enjoyed nothing more than rooting on and watching his 4 grandchildren (Taylan 2007, Aylin 2011, Hayden 2011 and Elizabeth 2013) compete in their various sport activities and extracurricular accomplishments. (Soccer, Dance, Tennis and Ice Hockey).  He was the loudest voice on the sideline and was a fierce supporter of all things near and dear to his heart.  Herb was also a proud American, grateful for the opportunities and freedoms afforded him and would love to sit with his friends and acquaintances (on all sides of the aisle) to debate politics, issues and current events. His son Chapin, was given the opportunity to spend Herb’s last days by him bedside and had many long conversations to reflect on happy lifetime memories, family vacations, friends and special times during his lifetime that brought a smile to his face.  He asked Chapin to make sure his friends and acquaintances at Independence Village realized how much he enjoyed his time and friendship together, and was concerned he would not have the opportunity to say thank you but Chapin reassured him his message would get out without pause and to rest easy which he did.Herb Hough was just a genuine, friendly and interesting person who made impact on so many people’s lives.  Memories:  Frank Howes: I sat with Herb for most of the last six years, and I miss him terribly. Even though he had many health problems, his death came as a surprise. Some of the things I remember about Herb: He was devoted to Donald Trump (this was a subject on which we agreed to disagree). He was a master debater, and he rarely lost an argument. He had an inquisitive mind, especially about politics. He was generous with his time; he took me to doctor’s appointments on many occasions. He was devoted to his grandchildren, and he especially enjoyed watching his grandson play hockey. He loved travelling with his family. He was proud of his Navy service. He loved living in Hong Kong while he was with IBM. He was a vehement supporter of the right to bear arms. He was an unabashed old-fashioned supporter of American ideals, and was worried about the direction the country was headed in (toward socialism he said). Herb is a great loss to us all.Richard Smalto: A dynamic personality. He made me realize how much more there was to know that was important about the mundane things that effect our daily lives. “Don’t you ask your Doctor questions about what ails you?”Pat Simpson (writer of this article): I remember most the time when a protruding hernia bulge suddenly appeared on my abdomen. Without hesitation, Herb drove me to Urgent Care and then to the Emergency Room at Rex Hospital to leave me in their care. I’ll be always grateful for Herb’s unforgettable kindness.

One Way to Stop Smoking Cigarettes – by Richard Smalto

The delicious looking, long legged, buxom blond woman, in stocking feet, slid across a beer-soaked fraternity floor, stopped in front of a young man and ask him to dance.  Joy, the gorgeous long-legged creature, in stocking feet, a woman every man desired, was tipsy and had been drinking beer left over from a blown-up keg when she approached the young man and asked him to dance.

It was New Years’ eve and a popular fraternity on college campus was having one of its perennial parties. The unremarkable young man who had made a New Year’s resolution to stop smoking was only too happy to join the stunning blond on the dance floor. Having made a resolution he thought it would be a good test of his resolve to stop smoking at a party where almost everyone else was drinking and doing just that.  As a consequence when his dance partner asked him to join her for a smoke, after the dance was over, he begged off citing the resolution as a reason for why he could not. Expecting to be put down by this beguiling woman he was surprised and euphoric when what he received was a kiss on his lips.

Delighted to learn that his resolution had engendered a buss rather than a rebuke he decided to use it as a strategy throughout the night. Every time he had the urge to smoke, which was often because he was always nursing a drink, he approached a member of the opposite sex and said if she would kiss him on the mouth, he would deny his urge to smoke. Many kisses later he left the party without smoking confident that because he had not had a single cigarette he could refrain from indulging in the dreadful habit from then on. 

You Hear Me? – By Frank Howes

I was in the inn in a village on Rigel 3. I was a bit tight, and I intended to get tighter if you know what I mean. I’d caught my wife in bed with another man this afternoon, and I was angry, and sad and confused and a lot of other things.

“What’ll you have?” bellowed the old man behind the bar.

“Do you have cyanide, or strychnine?”

“Eh, what’s that? Speak up son, I’m a little deaf.”

I said loudly, “A beaker of the bard’s mandragora if you please.”

“Eh? Quit whispering!”

“What’s your best brand of poison?” I shouted.

“Did you say you wanted poison?”

“Yeah. Anything deadly.”

“Well, I’ve got some rotgut that my cousin cooks down on his farm. Makes it out of Rigel root. Fermented dinosaur dung he calls it. If it don’t kill you, it’ll make you wish you were dead.”

“Is that the strongest thing you’ve got?”

“Yeah, a hundred and fifty proof! Guaranteed to prove you’re crazy if you drink it. Somethin’ eatin’ you son?”

“You could say that. I just caught my wife in flagrante delicto with another man.”

“Too bad. I know how you feel. But don’t you go and do anything stupid now, you hear? Like I said, I know how you feel.”

“How would you know?” “

“Well, I caught my wife with another man back in ’73.”

“What did you do?”

“Went out and bought a sonic stunner and some ear muffs. Decided I was going to set it off at max power on both of them. I intended to make them both deaf.”

“Intended?”

“Yeah. But I made a mistake. I tested out the stunner on myself first. Put my ear muffs on and turned up the volume. I wanted to make sure it was good and loud. Turns out I should have tested out the earmuffs first instead of the stunner.”

“Why’s that?”

“The stunner worked. The earmuffs didn’t. So, like I said, don’t you go and do anything stupid now, y’ hear. You hear me son? Do you hear me?”

What My Children Taught Me – By Phyllis Woolley

A large part of my life has been spent teaching my children.  I never truly stopped to think about what I have learned from them. Having three sons and their dad having passed when they were quite young, can make life a little difficult.  I know that a mother’s job is to care for, and teach family values and traditions to her children. What I didn’t know is how much they would teach me. I would like to share that with you.

1. FAMILY is EVERYTHING! No matter how angry you might be, you stand by your brother, no matter what!
2. HAVING A LOT OF FRIENDS IS NOT NECESSARY. As long as you have one close friend when you need them, you will be fine.
3. A CLEAN HOUSE AND NO DIRTY DISHES IN THE SINK IS NOT NEARLY AS IMPORTANT AS SPENDING TIME WITH YOUR CHILDREN.
4. LIFE IS SHORT, LIVE EVERY SECOND OF IT!
5. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE A COLLEGE DEGREE TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN LIFE.
6. BE CAREFUL IF YOU LIVE IN A CUL DE SAC AND YOU ARE SETTING OFF FIREWORKS. THEY CAN GO THROUGH YOUR NEIGHBOR’S WINDOW AND SET THEIR BED ON FIRE.
7. NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU SCREAM, IT IS IMPORTANT TO BE AT YOUR CHILDREN’S EVENTS. Your being there no matter what, is what they remember and talk about when they get older.
8. RAPPELLING
9. HOW TO DRIVE A BOAT
10. HOW TO USE TECHNOLOGY.
11. I NEED TO ALWAYS FRY TWO CHICKENS. One chicken is never enough.
12. GRASS IN YOUR FRONT YARD IS NOT IMPORTANT OR NECESSARY. A lot of neighborhood children in your yard is much more entertaining! Plus, you always know where your children are.
13. DO NOT PARTY IN A GRAVEYARD.
14. HOW TO KEEP SCORE AND STATS AT A LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL GAME.
15. TEACHING THEM HOW TO CLEAN, WASH CLOTHES, IRON, SEW ON A BUTTON, COOK, RESPECT YOU AND OTHERS, KINDNESS,COMPASSION , LOVE OF GOD AND PRAYER IS THE BEST INVESTMENT YOU CAN MAKE! They will be the ones who care for you when you get old.
16. THE HOUSE YOU LIVE IN IS NOT THEIR HOME. HOME is wherever YOU are.
17. THE FEELING YOU HAVE WHEN YOUR CHILD HUGS YOU IS THE BEST MEDICINE YOU WILL EVER GET.
18. GRANDCHILDREN SHOULD COME BEFORE CHILDREN.
19. DO NOT LIVE YOUR LIFE BASED ON A HALLMARK CARD. YOU WILL ALWAYS BE DISAPPOINTED! FACE LIFE HEAD ON.
20. YOU CAN ALWAYS LEARN SOMETHING NEW.

I always knew it was my job to teach my children. It is! However, they have taught me to listen and pay attention. Life is what you make it.

Your happiness is what you make it!

Janice Sapp: in Retrospect

As told by Janice Sapp to Pat Simpson

Born in 1948 on January 2, I was my dad’s birthday present and first born. My parents, Albert Daniel Mancinelli, and Yolanda Conte, were both the first-to-be-born in the USA. Raised Catholic, they broke tradition and married in a Congregational Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut. After their marriage and breaking tradition again, they left their families and went West to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where both my sister and I were born.

And a third time breaking tradition, they took me with them and went to Tripoli, Libya. I became bilingual, speaking both Italian and English because Marcella, my Jewish-Italian nanny who had escaped from the Nazi’s slaughter, spoke only Italian with my parents and me.

In 1954, a year after my sister was born, my family left the USA again for the Panama Canal Zone where I picked a mango both before and after school on my way to and fro. I loved Panama and played with other kids; we did things like chase iguanas who lumbered nimbly and quickly away from us. Using cardboard we slid down the muddy clay banks; we became so dirty that our mothers would make us take off our clothes before they would allow us to come indoors to wash. While I was there, I got to see many things: the Chinese Gardens where people grew vegetables and fruit; preposterous insects that had big scissor-like jaws; Mina birds with their stately black feathers and huge orange beaks that mimicked human speech; small Marmoset monkeys; and frightening and hairy tarantulas. Yes, Panama was my childhood paradise.

Coming home to America on a ship was fun until it started to wallow – all of us slept on the deck those two nights while the ship languished on the rolling ocean. My mom had made us lime green tiered skirts and tops. And when our parents went to the Captain’s Dinner one night, the chef brought us dessert in the form of a swan fashioned from pastry and whipped cream.

We moved to Mechanicsville, Pennsylvania where I entered sixth grade and spelled words according to British grammar. My task for a few weeks was to look up the words in the dictionary to show the teacher that I knew the difference between British and American English spellings. One of our class assignments was to write a story, which I titled the Red Planet that was populated with aliens and humans cooperating to grow food for everyone. Asked to write poetry, this is my first poem:

My name is Janice Mancinelli

I live on 5 MacDonald Street

I have a cat whose name is Nellie

Who ate bats’ meat.

A bit grim, I would say, although my classmates laughed. My Senior year was in Weymouth Senior High in Massachusetts where I graduated with a thousand other kids. Yes, this Baby Boomer class was huge; we scattered all over the country to colleges, universities, military service, and paying jobs. Receiving a scholarship to Elizabethtown College in Hershey, Pennsylvania, I realized that a small Amish college with an undiversified student population was not where I wanted to be. My family had moved from Massachusetts to Silver Spring, Maryland; when I went home for Spring Break I enrolled in the University of Maryland in College Park and received a Remission of Fees, a scholarship that required good grades and the fulfillment of the requirement to teach for the State of Maryland for four years after graduation. This was a pleasure for me/ Since I was a teenager, I had decided that teaching kids inspired me to become creative about how I taught English and later to teach ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages).

In the course of time I earned a B.A. in English Education from University of Maryland in College Park; an M.A. in English/ESOL from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia; and an MDiv as a Seminarian from Wesley Theological Seminary at American University in Washington, D.C. In 1982, I even wrote “Mothers Without Custody”, an article in Children Today magazine published by US Health and Human Services. I also wrote articles such as “St James River Boy” and “A Unicorn Who Lost the Shine in Her Horn” for other community newsletters and publications.

In 1983 I married David Sapp at St George’s United Methodist Church in Fairfax, Virginia. We later moved to Plano, Texas.  Living in Plano and teaching in Dallas as well as at Plano Community College, I taught ESOL and realized that some students who wanted to learn English could not pass the exams to be admitted to college classes; many students did not have enough education to read and write in Spanish. I could feel their pain of not fitting in and doing work that kept them poor to say nothing about being cheated by employers who paid them less per hour than the minimum wage. So, I established a Dayspring Education Institute to teach ESOL to both adults and children, for which I was later awarded a “Letter of Merit” for community organization by the Mexican Embassy in Dallas.

I resigned my orders in the UMC (United Methodist Church) because of what I saw then and what I see now as cowardly and non-prophetic, (e.g., “Exemption of the Rainbow Community from Ordination”); continual moving of ordained clergy every 2 to 4 years; and a continuing non-supportive attitude to end racism. (Remember Dr King who wrote the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and the response of the UMC clergy in that town?)

Sadly, after being hospitalized since last May with severe septic inflammation, David died just two months ago, November 14, 2022, from a heart attack. Before that I had taken care of David’s parents for 18 months. They died within weeks of each other in 2012.

At any rate while teaching at Plano Community College, I took studio art classes at the Craft Guild in bookbinding and metals/jewelry, and earned an AA in Studio Art (60+ credits). I loved the classes and was delighted when I was given a solo show in the college’s gallery. I entered large (4×4) paintings of Hebrew women showing their strength and ability to lead Israel through dangerous times. My paintings sold! Continuing with painting and bookbinding, I have found a new niche –– that of being an emerging artist and have placed 1st and honorable mention for entries in art galleries in Dallas and surrounds. As I look back on my professional career, I was an ordained UMC minister from 1983 to 1994.

I have been a public-school teacher in Maryland, Virginia, Texas and Washington, D.C. and an instructor at Temple University. I established the Dayspring Education Institute to teach ESOL. I was a technical writer/proposal manager at CACI (Consolidated Analysis Center, Incorporated), as well as dean of students at Mei Academy in DC, a public charter school for pregnant girls and their children

But there have been some fun things along the way, things like opening Jan’s Bookbinding Studio.  I’ve done commission work and hand-binding as well as text blocks; I have also taught bookbinding and paper making. I’ve even taken flight lessons a two-seater Cessna at Andrews Air Force Base.

In 2023, I intend use my God-given gifts to those I meet. We are not here to take care only of ourselves and our needs, but to serve others out of the abundant love that God gives us all.