My childhood friend Marcia McDonald (and her twin brother Arthur)) were a year younger than me. In the early elementary school years Marcia and I spent a lot of time together. Our houses were near and her home was where I and other children of similar age would hang out,

In the summer the McDonald family went to their cabin on a lake in Skowhegan Maine. One summer in the 1940’s I was invited to spend some time with the family there. It was beautiful and they even had a motorboat.

I was a year and a half older than the McDonald twins, Marcia and Arthur, so I was a grade ahead of them as we grew through the school years. So it was only natural that in Junior and then Senior High we would each develop new interests and new friends.

And then we diverged even more when I left home to go to college. I eventually lost touch completely. Occasionally though my sisters met up with Evelyn, the twins older sister. So I learned that Arthur was married and still living in Belmont. And Marcia had married and was living in Portland Maine.

Now it is many years later and I am searching for information about the McDonald family. I found that the father, called Archie, passed away in 1972 at the age of 68. The mother was Swedish, Hildur. She lived 10 years longer and passed away at age 76. In the early years when I knew the family, the father took the children to the Catholic Church. The mother was Protestant but I wasn’t aware of her going to church.

Their home on Prebble Gardens Road was always open and welcoming. They had several interesting trees in their back yard. These had been brought to the area in the 1800’s when that land was part of the Benton Estate. And they had a brick wall forming part of the border of their property – again another remnant of the Benton Estate.

Yesterday I went for a Covid test. I went down to the lobby and waited for the van to transport me downtown. There was a large fire truck and I watched the firemen packing up their gear and getting ready to depart. I inquired about the presence of the truck and was told that a resident had had “some difficulty”. Not unusual given the age of the residents in a retirement community.

Well later in the day my son phoned to say that the director of this facility had issued the lockdown order – again! An air of gloom prevails this morning.

They are all gone now. Now our generation is approaching or has reached the great unknown. I am researching my contemporaries – trying to find out where each of them is their life journey. In my previous blog I explored the Gugger family. Today I looked up the Moore family who lived on my road (Od Middlesex Road) across the street from the Benton Branch Library. It was a family of numerous daughters. The youngest was Loretta, who was close to my age. She was a year ahead of me in high school. I remember Loretta particularly because she was friendly with Larry Foster who was in her class in Belmont High School, Class of 1953. Sadly Larry was killed in a plane crash on Nantucket Island.

In my research I found that Loretta was now a widow. Her husband of 49 years died in 2015. They married in 1966. She and her husband were accomplished librarians and had lived in Salem Massachusetts for many years. They each had attended Simmons College where they achieved some of their library science credentials. (My mother also attended Simmons when she was in her 50’s and earned her M.A. in Library Science.)