Home Page: Going Home

Thomas Wolfe wrote You Can't Go Home Again. As someone who lived in at least seven places before graduating from high school, it can be difficult to determine just where "home" is: my birthplace, Niagara Falls; early childhood, in Trenton, NJ; rental homes in Fluvanna, NY; our first owned home in Lakewood, NY; high school graduation in Ellington, CT? Throughout my life there have been countless trips to the Niagara Falls area to spend time with grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. I have vague memories of times at the New Jersey shore, especially when I floated out in my Donald Duck inner tube and decided that I should turn back, as I was closer to England than the US (WHERE does a 4-year get a notion like that? And a memory that has stuck with me throughout my life?!) I had good times as a member of the Ellington High School gymnastics team and ski club. But New England, beautiful as it is, was never really home, although I spent three years there in high school; returned to my family home on vacations from undergrad and master's degree studies; and returned to live in Connecticut, Maine, and New Hampshire as an adult, all totaling 26 years of my life.

The past 20 years of my life have been spent in the Atlanta, GA area and in Sarasota, FL. Between Maine, New Hampshire, and Georgia, I have raised my two beautiful children.
In Sarasota, I have had my most productive years as a professional, as a professor at the University of South Florida.

I lived in Ireland in 1980-81 as a graduate student on a Rotary Graduate Fellowship, attending Trinity College, Dublin. And I have returned many, many times, more than I can count. My parents spent the better part of 17 years in Ireland in their retirement years. Whenever I go there, my heart feels at home.



I have also lived in New Zealand, and I find it the most beautiful place on earth, with the best government I have ever encountered. I would move there in a heartbeat.

And yet, when I think of "home," my mind takes me to western New York; Lakewood, in particular, where I lived between the ages of 8 and 14 in a home that my parents built. I lived there longer than any other place as a child, and some of my best memories hail from Lakewood Elementary School and Southwestern Regional High School. I had not returned since I was 14 years old, and I had lost touch with my best friend from that time in my life. Several years ago, a friend of my parents from Lakewood helped me to reconnect with that friend, Celeste, and we communicated on Facebook.

This summer, for several reasons, I suggested to my mom that we spend a week back in western New York. We had not seen my dad's brother Ron and his wife Joanne in about 20 years since they moved from Massachusetts back to the Niagara Falls area, and my uncle has not been well. We both wanted to see them. My brother-in law Jeff and sister-in-law Dede had invited us to visit them in Findley Lake before they sold their home there, and we wanted to do that. And, in Lakewood, we wanted to see our former home, Mom wanted to visit her good friend who lived across the street, and I wanted to reconnect with Celeste and other school friends.

And so, after 45 years, I was going home. This blog will offer details, photos, and thoughts as I traveled back to the favorite part of my childhood.