Memory Lane

A recent NY Times travel article so closely mirrored the past that our family lived every summer beginning in the 1970s that a tug on the brain and the heart insisted on it being shared.

Rustic vacation houses in the woods are called camps. As a child of the 1950s, "camp" to me meant a week in a bunkhouse with other youths, sharing starchy meals served up with omnipresent "bug juice", a cross between Kool-aid and liquid Jell-O, completing tacky craft projects, and following the flashlight's beam into an insect-ridden outhouse to answer a mid-night call of nature.

Upscale camps are now known as compounds. Our family’s place is just a camp, filled with household hand-me-downs, cast off furniture, musty towels and joyous memories. We spent every summer, from the day school ended in June until Labor Day threatened in September, in heavenly busy-ness and idleness as we chose. The idyllic seasons made memories in the lives of our family and friends that are the building blocks of the memories we're making today.

I hope you will enjoy the article and the memories it evokes.

Rita Potter - March 10, 1920 - March 4, 2007

Rita M. Potter, 86, a former resident of 119 Ellen Street, Oswego, NY, and the Manor at Seneca Hill died after a brief illness on Sunday, May 4, in the Oswego Hospital. She was born in Oswego on March 10, 1920, to Floyd and Nelda Buske Padden.

Mrs. Potter was the widow of the late Roger G. Potter, who died in 1975. She was a member of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oswego and the Church Women United.

She is survived by two daughters Diana L. (Robert) Borman of Chappaqua, NY, Nancy (William) Bellow of Oswego, and three grandchildren, Kate E. Borman, Robert G. Borman and Adam K. Borman, all of Chappaqua, NY.

Funeral services were held at Grace Lutheran Church with Pastor Marsha Irmer officiating with a spring burial at in Riverside Cemetery. Contributions can be made to Oswego Health or Grace Lutheran Church.

Read the on line obituary here.