Kathy Esker Hellmann
Biography of Kathy Esker Hellmann
The exhilaration of graduation was tempered with the untimely demise of my good friend, Beverly Miller. Rita Hammersmith, Betty Ott and I had spent that evening with her at Cedar Point.
In September 1960 it was off to St. John’s Hospital School of Nursing in Cleveland with Barb Sass. Two weeks into it I knew it was a mistake. It quickly dawned on me; I hated dealing with sick people as much as I hated admitting to being sick myself! However, I toughed it out, became an RN and hightailed it to the University of Detroit where my brother Mike, (SPH class of 59) blazed a trail a year ahead of me. I worked in surgery at Mt. Carmel Hospital with my sister Jo, (SPH class of 1955) while attending U of D fulltime for a year. Meanwhile, the school seemed to be a magnet for more of my family: brother-in-law, Joe Sullivan, (SPH class of 1955,) Mike’s future wife, Joan, and my brother Bill, (SPH class of 1964.)
I had a few “encounters” with Bruce Astarita at U of D, who was supposed to be helping me with my Math, (The late 80’s found our families living a few miles apart on Southern California’s Palos Verdes Peninsula.) and later met Toledoan Dick Hellmann in his senior year at U of D in mechanical engineering. A few months later we chose a wedding date of 01 January, 1965, the same day as my parents’ wedding at St. Paul’s in 1937. However, Fr. Yeager, said it was not possible because as students away from Norwalk we were not members of the parish and the priests would be “too busy” that day. We compromised with my “rejoining” the parish via my mother adding my pre-stuffed church envelopes to the Sunday collection and “tied the knot” on 02 January. Rita was a bridesmaid and she graciously allowed us to park our honeymoon car in her garage “for protection”.
Our son Chris(topher) was born in The Cleveland Clinic, November 1965. Our daughter, Heidi, came “out of the air” (as she used to say), June of 1968 in Cincinnati, Ohio where Dick began his General Electric Aircraft Engines career.
Over the next decades we moved a great deal with GE, which gave us an opportunity to see the world. Our first life changing adventure commenced as we disembarked the airplane in Caracas, Venezuela. Through some communication mix-up, no one met us and we had no car, nothing but a hotel reservation miles away up the mountain and our pigeon Spanish to negotiate a taxi to get there. But it was a five star InterContinental hotel which served as home for two months until our house was ready. It was quite a contrast to have celebrities alighting from their limos at the entrance while our children’s rickety Blue Bird school bus picked up all the little expat urchins. Then four weeks after moving into our stucco, tiled roof house - with barred windows and doors and a live-in maid to keep any potential intruders at bay, a wealthy couple was gunned down in their front yard, three doors away. Venezuela was a non-stop circus: abrupt food shortages, utility cutoffs, three hour siestas, a nearby plane crash, another gun battle with Dick caught between the police and bandits, torrential rains and landslides, our nearly becoming jailbirds on the Isle of Margarita, and being surrounded by machete-wielding Indians in a remote rain forest.
The calm of Upland, CA was a welcome respite, though we frequently seemed to be trekking in the desert, hiking in the mountains, camping at the beach, checking out ghost towns, and refereeing kids’ soccer amid earthquakes, getting showered by ash from a forest fire in the nearby San Gabriel Mountains, and hearing yet another small plane crash - this time only blocks away. I also finally received a BA in History from Cal Poly U at Pomona, thinking I might like to try the legal field. But then I decided I really didn’t like dealing with lawyers.
(Maybe it wasn’t so calm there after all!)
In 1977 it was back to Cincinnati. I answered the call for more minorities in the trades and enrolled in a carpentry apprenticeship program with the UBC&J (United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners). I loved the interior work and learned a lot, but most jobs were outside. After two years of sitting on cold I-beams in 0 degree weather or making concrete forms only to tear them down again, I decided that maybe there was something else out there for me.
Big adventure number two commenced in 1980 in Marblehead, Massachusetts, another peninsula community. The best were the summers on our sailboat, visiting nearby islands and tooling up and down the Atlantic Coast. I learned a great deal about the sea and cetaceans from helping our son change bait while hauling traps from his small power boat. My pay was lobsters for dinner that night - or whatever else of interest entered the traps. In the colder months I studied income tax preparation and became an Enrolled Agent. (I have spent 22 years in this field in MA, OH and CA and now also do it on a volunteer basis for VITA.)
After a short stint back in CA we moved to Toulouse in Southwest France, for the third big adventure. Besides the wonderful cuisine, friendly people and incredible scenery, we made many life-long friends with whom we now spend part of each summer. (Jim Mack recently revealed that he had had many business trips in the area.) Toulouse is strategically located between the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Pyrénées Mountains that form the border with Spain and Andorra (look that country up in your atlas!) – All easily accessible for the day or more. We used our van nearly every weekend to explore and hike, sometimes getting so enthralled with a wonderful meal or chateau that we would forget to find a hotel and had to sleep in the vehicle. Toulouse was also a good staging location to see the rest of Europe. Heidi was working in Norway on an oil rig in the North Sea so we would meet during her down time. It was very difficult to leave after 5 years, but we sought solace in the 30 cases of good wine we shipped back. Shortly thereafter Dick took early retirement and became heavily involved in his “do-gooder” causes.
From Marblehead our son Chris went back to Cleveland and Case Western Reserve for his BS in electrical engineering. He rehabbed an old Victorian house in the Ohio City neighborhood of Cleveland and took advantage of my carpenter skills on every home visit from France. He and his forensic pathologist wife, Cris(tin), son Cynan, 9, and daughter, Ciara, 7 live in Lexington, Kentucky where he got an MBA and MA in International Commerce and Diplomacy at U of KY. Being only about 90 miles away, we see “The 4 C’s” frequently.
Our daughter Heidi obtained her Petroleum Engineering Degree at Stanford University and her MBA at The Wharton School at U Penn. She met her husband to be, Rajesh, an investment banker, while they were both working for Enron in Mumbai/Bombay. When the company started to implode, they moved to London, England where twin daughters, Kavita and Yamini, 5, were born. Their wedding was in India (an Indiana Jones type country) and very different from our own, officiated by a Hindu pundit wearing a turban and three white stripes painted on his forehead. Heidi wore saris, but I opted for western wear. However, the typical three day Hindu ceremony was truncated to one, and Rajesh did not enter on a white charger. After living in The Hague for 2 years, they are happy to be back in sunnier England.
We hike often, in Switzerland, N Italy and France - sometimes in NW Canada as well as in this country – love the Red River Gorge in KY. A few years ago a planned two week hike on the ridge of the Pyrénées was truncated when I broke my arm; we were so remote that it took four days to get to a hospital. This year we completed a 5 year pilgrimage hike (2 weeks per year) with a fellow Toulousian couple, on “The Way of St. James” from Puy en Valey, France to Santiago de Compostella, Spain- about 750 miles. For many centuries this “El Camino de Santiago” was famous for pilgrims atoning for their sins. (Of course, we had none; and now have many indulgences packed away for future credit! )
‘Midst all of this moving around I kept my strong Norwalk roots. Our fair Maple City still feels like home and invariably brings memories flooding back like those of the Kath-Lin Shir-Pats Club (Moi, Linda Ruffing, Shirley Frederick and Pat Rooney) and our dues of ten cents a week …to do what I am not sure, Cokes and Becker’s chips at the K-H, Girl Scout camping with Bernie Fries’ wife Karen aka Dink, and working at the A & P with Rita. Denny Ware was a neighbor, fellow softball player, and the first boy I kissed, although I won a kissing dare by chasing Carol Ruffing’s brother John around the playground. Acting in Arsenic and Old Lace with Linda Parker, among others our senior year, had many laughable moments, including Don Lippert as Teddy Roosevelt yelling, “Charge!”, the table breaking and me almost falling from the stage, and Chuck Cooper giving me a lift to play practice one night with a car that had a board in back holding up the front seat. We had to stop first at SOHIO to buy a whopping fifty cents worth of gas!
It is sad every time I see another staunch Norwalk icon, like Meek’s Bakery or the Outdoorsman disappear – it reminds me of what a dynamic, throbbing metropolis Norwalk once was – but I still love it and get home 4 or 5 times a year. One of our favorite things to do is walk around town and enjoy: West Main’s classic architecture, Woodlawn Cemetery with its treasure trove of beautiful old trees, the new North Coast Trail, and of course the reservoir – scene of many submarine races.
My mother will be 92 this year and still lives on Woodlawn Ave. It’s a pleasure to go up and see her and explore my old town.
