Personal History - Alison Weber

Alison M. Weber -- Personal History

I began work at age 11, taking a bus into Washington, D.C. from the suburbs, aattaching test tubes to sterile jars for the American Red Cross during the summer. At 14, I handled “complaint calls” for a large appliance retailer, which was my first paying job. Summers, during high school and college in the 1960s, I worked as a “typist” for various government installations, including the USAFGC, Pentagon, in Washington, D.C. I ran out of funds for college after two years and went to work at Walter Reed General Hospital, at first as the secretary to the Chief of the Pathology, and then as Chief of the Blood Drawing Unit, which put me in charge of OJT for young MSC lieutenants to learn proper venipuncture techniques in addition to my secretarial duties, which included dictaphone transcription and a knowledge of medical terminology.  I met and married an Army sergeant and after he left the military, we moved and I took a job with the Army Map Service as a head secretary where I mastered their first word processing unit that took up an entire, though small, room.  After another move, I continued in a Civil Service position as Secretary to the Chief of the Special Mapping Agency, US Geological Survey, in Reston, VA.  I was reassigned as the lead administrative support person to a committee of the Office of Management and Budget that was assessing all of the mapping capabilities within the Armed Services.  In this capacity, I supported a team of civilian and military personnel from many government agencies and saw the work through to the formation of the Defense Mapping Agency.  At this point, I became a young widow following the unexpected death of my husband.

I returned to Frostburg State College (MD) where I had been from 1964-1966 and completed my degree (Political Science) in 1976.  I was remarried in 1978 and look forward to my 33^rd  anniversary this November.   During the mid-70s, starting with a college internship, I was employed by WCBC Radio, Cumberland, MD, as a broadcast journalist, covering local and state news.  In the early 1980s, I stopped working and hoped to begin a family.  We adopted an infant from Korea in 1984 and again in 1985, and I planned to be a fulltime mother.  My husband began an industrial sales distributorship south of Pittsburgh, however, and my services became essential.  I acted as Vice President and oversaw all the administrative processes of the business which were many and varied, and learned computer accounting, mostly by trial and error.  I began home-educating my children in 1988 while continuing to handle the accounting functions of our business and did this until 1992.  At that time, a surprise event took place in my life, adding a third child to the family. With her birth, I went completely off-payroll and continued home-schooling for 20 years. During this period, I started a homeschool support group in Greene County that I chaired for the first year before moving to Armstrong 17 years ago.  I’ve led a variety of homeschooling events, field trips, classes, and clubs. When my youngest was in 4^th grade, we experimented with a cyber-charter school. The next year, although not enrolling my child, I worked for the school which is no longer in existence. During that year, in which the school was failing, I started off assisting the school nurse with paperwork; other teachers with grading, and calling on delinquent students’ families, but ended teaching three upper elementary English classes.  Today, I my oldest daughter, Alexa, and her husband work in San Francisco and are young entreprneurs, introducing Foodspotting.com around the world. My youngest daughter, Samantha, just graduated from Freeport Area High School, summa cum laude, and will attend Grove City College in the fall. Our son, Zach, died 3 years ago while serving in the Air Force at Aviano AFB, Italy.  My husband sells optimization equipment for gas wells for Weatherford, Inc., for the eastern portion of the US. We attend North Park Evangelical Presbyterian Church. In the past, at former churches,  I was active leading VBS and teaching Children’s Sunday School .

As Different as Day and Night by sammweber

As Different as Day and Night

Samantha Weber, 13 Jan 06, 8^th grade

“Tomorrow I want you to get up early so we can get started with school and get finished.  You’ll feel much better if you go to bed now so you can get up early and get things out of the way!”

“Mom, I don’t want to get up early:  I’m,just not a morning person like you!”

This was another attempt by my mother to try and get me to wake up early for school.  She just doesn’t understand that we are two totally different people.

My mom is obviously the “early bird:  she likes to get up around 5 a.m. and take pictures of the sunrise with her digital camera!  (I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand why she does this.)  Once she takes the pictures, she uploads them onto her computer and adds them to her very long collection that is displayed on her screensaver as a slideshow.  Occasionally, much to my chagrin, she wakes me up just to go look at the “beautiful” sunrise.  Personally, all sunrises look the same to me; but to my mom, every one is a unique masterpiece:  the artwork of God.   I also appreciate the fact that “The heavens declare the glory of God,” but I prefer to find my artwork on my computer after the sun has set.  You see, all day long I toil doing schoolwork and chores; and by the time all of it is done, it’s dark outside.  I’m ready to be a rebel – to be “bad.”  I have this nervous and excited (hyper?) feeling as I invade the web, pillaging for some kind of spoils.  My gang is hanging out on IM, waiting for me.  A perfect homeschooled student by day; but by night I’m  “a bad white girl!”  (Remember the Titans)  Then at 10 p.m. when the whole gang is online, my mom disrupts the conspiracy and says I need to go to bed!

It’s absolutely not fair.  She did the same thing to my brother and sister before me though.  My sister would sneak back out of her bedroom to the computer after my mom went to bed.  Occasionally, she would get caught, but as I hope you can see, it’s just natural for us to want to stay up.  Now don’t get me wrong, I do love to sleep.  I like to do my sleeping, however, during the morning hours.  The house is its most quiet and peaceful then.  The dog is asleep; the tv is off and all is quiet.  Nothing has started and I think it should stay that way.  Around 9 a.m. I am in a heavy state of dreaming and should not be awakened.  Over the years, my mom and I have had numerous battles about the time I go to bed and the time I wake up.  Usually, I lose at night but win in the morning because it is almost impossible to wake me up – or, if awakened, I’m so miserable to be around that my mom has learned to avoid the unpleasantness.    

Hours earlier, while I’m snuggled down in my bed as peaceful as an angel, my mom has leaped out of bed, made the coffee, taken her sunrise pictures, and settled down with a good devotional book.  She’s also got a load of wash started, taken something out of the freezer to thaw, straightened up the house, and made a list of chores and schoolwork for me.    Maybe she is able to get up so early because she too feels stealthy, like she’s doing something that no one else would even think of doing (at least in our family).  One day, maybe I’ll be just like her, getting up at the crack of dawn, making my kids go to bed early; who knows?   But, for now, I think I’ll settle for staying up a little bit later

 Just as I don’t appreciate the sunrise, my mom doesn’t appreciate the midnight hours and all the life it brings with it.  I can’t help that she is a morning person and automatically is awake at the very ridiculous hour of 5 a.m., and I also can’t help that I perk up after dark.  Writing this controversial paper on our differences has brought us somewhat closer:  I am starting to understand some of the reasons she likes to get up so early, and she is also trying to understand why I like to stay up.  After writing this paper though, I still think my mother and I are two totally different people.  In fact, maybe there are really only two kinds of people in the world anyway – the people who like to watch the sunrise and the people who like to see the sun set.

Playing House and Other Memories by Alison Weber

My dolls ate dinner and had their hair washed regularly;
 Rode in a real stroller, and wore handmade clothes.
Sitting in school, I daydreamed about them.
And at home, made those dreams come true:
Turning our front porch into our home.   My babies
Took naps  and had real birthday cakes I baked in a toy oven
heated with an interior light bulb -- tiny cakes from
boxed mixes sold just for such occasions!

They had the nicest clothes, even felt hats
And capes and patent leather shoes in white and black.
I had red leather shoes, but they weren’t available in
Doll sizes.  

 My friends had doll babies too and all our dolls played together.
Sometimes my friends would get angry about nothing,
Take their dolls and go home, but they’d be back the next day.

And how we would DRESS UP!  My best friend’s mother was a
Chorus girl in a nightclub and had an attic full of gowns she let
Us wear, with layers of stiff petticoats underneath!

 When our dolls were down for naps, we rode bikes
or roller skated in the alleys.  If all the neighborhood kids
were out,  especially the boys, we played hide n’ seek or dodge ball.
If it was just girls, we jumped rope or threw rubber balls
Against the bricked side of a neighbor's house.   The neighbor
was the first black woman I knew.   She let us come in her yard,
and under the overhang of her screened in porch she had a bench set
up for potting plants.  When we were over, she let us turn the bench into
our perfume-making station,  where we crushed rose petals and stirred
them into small amounts of water and bottled the rose perfume.

We sometimes walked to Grant Circle and climbed  Maple trees.
I actually really did not like climbing trees, so when I fell out of one and got pretty scraped
up, the pressure to be a tree climber ended, fortunately.   I bore my scrapes and scratches
valiantly, but more importantly, I was never forced to climb another tree!
 Not only that, but my mother never found out which was great because I was pretty sure I
would have been in big trouble if she'd known I was climbing the trees in the first place.

 The best thing, though, was “Blackie!”  Blackie was a big black crow
That Marie Drissel’s brother, Roger,  had caught and tamed.  Blackie was
MY  friend.  When I left my house in the morning to walk to school, I would
Yell, “Blackie, Blackie!”   Blackie would fly to me, and sit on my arm or shoulder
For a block or so.    He was semi-famous and even had his picture in the
Washington Post newspaper!

Being a kid, growing up in the 1950’s was truly awesome!   Pick Temple, Romper Room,
Comic books, Nancy Drew stories, never being scared to walk by myself to the movies or
swimming  pool, take a bus downtown, be friends with everyone on your block.

 While I was in elementary school, INTEGRATION occured,  and that was cool too – until I
found out my mother was a racist.  She never visited in North Carolina that I can recall and
when she'd lived there as a child it was in town not out in the country.  In town the races were undoubtedly separated.  My mother was probably about 12 when the family moved to Washington, DC, and hated North Carolina because it was "so hot down there" she said.  It was a horrible day when I brought a black girl from my class home to play and found out how much my mother hated black people, and is a separate story to to be shared.

Fortunately, my grandparents lived in D.C. with my mother and I. Granny (Charlee Rankin Killian) and Grandad (Andrew Vance Killian) both grew up in rural North Carolina outside Charlotte.  Their families ate what they grew and cotton-farmed with mule-driven plows.  Dirt-farming, I suppose you’d say.  The Rankins had “blackies” who lived on the farm.  They didn't  actually "have" them, they just were there living at the far end of the property.   They helped out, and the Rankins helped them in return.  So, anyway,  my grandparents were not racist whatsoever.  I only visited the farm in North Carolina in the summer.  I think because of my grandmother, in particular, growing up with this communal relationship on the farm, and her coaxing me to realize, "People's just people!" that I quickly made friends with all the crinolin-dressed little girls and white-collared little black boys that showed up for the first day of school at the beginning of my 4th or 5th grade year.
Anyway, all these are my favorite memories – better than Christmases or other holiday memories even.

Oh, might as well tell everything:  There was part of spending the summer weeks in North Carolina I was not fond of at all!  I was made to take a bath every afternoon.  This involved sitting in a large, but not actually large enough, galvanized round tub ON THE SIDE PORCH of the house -- Naked!

An Autobiographical Poem Samantha Weber (1992 - )

An Autobiographical Poem - Samantha Weber (1992 - )

Samantha

Blonde, four-eyed, thin

Sister of slant-eyed Alexa and Zach

Who loves Mom, Dad, and the kitten, Nike

Who feels peaceful about cyber-school

Who needs lots of sleep

Who gives love, advice to others, and fun

Who likes being part of the 3 S’s:  Sarah, Sadie, and Sam

Who doesn’t like soccer referees

Who fears going to sleep, being alone, and the basement

Who would like to see Mia Hamm and Grandpa Stanley

Who dreams of a “dreamhouse” with a bubble room

Weber

An Athlete Dying Young

An Athlete Dying Young

You remember those times

When you thought you’d never die?

You climbed mountains

Ran miles

Won games.

The people cheered you on

Like a Champion. champion, champion…

You loved the game.

The game loved you.

You’d never wish those memories away

From those fields

But glory does not stay.

Today those echoes fade, fade, fade

Your calloused feet stay still in shade

The shade of the shadow

Of Time’s past days.

They won’t remember you.

You never had a chance.

Injuries are an athlete’s worst enemy.

They strike without warning

And take no prisoners.

Unfortunately for you,

You’ll be forgotten.

You died too young. 

by sammweber (?)

A Humbling Trust by sammweber

A Humbling Trust by sammweber

“Trust will not give itself to us unless we are first rid of self and resolved that it shall suffice us. “ – Sertillanges

This idea of approaching trust with humility was completely novel to me.  By that, I mean that I had just never thought about this idea in these words. I have, on the other hand, seen it in action.  The entire Christian life requires a person to approach ultimate trust with a humble heart.  In order to be saved, a person must accept that they cannot save themselves and that only by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross are they redeemed.  I’ve always heard the saying “In order to find Christ, you must lose yourself.”  This means that in order to completely trust God, one must take themself out of the picture and be resolved that it will suffice.

The Christian life is not easy, in fact, sometimes it is just plain difficult.  It is a very easy thing to say “I will trust God in the good times and in the bad,” but it is a much more difficult task to actually do it.  God engineers all of our circumstances and often times uses our trials to bring us back to Him.  We are reminded in these times that we cannot will ourselves to be more diligent at work, or to be a better friend or teammate.  These hard times, instead, reveal our dependency on God and force us to humble ourselves as we trust in His plan for our lives.

sammweber | October 17, 2011 at 1:24 am |