This page is a "work in progress", first uploaded 1/2/02. Over the next month or so, I will go through some of Mom's photos and add scans to the text. Please bear with me, and check back in a few weeks.
Dorothy Van Haste came from a generation whose young women of working class background tended not to enter professional careers - but she was a smart lady! She graduated from Paterson East Side High School's commercial course in 1937, winner of the Pittman Prize for that year's most accomplished shorthand user. And she used to type with amazing speed and was a fairly accomplished bookkeeper. I'm certain that, had she been born a generation later, she'd have been an academic whiz and would have gone on to college and a great career. But there is no need to regret the road that she did take. Her life assuredly had its share of rewards as well as trials.
She was born 23 May 1920, the second daughter (and middle child) of Edmund and Margaret Peters. How she loved her father! She was always full of stories about him. He was a railroad man, a yardmaster for the old Erie-Lackawanna.
In 1943 she married Frank Van Haste, Jr., having met him shortly before the War began and having been "courted" by him for several years. Frank, my Dad, was in the Army Air Corps, and after their wedding they lived for a time in a walkup flat in Wilmington, DE. They lived across the landing from Jim and Natalie Carrozza of Boston and they became great friends.
The first tragedy in her life came in the late winter of 1944-45, when a War Department telegram arrived telling of the death in combat of her younger brother, T/4 Edmund J. Peters, Jr., 11th Airborne Division. A Bronze Star and a Purple Heart followed the telegram, but the medals did not ease the pain.
The war ended and the couple returned to Paterson where they rented space on the East side. Dad worked for the railroad briefly, but hated the overnights away from home. He soon quit and became a truck driver - a job he stayed with all of his working life.
1948 was notable in that both Mom and Princess Elizabeth of England became pregnant. This delighted her. Prince Charles and I were both born in November.
Now a family of three, they needed more space and moved to larger rented quarters on the South side of the city.
Mom suffered another loss in 1951 when Ed, her father, died at age 57 of a sudden massive cerebral hemorrhage. This hit my grandmother very hard and confronted the family with a dilemma. They didn't want Grandma to live alone but neither Mom nor her sister Margaret had room for her.
The solution came with Mom and Dad moving to the house in Haledon where Dad had grown up. It was 1952 and Dad and Mom were 35 and 32 respectively. They would live in that house at 11 Cook Street for 25 years.
The Van Haste household was suddenly large and bustling. In addition to the three of us there were Grandma, my paternal Grandpa, Frank, Sr., his maiden sister, Aunt Jewell, Dad's kid brother Bill and a rambunctious boxer named Devil. In case that wasn't enough, a variety of additional aunts and uncles usually came for dinner every Sunday.
Over the years, Jewell would move away and Bill would marry and leave. Grandma and Grandpa were fixtures.
So that was my youth. Dad worked hard, Mom ran the house and I went to school. There were tough times - winters when, construction being shut down, Dad didn't work and money was scarce - and wonderful times, like summer day trips to Coney Island, Seaside Heights, and Palisades Park.
My Mom was a rigorous budgeter. She'd plan for those sparse winters with great care. In the summer she'd buy extra canned goods and staples every week until the shelves in our basement looked like a food store. We'd draw down that stockpile all winter long until, about the time that the ground thawed, the last can of tomatoes would be opened.
There was always a Christmas Club. The last payment would be made as the weather turned cold and then, amid the scarcity of winter, the accumulated money would fund a bountiful Christmas of toys and turkey.
Along the way, they bought out the Van Haste family's interest in the house on Cook Street. I grew to adolescence and entered high school. Grandpa's health deteriorated and he left to live a little time with other relatives and more time in a nursing home. He died in about 1970.
As Dad gained seniority on the job and as technology began to allow construction projects to continue deeper into the winter, the family became more prosperous. Still, there was concern about how my college education would be funded. My parents were prepared to sell the house and return to renting in order to finance my degree. Fortunately, scholarships were available to me and the need did not arise.
In 1965 Mom went to work outside the home for the first time in over 20 years. She became a medical secretary/receptionist in the office of a local physician. She even took driving lessons and acquired her first driver's license!
After I went off to school they were able to travel a bit. They took motor trips to Florida, including the remarkable one in the winter of 1967-68 when the 1960 Chevy Impala threw a rod in Manning, SC and the local Chevy dealer trusted them by financing the purchase of a '65 Impala SS and sending them on their way.
They also achieved one of Mom's lifelong dreams by traveling to Hawaii. They flew first class, stayed in fine hotels, and visited the sights of Oahu, the green hills of Maui and the volcanic heights of the Big Island. And then, a couple of years later, they went back for an encore! These trips were probably the high points of their 43 years of marriage.
Mom and Dad saw me graduate NYU and move to Connecticut in 1970, and marry my beloved Patricia in 1971.
In the mid-1970's Mom's sister Margaret died from chronic respiratory problems. She was not yet 60 years old. In 1977 Grandma passed away at the age of 82. Finally, after 34 years of marriage, they were on their own. Dad retired, Mom quit her job, and they sold the house and moved to Whiting, NJ. They bought a single family home in a retirement community, Cedar Glen Lakes. In that little house they had nine good years. In 1978 their Grandson arrived and they tried their best to spoil him irremediably.
Their happiness was cut short by Mom's last and hardest loss. Her loving Frank succumbed to lung cancer in October 1986. Mom would live on for 15 years and she would have many good times and much contentment but I believe that she was never truly happy again after Dad died.
We had a very rough year or two after Dad died, but with the help of her neighbors and friends she recovered her ability to enjoy life. With a group of five or six women she went to movies, did lunch and shopped. She adapted well enough to being alone.
In 1990 she began to have increasing health problems. At age 70, chronically short of breath, she was found to have a leaking aortic valve and blocked coronary arteries. The valve was repaired and the blockages bypassed in open-heart surgery. Unfortunately the valve repair was not effective and a year later she had a second surgery, where a prosthetic aortic valve was installed. This meant that for the rest of here life she would have to take an anti-coagulant drug, Coumadin.
Coumadin is the devil's bargain. You must take it if you have a prosthetic valve in place - otherwise clots will form at the valve and, sooner rather than later, a piece will break away and lodge in the brain or lung with disastrous results. The problem is that the suppression of the blood's ability to coagulate leaves you susceptible to many other problems. Sooner or later, one of them is going to cause great trouble.
It became clear to Pat and me that Mom's health was becoming increasingly fragile and so we encouraged her to sell her home in Whiting and move to our area. She was reluctant to leave her familiar environment but acceded to our wishes. In 1994 she relocated to Stratford, Connecticut.
She has joked with me about having a new full-time job of going to medical
appointments. Her life has indeed been full of cardiologists, internists, ophthalmologists,
podiatrists, gynecologists and radiologists. She's had cardiac catheterizations,
precautionary hospitalizations, a large and ever changing pharmacopoeia and
a couple of falls.
Through it all and despite it all she has managed to live seven pretty good years. She became a serious New York Yankees fan. She went with me to minor league baseball games. She fervently adored our annoying little bichon frise, Henry.
Now the end of the story is very near. I am writing this at her hospital bedside. On 19 December 2001 Mom suffered a catastrophic subarachnoid hemorrhage - exacerbated in its severity by the anti-coagulants. The damage is in the brain stem and she has been left unable to speak or swallow or move her limbs. Other complications are beginning to set in and we know that she will be leaving us soon. She is receiving hospice care, she is getting regular visits from the morphine fairy, and she is resting and at peace.
Mom has always been a committed and devout Roman Catholic, and she has been comforted here in this church-affiliated hospital, by the ministry of the priests and sisters who perform pastoral functions for the sick. She is sure of her eternal reward.
I look back over the years and think of the many things my mother gave to me, the myriad of ways that she expressed her love for me. She gave me life itself, she taught me to love reading and learning, to appreciate goodness and truth and beauty. She gave me things central to making me who I am.
Perhaps the greatest thing that she gave to me was her love of books and reading. As far back as I can remember, Mom was reading to me and surrounding me with books. Someof my earliest memories involve Golden Books like "The Poky Little Puppy" - that literary classic that we in our turn read to our son!
From elementary school years I remember summer nights when Dad - who had to get up at oh-dark-thirty - went to bed and we two night owls sat up, she reading to me for hours from a series of Perry Mason novels.
Soon, of course, I preferred reading on my own. But the pleasures of a parent reading to a child stayed with me and in my turn I read thousands of pages to our son just as she did to me.
What has this woman done for me? Everything. Now at the end, I will do all I can for her.
CODA
Mom passed away quietly...peacefully...in the early morning hours of 2 January 2002.
If you have remembrances of Dorothy Van Haste that you'd like to share (or if you'd like to correct me on anything I've said here) please e-mail me at frank.vanhaste@snet.net and I will incorporate your comments.