1966: The Sound of Music

By Corinne H. Smith

1966:  I turned nine years old.  I was in Miss Brubaker's fourth grade class at Farmdale Elementary School (though she soon married and became Mrs. Crouse).  Daddy was 37, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom was a stay-at-home Mom.  We lived on Hathaway Street in West Hempfield Township.  The #1 song on the radio on my ninth birthday was “You Keep Me Hangin' On” by The Supremes.  Mom snapped this photograph.  You can see some changes in our living room.  We put up paneling, and we exchanged our old black-and-white television for a console entertainment unit that combined a color TV, a record player, and a radio with stereo sound.

     A lot was going on during the summer of 1966.  People were marching for civil rights in Mississippi.  The AFL and NFL were negotiating a merger agreement for a united football organization.  In our neighborhood, a new stretch of U.S. Route 30 just opened to traffic, from Rohrerstown Road to Prospect Road.  And The Sound of Music finally came to Lancaster County.

     The movie had been officially released more than a year beforehand, in March 1965.  But that didn’t mean that it automatically appeared in theaters in every market.  According to Cinematreasures.org, The Sound of Music “was among a number of prestigious productions given the ‘roadshow’ treatment, whereby a film was booked as an exclusive engagement in major cities and would play for many, many months before being put into a nationwide general release.”  And that’s what happened to us.  Oh sure, if we had wanted to drive 50 miles, we could have gone up to Harrisburg, where The Sound of Music had been showing nonstop at the Eric Theatre since the middle of July 1965.  But no, it wasn’t that crucial.  We had decided to wait.

     In the meantime, the movie set all kinds of box office records across the country.  It won five Oscars at the Academy Awards ceremony on April 18, 1966, including Best Picture of 1965.  And still it eluded us.

We could buy the soundtrack album months before we could see the movie itself

     When the Fulton Opera House announced that it would open The Sound of Music on Wednesday, June 22, 1966, we saw our chance.  School was out for the summer.  Mom and I could go to the 2 p.m. matinee.  Off we went, to stand in line and get reserved seats for the show.  $1.50 each.

     Every city and town has its traditional elegant theater of old.  The Fulton is the one for Lancaster.  Named after local legend Robert Fulton, it was built in 1852 on the foundation of a jail that pre-dated the American Revolution.  Across the decades, it had had its ups and downs as a venue for both film and live shows.  By the late 1950s, the Fulton was “repositioned … as an art moviehouse, with occasional stage performances.”  The Sound of Music hit the Fulton at the right time.  Soon the decision would be made to limit its offerings to live shows only.  Lucky us.

     Even though I was fairly young at the time, I have clear memories of going to this movie.  A lot of people were there.  We had to stand for a long time in a long line that wound down the sidewalk along North Prince Street.  It was hot, very hot.  (Turns out that we were a few days into a week-long heat wave that featured sustained daytime temperatures in the 90s.)  When we finally were allowed to enter, every empty seat filled up quickly.  The air was stuffy.  I don’t believe the theater was air-conditioned.  And when the projectors were supposed to start rolling, they were delayed by a mechanical problem.  We had to sit and wait for something to get fixed, perhaps for as long as an hour or more.  But I remember that the place was still packed.  Nearly everyone stayed.  We had all waited this long for The Sound of Music.  We weren’t going to leave.

     The movie sure lived up to its reputation.  Nothing could match the opening scene of the Alps on the big screen.  In an instant, we were flying from our seats in downtown Lancaster to a magical mountainous place, thousands of miles away.  It seemed as though we were in the congregation for the wedding, too.  The chords of the cathedral organ resounded throughout the hall, nearly shaking the walls around us, and Maria strode past us in white, down the aisle.  Then we were dragged into the chase scene.  Run, run!  At last we made our way up into the mountains again.  The music and the whole production were thoroughly magnificent.  For nearly three hours, we were in it, we were there.  I still get chills, remembering.

     In 1986, my father, my then-husband and I joined a tour group that traveled to Munich, Bavaria and Austria.  This time we had a chance to witness The Sound of Music settings ourselves.  The big estate that was used in the movie was in private hands, but we could see the mansion from across the other side of the water.  The gazebo had been moved off the property so that tourists could take pictures of it and dance through it themselves.  Some of our fellow travelers did just that.  Downtown Salzburg looked familiar, as we passed the same fountains and walked through the same city squares that Maria and the children had skipped across.  And the Alps!  Wow.  Nothing can quite prepare you for them.  It was magic, again:  Life imitating Art imitating Life.  Who could imagine such beauty?  And really, we felt as though we’d already been here.

     Maybe it’s because of our own German heritage and musicianship that we have adopted “Edelweiss” and “The Sound of Music” as family standards.  Both songs have been played at recent funerals of Hosfeld relatives.  Our ancestors didn’t come from Austria, and they arrived in America well before the time of the World Wars.  But somehow The Sound of Music has ended up being our story.  How did Hollywood do that?

1965: To the Moon, Robert

By Corinne H. Smith

1965:  I turned eight years old.  I was in Mrs. Jenkins' third grade class at Farmdale Elementary School.  Daddy was 36, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom was a stay-at-home Mom.  We lived on Hathaway Street in West Hempfield Township.  The #1 song on the radio on my eighth birthday was “I Hear a Symphony” by The Supremes.  Mom snapped this photograph.

     In 1962, President John F. Kennedy challenged the American space program to reach the moon by the end of the decade.  His dream would become a reality that, unfortunately, he didn’t live to see.

     By the time I was in third grade, a number of Mercury and Gemini spaceships had begun to lay the groundwork (so to speak) for the ultimate journey.  People were getting very excited about the possibilities that lay ahead.  Including one of my fellow classmates in Mrs. Jenkins’ room.

     Robert Mattern remains a mystery to me, in hindsight.  He was in my third grade class.  He and I spent a fair amount of time talking during recess.  I didn’t know then that he was merely a temporary traveler on our educational path to Hempfield High School.  If he was enrolled in our school before third grade, I didn’t run into him.  If he stayed at our school after third grade, I didn’t see him much at all.  I assume he moved into our area for only one or two school years; and then just as quickly, he moved away.

Robert Mattern, as pictured in our third-grade classroom photo

      One day Robert Mattern explained to me that he was building a rocket in his backyard.  He was quite animated about the details of the machinery.  When it was ready, he would take off and head to the moon.  And he wanted me to go with him.  Actually, he expected this.

     I was shocked.  Not at the fact that a seven- or eight-year-old was building a space craft.  That part of the story, I accepted without question.  I was upset at the me-going-along part.  I never said that I would accompany him.  And for some reason, I found him difficult to argue with.  I didn’t have the courage to admit that I had no desire or intention of going to the moon.  In my mind, I pictured us riding on the back of the rocket as if it were a round-bellied horse, speeding toward the unknowns held by a star-filled sky.  (How would we breathe without an atmosphere?  I never considered this dilemma.)  We would travel like an intergalactic “Born to be Wild” duo, years before Steppenwolf even recorded that song.  This was scary stuff.

     Mom used to tell this story, too.  She said that I came home from school one day, frantic.  I told her then about Robert Mattern and his plan to take me to the moon.  And I moaned to her that I didn’t want to go.  She probably had to stifle laughter as she assured me that I had no need to worry.  She and Daddy would never give me permission to make the trip.  I must have felt relieved.  Memories of the rest of this vignette have therefore faded.  I don’t recall if I ever officially turned down Robert’s offer.  Maybe Mom convinced me to “just wait and see,” and to deal with the decision when the rocket was finally ready for launching.  Naturally, that day never came.

     So many people pass in and out of the course of our lives.  Some leave traces that linger.  And sometimes a casual remark, an image, a sound, or a smell will take us back to a past moment and to a random interaction with another person.  And we’ll be curious.  Where did that person go, who was with us for only a short while?  What has he been doing?  Who did she become?

     On occasion, I search online for Robert Matterns.  I look at photos of fifty-year-old men, scanning their faces for some resemblance to the boy I once knew.  I wonder what happened to him.  Did he keep an interest in space, or was it just a passing fancy?  Was it instead the building of the thing that intrigued him, the mechanics involved?  Does he ever think back to those days at Farmdale Elementary School, when he chatted with that girl with the white-rimmed glasses?  Does he ever look at the full moon and smile? 

1964: Armstrong and Macon

By Corinne H. Smith

1964:  I turned seven years old.  I was in Mrs. Felty’s second grade class at Farmdale Elementary School.  Daddy was 35, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom was a stay-at-home Mom.  We lived on Hathaway Street in West Hempfield Township.  The #1 song on the radio on my seventh birthday was “Baby Love” by The Supremes.  Mom snapped this photograph.

     Daddy worked for Armstrong.  Didn’t everybody’s father work for Armstrong, back in the Lancaster of the 1960s and 1970s?

     The Armstrong Cork Company, later known as Armstrong World Industries, had its beginnings in Thomas Armstrong’s two-man cork-cutting shop in Pittsburgh in 1860.  Technological progress gradually expanded the business into creating insulating corkboard, fiberboard, ceiling board, linoleum, and vinyl flooring.  In the early part of the 20th century, “a new [flooring] factory rose from a cornfield on the edge of Lancaster, Pennsylvania,” according to the official corporate history on the Armstrong web site.  My father was among the many men (at first, almost exclusively men) who were hired at the company’s additional post-war research and development office on Columbia Avenue.  “It was a good place to work at the time,” he says.  He spent 34 years here.

Armstrong Cork Company, Columbia Avenue, Lancaster PA, in late 1950s

     Daddy graduated from Lehigh University with a B.S. in chemistry in 1950.  He was hired by Penn-Dixie to analyze Portland cement at two of its plants:  first at the one in Nazareth, and then at the one in Butler.  He grew bored with the task.  He was the lone chemist on the site; and it was up to him to run the same tests, over and over, day after day.  During one full month in Butler, he didn’t get a single day off.  “I didn’t think that was right,” he says.  He quit the job and came back home to eastern Pennsylvania.

     For the next four years, he worked for Keasbey and Mattison in Ambler.  Here he devised the formulations for asbestos boards.  He figured out the amounts of necessary ingredients, depending on what kind of binders were to be used for the final products.  With thin paper, it was flour; with the thicker paper, it was tapioca; and with heavy millboard, it was Portland cement.  The boards would be purchased by companies that needed fireproof protection.  “I had to walk through the plant every day, and the air was full of asbestos fibers,” he says.  “At that time they didn’t know that asbestos wasn’t good for you.  When it gets into your lungs, it doesn’t dissolve because it’s inorganic.  It’s magnesium aluminum silicate.”  Much use of asbestos in the U.S. was outlawed by the EPA with the Asbestos Ban and Phase Out Rule in 1989.  While Daddy has benefited a bit from some of the resulting legal proceedings for victims, his lungs have sustained only minimal long-term effects from his exposure.  He is lucky. 

     1955 turned out to be an important year, and one of change.  On a blind date my father met Jeanette Banzhoff, a registered nurse from the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia.  She was in charge of the seventh floor of the Maloney section.  Here she once took care of Alexander Maitland Stewart, father of actor Jimmy Stewart.  She gave Jimmy updates over the phone on at least one occasion.  She had also been a student at Penn at the same time that C. Everett Koop was earning his medical doctor’s degree there.  And like my father, she too was originally from Lehigh County.  She also liked music and dancing.

     My future parents were already engaged by the time Daddy interviewed with Armstrong in Lancaster in May 1955.  He’d seen a recruitment ad in the American Chemical Society’s Chemical & Engineering News.  He knew that Armstrong marketed a line of insulation that Keasbey and Mattison manufactured.  He came over for an interview, and he was quickly hired as a research chemist.  After participating in a week-long training and indoctrination session with 15-20 other new hires (held at the Armstrong Manor, the company estate located north of the city), my father embarked on what would be his life-long career.

     In the meantime, he and Jeanette got married in October 1955.  They bought and moved into the little brick Cape Cod house on Hathaway Street in early 1956.  I would eventually show up in November 1957.

 

M. Jeanette Banzhoff & Lewis K. Hosfeld, married October 22, 1955

      At work, Daddy’s specialty became the development and adherence of paint to fiberboard for the creation of ceiling tiles.  Armstrong employees were then encouraged to be innovative.  Daddy lived up to this challenge and was able to file his first patent in 1963.  It described a “Method for Producing Roller Embossed Warp-Resistant Fiberboard.”  This technique was first used on an Armstrong ceiling tile design called Crestmont.  Eventually he would hold seven U.S. patents and two Canadian patents, all dealing with some portion of the process of making and/or painting ceiling tile.  (Click here to see them: U.S., CA-1, CA-2.) 

     White or off-white ceilings weren’t necessarily universal.  Once, an Atlantic City casino ordered brown ceiling tiles.  Some Europeans seemed to favor colored tiles.  Daddy and his associates had to use formulas to guarantee consistent hues for each batch of each tile design.

     Daddy’s job required a fair amount of traveling, too.  Though he sometimes visited suppliers to check on specifications, he most often went to the places where the fiberboard (or later, the mineral wool fiber) was made.  These included the Armstrong facilities in Pensacola, Florida, and in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania.  Once he even flew to Munster, Germany.  But the factory he frequented – sometimes as often as a week each month, when I was growing up -- was located in Macon, Georgia.

     The Macon plant made fiberboard for ceiling tile.  Armstrong owned some nearby forests.  Trucks would bring in logs – “Mainly cottonwood and loblolly pine,” as Daddy recalls – and run them through a de-barker.  Then they would be ground down to little particles of wood fiber.  A slurry was made out of this material, and it proceeded through a big forming machine to make the panels.  The last steps involved the applications of a primer and a top coat of paint.  Voila!  You had ceiling tiles.  Well, maybe it wasn’t that simple.

     When I was in second grade, my mother and I got a chance to travel to Macon with my father on one of his business trips.  I was permitted to miss school, since this was an educational experience.  We flew down to Georgia.  Mostly, I remember the heat – both in the usual southern air, and inside the plant itself.  I stood next to a huge vat of floating wood pulp, the slurry.  I couldn’t believe that my father and these other men willingly worked in such a hot and noisy factory.  He told us that the constant walking on these concrete floors was hard on his feet in dress shoes.  He always took extra cushiony insoles along on these trips.  One visit to Macon was enough for Mom and me.

     Armstrong began to emphasize the creation of even more new products.  Its employees developed such items as floor wax, cleaners, and caulking compound.  But in the long run, these endeavors weren’t worth the special effort.  “After a while, Armstrong decided to make just the floors and the ceilings, and let the little guy do the little stuff,” Daddy says.  “And that’s the way it is today.  They dropped the word ‘research’ from the sign.” 

     The kind of work that Daddy did at Armstrong from 1955 to 1989, no longer exists. Since then, advancements have been made in paint technology.  No one has to use slide rules or logarithm charts in order to insure consistent pigment measurements across the board.  In hindsight, it seems as though Daddy was the right person for his job, and he was in the right place at the right time to do it.

     Maybe his work was another reason why our birthday photos became so special to us.  During my childhood, Daddy was often away in Macon, and we didn’t always spend much time together.  Our commitment to this photo tradition meant that for at least a few minutes each year, we would be able to stand shoulder to shoulder and to be with one another.   

1963: A National Tragedy Birthday

by Corinne H. Smith

1963:  I turned six years old.  President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on this day.  I was in Mrs. Earhart's first grade class at Farmdale Elementary School.  Daddy was 34, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom was a stay-at-home Mom.  We lived on Hathaway Street in West Hempfield Township.  The #1 song on the radio on my sixth birthday was “Deep Purple” by Nino Tempo & April Stevens.  Mom snapped this photograph.  We may have been on our way to or from church, on the following Sunday.

 

     The day I turned six was the day our American president was assassinated in Dallas.

     Mom used to tell the story.  She was in the middle of baking my birthday cake when she heard Walter Cronkite’s announcement come over the television in the living room.  (The very same set that Daddy and I always posed in front of, for the birthday photos.)  Mom ran out the back door and down to our neighbors’ house to tell them.  Later she couldn’t remember whether or not she’d even closed the refrigerator door, in her rush.  I assume that she was merely in the process of mixing ingredients, and that the cake had not yet been put in the oven.  Burning the cake or setting the house on fire wasn’t part of her tale.

     Admittedly, I don’t remember that day at all.  I do remember watching the funeral on television:  watching little John John salute his father, watching little Caroline standing by.  I’m only five days older than Caroline, so I often wondered what the situation was like for her. 

     The photographic retrospective book Four Days was released on January 1, 1964.  My Aunt Bert gave me a copy of it a few months later, and we shelved it in the bookcase next to our fireplace.  I don’t think we ever really paged through it.  It was just something that needed to be there.  I used to feel some kind of eerie connection whenever my fingers touched it, mostly when I was searching for one of my nearby story books.  I still have this copy of Four Days; its once white cover, now browned with age.  I guess I could say the same of myself.

 

     My parents weren’t fans of the Kennedys.  Mom was a diehard Republican.  Daddy was a registered Democrat who often sided with the other side.  As two conservatives born and bred in the Lutheran church, they weren’t overly fond of Catholics, either.  Still, they were naturally appalled by the assassination.  If that could happen in America, anything could. 

     Every year after that, amidst remnants of gift wrap and mouthfuls of cake, I was subjected to hearing anniversary accounts: some from the people around me, and many more from TV, radio and newspapers.  Mom would tell the cake and refrigerator story.  It's tough to be merry and celebratory whenever everyone around you is soberly reminiscing about where they were when. It's enough to make a birthday girl feel like an intruder at her own party. And a real heel to even expect a party in the first place.

     As a result of this overload, I usually avoid additional exposure to JFK-related stuff.  I haven’t seen Oliver Stone’s movie.  I didn’t read any JFK books, fiction or nonfiction, until Stephen King’s novel, 11/22/63, came out in 2012.  With that title, how could I resist?  I’m pleased to say that it is a truly fabulous work.  And a long one, too.  I may even need to read it again someday.  (You can find my review of the book here.)  

     On September 11, 2001, I saw the World Trade Center towers fall via television.  In the midst of the shock waves swirling around me, I overheard a co-worker mourn, “How could this happen today?”  It turned out to be her birthday.  That’s when I thought to myself -- yes, perhaps a bit crassly -- Now we are off the hook.  We 11-22ers can pass the responsibility of national tragedy birthday holders onto you, 9-11s.  Time has helped to fade the fabric of past loss.  November 22 may be on its way to becoming a normal day again.

1962: Kindergarten

By Corinne H. Smith

1962:  I turned five years old, and my birthday fell on Thanksgiving.  I went to kindergarten at Landisville Elementary School.  Daddy was 33, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom was a stay-at-home Mom.  We lived on Hathaway Street in West Hempfield Township.  The #1 song on the radio on my fifth birthday was “Big Girls Don't Cry” by The Four Seasons.  Mom snapped this photograph.

     OK, so Big Girls Don’t Cry.  That would have been good musical advice for my first week of kindergarten.  It didn’t begin well for me.  I was one of the kids who cried and resisted initial involvement.  (Yes, I guess my tendency toward nonconformity came early.)

     On the first day of school, I spent most of the time in a corner by the door with at least one other classmate:  a boy whose name and face I’ve forgotten.  Neither one of us /wanted to participate in any of the activities or lessons.  The teacher wisely left us alone, after she saw that she couldn’t entice us into the main part of the room.  By the second or third day, I finally left the corner and joined in.  The boy stood his ground for a whole week.

     I’ve given thought to those first days, in the years that have passed.  Did my discomfort come from being an only child, and from not having been previously exposed to a larger group of kids?  Or really, to any other kids?  Was it because I’m a natural introvert?  Or was it a casualty of being younger?  On the first day of kindergarten, I was four years old.  I wouldn’t turn five until November.  Nowadays, I’d be held back until the following year, or even longer.  But in the early 1960s, this rule wasn’t yet in effect.

     It wasn’t until I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story of Success (New York:  Little, Brown and Company, 2008), that a light bulb came on, for me.  This passage appears in the chapter where he debates the differences a birthday can make.

               “Parents with a child born at the end of the calendar year often think about 

          holding their child back before the start of kindergarten:  it’s hard for a five-year-old 

          to keep up with a child born many months earlier.  But most parents, one suspects, think 

          that whatever disadvantage a younger child faces in kindergarten eventually goes away.   

          But it doesn’t. … The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year 

          has over the child born at the end of the year persists.  It locks children into patterns of 

          achievement and underachievement, encouragement and discouragement, that stretch 

          on and on for years.”  (p. 28)

     Yikes!  Is this why I always lagged behind my classmates in math in junior high and high school?  Simply because my mother put me in kindergarten when I was four?  For now, I’ll accept this explanation.  Of course, it doesn’t cover how another classmate, just one day younger than me, became a successful medical doctor.

Kindergarteners in one of the Landisville Elementary School classrooms, 1962-1963. Back, L to R: Bruce Barto, Jimmy Martin, Denise Newcomer, Jeffrey Brubaker, Jeffrey Weiksner, Doug Hummel, Scott Meiser, Mickey Houser.  Front, L to R: Karen Diehl, James Kneisley, Corinne Hosfeld, Danny Rutledge, Tracy Myers, Mrs. Grotefend, Debra Thompson, Virginia Thomas, Jack Kuehne, Denise McCrabb.  (And no, I don't believe my fellow first-day corner-sitter appears in this photo.)

     Danny Rutledge, who is standing next to me in this photo, used to make fun of my name.  Instead of pronouncing it “ca-REEN,” the way I preferred it, he always embellished it to “ca-reamy mashed potatoes.”

     What did we do in those half-days of school?  A look at our “Kindergarten Report of Progress” offers some clues.  Here are the attributes we were judged on.  Today some of them seem pretty silly.  I got a “needs improvement” mark on one of them, during the first term.  Can you guess which one?

• I keep materials from my mouth.
• I use a handkerchief properly.
• I put on and take off my own wraps.
• I follow directions accurately.
• I express myself with art materials.
• I finish my work promptly.
• I work and play well with others.
• I speak clearly in a pleasing voice.
• I keep my hands to myself.
• I sing songs in tune.
• I respond well to music.
• I share my ideas and evaluate results.
• I listen when others are speaking.
• I enjoy stories, books and poetry.
• I take responsibility.
• I bring in worthwhile material.
• I obey quickly and cheerfully.
• I relax at rest time.
• I come neat and clean.
• I attack simple problems.
• I get weighed and measured.

     Today I don’t understand why I didn’t pass muster at first on speaking clearly and in a pleasing voice.  Maybe I just wasn’t used to talking, since I lived in a house with a very vocal and chatty mother.  Nevertheless, I improved enough to get an “S” for “Satisfactory” as a final grade for speech.  A good move, since I now occasionally get paid to speak.

     This year, 1962, was also the first time that my birthday fell on Thanksgiving Day.  From this point on, we often combined the occasions.  Turkey and stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes with browned marshmallows on top, pumpkin pie and birthday cake.  Eventually Thanksgiving meant a partial family reunion for my mother’s Banzhoff clan.  My Grandma, Aunt Bert, Uncle John and Aunt Marian would visit us for the day and the dinner.  Then we’d play a spirited game of UNO afterward.  It was my favorite holiday and meal of the year.