Sue’s Memory Book for Mom and Dad

• Susie and Pop-Pop
• Mom and Dad
• Len | Sue | Laurie | Bill
• Mom and Dad 50th Anniversary
• Additional Notes

In August 2009, for Mom’s 90th birthday, Sue put together a photo album of Mom and Dad’s life. I know she printed a copy for me but I’m ashamed to say I don’t know where mine went. Laurie found her copy in one of her trunks in Spring 2019 and I took the opportunity to make an electronic copy. Sue’s album was strictly photos, so the words and captions are my addition. The dates are my guesses and subject to corrections once other people see them. I’ve tried to stick with Sue’s page format and arrangement of photos.

In August 2019, Sue provided some additional photos which I’ve added in several places where they seemed to fit, and at the end. I’ve also had several lengthy and enjoyable phone calls with Sue and Laurie to try to fill in some of the details, for which I am grateful. In September 2019, I came across a copy of Sue’s Garbutt Family Tree document from 2002 which gathered anecdotes and memories from Mom and Dad and helped fill in many details.

In November 2019 I found a collection of things from Mom, including photos, articles and note cards. I’ve incorporated them below but also collected them in a separate post called Mom’s Bag, November 2019.

In July 2020, I came across online genealogies for the Duncan, Goodloe and Pardee clans, mostly through geni.com (very little on the Garbutts yet, but I’m still looking). I’ve linked to them and added my own crack at current Duncan and Fisher family trees.

In January 2021, Sue sent me a cache of Garbutt family documents that Keri had been storing. I did a Garbutt Cache post based on the those documents plus my own online research.

So, at this point, the information below comes from a variety of sources all trying to paint a more accurate composite portrait of our Duncan family.

Here is a .pdf version of this page, in case you want to print it out or share more readily. Here is the first cut of an audio “podcast” based on this page (12 minutes), produced with Google’s NotebookLM.

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My Dad, Conrad Howard Duncan, was born January 15, 1918. My Mom, Sara Ann Garbutt Duncan, was born August 1, 1919. Both were born in Valdosta, Georgia, where they were neighbors and childhood friends (note: Mom was born in Statenville, GA, about 20 miles from Valdosta, but she grew up in Valdosta from about age 5). I think these photos might be their high school senior yearbook photos, so perhaps from 1935 and 1936.

Susie and Pop-Pop

Dad’s mother and father were Susie (Mattie Sue Goodloe) and Pop-Pop (Carl Howard Duncan, sometimes “Pops” depending on who was doing the talking). Pop-Pop was born in Gadsden, Alabama on March 5, 1888 and died in Valdosta in December 1975. That’s literally about all I knew for sure when I started this project. I’ve done some amateur genealogical searching to find more about our branch of the Duncan family.

Susie and Pop-Pop were married on Christmas Day, December 25, 1916.

Susie and Pop-Pop’s wedding made the local papers!

Susie (1893 – 1979) was a Goodloe, whose family roots trace back to 1650s Virginia and to England before that. The Goodloe family was documented in a thick genealogy book that floated around the family for a while but I hadn’t seen in decades. I found the book in 2021, hiding in plain sight on one of our bookshelves, and have written a more detailed post about the Goodloes.

Here is the Goodloe family tree I found online, curated partly by Leecy Barnett. The line traces to George Gudloe who came from England to Virginia in 1655, and goes back several more centuries in Lancashire. It’s exhausting to contemplate.

Laurie says that Susie’s mother, Grandmother Pardee, has roots that go back to New Haven, CT, and the founders of Yale University. That was news to me, but here is Pardee side of the family tree and indeed it goes WAY back…further than I’ve been able to explore yet.

All of this genealogical detail only came to my attention as I put this website together, and even then only after I was at it for several years. There are vast depths to explore, if one were so inclined; I’ve compiled a few breadcrumbs and questions in a separate post. What’s astonishing to me is how little of this family history I was aware of for my first 62 years.

Pop-Pop worked in various jobs over the years. In Valdosta he ran the shoe department at Varnedoe’s (#8 on your driving tour of historic Valdosta and here’s more) before opening his own Duncan’s Shoe Store. Sue remembers more about the store and other anecdotes about Susie and Pop-Pop starting on page 29 of her Gramma Sue Stories.

Susan Barnett Rech did a lot of genealogical research of her own. From Ancestry.com, I found these biographies of Pop-Pop and Susie that Susan submitted:

Carl Howard Duncan. Howard was raised in Gadsden, Alabama. “Pops” went to school in Albertville to a junior college.  He spent one summer at a Chautauqua, NY clinic playing mandolin and studying voice.  Originally he was a travelling shoe salesman for a shoe manufacturer, then ran shoe department in Brother Frank’s department store, and also worked in Atlanta for a shoe store. His avocation was singing and Mr. Conrad Murphy was his teacher. As a young man he went to Chautauqua, New York and studied voice. He followed Mr. Murphy to Valdosta, GA to continue his voice lessons. Howard worked at Burrow’s Department Store where he met Susie. He then leased the shoe department at Varnedoe’s Store. Due to a fire, he then moved to a separate location as Duncan’s Shoe Store (now Darby’s). Pop-pop had three brothers and two sisters.

Susie and Howard were married on Christmas Day and had a reception in Thomasville, GA. Susie usually never drank, but managed to get tipsy on the punch that day. Howard’s good friend, Lloyd Greer, and architect, also moved from Gadsden to Valdosta and married Susie’s first cousin, Julie Winn Varnedoe. For the first four years of the marriage, they lived in Gadsden, while Howard worked for Frank. Susie came home to Valdosta to give birth to her two children so she could have some help. During her pregnancy with Helen in 1918, she was very ill with the flu of that year. This somehow resulted in her having a hysterectomy shortly after the delivery and she stayed in Valdosta for some trying to recover and return to Gadsden. She suffered for years from migraine headaches for long years and complained she’d been sick ever since “Helen was born”.

When they moved back to Valdosta they lived at 308 Jackson Street, with other family members of the Goodloe clan: Gramma Goodloe, Sister Louise, Brother Wallace, and the whole William Goodloe family at one time. Louise never married and lived there all her life. Uncle Wallace, suffered from rheumatic fever and was bent double but worked for an insurance company and fell in love with a nurse, Aunt Eva, and had two children. Charlie, who lived for a time in Bainbridge, GA, was the only sibling not in residence.

Pop-pop had a good sense of humor, wrote poetry, sang tenor in the Methodist Church Choir. He loved to read and didn’t particularly enjoy going to parties which Susie loved. He worked hard and the ladies loved to have him wait on them because he had such a sweet disposition. Helen can’t remember ever seeing him ever getting angry. He took forever to get dressed in the morning and wore a support for a hernia and cologne and powder. Since the house only had one bathroom, this was sometimes very trying. When he read, he always wore a green visor, like an old fashioned accountant. He always always started saying the dinner grace in a loud voice, but trailed off to whisper at the end. They always ate dinner at noontime and Pops always took an hour’s “siesta” daily before returning to work. He would then walk back to work, which was only about four blocks away. Susie really bossed him around quite a bit and expected him to wait on her. He would always make orange juice and grapefruit juice in a shaker jar.

Pop-Pop evidently really was quite the singer in his youth, even traveling to Toronto and appearing on the radio, according to this excerpt from the History of Lowndes County. Susan noted above that Pop-pop actually followed his music teacher, Conrad Murphree from Gadsden to Valdosta. It’s a pretty remarkable thought that our immediate family line only exists because Pop-pop decided to follow his musical ambitions as a young man to set up shop in Valdosta.

Susan’s notes on Susie:

Mattie Sue Duncan. Susie, or Mattie Sue as she was usually called, was raised in Valdosta, Georgia. She did not come from a wealthy family, but even families from the middle income range in those days had servants. So she all her life did have people to help her.

As a young lady, she worked as a millinery hat designer. She met her husband when they both worked at Burrow’s Department Store. She had one sister Louise and three brothers (see Howard Duncan). Her father was a auditor for the railroad, so every summer they would go on the train and spend some time in the mountains of North Carolina. She graduated from high school, but didn’t go on to college. She had a crush on a minor league baseball player as a girl. When she visited Macon as a young lady, her friends set her up with a blind date and told her that he was deaf and that she should talk very loud, but that he was sensitive and not to mention his deafness. They told the boy the same thing, so they rode the night on the streetcar yelling at each other. Valdosta at that time was a very small town and most people were related in some way it seemed. In later years, it was hard for Susie to believe that she didn’t know everybody in town, where they lived and who’s cousin once removed they were. And she liked to drive through the cemetery on Sunday to tend the lots.

Throughout her married life until retirement, she helped Howard work at the store. She would come home for dinner at noon, but then return to the shop. Grandma Goodloe was always there to help with the kids, as were the servants, for breakfast and dinner. For years Maybelle Cooper worked for the family as a cook. After Maybelle, Otho Mae worked for many years and made great biscuits and fried chicken and lemon meringue pies, not to mention green beans. They also had ladies to help with the laundry, and housecleaners like Mary Simmons, who came up through the backyard with a slow gait and a toothpick always in her mouth.

The house at 308 Jackson is now gone, but was a big white frame house with a wrap-around porch. It had a central hall and high ceilings to allow heat to circulate. Under the porch one could play and hide among the anthills. Susie had iron beds with chenille bedspreads in a huge room that a whole family could live in. The kitchen for many years only had a wood stove. On top on the refrigerator Susie kept a switch with which she would threaten her grandchildren that if they weren’t good, she would get it down. (Though she rarely did, if ever.) In the living room was the radio, and in the den a record player. There was no central heating, only fireplaces and in later years a space heater in the den.

I don’t know how Susie handled having two Howards in the house. By the time I got to know Susie, she always called Pop-Pop “Howard” (never Carl), and used to call Dad “Son” (never Conrad or Howard). According to Laurie, Susie called Dad “Sonny Boy” or, as he always signed his letters to her, “Bunny Soy.”

In 2025, after finding Susan’s notes, I had an email exchange with my sisters who offered additional memories of Susie and Pop-Pop. Len was the first to respond:

I will try to relate some of the details that are in my memory about Susie and Pops.  I didn’t know that Mom and Dad were left with “sitters” while Susie and Pop Pop worked.  I guess I never really thought about it, but  that must have been the case as I remember that they were always at the shoe store in my youth.  My earliest memories came from things Mom would tell me about how she felt about them.  Whenever I did things that seemed to upset Mom, which was quite often as I remember, she would remark “You’re just like your Grandmother Susie!”  I knew that was not a compliment, so I was always super cautious around Susie in my youth (about ages 2 thru 7 on my part).  She scared me a bit.

I spent many hours with them at the shoe store in my early years.  I loved it there.  Pops let me play with the old Remington typewriter he had in the back storage (inventory) room.  I loved the smell in that room of the brand new shoes so carefully arranged on the shelves.  I don’t remember their having many customers, but then I wasn’t really paying much attention to that.

Mom told me many years later (when I was doing my own stint as a traveling salesman with the photography job), that Pop Pop started out their married life as a traveling salesman, a job which he really was happy doing.  But I guess Susie was having a difficult time in Georgia after children because she insisted that they settle down there and begin their work tied down with the shoe store.  Now what Mom later told me (– much later, like in my late 30’s) was that Susie was the boss at home and at the store.  She was quite a formidable controlling woman, as I understand it from Mom.  And it was Susie who liked the idea of the shoe store because at that time she fancied herself to be a milliner, and from what I gather she was very talented at designing and making her hats.  So Pops sold shoes while Susie sold hats.  For much of their marriage, they were a real team at the shoe store, or so it seemed to me.  

They were still in the big house while I was at Brenau (1959-1961).  One of my most vivid memories from that time was Pop Pop’s revelation that his dream for himself had always been to be a singer on the radio.  I found that particularly sad because by that time Mom had revealed to me that the visit that Pop Pop made to us in New Jersey by himself [around 1957 or 1958 — when Pops was about 70] was said to be because he had suffered a heart attack and had to recuperate alone in New Jersey with us.  That, according to Mom, was not the truth, which she told me later.  The truth was that he had attempted suicide and Mom and Dad felt it was necessary to keep a watch on him apart from Susie.  So I guess their marriage was not always a bed of roses — but, then, whose is?  Poor Pops.  I always found him to be a sweet, sensitive guy when he was away from Susie.  We would always find a good laugh together, but usually Susie put a stop to “all that nonsense”.

I must give Susie credit for later coming to my defense, however, when she would remark to Mom that Mom and Dad  seemed to give me a much harder time than they did the other sibs.   I guess it’s only natural that each child gets less and less strict parenting, but I still appreciated her championing my cause now and then.  Also, she told me often that I had beautiful hands and legs.  I guess the rest of me was forgettable, but at least I could feel o.k. about my hands and legs (?).

Yes, Bill, I think it was sometime in the mid-1960’s that our grandparents moved to the smaller house.  I know I visited there with Richard when Scott was a little baby (he was born in 1965).   Talk about crowded!  That little house was a rude awakening after experiencing the roomy old house they had left.  And it seemed to me that Susie tried to cram in all of her old furnishings into each itty bitty room.

I remember that one of Pop Pop’s favorite pastimes was driving his car.  Just driving and driving.  Is that genetic?  I feel him.  One of my favorite memories from that time was the day Pop Pop was told by Susie to take a drive and buy some vanilla ice cream to be served with the fresh peaches Otha had prepared for dessert.  This was to top off one of Otha’s marvelous (yum, yum) fried chicken dinners served midday, as was their usual practice.  Pops was gone for a long time but, after he came back, we finally settled down to enjoy the wonderful meal.  When it came time to serve the dessert, Otha let us know that there was no vanilla ice cream to go with the peaches.  Susie pounced on Pops, “Howard!  You forgot the ice cream!”  Pops just quietly said, “Oh, good, that will give us something to look forward to tomorrow.”  Now, I don’t know why that struck me as funny, but I remember I laughed and laughed and I seemed to be the only one who found that funny.  Later I decided that the humor for me lay in the knowledge that I had of his suicide attempt.  It seemed to me to be such a hopeful statement about looking forward to tomorrow.  I really loved Pop Pop.

I hope you’re not sorry you asked your questions and I hope this hasn’t all been too personal, but I’ve had fun remembering these grandparents of ours.  I wish I could see them today and tell them how grateful I am that they were there when they were.

Len’s note prompted these remembrances from Laurie:

What a lot of interesting memories here! I don’t know what I can add, but I do feel the need to at least comment on a few things.  First of all, though, a few things you wrote about, Len, have stirred up my sensory memories very strongly. I was a lot younger than you when Susie and Pops had the shoe store, but as you mentioned the smell of the shoes, etc., a strong olfactory memory evoked a whole sense of being there in that back room that I don’t think I really ever conjured up before, at least not for so so many decades.  I definitely remember being there, smelling that smell, playing with the calculator (for me not the typewriter, but the calculator with its paper). There were definitely always hats in the store (with little nets and long pins with pearly balls), I was aware that it was a hat and shoe store but I don’t think I knew that Susie had made those hats.  I loved the stool with the little ramp that the seller sat on whilst the customer tried on the shoes, and the wooden and metal measuring gauges, and the little mirrors on the floor at funny angles.  I don’t think I would have ever recalled all that without your evocative description, Len, without the specific memory of that smell.  How funny it is that sensory input can stimulate so much of a buried memory.

And another is the vanilla ice cream to go with those cut-up peaches–the kitchen in that house where Otha did her magic, watching her flour the block where she made the biscuits.  Does anyone else remember that Pop Pop always re-packed the vanilla ice cream into metal ice trays (without the cube dividers)?  Anyone know why he did that? I always wondered. Anyway, I sure do remember those afternoons of fried chicken dinners, with those biscuits and those butter beans and that vanilla ice cream and those peaches. And creamed corn, I think. I do remember what must have been my last of those–it wasn’t at the Jackson St. house but the little one.  Maggie was small so it was after 1975, but I don’t remember how small–2 or 3? And maybe David was there, too, but I likely blocked that. Pop Pop had already died (another terminus post quem marking post-1975–sorry, that’s a historian/archaeologist term that’s useful to say that 1975 is the earliest possible date).  Susie was bed-ridden (she died in 1979) and I don’t think she got out of bed for dinner, but Mom and Dad and Bill must have been visiting from Hong Kong. I really think I remember Otha being there to cook that dinner–would that have been possible? We definitely had all those fixings and I remember sitting at the dining table in that small house. For some reason the butter beans are strongest in my memory of that meal. I may have only been in that house that one time.

As for their moving date to that house, I think it must have been like around 1963 or 1964, which would work for your stay in the new house when Scott was a baby, Len.  I do remember how funny it was that I could hang out with Ida Little when I visited Susie and Pop Pop at Jackson Street.  Ida Little was in my cabin at Camp Dixie and by coincidence we learned that she lived right across the street from Susie and Pops.  I hadn’t ever known her or even seen her in Valdosta.  But after finding this neighbor at camp, I know I hung out with her at her house at least two summers.  And I don’t think she came to Camp Dixie until at least my second year there.  Sue and I went to camp in the summer of 1959 (Sue for her only time and me for the first time of maybe 4 years) so I believe Susie and Pops were in Jackson Street until at least 1962.  Oh!!  And now I remember that I got my first period at Jackson Street the summer I turned 13!  Sue and I were in Valdosta together that summer without anyone else of the family and Susie had to manage my horror in that bathroom by her bedroom that smelled of her Bluegrass powder and Pop Pop’s Lilac Vegetal. So that would have been the summer of 1962 (my apologies, another terminus post quem).  Do you remember we were there for that summer, Sue?  We spent time with Taffy and Terry and we hung out at Shony’s Big Boy drive-in smoking cigarettes and trying to get picked up. I bragged to Terry about not having my period yet even though I was already 13 and she didn’t believe me (she was younger than I was and she had bled already).  Then immediately the shock hit when we were at Susie and Pop Pop’s house.  I really didn’t want to tell Susie but I think you made me, Sue, since Mom wasn’t around.  We took the train to Valdosta from Miami and I remember smoking on the train, too. Why did we go there alone?

I can’t remember anything about any other visits to Valdosta between the time when I was 13 and the time when Maggie was little, but surely there were some.  I do think I only went to that little house once.  No!  New memory emerging–we stayed at Sister’s house at least once to visit Susie and Pops when they were at that little house and had no room for us. But I don’t remember who all stayed at Sister’s with the rotten-egg sulphur water where we ate breakfast off of rodeo plates.  Anyone else remember?

Random other thoughts:  I think Mom told me that Pop Pop attempted suicide more than once.  I don’t remember him coming to stay with us in NJ so I don’t know how long he was there or when that was.  Mom also told me at some point that he was depressed for a very very long time, especially because of business woes but also maybe Mom hinted that came also from living with such a difficult and demanding woman. I think Susie really rubbed Mom the wrong way and I wonder if she resented Dad’s loyal son position much. I think I would have!  So I can see why a comment about being just like Susie would come as a slap in the face for you, Len. As for Mom’s aspirations for her life early on, she told me when I was maybe even a teenager that she had had great plans for herself as a biologist with a chemist husband, that she fantasized about being a great scientific research couple like Marie and Pierre until Dad told her after they were married that he expected her to stay at home. I felt really sorry for her but reluctantly took on her model in my own marriage (not that I had a degree in biology or anything).

Weirdly, I don’t remember any stories at all from Dad’s childhood (only from mom about his models).  I guess I always thought he was too unapproachable to have had a childhood that he would ever admit to.  Mom was different, she told stories about her mother, her siblings, the Depression, being a girl.

I will add my own scattered recollections of Susie and Pop-Pop. We used to visit Valdosta more or less annually until we moved to Hong Kong in 1971. My main memories of Susie and Pop-Pop center around staying in their small house on Cranford Avenue. I have nearly no memories of their larger Jackson Street house other than its wrap-around porch and the creepy but cool crawlspace under the whole house. The Cranford house was much smaller but fully air conditioned which was important in the gross South Georgia summer heat. That house was small and cluttered, as Len recalled, and I was under instructions from Susie not to touch anything. We were much happier staying at Sister’s and Jamie’s larger house nearby.

I can corroborate some of Pop-Pop’s eccentricities, including him carefully cutting bananas onto his corn flakes every morning followed by taking an hour or more in the (guest) bathroom. He used to spend much of the day in an upholstered rocking chair in the tiny den with his green visor on, reading the newspaper, rubbing and crinkling each page with his fingers. When Susie made Pop-Pop get up, which was often, he would have to rock back and forth three or four times to get the momentum to get out of the chair. That was always fun. He was a round little man, generally very sweet but browbeaten by Susie. I can’t say I saw a lot of Dad in Pop-Pop — Dad was more Susie’s child and the two of them would vie to be “the boss” while we were in town. Susie usually won.

Susie (and Mom and I) would watch baseball games on TV in the same den — usually the Braves but later the Chicago Cubs whose games were available on their cable network (via the nation’s first “superstations“). It was one thing she and I could sort of bond over. If baseball wasn’t on, there were game shows or soap operas. When the soap operas came on it was time for me to go find something else to do. Most often, some combination of us would go visit other members of the Garbutt or Goodloe clans. That seemed to be our main activity in Valdosta. The true highlight of visiting Susie and Pop-Pop was always Otha’s fried chicken Sunday dinners, as I wrote in the post about our Valdosta visits.

I knew even less about Mom’s Garbutt side of the family, but with online digging I came up with some details. Mom’s great grandfather, George Garbutt, was raised in England and came to Georgia as a young man in 1848. He started a sawmill and the family grew and spread in the lumber business for more than a century. George’s eldest son, John William (Willie) Garbutt, built sawmills of his own, as did his son, Allie Glenn Garbutt, eventually in and around Valdosta. Allie Garbutt and his wife, Lida Maude Kittrell Garbutt, had eleven children, including my Mom, Sara. See much more of what we’ve learned about the Garbutt line here.

Grandma Garbutt (Lida Maude) died in 1947 at the age of 66, long before I was born. I don’t even know if my sisters knew her. Grandpa Garbutt (Allie Glenn) passed away in 1961 at age 82 and lived with us for a bit in Coral Gables after we returned from Cuba. I don’t have any memories of him; I haven’t asked my sisters…yet.

Mom and Dad

I don’t know a whole lot about Mom and Dad’s early days, but I’m happy Sue put together the Garbutt Family document based on a trip she took with Mom and Dad to see Len in New Orleans in 2002. It contains more of Mom’s family memories and details than I ever knew, and even some of Dad’s. Also see her profiles of Mom and Dad starting on page 23 of Gramma Sue Stories.

The Duncans and the Garbutts grew up near enough in Valdosta to know one another and Mom became friends with Helen in middle school. They grew up through the Depression and while Mom said everyone they knew was poor, none of them were truly desperate. The five Garbutt sisters were evidently quite an attraction. One of their schoolmates said something to the effect that he didn’t know what would become of his life but he hoped he would marry a Garbutt girl.

Sue’s Garbutt Family document mentions that Dad built very elaborate model ships and planes by hand. I remember he was proud of his ship models and regretted that none survived. He also built his own wireless radio; later he was a great tinkerer and fan of Heathkit stereos. In college, or maybe high school, he built his own telescope, grinding the lenses by hand. I think I still have one of the lenses (somewhere). I have retained nearly none of his tinkerer genes.

Both Mom and Dad were good divers in high school and spent lots of time at the neighborhood Barber’s Pool in Valdosta. Sue remembers a story that Mom once came there very proudly with a homemade swimsuit that turned out to be see-through once it got wet (evidently that yellow suit is what made Dad first really notice her). She ran home very embarrassed and spent all summer figuring out how to get it lined. Here is an article I found with photos and other links about Barber’s Pool which was clearly a big deal in Valdosta back in the day (and where they’re still dealing with the legacy of segregation).

Since I’ve mentioned the topic of segregation, it’s worth noting that the Valdosta of my parents’ childhood was a deeply segregated and divided place, site of some of the most horrific and widespread lynchings and racial violence in the nation. My parents were raised in a deeply racist place and time and definitely carried some of that legacy through their lives and into ours. Each of us children have had to deal with reverberations of one sort or another. I’m sure there’s more to be said on this topic but I’m not sure where or when.

Dad went on to dive at the collegiate level at Georgia Tech. Mom told the story that he once dove into a brand new pool at an opening ceremony at Tech. He lost his swim trunks and stayed underwater (which was fortunately very cloudy) for a long time hunting them down and getting them on before he resurfaced. Sue points out that may be why he has a strapped suit in the later picture.

Dad graduated high school in 1935 and went into the engineering co-op program at Georgia Tech, which took 5 years. In his words…

I went to Georgia Tech, where I was what they called a co-op student, co-operative, which means I went to school for three months, in college, in school, and then worked for three months in the field, hopefully where I would be when I finally graduated. I did chemical engineering there but I started out working for a sheet metal factory in the planning capacity, which involved chemistry alright, but it wasn’t very much chemistry engineering involved, just a lot of hard, hard work over hot solutions, for which you had to wear a complete facemask and rubber gloves and a rubber apron, and it was hot. And I worked there for two years, that is, eight quarters, because we worked one quarter and went to school one quarter. Then I worked at the State Highway Department as a civil engineer really, not a chemical engineer but I was a draughtsman there, making up plans for highways, new highways and renovations of highways. And that was for another two years, two and a half years, I guess, but that last year I was at Georgia Tech I was a co-op student working at the Baton Rouge refinery of what was then Standard Oil of Louisiana, but it was later changed to the Exxon Corporation.

C.H. Duncan interview for the Hong Kong Heritage Project

Mom went to Georgia State Women’s College (now Valdosta State University). She studied biology and chemistry, but she never ended up working a day in her life…for a paycheck, anyway. She wanted to get a business (typing/secretarial) job in Baton Rouge when they moved there, but Dad didn’t want her to. This became something of a lifelong regret for Mom — in 2013, Allie got her on camera nearly admitting as much but then backtracking to being happy being a Mom. Len also related this in 2025: “Mom and I were sitting together at the table on the Powell Dr. back porch when she shared with me one very intimate tidbit. This was a bit before I left for Arizona in 1989 after Mom and I had become more adult friends than daughter/mother. She let me know of her feelings that she had wasted her life and had nothing to show for it after all those years. She said us children got in her way. I asked why then, did she have all those children? She replied, “At the time, I just thought it was the thing to do.” Doesn’t that sound like Mom, but so sad. As painful as that was to hear from her, I will always be grateful for those times that we had girltalk together. We got closer and closer with each visit I paid to Florida after I moved out west. I really cherish the memories of those moments. I love you, Mom!”

Here are photos from Mom’s freshman year at college (1937) when she was Treasurer of the class and from her sophomore year.

Several photos from Mom’s junior year (1939) at college when she was Vice President of the class, in the Math and Science Club, and the Valdosta Club for townies.

Mom liked to recount the story of a school trip in 1939 to Washington DC where she happened to see Marian Anderson sing at the Lincoln Memorial. When Mom told the story I was never quite sure if she appreciated that it was a significant civil rights moment, or if she was just pleased that Marian was there to give a free concert for her. Her other memory of the trip was wearing pretty little shoes with holes in the top (Allie recalls Mom saying she got them from the Duncan shoe store in Valdosta) and getting blisters through all the holes because they walked around so much.

One of Mom’s proudest accomplishments while in college was being voted “May Queen” in 1940 (see GSWC article). (Note: take some time to read the rest of the paper, including “Quotes and Unquotes,” “Lighter Side of Life at GWSC” and the “Kampus Kaleidoscope.” I also enjoy the ads, including the list of the week’s films playing at The Ritz.) Her May Queen dress also doubled as her wedding dress, a few months later.

Mom made sure not to smile in her official May Queen picture because she was embarrassed by a gap in her front teeth. Later in life she was able to get the gap fixed, and when Sue started developing one, Mom made sure to get it corrected as a child. Mom had another tooth story — that she wore away her enamels by sucking on lemons as a child. She was always quite concerned that we took better care of our teeth. Nevertheless, I can’t tell you how many cavities I’ve had and recurring nightmares of my teeth crumbing like chalk.

These two photos of Mom turned up (not in Sue’s album); I’m not sure when or where they were taken, but I’m betting it was Valdosta around her college years, though the Helen picture may be later.

Mom and Dad both graduated college in 1940, during World War II but before Pearl Harbor and US entry in the war. Dad’s last co-op work assignment was at the Standard Oil refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was relieved when they offered him a permanent job after graduation, because he really wanted the job and it meant a green light to go ahead with wedding plans. (The job also meant a deferral from the armed services, which maybe pleased Mom more than Dad; the draft started later that year). Mom told the story that she and Dad were at the movie theater in Valdosta seeing a Tarzan movie when a Western Union telegram delivery “boy” (only later did I realize that was South Georgia code for a black man) tracked them down — after going to Dad’s grandmother Pardee’s house and being directed to the theater — and delivered the news with the Standard Oil offer. He yelled “I got it!” in the middle of the movie and they left to celebrate.

Mom and Dad both wrote letters to each other every day for five years while Dad was in college in Atlanta and she was in Valdosta — except for Fridays because then you would get two letters on Monday, and stamps were 3-cents each, which added up in those days. Just before graduation, with Mom heading off to life with Dad, and Mom’s mother moving to Jessup, GA, Mom and Dad decided to burn all the letters. Dad had just graduated and Mom still had a week left but she took a whole day off to burn the letters and it made for quite a bonfire. I wish she had saved a few. She felt guilty about missing a day of school and apologized to her professor. He punished her by telling her to write from Baton Rouge, which she did.

Dad graduated on June 3, Mom the next week, and on June 13 they were married. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen wedding pictures or heard about the ceremony, though evidently Mom’s mother, Lida Mae, who never left the house at that point, declined to attend which Mom regretted.) The following week they were on a bus to Baton Rouge to begin their lives together.

Mom and Dad lived at 1828 Oleander Street, in a house that looks like it’s still there, according to Google. They enjoyed Baton Rouge, making friends with a core group of Standard Oil families including the Matthies, Hedlunds, and Piercys that they would stay close to for years. They loved taking trips to New Orleans and eating, when they could afford to, at famous restaurants like Antoine’s, Galatiore’s and Arnaud’s.

Len (Helen Louise Duncan) was born February 15, 1943, in Baton Rouge. The announcement card seems like a pure invention of Dad’s (I’m not especially proud to say I evidently share some of his sense of humor…I could see myself doing something similar).

And before long, there were three daughters. Sue (Carol Sue Duncan) was born January 15, 1947 in Baton Rouge. In 1949, Dad was transferred to New York with a very pregnant Sara, and the family found an apartment in Orange, NJ. Laurie Ann Duncan was born June 25, 1949, in Orange Memorial Hospital (just like me!). They soon found a house in Chatham, partly because Mom and Dad were afraid colicky baby Laurie was keeping the apartment neighbors awake. See more in Gramma Sue Stories starting on page 11.

In 1954, the family boarded the S.S. Santa Rosa and moved to Caracas, Venezuela, where they lived there for two and a half years (the photo is from their return trip after home leave in 1956).

Per Sue, their address was Quinta Beatriz on Calle Junin, El Rosal, Caracas, Venezuela. All three girls went to Escuela Campo Alegre, the American school in Caracas. They had a spaniel dog, Winkie, whose nails clacked on the tile floors in their house, to Mom’s consternation. See more on Venezuela in Gramma Sue Stories, starting on page 39.

Not in the original album, this holiday note from Mom and Dad in Venezuela turned up. I think it may have come from Aunt Helen’s stash of things. For those not tuned into Mom’s handwriting, I’ve tried to decipher below. Seems like Mom had her eyes on escaping Venezuela — think she liked it there?

Felices Pascuas (Happy Easter)
Prospero Ano Nuevo (Happy New Year)
Greetings from Venezuela for a most happy holiday season. Howard is going home on business Tuesday and we’re green with envy. We’ll have to look forward to next summer. Will probably be in Valdosta for the month of July and have to see you then. I hope you can come to Valdosta too. We may come home early but I don’t know. Will visit N.Y. and sail from there August 22nd. It sounds too good to be true. Merry Christmas to all! Sara and Howard.

The family returned to New Jersey in early 1957, living on Evergreen Road in Summit for a few months before buying a house at 42 Browning Road in Short Hills. That’s where I was born on March 28, 1958. Laurie remembers that for the time in Summit, each of the three girls went to different schools and Mom had to chauffeur each in the mornings and afternoons, sometimes also getting Dad to and from the train station. Mom hated driving on icy roads and had several bumps along the way, and some days had to drag Sue into her school. In the second year, Sue and Laurie went to the same school, Hartshorn Elementary, where I would later go for sixth grade.

In the summer of 1959 we moved to Havana, Cuba for a short posting before Castro hastened folks like us to leave. Mom saved this Havana Post article announcing Dad’s appointment to the board of Esso Standard Oil, S.A. (Esso’s holding company for South American adventures, I think). I didn’t know he was on their board, particularly at that point. It’s too bad the Havana Post didn’t have better editing controls (check the second sentence), but I guess they were under a lot of pressure. Nevertheless, this is the most detail we have of Dad’s working life to that point.

Laurie remembers leaving Havana abruptly at Christmas Break in 1959, spending Christmas in Valdosta, and then the family ended up in Coral Gables in early 1960. We lived in a rental home in Coral Gables for a year or so before moving into a new house in South Miami. We lived there until 1964 when we moved to Aruba.

Sue’s Memory Book then moves to sections on each child, but to round out Mom and Dad’s story…

In 1966, Dad was transferred back to Esso Chemical in Coral Gables. Mom, Dad and I lived in a house on South Alhambra Circle with a canal in the back where Dad kept a boat and began fishing in earnest. Mom played a lot of tennis and bridge. See more in Bill: Coral Gables-New Jersey.

In 1969, Dad was transferred to New York where I believe for a time he was secretary to the Board of Directors of Exxon. We lived in Short Hills, NJ, on Tennyson Drive. Dad commuted into New York each day, hating it most of the time. Mom played lots of tennis and bridge. See more in Bill: Coral Gables-New Jersey.

In 1971, Dad was transferred to Hong Kong where he was the Managing Director of Peninsula Electric Power Company and a Director of China Power and Light. All of us loved Hong Kong — it was a peak experience (a bad pun, just for Dad). See more in Hong Kong Pre-Barb and Hong Kong with Barb.

In 1977, Dad retired and moved with Mom to Riviera Beach, Florida where they rented a condo at Sugar Sands for a year while their house on Powell Drive was constructed. Dad bought his dream fishing boat, a 28-foot Bertram that he named Por Fin. They lived and fished and welcomed grandchildren for a long happily ever after. Dad ended up retired for 37 years, exactly the length of his Exxon career.

There’s more to their story after 1977, which you’ll see through the rest of this site from my perspective. They didn’t leave many direct remembrances of their own. Mom and Dad lived long, full lives until 2014.

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Now, a section on each child and subsequent grandchildren.

Len

Len (Helen Louise Duncan) was born February 15, 1943, in Baton Rouge. She moved with the family to New Jersey, Venezuela, back to New Jersey, and when the family went to Cuba in 1959, she went to Brenau Academy in Gainesville, GA for 12th grade (Sue thinks because school in Cuba only went thru 10th grade). She graduated from Brenau in 1960, went for a year to college at Brenau and then came to Coral Gables with the family where she attended the University of Miami for awhile. Around 1962, she married Mike O’Farrell, who she met in Miami and whose father was also with Esso, but the marriage only lasted a year or so. In 1964, she married Richard Molinari and lived in Coral Gables until Scott was born on April 21, 1965 when they moved to a new house in Kendall, Florida. (That made me an uncle when I was age 7 — I am closer in age to Scott than to Laurie.)

Len and Richard stayed together more or less until 1972 when Len and Scott moved to Key West with Sue and Laurie.

She met and married Mike Horne around 1974 in Key West, where Mike owned a Harley Davidson shop. That marriage lasted until about 1980, after which Len moved to West Palm Beach near Mom and Dad. She stayed in that area several years, moved to Fort Myers, Florida in about 1984, then back to West Palm Beach for a few more years. She moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico in about 1990, Carefree, Arizona near Phoenix in about 1992, and Green Valley, Arizona near Tucson in about 2002.

Scott grew up in Miami and Key West, some with Len and some with Richard. He went into the Air Force around 1985, was stationed in Germany (Zweibruken AFB?) and met his future wife, Carmen. They settled down in Germany, having their son Alexander in 1991 or so. They all live together in a small town, Kashofen, in southwestern Germany.

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Sue

Sue (Carol Sue Duncan) was born January 15, 1947 in Baton Rouge. She moved with the family to New Jersey, Venezuela, back to New Jersey, to Cuba, then to Miami and Aruba. Sue graduated high school in 1965 in Aruba and went to Simmons College in Boston, where she graduated in 1969 with a degree in psychology. Here are Sue’s more detailed recollections of her academic journeys:

No kindergarten – no such thing in Chatham NJ in 1952.

1. 1st grade – Chatham Elementary, Chatham, NJ.  I remember hiding under my desk in a nuclear bomb drill, thinking that wasn’t going to help much.  I’d seen the movie clips that Ed Sullivan said were not appropriate for children.  I peeked anyway.
2. 2nd, 3rd, half of 4th – Campo Alegre School, Caracas, Venezuela – wonderful, loved it (all except Spanish class where the teacher wouldn’t let you take a bathroom break and I had a very embarrassing accident)
3. 2nd half of 4th and 5th – Summit Elementary School, Summit, NJ – I got what the doctor diagnosed as “school-itis.”  Probably my first big depression.
4. 6th grade – brand-new Hartshorn Elementary School, Short Hills, NJ (a favorite year of biking with friends on the wonderful hills where all the streets were poets and authors (Browning, Byron, Tennison, Coleridge…)  Played harmony in recorder class — and “the clarinet, the clarinet, says doodle-doodle-doodle-doodle-det”
5. 1st half of 7th grade – Ruston Academy, Havana, Cuba – LOVED it!
6. 2nd half of 7th grade – Ponce de Leon Jr. High School – Coral Gables, FL – that’s where I learned to play clarinet.  Fabulous band teacher, private lessons.
7. 8th and 9th grade – South Miami Middle School – bigger and better band experience
8. 10th grade – Southwest Miami High School — huge, horrible experience.  Big-time depression.
9. 11th grade – Everglades School for Girls – truly meaningful education.  All girls made life so much easier.
10. 12th grade – Seroe Colorado School, Aruba – hard time adjusting, wonderful spring semester

and then

1965-69 Simmons College, Boston MA – started in Chemistry, switched to English, and got my degree in Psychology – women’s college in a sea of colleges

1971-72 Lesley College, Cambridge, MA – Masters in Education – learned much of what I see happening in Agile Learning Centers.  Another all-women’s college.  My favorite.

1974 – 76 Stanley Switlik Elementary School, Marathon FL – 3rd+4th grades in a pod with three other classes, then 2nd grade at Sue Moore School.  That was enough for me.

1986-88 Parent educator, Stanley Switlik – volunteered in all grades, created my own activities, loved it!

1994-97 Parent educator, Santa Fe College – loved opening people’s eyes and hearts

1999-2006 Alachua County Waste Alternatives – I took that job to learn how to do public education on a county level.  20 years later, I’m finally doing it.

1990-2024 – informal education, home, schools, communities – Keys to Peace, Peace Education Now, FutureFlash! Project, Climate Collaboratory.  Quite a process!

Sue has shared a lot more about her life and memories in a separate project for her girls called Gramma Sue Stories. She posted this video for her 75th birthday:  2022-01-15 Me, My Dad and Martin Luther King.

Sue and Laurie had a brief adventure in Australia in 1970 not long after Sue finished school. Sue came back to New Jersey where she got a job at Chubb Insurance in Short Hills; after a few months she was promoted to a job to NYC and commuted into town with Dad. That didn’t work out very well, and perhaps not coincidentally, in the summer of 1971 we moved to Hong Kong. Around the same time, Sue and Laurie moved to Boston where they both got jobs at ABT Associates in Cambridge. Sue then decided to go to grad school at Lesley College for elementary education, where she graduated in 1972.

In 1972, Sue, Laurie and Len decided to move together to Key West. They lived together in a pink house for a while. Sue worked at the ARC helping the disabled paint fishing lures. She met Tom Blythe and shortly thereafter moved to Grassy Key, where they got married in June 1973 (we came to the wedding).

Sue and Tom had three girls, Carolyn (now Keri) in May 12, 1977, Susanna (September 19, 1979) and Jill (May 19, 1983) and raised them in Grassy Key and Marathon. Sue and Tom divorced at the end of 1989, about the time Sue moved with the girls to Gainesville.

Keri married Jon Shinn in Gainesville in 2003 (we were there!) and had four children, Jonah (now Autumn, b.2006), Alden (b.2010), Trey (b.2014) and Leo (b.2018). Susanna married Riad Saidi in Gainesville in 2009 (the ceremony was in St. Augustine) and had Amila (b.2011) and Reef (b.2014). They moved to Asheville, NC in 2014. Jill went to the Galapagos as an au pair in 2006, met Javier Moreno who she married there in 2008 and founded Galapagos Alternative. They had Elia (b.2011) and Maia (b.2018). Jill married Fernando Franzetti Actis in 2023, the same year she had Ember Franzetti Blythe.

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Laurie

Laurie Ann Duncan was born June 25, 1949, in East Orange NJ. She moved with the family to Venezuela, back to New Jersey, to Cuba, then to Miami and Aruba.

For her junior and senior years of high school she attended the Cambridge School of Weston in Massachusetts where she met David Schmitt. She attended one year at Boston University in 1967, then went to Miami for secretarial school and worked with Len at Mortgage Associates for about a year. She moved back to Cambridge, living sometimes with David, some on her own until she and Sue went to Australia in 1970. Laurie went back to Cambridge after the Australia episode, and Sue later followed where they both worked at ABT Associates until Sue went for her Masters.

Laurie was visiting us in Hong Kong for a few months in early 1972 when she found out David had been in a motorcycle accident in Woodstock, NY. She went back to help take care of him, and then married David later that year in Woodstock. They moved to Coral Gables and then South Miami where David started medical school. Maggie was born October 7, 1975.

Laurie and David divorced in 1986 after moving to Boston in 1978 for David’s medical residency and back to Miami. Laurie stayed in Miami with Maggie for several years, completing her Bachelor’s degree from University of Miami in 1986. They moved to Philadelphia in 1990 where Laurie studied ancient history at the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated with a Masters in 1992, then taught at Friends Central in Philadelphia from 1992 through 1999. Maggie attended Friends Central, graduating in 1994, and was accepted at Harvard. Before going, she took a gap year in Africa, first in Kenya for a few months with a National Outdoor Leadership School program, then traveling down the eastern side of Africa to Zimbabwe, where she stayed with a family in the communal farmlands for most of the rest of the year. I remember her coming back with a great wad of homemade peanut butter.

Laurie taught at the American Community School in Beirut from 1999-2003 before teaching two years at Graded American School in Sao Paolo, Brazil (2003-2005). She attended an International Masters program in Peace and Development at Universitat Jaume I in Castellon, Spain in 2005-2008, including some time back at Friends Central, which is when she moved things into our house. She then worked at the American School of Guatemala in Guatemala City from 2008-2010.

Laurie started working for Kulturstudier, operating 3-month college semester programs (Peace and Conflict Studies, Religion and Power) in Pondicherry, India from 2010-2013 and Ghana in 2014. Between semesters, she stayed part-time in Madrid and bounced extensively between friends and family in the States. In 2015, she “retired” when the Ebola outbreak in West Africa got close enough to close the program in Ghana. Laurie stayed in an apartment in Madrid for about a year before getting a place in Segovia, not far from Maggie and her family.

After graduating from Harvard in 1999, Maggie joined Laurie in Beirut for one year before gravitating to Madrid. She lived in Madrid for about 15 years in various arrangements and apartments, including about 8 years with Cristina Vega in Lavapies. Maggie worked on many projects, becoming adept at simultaneous English-Spanish translations as well as contributing articles to The Atlantic and others. In order to secure papers for Spain, Maggie married a friend, Sandra, and meanwhile also met Juan Alcon. She divorced Sandra, married Juan and had Sam in 2012, the same year she co-authored the book, The Gaza Kitchen. Maggie, Juan, Sam and new baby Nico moved to La Losa in 2015.

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Bill

Bill (me, myself, I) was born March 28, 1958 in Short Hills, NJ (technically, at the Orange Memorial Hospital where Laurie was also born — now a nationally historic place, for obvious reasons). I moved with the family to Havana, Cuba for a short time in 1959, then to Coral Gables, FL, in 1960. We moved to a house in South Miami in 1961, Aruba in 1964, back to Coral Gables in 1966, Short Hills again in 1969, then Hong Kong in 1971.

I met Barb in Hong Kong, where we both graduated high school in 1976. I went to Georgetown University while Barb went to the University of Virginia, both graduating in 1980. We got married in 1983 and lived in Northern Virginia before moving to Columbia, Maryland in 1990. We had Allie in 1995.

Allie graduated high school from Glenelg Country School in 2013 and attended Babson College, graduating in 2017. She lives in Boston where she worked at Staples headquarters for one year before moving to online shopping company Rue Gilt Groupe.

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Mom and Dad’s 50th Anniversary

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Additional Notes

Many thanks to Sue for compiling this album. Some additional photos:

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As a companion piece to this photo album, here is the poem Sue, Laurie and Len (I guess maybe I contributed too, but don’t remember doing so) wrote on the occasion of Mom and Dad’s 50th anniversary. We presented it during the celebration at Captiva Island, Florida. It’s a recounting of their lives together, trying to get them to fill in more.

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Mom kept a copy of this undated column from Ann Landers. No further explanation other than the note “Didn’t know if you saw this” sent to (or from?) an unknown recipient. It seemed to strike a chord with her. Just sayin’.

This article came from a collection of items I found in a bag on my shelf of photos. It’s was a set of photos and articles that Mom had collected and saved over the years. I’ve incorporated the items into the flow of the other pages in this website, but I made a single page where they’re all together to make it easier for people looking just for them. It’s called “Mom’s Bag, November 2019.”

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This seems to be as good a place as any to include this YouTube playlist of songs that Len, Sue, Laurie and I associate with Dad. The four of us collaborated in 2018 to cook up this list, sharing memories with one another. It’s not all-inclusive, but it was fun to put together. It includes, at the end, a video that Leecy Barnett put together of photos to honor what would have been her Mom, Helen Barnett’s, 100th birthday.

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In 2013, Allie did a school project that included a video interview of Grandmom and her history. The project was about changes in attitudes toward women in the workplace. The videos are linked here:

• Grandmom interview 1
• Grandmom interview 2
• Grandmom interview 3