By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
DEC. 22, 2020 | One of the joys of the holiday season is the arrival of Christmas cards, from neighbors, of course, but particularly from friends from far away. For many, it’s the one time of the year you hear from them, as you keep your friendship intact.
One of the days following Christmas, I’ll sit down for about a half hour, and read through the 2020 cards again, to make sure I pick up all on our friend’s adventures during 2020. It’s also a good time to see if people have moved so that we have their correct address for the 2021 sendings.
We are delighted to get the often beautiful standard cards. However, today with modern printing methods so handy, we now get to see the creativity of friends in telling us about their lives, in words, but also in photographs. Or details of their lives in longer letters. (New these days: cards becoming mini-movies of activities sent by email.)
Sometimes you smile when you get these Christmas messages, often at the photographs of people involved. Whatever the message, it always warms your heart.
However, it’s unusual and surprising to bust out laughing at one of the cards. That happened to me this year when receiving what was expected to be a photograph of a far-off family. They most often use a current picture of their family. However, this year it was the photograph of their family from their card of 1978, saying in red letters this year “A Year to Remember,” and under that an explanation “We liked 1978 more than 2020.”
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All is not happiness in reading Christmas cards. You hear of sad events in the lives of friends, and you feel for them. These are often unexpected, adding to the sadness.
Chiswell
A card from Port Townsend, Wash., contained such a message. It told of the death of one of our friends, a former resident of Cardinal Lake in Duluth, Alfred Chiswell. He died in Port Townsend on September 25 at age 77. We received the card from his wife, Maury (Maureen), who still resides there.
Alfred had a tremendously innovative person, and was always tackling engineering projects from an early age. In telling about his childhood, he would say: “If the federal firearms laws had been in force when we were kids, and we had been caught, we would have been sent to either reform school or jail.” You see, he was always blowing up something with dynamite, or into other teenage pranks.
Alfred was a native of Southern Pines, N.C., and went on to graduate in electrical engineering at North Carolina State University. He was decorated as a captain in combat duty with the U.S. Signal Corps during the 1960s.
His background was perfect for joining the telecommunications industry. His telephone career took him to sites in Europe, South America and Saudi Arabia. Eventually he was transferred to Gwinnett with one of the companies
Alfred taught me a lot about his hobby, which was the field of Endicott forts, and he had visited many of them. (Fort Pulaski, near Savannah, is one of them. ) These are the five-pronged brick forts that guard our seashores. He was an expert on them. In his last home of 21 years in Washington, he continued his interest in forts as a member of the Coast Artillery Museum at Fort Worden State Park, where he was a tour guide. For his work there, he was volunteer of the year and given a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 from the Washington State parks.
Alfred Gregson Chiswell, 1943-2020: may you rest in peace.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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