Posts Tagged ‘ James B. Woodman ’

It’s Veteran’s Day. Ninety-seven years ago, shortly after 5:00 AM, Paris time, French, British, and German delegations signed an agreement to have the shooting of the Great War stop at 11:00 AM. On this day of the year,  I experience a sense of time warp, a feeling of being transported back to a moment in history. The savage noise of the guns is–for a little while, anyway–replaced by an enormous sacred silence. The two world wars form a big …Read More

Robert Frost wrote, “Nobody was ever meant, to remember or invent, what he did with every cent,” but my grandfather obviously disagreed. He tracked his expenses–to all appearances every nickel–in a slim little book with an oxblood red leather cover. His record-keeping started in June, 1910, when he was looking forward to his wedding in October. The first item entered (for $50) was  “Ring.” In September, he listed several things that would furnish the couple’s new residence–chairs (one Morris, one …Read More

Everyone gets assigned a different war. My dad, Ev Woodman, served in the United States Navy in World War II and took part in the invasion of Normandy. Deafening noise, shells bursting on the beach, the ocean running pink with blood—he got the whole infernal nightmare. His dad, in contrast, didn’t get to France until shortly after the Armistice in World War I. James B. Woodman, M.D., was quickly put to work doing “reconstructive surgery” on the wounded, …Read More

We’ve just had the umpteenth snowfall of the season, and I hear the scrape of my neighbor’s shovel and the rumble of snow plows going by. On Facebook, there are dozens of pictures of snow banks, snow plows, snow forts, snow angels made by little kids. Sifting through old family photographs, I come across similar photographs taken in January, 1919, in Franklin, NH. New-fallen snow there, too, and children in snowsuits. Like this pic of my dad shortly …Read More

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” So goes the first line of L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel, The Go-Between. In New Hampshire, you can often take a day trip to that foreign country and do things the way they do them there. You can dance traditional square and contra dances on the scuffed wooden floors of grange buildings or squirm through lectures in the back-breaking pews of village meeting houses. On Sunday, I played …Read More