Off the Hook Archive melb@marysvillejt.com  Home Subscribe Photos

Off the Hook - Archive 2012
by Melanie Behrens

1/27/12
The return to Switzerland
My friend Kathy Cotter has now turned into a world traveler. She and her husband Bob took their first European trip this last April to Switzerland and Italy. The real reason to go was to visit their son Kevin and daughter-in-law Andrea, plus their granddaughters Emma and Sydney, in Konolfingen, Switzerland. They are there for about two years with the Nestle Co. Kathy thought that might be her only trip to the beautiful country, but no, she had to make a very quick one recently.
Andrea Cotter was having surgery in a Swiss hospital and the family needed help with the children, so Kathy was on her way again. She had much concern about traveling to Europe alone, driving in a strange country with two little girls in the car and dealing with a place where almost no one speaks English.
To begin with, her plane trip was uneventful, arriving in just seven hours in Zurich, Switzerland, about two hours from Kevin’s home. She took this as a good omen that all would be well.
Her duties included driving her grandchildren to school at the International School of Bern, actually located in Gumlingen. The school has children from all over the world who don’t seem to notice each other’s differences.
Not only do the names of the cities sound strange, but also Kathy says very few people speak English in these small towns. In fact, even if you speak German, it may not be understood there since this area of Switzerland speaks its own separate dialect. I remind you that Kathy at this point speaks only English.
In order to drive Emma and Sydney to school, she had to go through many small towns with roundabouts. Even though she had practiced driving with Kevin, she was quite afraid of getting lost with the little girls in tow.
In a roundabout, you must also negotiate around the people walking in front of you and bicycles clogging everything up. The Swiss ride their bicycles everywhere, rain or snow. She did make one wrong turn and got a little lost, finally stopping to ask for directions. As anticipated, the person didn’t speak English, but when her destination was mentioned, the person pointed in the proper direction. Gas is $8 a gallon in Switzerland. The trip to school was supposed to take her about one half hour each way, but it seems Kathy allowed an hour for problems. She considers driving this route two times a day her biggest accomplishment.
After dropping the children off at school, she went to see Andrea in the hospital. That meant parking in a hospital lot located a 15-minute walk from the hospital. Even though Andrea had great care, the family felt the hospital was dreary, since the walls of the rooms were all unpainted gray concrete block. It looked like a basement.
Everyone complained about the quality of the food and there were no televisions in the rooms. It would all be in German anyway and most of the hospital staff did not speak English. But the doctors did, and Andrea’s doctor was the head of the department so they called him professor.
When at home, Kathy had to have lessons in operating all appliances in the kitchen and laundry room because everything looks different. When cooking, she had to convert the temperature from Celsius listed on the oven. Then there was the toaster. It operated by twisting a knob and pulling out the rack. There was no popping up.
In their apartment building, each family has a separate tiny laundry room in the basement. The washer and dryer don’t look anything like the ones we have. That’s where Kathy met the neighbor, Sylvia. She ran into her there quite often. Sylvia spoke no English, but freely conversed in German and Kathy would just continue to say, ja!
This is considered a very safe part of the world, one where even young elementary children can ride a public train 10 minutes or so to school. Stores close at six in the evening and nothing is open on Sunday. The exception to that is a 24-hour market where customers just take what they want and leave the money in the unattended store.
All in all, Kathy’s mission to help her family was accomplished!
___
The hand of fate
Their seven-day Western Mediterranean cruise started on Dec. 4, 2011. The tragedy occurred on another cruise but the same ship with the same captain nearly one month later.
Don and Roberta Coder have good timing and fate was with them, so to speak. Their cruise was on the Costa Concordia, the same ship now lying on its side and mostly under water in the Mediterranean Sea. Local attorney Dave Allen and Lynne Bauman were also on the cruise.
Don describes the ship: “The Costa Concordia was a huge ship at 16 stories tall and over 900 feet in length. As we entered the ship, it felt more like entering a city. There were multiple restaurants and lounges throughout, including spas, small shops, and even a casino. The rooms were spacious and nice. It was difficult not to get lost, and we did on many occasions. It was also very difficult to evaluate this enormous ship without thinking that it was truly “unsinkable.”
Don continued: “It is hard to believe this wonderful ship floundered on the rocky ledge of an island in the Western Mediterranean. I am thankful not to have experienced this terrible event while on our trip. Our memories are all good, and we will remember this huge ship, the Costa Concordia.”
Thankfully these four passengers from Marysville chose to travel in December and not January!
Back to top

1/20/12
From Russia with love
Faye Cox, a local attorney and partner in the firm of Schulze, Howard and Cox, and her husband, Jim, a financial planner and partner in McCarthy and Cox, had nearly everything. They were two professionals with a young son, Kaleb, now 3. All they needed was a daughter to complete their family.
They decided on adoption from the country of Serbia. That wasn’t going smoothly, so the whole operation was shifted to Russia. There they eventually adopted a daughter, Caroline, who is now 1 and home with them in Union County.
The course of foreign adoption needs a guide and theirs was an agency located in Cleveland. That made the whole experience a lot easier. They help by providing the way through mounds of paperwork and also by providing drivers in the foreign cities and interpreters in court. Apparently lots of patience is also required of the family.
Then there’s the expense. A Russian adoption requires four trips to the country. Each of those means 11 hours flying from New York City to Moscow, hotels, food and court costs.
Their daughter, Caroline Elizaveta, was adopted from an orphanage in Tver, Russia, located about three hours northwest of Moscow. Little English is spoken there and the Coxes felt like real outsiders.
Jim pointed out that signs in the city and on businesses gave no hint to what goes on inside, since the alphabet is unintelligible to Americans. Then there was the one restaurant that had a sign, which said chicken house sandwiches in English. They went right in and chose something from a picture on the menu, because the sign was all the English there was. What arrived was a not-so-good pressed vegetable sandwich!
Caroline is a child of the Roma-Gypsy culture. This is a group of people who are looked down upon by Russians as less than desirable. Faye and Jim, on the other hand, are so glad to have her. She is a beautiful child with lots of dark hair and dark eyes, typical of her heritage.
Faye described the scrutiny of their income, health, home and family as quite intrusive, but eventually worth it. Oh yes, a health certificate for their dog was even required.
One of the four required trips to Russia involved a court hearing. The female judge didn’t speak English, so the interpreter was a necessity. There, they were again questioned about their lives and occupations. The court had much trouble understanding Jim’s financial planner status. He thinks it may be because Russians are just learning about money management.
Under communism, the government even owned your home, so there was no incentive to improve it and many are quite run down. Just recently the people have begun home ownership.
With regard to women, Jim and Faye agreed many are beautiful and wear expensive designer clothing. They saw them dressed in that apparel coming out of the most deplorable housing, and determined all of their money must be spent on the “look.” Men, on the other hand, were more simple and casual in their dress.
According to the new parents, Russians are not warm and fuzzy and in particular those over 30 even sneered at them when they were in public with Caroline. Maybe that’s because they realized she was being adopted.
During the time spent in Moscow, they saw extreme pollution, enough to make you choke. They also noticed everyone smoking, and learned beer is not considered an alcoholic beverage because it’s not high enough in alcohol content.
There were 80 children ages 0 to 3 in the orphanage where Caroline lived and in the Tver region there are three such orphanages. Foreign adoption is much needed.
Jim and Faye feel Caroline is now right where she should be as their daughter and Kaleb’s sister.
 Back to top

1/13/12
One giant diverse family
I’d say this couple exemplifies the term “super parents.” I’m sure they would disagree. They are just busy building a normal family. They’re not looking for accolades or a TV show, but may hope to inspire others to adopt.
Polly and Kevin Green had two sons and in 1988 wanted to adopt a daughter. That’s the start of how their family grew to 24 adopted children. The last two of these are twin girls, 14, from Liberia, and their final adoption is pending. There are 22 children in the house now and two others in college.
By 1990 the Greens had their first adopted daughter from Korea. Then they wanted her to have a sister and so on. Most of the adopted children are foreign and many have special needs, including a cleft lip and palate, Down’s syndrome and heart problems. One daughter needed a kidney transplant and that was eventually provided by her adopted brother already in the family.
It’s not just the health problems, but the number of children that make Polly very tired at night. Even so, she’s happy about it! When asked about viruses, she said they seem to be pretty immune except when the H1N1 was contracted. The family took a big hit with 16 sick at a time.
When they go to the doctor, Flu shots mean everyone lines up in one exam room and then the shots are just given right down the line. At the dentist, 17 go at a time with all hygienists coming to work that day.
Those from international adoptions are from Cambodia, Liberia, Hong Kong, Ethiopia, Korea and the Philippines. Some spoke only a little English when they arrived, but Kevin said within a month they usually communicated well. The family lives in the Fairbanks School District and all attend there except for two who are home schooled.
Polly is a master shopper who searches for bargains on everything. She is chief cook and a few of the girls like to help, but that isn’t required. All of the children are responsible for their one job, which is some small cleaning chore during the summer and on Saturday. No child is responsible for another one. Kevin and Polly made it clear, they are the parents and are there to take care of the children.
They agree the big problem in the house deals with food. It can be an arguing point since it takes a lot to convince some of the children there will be enough for them. Many have not had that luxury before becoming a Green. Many times they didn’t know where their next meal would come from and can’t quite get over that. Those same kids are almost always found in the kitchen when Polly is cooking because of an almost obsession with it.
Kevin is the grocery shopper. He’s the king of coupons and every Saturday at 4 a.m. (because there are no crowds then) he heads out with a few of the kids in tow to buy groceries at four different spots.
The Green family lives in a beautiful three-story brick home on several acres. They have four floors of usable space, but only three and a half bathrooms. It forces the youngsters to plan their bathroom time. There are seven bedrooms upstairs and the third floor is a dorm-type area for five. That’s how the kids wanted it. The lower level has two large bedrooms and a family room. They travel in two large vans — each with a capacity of 15.
Once a year a vacation to the beach is a must and includes the rental of several condos. At home, there are no private date nights for Polly and Kevin, but on each child’s birthday they are taken out with their parents for dinner.
The Greens are active members of the Church of the Nazarene and prayer is an important part of family life. They feel prayer is what led them to each of their children. Those living in the house now range from ages 20 to 5.
Polly and Kevin cherish their time to talk to each other. It’s at 5:30 a.m. over coffee! Theirs is a life they sought and one they love along with their 26 children.
 Back to top

1/6/12
Marysville 60 years ago - Part 2
Last week I told you about 60 years ago in Marysville from the viewpoint of Marysville residents, Kae Zorman and Linda Trees, members of MHS class of ‘58. They were born in 1940, just before World War II started and were together at East School for many years. The story continues.
Kae’s mother, Belva, owned a beauty shop at the present site of the Union County Chamber of Commerce on W. Fifth St. The family lived upstairs. Linda would come to spend the night and the girls would sit in the window and watch bar patrons from Awanda’s Tavern stumble out late at night. This served as an early education for them!
Kae remembers ice skating on Plum St. That is to say, the streets weren’t cleared well in the winter in the 1950s. In fact, Linda said in the country, roads were plowed from each side making a huge wall of snow right down the middle. It was impossible to see the cars on the other side of the road.
About Linda living in the country, by sixth grade Linda and her family had moved to a 50-acre farm in the country. She considered it a fate worse than death ... worse than stating your life on the east side of town! Living in the country was so limiting and she felt really out of the action. Even worse than that, the family had one chicken, one rooster, one pig, etc. She would start to know them and then the animal would be missing, but later show up on the table in some form for dinner.
The girls moved on to junior high. Kae has an ornery side now and apparently got her start in those years. It seems some students (there were only about 70 members in their class) loved to pull pranks on study hall teachers. Kae was the expert with itching powder. It seems she would make a quick pass behind the teacher and dump some on his neck and down his shirt. Then the class waited for the extreme reaction. It never failed to produce!
The organized “study hall rowdies” would also, on cue, begin the roll of the hard gum balls. They were released all at the same time from the back, rolling down the rows to the front. The particular teacher then just picked all of them up. No repercussions. How would that go today?
Linda was a majorette in the high school band and remembered every Friday after the home football games (played at the field on Grove Street now Lewis Field) the band would march down to the high school on W. Sixth St. (now the Union County office building) with students and friends following them! She said it was such an innocent time it didn’t take much to have fun.
Linda remembers the town was so small that kids couldn’t get away with anything in the car. Everyone knew who you were and what your car looked like. They would be glad to report to your parents if necessary. That, said Kae, was a terrible event. If you were in trouble in school or in the community, the punishment at home was worse.
All this said, Kae and Linda can’t imagine growing up in a better place and that feeling has been echoed by their children. They’ve seen other parts of the world, but this is where they chose to stay.
If you missed part 1 just go to marysvillejt.com click on Off the Hook and then on archives.
 Back to top

 Marysville Journal Tribune
copyright©2012
  All rights reserved