LETTERS

Joe Berwick: Father

To THE EDITOR:

"Joe Berwick, the Sandwich Man" wasn't "just a sandwich man." He was first and foremost a father. There were ten of us to bring up — eight girls and two boys. Those sandwiches came from fifteen loaves of bread a day - twelve dozen cup cakes - frosted, and six pies. The love of our wonderful Mother was in that cooking - many hundreds of boys had the best to eat when Joe Berwick called out "Sandwiches." It was a part of our livelihood and we each had our stint at the bread mixer for five hundred turns every night.

Our father certainly had a beautiful tenor and stentorian voice. Many times we sat on the porch and as we watched the rain come sweeping down the hill and across the fields with thunder and lightning we sang all the lovely old songs he taught us, with harmony, and at the same time teaching us to face the storms of life unflinching, with courage and song. There were times when we were up on Balch hill, in the woods scampering over the trails, finding many flowers, violets, adder tongues, miliums and others. Time didn't exist for us and it wouldn't be long before we heard our father's voice reverberating in the hills as he would call us with cupped hands from the front porch.

When he would come home from the now non-existent Butterfield Museum where he worked as janitor and teacher too, for he could teach when someone became ill, we would meet him on top of the hill and he would find all kinds of silver money in the road we'd just come over and make us wideeyed. Then he'd have us march, stomach in, shoulders straight, one two, one two, down the hill to home, Mom and supper.

Dad's doctoring abilities stood us, friends, neighbors and students in good stead over the years. He was a crackerjack diagnostician and knew what to do. Many's the night he sat up, night after night, with us, when we were ill, keeping us warm or cool, whatever the sickness indicated - cheering us, encouraging us, singing a little lovely song. He turned no one away who came to him for help and, of course, his pay was deep friendliness and love of service to others. . . .

"Joe Berwick, the Sandwich Man" had stature, constantly improving his mind with new books, medical and others, until the day he went to the hospital. We each have many memories of Dad as a father - but they belong to us to pass on to our children in our struggle as parents and teachers, to bring them up into kind and strong human beings.

We knew too the characteristics of our father - and of his "snorts"— which somehow seemed to go at times with his great and tremendous love for song causing him to constantly surround his fellow man with singing.

I write the above because "Joe Berwick, the Sandwich Man" was our father, our teacher, our minister, our doctor, and love for our parents, each other, and people is strong because of them. May God bless them and keep them.

Buffalo, N. Y.