| Roe Family 2024 Christmas Letter |
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Another quiet year for us with most of the activity focused around our daughter and her family. Donna, her husband and their two Golden Retrievers moved into their new home the first of the year after almost two years in an apartment. We're very fortunate that she and her children are all living nearby in Vernon - at least for now. Donna continues to teach English as a Second Language to adults in Willimantic and Mark C. creates videos for the Saint Francis/Trinity Health hospital group in Hartford.
Since Easter they have been hosting family events almost every month. Donna loves to entertain creating games and activities for each event. Click here for a short video of one of the games from an October party. It was a cold and windy day adding to the challenges. The Grands are all doing very well at their jobs. Annie is a Product Design Supervisor at Collins Aerospace, Katie is a Product Manager at Traveler's Insurance and Adam is a Controls Engineer at JT Automaton.
The big news is that our oldest granddaughter Annie, while on vacation in Italy, became engaged to longtime boyfriend Thad Dang. They will be married on Halloween next year, but are missing a real opportunity by not having everyone dress in costume for the wedding. Their generation waits longer to tie the knot than in our day as they all have careers and finding an affordable house to raise a family is a real challenge.
Son Mark is still at Lego. Although the majority of Lego is moving to Boston his department will stay in the area, which we are all glad about. He made one business trip to Europe this year where Lego has its headquarters in Denmark and a manufacturing facility in Prague. Two more trips back planned for 2025. It had been some years but I visited Mark at work this year and always enjoy the tour. It's a unique office. Where else are you surrounded by toys? Each Christmas Deb and Mark's card chronicles their year and is on our website to enjoy. This year he used AI to create a cartoon of his year.I turned 85 this year in pretty good health, which is an achievement in itself. But the body does start breaking down a little at a time. Nothing too serious, but I'm having to visit doctors and take meds for the first time in my life. The TaiChi/Qigong classes I've taken for over 20 years help a lot with stability and control. Our class of 'old folk' have been on Zoom since Covid and it makes things easier not having to travel in cold weather.
I've also started seeing a naturopath as I'm very disappointed in the annual 'Wellness Visit' modern medicine passes as a physical. I didn't realize I was being spoiled by my old school medical doctor of 25 years who was open to my natural medicine approach and gave a real thorough physical. But she too had enough of the modern health system and retired. Jan has some health and mobility issues and prefers to stay near home. An outing now is lunch and a visit to a thrift shop, which she finds fascinating. We both get monthly body work at home from an old friend that takes out some of the kinks. Donna living nearby stops in regularly and takes Jan to lunch. No travel this year. Sadly that part of our life seems to be over, but we're grateful for the many places we have visited over our lives together. The weather in Connecticut was strange again this year. Very heavy rain with winds the first half the year and record drought through the fall. When the year ends it will be a year of average rainfall. We've been investing in the house each year. Found a new carpenter/painter and had a number of things fixed, painted or upgraded. Sadly our long time carpenter and friend Kurt passed last spring with ALS. We hosted Thanksgiving and Christmas for the family this year as our large living room is better suited for 12-15 people indoors.
Finally publish my first book, "David Allis and the Birth of Vernon" documenting the first 90 years of our town. Allis built what was perhaps the first saw and grist mill in town, was a local organizer during the Revolutionary War but his contributions were lost to history. I love bringing these early people back to life. If interested click here for an online pdf of the book. It's intentionally short and readable. I did a program in January for the historical society on Count Munchow, my favorite scoundrel, co-led a walk in August at a local cemetery, and am preparing a talk for January on a forgotten 19th Century preacher that rivaled Billy Graham and has also been forgotten. The DAR gave me an award in January for my work, which was nice. My memory is not what it once was so I'm feeling less comfortable doing the programs and now have to read much of the them. I've been working on a second book about a distant branch of the Roe family that settled in nearby East Windsor and produced a writer famous in the mid 19th Century. He and his son were friends of Mark Twain. I enjoy the research more than the writing, but will finish it next spring. Then more Vernon history and family genealogy books will hopefully follow. I've also kept busy with a few local projects and work with other historical societies. I have, however, begun to step back from leadership roles to focus on writing. Our generation, now in our 80's, are retiring from running non profits and, sadly, the next generation in their 60's and 70's aren't stepping up. We will lose a lot of our cultural activities. We hope you and your families stayed safe this year. You can reach us at Jon.Roe@comcast.net. We'd love to hear from you.
Jon & Jan
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