The Saga of Stewartville

In Media, PA when Michael was growing up we lived in a very small house which was used at one time for a vacation cottage. It had an attic, one floor of small rooms, and a basement which had a dirt floor. Yes, it was tiny compared to American standards. However, when some Japanese friends came to Media to live for a year, they were wonderstruck by the amount of space we had. We lived on a half acre with lots of trees, plants, and flowers. I told the Japanese wife that lots of people thought our house and land were too small, and she shut her eyes in pain. "In Japan, we think..so much space!!" Everything is relative.

We were able to put a cement floor down in the basement and that green plastic turf--called Astroturf, I think?--over that so Michael could play down there. Here begins the saga of Stewartville.

We had some lovely neighbors on our street, Jim and Blanche Stewart. I loved Blanche. She inspired me in a quiet way to be a deep-thinking woman and not get distracted from my true goals in life. She spoke rarely, but well, and she didn't believe in touchtone phones; they had one telephone in the house with a dial. Blanche had a cat named Misty, and Misty loved Blanche but hated everybody else. It went along with Blanche's mild witchlike manner; she was attached to the earth and nature and told me a lot about what to plant and when. "Never before Memorial Day should you plant anything," she told me and I followed her advice. When I had Michael she came and let me show off my beautiful new baby boy, telling me, in her own Blanche-like quiet way, what it was like for her to become a mother. Blanche and her husband Jim took a special interest in Michael after that.

When Michael was eight he grouped together pieces from various toys and games, also some of the railroad cars my husband bought him and, with lots of paper and cardboard, began to build the town he named Stewartville. It was a major undertaking and took weeks to build. It had streets, stop signs, stores, office buildings, and even a town square and lots of houses. While he worked on Stewartville I did not insist that he stop work and come and eat dinner with us. I gave him a plate of food that he could take downstairs with him and continue his work. Why? I wanted to let him know the importance of creativity and individual achievement.


Stewartville was done or almost done when we had a heavy rainfall and water came into the basement and soaked Stewartville. I sat on the basement steps, holding my head in my hands, sobbing my heart out. What was wrong with us? Why couldn't we have a better house with a real finished basement? What were we doing to this defenseless child--all that Mom stuff except it was very real.

And Michael came up to me and said: "Don't cry Mom! I shall rebuild!"

He cleared away the soaked mess, salvaged what he could, and rebuilt Stewartville, only this time he added a memorial in the town square dedicated to those who lost their lives in the big flood of Stewartville.

If anybody reading this knows my son, it just puts another piece in the picture of why Michael went to Haiti to help with the cholera epidemic, went to Japan after their earthquake and risked his life there, and added onto those two times, went into some of the worst hell-holes on this earth to perform humanitarian aid work. After hurricanes Katrina and Rita he went south to help with the Red Cross, staying three weeks and establishing a "MASH" unit with only rudimentary medical supplies and the help of a nurse from Chicago who took time off from her job to help also. I'll end with this: if you ever needed somebody to go through hell with, if you ever needed somebody to guard your back, be in your corner, or help you with a computer problem, this is my son Michael.