Ray Schumack

Born just a few years before the United States descended into the Great Depression, Ray Schumack lived through World War II, served in the Korean War, completed his college education thanks to the GI Bill and enjoyed a long and successful career in marketing and public relations before moving to Southport in 2003.

Ray has vivid memories of his early years in the Bronx, a time when milk and ice and a lot of other products were delivered door-to-door by horse drawn wagons. "It was a big deal when those metal wagon wheels were replaced with rubber tires," he says, "The streets were noticeably quieter." His grammar school education was literally "all over the place," as his family moved six times from one apartment to another, each time getting a month's free rent as an incentive from the newest landlord. "I didn't feel smart," he says, "until I was finally able to spend two years in the same school in Queens and took a test that ranked me near the top of my class."

Despite hard times, the Schumack family weathered the Great Depression more comfortably than many other families. Ray's father was a foreman carpenter in charge of maintenance on the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. He earned a good salary --$35/week--owned a car and could afford to build his own summerhouse on Lake Peekskill. "I never knew that I was living through the Depression until later when my parents told me about it," Ray says. Asked about his mother, Ray said, "She wasn't interested in cooking and housework. She read great books to my older sister and me, not kid stuff but classic literature like Homer's Iliad."  

Ray (standing left) with some of his Korean War buddies

After World War II ended, Ray's family sold their house in the country to help finance his first two years at Fordham University, where he began to study law but found his courses in journalism much more compelling. When family funds became scarce as a result of his father's bad investments in the stock market, Ray became a part-time student and applied for a job as a photographer at The New York Times. There were no openings for photographers but there was one for a copy boy (aka "gofer") in the Editorial Department. He got that job and the course of his life's career was set.

North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950 and the US once again went to war. Ray was an unmarried, healthy 22-year-old male with a full-time night job at the Times. He was taking a few college courses but not enough to be deferred from military service. Within days, his local draft board classified him 1-A. Two months later, he was inducted into the US Army and shipped to Fort Devens. And a year later, in August 1951, he landed in Pusan, Korea-a country he had never heard of prior to the beginning of the war.

At the Army's 3rd Infantry Division Replacement Depot near Seoul, a lieutenant approached Ray with a clipboard holding his records. This is their conversation, as Ray recalls it:

LT: I see you worked as an editorial assistant at The New York Times.

RS: Yes sir. (Editorial assistant sounded better than copy boy when filling

out his forms)

LT: And you can type.

RS: That's right.

LT: How would you like to be assigned as a combat correspondent writing for

Stars and Stripes?

RS: (To himself--This is great. I'll be another Ernie Pyle!)  

Ray's new book recounts his experience as a combat correspondent for Stars & Stripes during the Korean War.

Ray's nine-month stint as a combat correspondent-learning on the job--was launched. "When you come out of the service, you don't talk about it for the first 50 years," Ray says. But now, wanting to share those memories with his family and others who may be interested, Ray has written and self-published a 75-page book that describes this important period in his life: News Dispatches from the Korean War. The book, based on his scrapbook of news clippings and 50 letters that he sent home to his parents at the time, paints an intimate, on-the-ground picture of a soldier's daily life. His very readable account is available in both printed and electronic formats; see information at the end of this article.

Leaving the Army at age 24, Ray eventually married, became a father and worked full time at one job and three part-time jobs as well while he finished college with the support of the GI Bill. He landed a job as assistant editor for a national trade magazine and, in a series of progressively more responsible positions, went on to develop his expertise in trade association management, public relations and journalism.

"The most exciting job I ever had," he says, "was working for 15 years as chief communications officer in the Park Avenue headquarters of a Fortune 500 company," where he was responsible for corporate communications and product promotion for 17 divisions worldwide. "The CEO saw us--his employees--as teammates and rewarded excellence." In 1988, Ray went off on his own, setting up a marketing and communications company that continues to serve clients on a reduced scale from his home on PGA Lane.

Ray is the very proud father of a daughter, an RN and hospital administrator, and two sons, both lawyers. For the last ten years or so, the woman who shares Ray's life is Carol Sager. Her company, Sager Educational Enterprises, offers coaching, consulting and seminar services to executives and others looking to move forward in their careers. Ray first noticed Carol at a conference in the Boston area and they had a very professional, technical conversation about web sites. Other, more personal conversations followed.  

Ray Schumack & Carol Sager in Ireland, one of the many countries they've enjoyed visiting together.

 Carol, an alumna of Barnard College, holds a doctoral degree and enjoyed a long career as a teacher and school superintendent before becoming a consultant. Both Ray and Carol work best in their own space, so she maintains her office in Boston while Ray has his office in Southport. "We think of Boston as our winter home and the Cape as our summer home," Ray says. They enjoy traveling with small group tours and, among other places, have visited China, Russia, England, Ireland and Italy.  

Now that Ray has mastered the technical aspects of self-publishing, he is moving on to write a book about growing up in the Great Depression and another titled So You'd Like to Publish a Book. However, he's discovered that writing a book is not the hardest task: "It took me two weeks to write my book about Korea," he says, "and another two weeks to polish it up. But it is taking months to market it." Trying to get your book noticed among some 40,000 self-published books published in the US every year is daunting-to put it mildly.

So, having read Ray's book, here is my plug for it. This is not just another book about the horrors of war. It reads like a series of letters from a young man who, thrown into a situation about which he knew little or nothing, made the best of it and found a path to his future career as a writer. The book is available in print ($13.95) and kindle ($3.99) versions from Amazon and other outlets. More information at www.koreanwarstory.com. Ray will be the featured speaker at a Brown Bag Lunch in November 2013.  

We're rolling down the highway

on a full tank,

the night is cold and the moon is high

and my thoughts seem to scatter

like litter along this lonely stretch of road.

U2 is taking up the air waves

"where the streets have no names"

urgent guitar riffs ring out

as my mind reels back

like a movie,

and suddenly I am somewhere else,

with someone else. . .

I have traveled nameless streets myself,

a journey often wrought with

desperation, disappointment, and heartache;

a rite of passage

I revisit in that blue moon phase,

and in one single blinding moment

I see it all so clearly

yet I cannot grasp it,

for I have long since moved on -

the moment is gone,

stolen by an aging forlorn ghost

who disappears like smoke

over a snowy rooftop.  

The faces blur,

still the engine roars

and the road behind

is somehow shorter,

or are the objects getting too close?

The images seen

through that oval shining piece of glass

only reflect what has come to pass.

How it all blends together so seamlessly;

the passage of time

like broken lines on a highway,

each one representing a single step

of where we've been

and where we're going.

The song has ended

and my memory is slipping from view,

like the winter landscape whizzing by.

The road goes on,

the tank is less than half full,

and streets have yet to be named,

guided by a waning moon.  

The Native Americans we read about in history books are usually described as men who went hunting and fishing or are portrayed as warriors. We also find references to them engaged in "shore whaling," that is, harvesting whales that washed ashore, as whales sometimes still do on Cape Cod beaches. It's unusual to find an article about Wampanoags signing up to sail for months, or sometime years, to hunt whales throughout the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, I recently discovered just such an article, "When Mashpee Indians Went Whaling Together," written by Dr. Russell G. Handsman while he was research director at the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington, DC.  

Mashpee Wampanoags were among the many men from southern New England who experienced the dangers of hunting whales in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The early American whaling industry transformed the lives of Mashpee whalers and their families. Wampanoags from the Cape, like other men from southern New England, were an important source of whaling labor well into the early 19th century. Dr. Handsman has been engaged in an ongoing study of how their whaling experiences helped to shape the histories of Native American communities. Information in the National Archives enabled him to develop life histories of specific whalers, and the stories of their connections between work and home helped Handsman to understand the impact of their experiences once their whaling days were over.

Handsman's article refers to the 1825 voyage of the whaling ship Good Return, which left New Bedford on a ten-month voyage, probably to the South Atlantic whaling grounds. Seven Mashpee Wampanoags, ages 15-42, were part of the 22-man crew. The presence of that many Mashpee men on the same voyage was unusual. However, whaling together in pairs or small groups has been documented in the logs of 20 ships' voyages between 1815 and 1835. While at sea, Mashpee men very likely talked about pressing issues back home, including abuse by white neighbors of tribal natural resources and their desire to govern themselves, free of appointed guardians. Men at sea also had the opportunity to share in the experiences of global travel and cultural encounters while observing how people lived in the many ports they visited.

When they returned home, men like Solomon Attiquin often became actively involved in community affairs. In 1834 Mashpee natives sent a petition to the governor of Massachusetts to be allowed to govern themselves. The petition also stated that no white man could cut trees in Mashpee and that the Wampanoags would confiscate any timber being removed by a white man. When Mashpee men forced a trespassing white man to unload his wagon of fresh cut trees, their action resulted in what I described in a previous article as "The Indian Revolt."

Among the signers of this petition were at least ten Mashpee whalers, including four who had shipped out on the Good Return. With all that they had learned while traveling the world, after retiring from the sea they served their community as selectmen, constables and spokesmen for Mashpee's continuing demands for more self-government.

Herman Melville memorialized Wampanoag whalers in Moby Dick. But unlike the fate of his character--the Gay Head Indian harpooner Tashtego--the Mashpee and other Wampanoag communities survived to the present, in part because their men went whaling together. Native mariners talked about much more than a 'great white whale.'

SOURCES

Russell G. Handsman, "When Mashpee Indians Went Whaling Together," 1995

Mark A. Nicholas, "Mashpee Wampanoags of Cape Cod, the Whalefishery, and Seafaring's Impact on Community Development," The American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 2, Spring 2002, pp. 165-197

IMAGE  

Photo-engraving by Milton J. Burns, 1894. Mystic Seaport Image Archives      

Karen & Jim Chelotti

Jim Chelotti, with his wife Karen at his side, succumbed to Picks Disease (frontal temporal dementia) at Hospice by the Sea in Boca Raton, Florida on March 2, 2013. 

_____________________________________

Naturally athletic, Jim overcame the limits of his five-foot four-inch stature by becoming a life long body builder, even excelling at basketball by learning to shoot a wicked off side shot from outside the key.

Verbally abused by a father suffering from post war trauma, Jim was always encouraging and supportive, even to opponents on the tennis court, gaining him the nickname "Gentleman Jim."

With no financial backing, Jim worked his way through Dean Junior College and parleyed that into degrees from the University of Bridgeport and Suffolk University.

Having to work after school to support his family during high school, Jim later made up for the activities he missed by advising and coaching clubs from dramatics and speech to ski and track events during his 34-year teaching career.

Growing up in an apartment, Jim married and taught double sessions to get the down payment for a house. Eventually divorced, Jim continued to be a strong presence in his four children's lives, introducing them to hiking, snow picnics and the beach.

Financially strapped, Jim lived in a rented room for five years, becoming a DJ, starting a college search business, and selling laminated pictures from magazines at flea markets to make extra money.

Shortly after meeting an unemployed divorced woman at a softball game, Jim arrived at her door with bags of groceries, hugs for her two children, and won her loyalty and love in a 17-year marriage.

Always open to new and varied experiences, Jim liked to read, visit museums, collect stamps, watch the Patriots, take long distance bike rides and play horseshoes, which gained him the additional nickname of "Mr. Ringer." He was also a published writer and represented Massachusetts at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation at Princeton University.

Jim's life was a testimony to what optimism and belief in goodness can accomplish.

He believed that grace is not a reward for good behavior, but is provided by God to everyone for strength and guidance.

Jim was not a saint, but he was a truly contented man who never lost the enthusiasm found in the eyes of a child. It was my privilege to have been his soul mate and the love of his life. He taught me how to be a better person, lessons that I will try hard to hold onto without him.

Ti amo, Jim!

Provincetown Has It All 

History, Art, Food, Shopping, Wild Beauty & Wild Times  

by Karlyn Curran

Provincetown is one of my favorite Cape Cod destinations to visit with friends

and guests. There's so much more to the town than just Commercial Street;

I have to pick and choose what to do and never have enough time to do it all. 

Classic seaside cottages line Route 6A on the way into Provincetown.

The town lies at the very tip of the Outer Cape, about 60 miles and 90 minutes (without traffic) from Mashpee. The year-round population of 2642 people (as of 2010) swells to about 60,000 in summer. Most of the land belongs to the National Park Service as part of Cape Cod National Seashore. Commercial Street is the heart of populated Provincetown; it's filled with galleries, stores and restaurants and provides unrivaled people watching.  

My favorite way to get there is to take Route 6 to where 6A branches off to the left in Truro. Follow 6A past two clusters of tiny beach cottages with names like Daisy and Poppy, all in a row on the edge of the water, and enjoy the amazing views of Cape Cod Bay with Provincetown in the distance. Once in town, bear left onto Commercial Street and slowly drive the entire one-mile length of this charming, narrow, usually crowded street. Watch out for bicyclists and pedestrians as you get an overview of downtown Provincetown.   

Commercial Street, lined with galleries, stores and restaurants, is the heart of downtown, and you can't beat it for people-watching.

Buildings on the left back up to the bay and both sides of the street are crammed with beautiful houses and bustling businesses. The Lobster Pot Restaurant (great fried seafood) on the corner of Commercial and Standish Streets marks the center of town. You'll want to return here and park your car but for now keep driving until Commercial Street makes a sharp right and becomes Province Lands Road. Get out of your car here and visit the tiny circular park containing a small monument commemorating the Pilgrims' first landing in America. Walk out on the nearby breakwater and see two of Provincetown's three lighthouses: Woods Edge and Long Point (neither accessible by car).  

Race Point Lighthouse

Continue along Province Lands Road through the National Seashore. Pass the Province Lands Visitor Center and the airport and you will arrive at Race Point Beach, possibly the best beach in town. A short walk brings you to the third lighthouse in Provincetown: Race Point. Return to the visitor center and, if you do nothing else, at least climb to the upper deck for a spectacular 360 degree view of outermost Cape Cod.

Now it's time to return to downtown Provincetown and park your car, preferably at the huge lot adjacent to MacMillan Wharf at the foot of Standish Street. Another lot by the Pilgrim Monument is a short walk away and, if that one is full, an attendant will direct you to other available parking.  

A dune buggy ride through Cape Cod National Seashore with Art's Dune Buggy Tours is an exciting (and only authorized) way to experience the sandy hills surrounding Provincetown.

My hands-down favorite thing to do in Provincetown is to take a dune buggy (really a Chevrolet Suburban) tour of the National Seashore dunes. Art's Dune Tours (4 Standish Street) was started by Art Costa in 1946, driving a 1936 Ford 'woody.' Now his son Rob's commercial enterprise is the only one allowed access to this part of the National Seashore.

The hour-long ride takes you onto shifting sandy automobile paths through the dunes while the driver educates you about the vegetation and animal life. You enjoy magnificent views of the dunes and ocean and pass small dilapidated dune shacks where artists, writers and people seeking solitude retreat to in the summer. Make your reservation as soon as you get into town and plan the rest of your day around it. You can also take a whale watch cruise out of Provincetown. Several companies, including the Dolphin Fleet and the Portuguese Princess, leave from MacMillan Wharf.

An aerial view of Provincetown shows the landmark 252' high Pilgrim Monument (right of center) and MacMillian Wharf (bottom left). Commercial Street wends its way through town just one block  in from Cape Cod Bay.

For another spectacular view and a taste of history, climb the Pilgrim Monument and visit the Provincetown Museum at its base. The 252' monument is the tallest all-granite structure in the US and dominates the Provincetown skyline. Panoramic views of Provincetown Harbor and the town, Cape Cod Bay and the National Seashore are the reward for your exertions. The museum's exhibits highlight the Pilgrims' stay in Provincetown. They landed here first but found the climate and land inhospitable and eventually settled in Plymouth. The Mayflower Compact was signed in Provincetown.

Now it's time to sample the ambiance of downtown, have a bite to eat, shop and visit art galleries. Provincetown has three distinct populations: Portuguese fishermen, artists and gays. Fishermen are fast disappearing but the artist and gay communities are thriving; their commercial ventures and lifestyles spill out of the stores and into the streets.  

The Lobster Pot at the center of town offers great fried fish. For something a little more adventurous, try Bubala's by the Bay or Bayside Betsy's; both have water views.

There are more than 100 restaurants in Provincetown, but a few of my favorites are clustered together on Commercial Street, in the first few blocks of the East End; they all have water views. Bayside Betsy's (#177) and Bubala's by the Bay (#183-185) have excellent luncheon menus, and Trip Advisor ranks Jimmy's Hideaway (#179) as Number 5 out the town's eateries, but it's expensive and only open for dinner.

As for shopping, you can't go wrong just exploring any store or boutique that appeals to you. There's the usual summer tourist stuff. Try Cuffy's for good quality Cape Cod t-shirts and sweatshirts and bargain prices at the end of summer. Window-shop the t-shirt stores whose offerings often feature outrageous messages good for a laugh. Fill your own bag with every imaginable flavor of saltwater taffy at two candy stores near Town Hall. Get a painless temporary tattoo to embarrass your kids and grandkids and wash it off after you've had your fun. For the serious shopper, Provincetown offers designer clothing, leather goods, shoes and jewelry and, of course, art of every description and price range.

The residents of Provincetown know how to party. The Portuguese Festival (June 26-30, 2013) features Portuguese food and dancing and culminates on Sunday with a boat parade and the Blessing of the Fleet.  

The annual Carnival Parade (August 22 this year) is Provincetown at its most 'colorful.'

The Carnival Parade (August 22, 2013) is a hoot! This year's theme is "Viva Las Vegas." Gays from all over the country descend upon Provincetown for Carnival Week. The fun begins before the parade (which never starts on time) when transvestites, dressed in their flashiest clothes, big hair and high heels, strut their stuff along the parade route.  

Three caveats: 1) Stay away If you find this kind of entertainment offensive, 2) Don't plan to shop or sightsee because the town will be too crowded, 3) Don't drive. Several travel agents, including Karyn Wendell, charter a bus to the event. (Karyn also charters a bus to "Secret Gardens of Provincetown" on July 14). 

One last practical tip: There are clean free public restrooms at Provincetown Town Hall, 260 Commercial Street (see also the beautifully restored historic meeting room on the second floor) and near MacMillan Wharf where the buses enter. My enthusiasm for Provincetown makes it almost impossible for me to stop here, but the editor says I must. Go see the town for yourself! 

Sandy Bernstein is a freelance writer and web designer. Her poetry, articles, and fiction have appeared in such publications as The Writer Magazine, Writers' Journal, Poetic Voices, Flashquake Magazine, Mind Fire, and many other print and web publications. She is a long time member of the Stoneham Writers Group. Currently she is working on a novel, an excerpt appears on her website www.sandybernstein.net. 

If you have a
Kindle, you can access her short story "Creepies"on Amazon for $.99.

www.amazon.com/dp/B00BKMXDDS

Karlyn Curran moved to Southport from New Jersey in 2003. She has a daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren in Falmouth and two sons, their wives and another grandchild near Hanover NH. After her husband passed away and she retired from her teaching career, she moved to New England to be closer to her children. She loves Southport and Cape Cod.  Even more than that, she loves being a "hands-on" grandma. She caught the travel bug from her husband and this has resulted in a chronic condition.   

 

David Kapp, with his wife Billie, moved from Connecticut to Southport in 2009. David retired from a career as a university library administrator, after working in the libraries at Brandeis, Harvard and the University of Connecticut. He was a building consultant for the planning of a number of major university libraries and was, for many years, the editor of Connecticut Libraries. Billie enjoyed a career as an educator and social sciences consultant. The Kapps are frequent visitors to Hawaii where their son, daughter, grandson and other family members live.