Episode 5: Notable People in HOTGS History
“Episode #5: Notable People in HOTGS History” by Sue Lanza and Shawn Carty. Released: 2021. Track 5. Genre: podcast.
Transcription
Sue Lanza:
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of House guest, the podcast about all things related to the House of the Good Shepherd, a retirement community in Hackettstown, New Jersey. I’m Sue Lanza, the CEO and I’m joined today by my co-host The Rev. Shawn Carty, who is our Chaplain. Please enjoy. Hey there, Shawn.
Shawn Carty:
Hello Sue.
Sue Lanza:
How are you?
Rev. Shawn Carty:
I’m doing well, here we are.
Sue Lanza:
It’s episode number five.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Can you believe it?
Sue Lanza:
No, I don’t know what happened.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Are we getting our sea legs? Do you know that term?
Sue Lanza:
I do know that term and sometimes I feel a little woozy, but today I’m feeling pretty good. So thank you for that. So today I’m understanding we have a very important theme, because we’re back to our history. We diverted a little bit onto some other topics, but we’re back to history. So tell me about our theme. I’m very excited.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Well, I thought today we could talk a little bit about some of the particular people who are here in our history. Part of our story here at the House of the Good Shepherd and there are several people in particular I want to share. Some of the things I’ve discovered is I’ve been digging through the archives, I know you’re doing as well. We’ve been discovering things as we go through the archives, fun pictures and all kinds of stories and I wanted to share a few of those today.
Sue Lanza:
Yeah. Because I hear that we do have some interesting connections that maybe we hadn’t thought of or known about. I’m sure I didn’t know about these when you were mentioning them to me. So I’m sure all of our listeners will be equally as tantalized.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
That’s right.
Sue Lanza:
So tell me what’s the first one. I can’t wait to hear about this.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Well, do you ever remember reading Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift?
Sue Lanza:
Oh my goodness. Yeah. For some reason I thought that was a scary Sci-fi book because the guy was really big then he was really little.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Well, it does definitely have some of those elements to it. It’s been years since I’ve read it, but it was really meant to be a satire. And that was much of what Jonathan Swift wrote.
Sue Lanza:
I didn’t realize that. I just thought it was some kind of a kid’s tale that talked about big and little and when all the things in between, and it totally reminds me of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, remember that movie?
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Yeah, it definitely has that Sci-fi aspect to it, doesn’t it?
Sue Lanza:
Yeah.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
So long story short, there is somebody in our history who was related to Jonathan Swift here at the House of the Good Shepherd.
Sue Lanza:
Get out.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
And just to give ourselves a little orientation historically Jonathan Swift lived from 1667 until 1745. Born and lived all of his life in Ireland. And from my perspective, an interesting connection, he was a priest in what was then the Church of England and was known as Dean Swift because he was the priest who served at the Cathedral, a Dean.
Sue Lanza:
Oh my goodness.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
So, he was Dean Swift. And as I mentioned, he was very much a writer of satire and even still you’ll hear occasionally really educated folks talk about something being very Swifty and as though it’s a satire.
Sue Lanza:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rev. Shawn Carty:
But our connection, I think is quite interesting. We had a woman who lived here at the House of the Good Shepherd who was connected to him. And I thought I could just read little bit. This is from an article from the Eastern Express published on November 9th, 1967.
Sue Lanza:
Okay.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Just a couple years after we got ourselves established here in Hackettstown.
Sue Lanza:
Yeah.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
She was a 104 in the year 1967, which is amazing.
Sue Lanza:
It is because that age is still a marvel today but back then, wow, couldn’t even touch it.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
I mean, at the moment I don’t know the exact count, but we have several centenarians in our house at the moment. But back then 104. So here’s the story. I’ll just read a few paragraphs of it. At the age of 104, no one should have to put up with traffic conditions in today’s highways. Can you imagine what they’d think of traffic in 2021?
Sue Lanza:
Oh my gosh. In Hackettstown. Oh my goodness.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
In 1967.
Sue Lanza:
Dear.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
At least that way seems to be the way Miss Mary Louise Swift looks at it. So Mary Louise Swift.
Sue Lanza:
So she really has the name and everything.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
That’s right. Miss Swift of Hackettstown who turned 104 today, recently expressed a wish for an automobile ride. This was the big outing.
Sue Lanza:
I thought she didn’t like traffic.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
I guess. I don’t know.
Sue Lanza:
Oh dear.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
An aid at the House of the Good Shepherd, a retirement community in which she has lived for the last nine years. So in other words, she was part of that group.
Sue Lanza:
The group who came and transferred over. So she lived in both places. There’s probably only a very unique group that did that.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
She put her an aide from the House of the Good Shepherd, put her in a car and started out on an area highway. The centenarian observed her 100th birthday anniversary today, November 9th, 1967 with friends at the home. She received a telegram when she turned a 100 from President Kennedy and there’s some other wonderful little details. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. And she likes to tell people she arrived just 10 days before President Abraham Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address.
Sue Lanza:
Oh my goodness.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It’s interesting how we are connected to history.
Sue Lanza:
Oh wow.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
She is a direct descendant of 18th century writer Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, we talked about. She does not know how she is related, only that her grandfather was born in England and now talks about that. So it’s not entirely clear.
Sue Lanza:
It’s a little vague, but we’ll go with it.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
We’ll take it. We’ll go on with it.
Sue Lanza:
Yeah.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
She describes in this article, she says one of her childhood memories was watching the building of the Brooklyn bridge.
Sue Lanza:
Oh my goodness.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
A noise made by the contractors annoyed me, she said.
Sue Lanza:
Well, she doesn’t like traffic. You know that.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
I just thought that was fun. She sadly died the next year. So she lived to be 105 and there was a write up in the local paper as well, reiterating some of what was described in the first article. I thought that was a nice connection.
Sue Lanza:
It is a great connection. And I love the fact that she clearly stated in two cases how she didn’t like hustle, bustle and loud things. And boy, she came to the great setting. If she came from the oranges out to here, she probably loved the setting down by the river, quiet, nobody knows you’re here.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Well, and she would’ve seen that transition from going from orange, as we talked about in the last episode to coming to this place, which is so nice and quiet.
Sue Lanza:
Absolutely. So what else do you have for? I have his feeling because I know the listeners can’t see all this but boy, he’s got a pile of stuff, he’s banging around and moving around. So I don’t know what’s going to come up next, so let’s…
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Get to show and tell today.
Sue Lanza:
I see.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
We’ll have to do our best in describing it. The next person I want to talk about our connection and history to, in this case, a literary figure is… I want to see if you can guess. So here are the opening words to a very famous book written by an American author. Chapter one, Call me Ishmael.
Sue Lanza:
Oh, stop. Okay. All right. We’re done.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Some years ago, nevermind how precisely, having little or no money in my purse, and nothing in particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
Sue Lanza:
Oh my goodness. Well, if that isn’t Moby-Dick.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
That’s right.
Sue Lanza:
I mean that book and now I’m looking at it. My gosh, the thing is so long and it’s just like guild in the ocean.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It is.
Sue Lanza:
I mean, it’s pages and pages and pages.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
The edition I have is 640 pages.
Sue Lanza:
Okay.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
That’s why I asked you if you had your sea legs, because we’re going to talk a little bit about a connection to Herman Melville and of course-
Sue Lanza:
I see.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
… he was known for writing about the sea. The connection here is that we had a resident and just… Oh, I’m sorry, just to remind ourselves. Melville lived from 1819 to 1891. And of course well known for having written Moby-Dick. Later in his life, he actually wrote a lot of poetry, which I think is interesting too.
Sue Lanza:
Wow. To go from that book, which is such a classic to poetry. That’s a leap.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Though relatively, the person that we know who is connected to him is a woman named Frances T. Osborne. Frances of course, spelled F-R-A-N-C-E-S the feminine version of that name. And she lived here at the House of the Good Shepherd. And what we have here in our archives is a picture from 1969, which would’ve been 150 years since Melville was born. So 1819 to 1969. And around that year, there were lots of events to celebrate that sesquicentennial. I think that’s the right term for 150 years. And in particular, she was honored because she was a direct descendant. She was the granddaughter of Herman Melville.
Sue Lanza:
Oh my goodness.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Had lived here at The House.
Sue Lanza:
Wow.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
What we have here is a picture I’ll try and describe it. It’s a group of rather impressive looking people all dressed up and Frances is sitting with a lovely corsage on her dress and wearing pearls and looking just splendid and she is being honored because of course she was the descendant of Herman Melville.
Sue Lanza:
And it was all this whole ceremony was because of this. This was a dedication just to mark that occasion.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Right. Part of the 150 years. And they wanted a living connection to Herman Melville. So this is an article from the Hackettstown gazette, our local paper back then.
Sue Lanza:
Okay.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
From 1971, March of 1971. And it was a description about somebody who’d come with all whaling memorabilia to talk about it. And the connection was because of Melville and it says in this article, the focal point for a program there on Herman Melville and whaling was Mrs. Frances T. Osborne, Melville’s granddaughter and a resident at the House of the Good Shepherd for the past several years. Included in this was Mrs. William T. Cahill, the wife of New Jersey’s Governor. So we had some interesting folks coming through town.
Sue Lanza:
Yeah.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Talking about that. And I think what we need to remember in this case, to some of us who think, “Well, Moby-Dick, I was supposed to read that in high school, I never got a round to it.” Literary character or literary figures writers were the celebrities of those days.
Sue Lanza:
Yes. That’s so true. You think of Ernest Hemingway and so many classic writers back then.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
So folks would’ve been quite thrilled to live here in this place and say, “Oh, the woman who lives down the hallway from me is related to somebody very famous.”
Sue Lanza:
Sure. Yeah. I love that.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
So it’s interesting.
Sue Lanza:
And the picture of her that you have that will put up at some point in some of our gathering of our memorabilia is just such a beautiful picture of her. She just looks so happy in the picture.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Yeah. And I will say I’ve known a couple staff members here who have very long tenures who remember seeing her. So it really was…
Sue Lanza:
Oh really?
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It really was an impressive thing to have some connection to somebody famous.
Sue Lanza:
That’s really amazing. I love when it connects to the present somehow, that’s great. Again, I see the shuffling of the papers, so I know you’re about ready to launch into something else. What’s the next thing on your agenda?
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Well, this one is interesting. It’s nobody famous, but I think it’s worth us remembering somebody. In this case, it’s a man named Theodore Kamisch. I’m not sure how it’s pronounced. The last name is spelled K-A-M-I-S-C-H. And what I discovered, you get to discover all interesting things when you dig through historical records, is the very large tree that is planted in the middle of our building, some of the folks will know that our building is kind of, in a diamond shape.
Sue Lanza:
Yes.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Within that space, there’s a very large tree that’s planted there. I think it’s a maple, in fact, and I found out why it’s planted there because it’s not something that just randomly happened. It was actually planted in memory of Theodore Kamisch. He was somebody who came to the House of the Good Shepherd in 1968. Again, shortly after we started being here in Hackettstown, he died the next year in 1969. But clearly made an impression on the place and that tree was planted in his memory and it was planted on October 25th, 1969. We know how old that tree is, right?
Sue Lanza:
We do.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It’s 50 what? Two, three, something like that. It was clearly not tiny sapling if you look at the picture.
But I just thought that was an interesting thing. It’s a tree I see outside my office and outside the Chapel.
Sue Lanza:
And I could actually see it from my office and our boardroom faces that direction. So it’s a space that a lot of the residents don’t use, but it’s a hidden away spot where you could out and have some meditation. I know some residents have done some gardening out in that spot because it gets some great light, but it’s perfect. So they just honored him with this. He must have been the heck of a guy in a year that they said, “Hey, let’s plant a tree in his honor.” I think that’s wonderful.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
As you know, there’s a little garden out there which in fact has some burials there of cremated remains of folks who’ve been here at The House. That might be another episode.
Sue Lanza:
I was thinking that might be because to learn more about the folks that are here with us and they’re in a good spot because they’re not in a spot where it’s going to be disturbed at all, so that’s nice.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
I will say from my perspective, spending a lot of time in the Chapel, as you would expect the Chaplin to do, looking out there, I am very much aware that we are part of a place that has that history.
Sue Lanza:
Yeah. Greater history. It’s literally here, everywhere that you look.
Rev. Shawn Carty
That’s right.
Sue Lanza:
Now I see you, now there’s movement again. There’s books moving. I think it’s going to be one thing and now it’s going to be something else.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
I’m giving you a test.
Sue Lanza:
Yeah. I see that.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
The thing I want to share next, and folks obviously can’t see it, but this is a beautiful leather covered book, rather large, red, and then has gold print on the front of it.
Sue Lanza:
You can’t miss it.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
And it says, The Book of Remembrance. And some of the folks who listened to our episode about The Cornerstone might remember that there were things that were put into the cornerstone. What happened at the same time and I looked back and saw this in some of our records is that this book was established. It wasn’t put in the cornerstone, but it was established.
Sue Lanza:
Right at that same time?
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Exactly. And so it’s from the time when we established ourselves here in Hackettstown. What this is a book that has the names of everybody who has lived here at the House of the Good Shepherd since we settled here in Hackettstown and the day that they died. Because as many of us know, this is a place where folks live the remaining time of their life.
Sue Lanza:
Sure.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
I just think it’s lovely to have this wonderful book. And it’s part of the Chaplain’s duty to keep it up to date and remember those who have been part of our story here. And so it goes from 1966, of course, we got started in 1965. And just for the record, the first person listed here is a woman named Lati B. Allen. And she died on November 8th, 1966. So she got to live here for not quite a year or so, I guess. And I just think it’s a lovely connection to what we do here.
Sue Lanza:
It is. I’m just curious, because first of all, thank you for sharing it with everybody. I certainly knew nothing of this book didn’t know of its existence at all. So every time we do one of these things, I’m learning a lot, but I’m just wondering if you could give some clarification, is this something that is normally done even in a church setting that there’s a record like this and not that people who have died, but who belongs to a congregation? I don’t know anything about this.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Well, as I’ve often joked, if the Episcopal church does anything well, let’s keep records.
Sue Lanza:
Okay. Is anyone reading them? Let’s ask that question.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
We keep records. So for example, every time we have a chapel service, I record that in a book and I’ve got books going back years, decades here at The House.
Sue Lanza:
You’re kidding. I didn’t even know you did that. And where is this book?
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It’s in my office. I mean, it’s got to be kept handy for keeping it updated.
Sue Lanza:
Okay.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
But so every service we do, whether it’s a morning prayer service or a celebration of the Eucharist or a funeral, and actually, in some cases we’ve had some baptisms here.
Sue Lanza:
I actually know one of our staff members who had her children baptized here.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
So all of that gets recorded and we record how many people were at the service, we record how many of those services have happened this year and what number it is. And some of those are key in details. This however is a little different in that. It’s more like what you would find in an Episcopal church called the parish register, which would include weddings and baptisms and funerals and things like. In this case, it’s not exactly the same, but very much in that same spirit.
Sue Lanza:
Sure.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
I just to add to that, there’s a stand which was given to The House in 1967. And I’m looking at a copy of the service of the dedication of that stand, September 28th, 1967. Those of you who have walked down the hall by the chapel, you’ll see a wooden stand who’s got a glass cover on it.
Sue Lanza:
Sure. Yeah.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
And I guess that’s where this book traditionally has been kept but I think sometimes it’s kept in the chapel’s office probably for more safekeeping.
Sue Lanza:
Sure. You don’t want anything, somebody spill a cup of coffee or something terrible happened to it.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Keep it together with all the other church records that we got. The stand was given not the book, but the stand was given in 1967 by a woman named Mrs. James Hill. And doesn’t seem to be in memory of anybody in particular, but very much for the folks who have been remembered here at The House and from the chapel at The House.
Sue Lanza:
And do you know why… I’m just thinking, when you said when the cornerstone ceremony happened, this book started to come into existence to start recording. Is that again something traditional that you would know of? I’m just curious, who would say, “This is a good idea, let’s do this.”
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It’s a good question. I don’t know if it’s just because it was a fresh start and we thought-
Sue Lanza:
Probably. Recorded.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
… this is a good time to start it. Or it may be that there are some other books and just we haven’t discovered them and I actually think that may be true, partly because I did discover and I’ve got another book here in front of me.
Sue Lanza:
I see that.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Which has a rather tattered cover-
Sue Lanza:
That has been through the mill.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
… cloth cover with leather corners and this beautiful little designer around it. I wish people could see it, but we’ll try and get pictures at some point.
Sue Lanza:
It’s like an old ledger book. It looks like the shipping records of the Titanic or something.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It’s exactly that.
Sue Lanza:
It really looks like that one they show it in the movie.
Rev. Shawn Carty
Right. And it dates to 1904. What I found curious though, when I first saw this was the writing on the front of it is inmates and convalescent.
Sue Lanza:
Oh my goodness. There’s that inmate thing again?
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Yeah.
Sue Lanza:
I know it was in its day it was an okay term but boy oh boy, is that? Give me the willies.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It just greats against our ears. You and I were talking before we started recording, but the distinction between an inmate and a convalescent. I’m guessing, I don’t know this for sure. I think you agreed with me was a convalescent would be somebody who came maybe for some rehabilitation.
Sue Lanza:
Yeah.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
And got well enough to go back home, wherever that might have been.
Sue Lanza:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Short term stay.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Whereas an inmate was somebody who was a resident. So what we should do is we come across this word. We should simply, I think, substitute resident.
Sue Lanza:
Right.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
These are residents and convalescents.
Sue Lanza:
Well, even the term long term care is somewhat outdated even though that’s the term that’s still used. That would be the substitute for inmate, which sounds you are a prisoner of some sort.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Right.
Sue Lanza:
Which we don’t want anyone to feel that way, but because we’re here to take care of you.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Exactly.
Sue Lanza:
That’s interesting. So what was that a book that just recorded all kinds of comings and goings?
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It did. And it had… So if you look just inside the front cover, it says when people are admitted, whether as an inmate or convalescent.
Sue Lanza:
Oh my goodness.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It also has deaths. It also includes marriages and some baptisms and some other things.
Sue Lanza:
Oh wow.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Because of the House of the Good Shepherd is not a Parish church.
Sue Lanza:
Right.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
And the chapel is not a parish church. It’s a chapel, it’s the distinction. It would not have necessarily been required to have these books. I will tell you in the parish when the Bishop comes to visit, one of the things that she and our current Bishop’s case would do is say, I want to see your books. And that’s part of the motivation for parish clergy to keep them up to date. We’re keeping the record.
Sue Lanza:
She’s checking up on you.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Exactly. But so this book would’ve been, I think mostly in that spirit, but not necessarily an official book as I said, Episcopalians are good record keepers. And the other thing that was interesting was, and it was either this book or a different one looking at some of those early years, almost everybody who was resident, I’ll use that word, here was an Episcopalian back in those days. And of course that wasn’t completely the case at the beginning, but that is not the picture now where a wonderful mix of lots of different traditions and diversity and people coming from lots of different backgrounds, religiously speaking and other ways too.
Sue Lanza:
Yeah. That’s great. And that book that you were just referring to, was that in with the chapel records or did you find that in with some of our other records?
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It’s in the main archives, so I will put that back and…
Sue Lanza:
No, I didn’t know that existed. Yeah.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
So the last thing I brought to share and that you’ve already seen this and actually others here at The House have seen it at chapel services through the week is our offering plate.
Sue Lanza:
It’s a beautiful plate.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Yeah. How would you describe it?
Sue Lanza:
It’s engraved shiny plate. Probably 18 inches. Probably 10 inches in diameter or something and it’s as shiny as it could be and it’s got all kinds of engravings on the front, not on the back, but tell us what it says because it is really beautiful.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It is. And I polished it recently. So that’s partly why it’s a little shiny.
Sue Lanza:
I see. You were trying to impress.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Yeah. Exactly. Okay. The engraving around the edge of it is in rather large letters. It says, God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. A lovely quote from I’m guessing one of the Psalms, I don’t remember exactly where. And then engraved in the bottom of it is in beautiful script, I wish we could write this way.
Sue Lanza:
I know. When I write in script, my daughter will say to me, “Mom, could you please write it so I could read it?” Because by the time she went into school, penmanship was out the window.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
It was so passé. But this is engraved in this beautiful script. And it says, to the glory of God and in grateful memory of Sarah Reddington Austin.
Sue Lanza:
What a name.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Yeah. Who was Matron, capital M. I know you love that word, Sue. Who was matron of this house for nearly seven years and it says, given by… And I love this list. It starts out, it says given by the House Family. Capital H capital F.
Sue Lanza:
There we are again.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Exactly. The House Family, the board of management, the ladies auxiliary, the brotherhood of St. Andrew’s Grace Church, which is one of the founding churches of the House.
Sue Lanza:
Yes. The five churches.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
And in this case, it’s a men’s group, the brotherhood of St. Andrew. So the ladies auxiliary is one and the brotherhood is the other. And then the other piece at the very end, it says, and several friend. And I just think that to me, at least captures some of the spirit of I think this place both historically and I would say now.
Sue Lanza:
Sure. It’s always been very family oriented down to earth. No heirs, everybody’s just wanting to be together. And that feeling comes across even in that beautiful dish.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Yeah. The last bit, and this is part of why I’ve been talking about it this week is that this was given by that whole group of people that I just described in memory of Sarah Reddington Austin. And it was given on All Saints day, which is November 1st in the church’s calendar in 1922. So 99 years ago.
Sue Lanza:
Oh my goodness.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
From the week that you and I are having this conversation and recording this. So next year, when it’s a 100 years old, we need to make sure we remember that and celebrate it.
Sue Lanza:
Right. We actually can double celebrate it because we can celebrate it when we do the 140th anniversary. But we can also do it when it comes up later in the year for its actual 100th birthday, because it’s very, very memorable.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
And I’ll say we use this still.
Sue Lanza:
Yeah. So how do you use it? Just so people understand.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
So it’s the offering plate. So folks who want to make an offering to support the chapel ministry can put their offerings in it. And then that gets brought up in our tradition in the Episcopal church, the offering plate is put on the altar as part of the service of worship. It’s sign of giving of ourselves to support the ministry of the chapel or the church as the case may be.
Sue Lanza:
That’s great.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
And one of the thoughts I had about this, given that so much of our history has been with residents who don’t necessarily come from great wealth to imagine your small offering, however small it may be, going into this beautiful sterling silver plate, presumably polished better than I’ve been able to do it.
Sue Lanza:
Well, it looks pretty good to me.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
And then being brought forward and put on the altar as part of worship. I would think that would make folks feel pretty good.
Sue Lanza:
Well, it does because you’re feeling part of the legacy of this place by just participating and putting whatever it is that you can make. You’re offering is just part of a bigger picture. You have to feel it, it’s not just, well just move along. It’s definitely part of something that’s larger than you.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Well, I think too about how many hands have held this.
Sue Lanza:
Yes.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Because traditionally not so much now with COVID precautions, we don’t pass things around as much. How many hands have held this as it got passed around and also and I did mention this to our CFO, “How much money has gone through this plate?”
Sue Lanza:
She probably is, “Oh, I wish that money came by me right now.”
Rev. Shawn Carty:
So it’s fun to remember and celebrate the history that we have here.
Sue Lanza:
So what else do you have because I see you have other little doodahs floating around.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
No, I think that’s it for today.
Sue Lanza:
He’s done with his doodah. All right. Well, what are we going to be doing in some of our next few episodes? Do we have anything lined up because there is a lot more history. One of the things is we were going to talk maybe a little bit about some of the properties around us and talk more about the daily life here when they got here.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Well, so two things I’ll mention one is that we had hoped to share some of our connection with Steven State Park. And I believe from something I had read that we did have a connection there. I just couldn’t put my fingers on it for this episode. The other thing that I discovered though, is that we have books and books, notebooks full of newspaper clippings. You remember the days when newspapers would have a gossip?
Sue Lanza:
Yes.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
And they would say Mr. And Mrs. So and so visited from Indianapolis to see so and so who lived on Maple street? That kind of…
Sue Lanza:
Right. It was the daily gossip mill or something.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
Right.
Sue Lanza:
But it wasn’t gossiping, it was more like matter of fact information.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
We have books and books of the local newspaper describing what was going on here at the House of the Good Shepherd and I think that’ll be an interesting project to dig into.
Sue Lanza:
Sure. And we’re trying to get some of this stuff more organized because as Shawn’s mentioning, we find something, we know we saw and then we have to go back. So we’re trying to get some assistance with things. And we did find out in one of our conversations recently that we were in contact with the Hackettstown Historical Society and they said, “Hey, we have a whole file on you over here.” So we’re all excited about making a road trip over there at some point, so we can check that out and see what they have that might be different than what we have over here.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
That’s right.
Sue Lanza:
So this is taking us on an interesting journey that I’m enjoying. It’s a little all over the place, but it’s fun to go through.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
And I think that’s part of the way history works. Isn’t that, you make a little discovery and it leads you down some path and you find, “Oh, we have this interesting connection to somebody who is Herman Melville’s grand daughter.”
Sue Lanza:
Yeah. It’s really quite amazing. And I’m sure more and more will come out as we go along. Well, thank you all for listening. I’m Sue.
Rev. Shawn Carty:
And I’m Shawn.
Sue Lanza:
And we will see you next time for the next episode of House Guest. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening to this episode of House Guest, the podcast, which is dedicated to all great things about the House of the Good Shepherd, a Retirement Community in Hackettstown, New Jersey. To learn more about us, please visit our website hotgs.org. Thanks for listening. See you next time.