By Linda Heistman
Memoir writing is one of the activities Jean Gaudin and some other seniors are currently engaged in at SHARP, the Senior Health and Recreation Program held weekly at Niccolls Church.
At 90 years young, Jean, of Old Forge, happens to be our oldest participant…so that is why she was the first to be asked to share some of her life story with everyone.
Jean says she really enjoys being a part of SHARP because it is fun, and there is always something interesting going on and something to do.
She likes to be around people, “who are sharing their lives with each other.”
As a child, Jean lived in Livingston Manor, NY.
She said she was always late for school because she would stop and talk to the local blacksmith.
“I liked to watch him make horseshoes,” she said, describing how he put a horseshoe over an anvil and pounded it into shape with a big hammer.
Jean’s father was a salesman, so she moved around a lot. Her father was a salesman so they covered a lot of territory from New Jersey to Dobbs Ferry, Oneida and Oswego.
She says that moving around a lot helped her to learn how to get along with many different people and circumstances.
When she lived in Oswego, she continued to be late for school because she would stop to talk to the watchman of the railroad.
He would come out with his sign to stop traffic for the oncoming train. She said he had a dog and was fun to talk to…what more could a child want?
He also gave her a sandwich occasionally, which she says her mother would not have liked had she found out.
Although she admits she often got in trouble for snapping gum in school, Jean says that students had a lot more respect for teachers back then.
During World War II, Jean’s brother was in the Marines and stationed in Guam where he was in a bomb disposal unit.
He told her of how they would sit on a bomb and refer to a book that told them how to disassemble it. “Weren’t they scared of the bomb going off while they sat there?” I asked.
She said she figured that maybe they decided that if it hadn’t gone off by then it wouldn’t go off at all.
Before the war Jean dated Ted Risley of Old Forge, but eventually she lost track of him.
Then she got a letter from him while he was stationed overseas, working as a radio operator in the China Burma India Theater (CBI).
She doesn’t even know how he found out where she was because she and her family had moved from Oneida to Oswego.
As a young adult living at home during the war years Jean held many jobs.
She worked a couple of years as a dental assistant while living in Oswego, a job she said she really liked. While living in Syracuse she worked in the GE factory, assembling parts.
She attended the Eastman Dental Dispensary in Niagara Falls. In order to become a dental hygienist, one had to go to school for a year.
When Ted came back from the war, she met him at the Thendara train station.
Ted and Jean wrote to each other and later she came to see him when her parents moved back up to be near her grandfather who had lost his wife.
Ted and Jean were married in Old Forge in 1946 and then went to Wanakena, NY so Ted could go to ranger school.
He was a salesman just like her father, but ultimately they were able to settle down in Old Forge.
They had five children: Robert Risley, Carolyn Yardley, Patricia Striekland, Sheila White and Donald Risley.
And she now has 10 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren.
When asked what her fondest memory is, Jean did not hesitate to say it was when she was married to Ted, and of course, her children.
One of the hardest parts of her life was in 1973 when her husband of 27 years died.
Ted had planned to take their son Donald and a cousin fishing that day. Jean had taken Sheila, then 12, to be inducted into the Eastern Stars.
Donald, only eight at the time, ran over to get Jean, saying something was wrong with Dad. Ted had had a massive heart attack.
As she looks back on this event, she said that although she is sad to have lost her husband, she is happy it happened while he was at home and not when he was out on the boat with the two boys.
Jean went to work at the Old Forge Hardware and stayed there for 20 years.
She also worked as a hygienist at the Town of Webb School.
She worked and raised her children and was happy that she had her mother-in-law in the area to help out.
As an Old Forge resident since 1953, “I can’t say much for the winters,” she said.
But she likes living here because the people are friendly and the surroundings are nice. She also likes the school.
Jean attends Niccolls Presbyterian Church and volunteers for many of the church functions, including working at the thrift shop every week.
She used to enjoy needlework, but now her favorite hobbies are reading and doing crossword puzzles.
One of her best friends is Char Pylman, and although they have known each other for years they did not become close friends until they both moved into the same building.
Jean recently lost her son Robert to lung cancer.
He lived in Kentucky with his wife and two children. He had met his wife here in Old Forge, when she came up to visit an aunt and he was picked to show her around the area.
He had been in the service and also served in the police department, was a postman and also worked in the sheriff’s department.
Jean was married to her second husband, Larry Gaudin, in 1985. He had three children and was a widower.
They had been friends and he had been a good friend of Ted’s. Larry worked at Brussels Garage and also at the Thendara Golf Course.
He had asked her to an area dance, and that was how they started dating. “He could really dance the Jitterbug!” she said. Larry died from Alzheimer’s disease in 2008.
Jean’s advice to young people is to “live up to your potential and do and be the best at whatever you are most interested in as a career choice.” She also advises them to “keep their noses clean.”