My Portfolio

Moving Back to Bethnal Green   All us evacuees were given the choice to go back home, once we had reached the age of fourteen.  Fourteen was the age for leaving school and starting work.  My birthday being in March, meant that it wouldn't be long before I would be saying good-bye...

Angels and Heroes Exercise "Feeling Gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." - William Arthur Ward   An 'Angel' is the one whose kindness and love sustained you as you have grown, faced difficult times and personal loss. A 'Hero' is the one who inspired you...

A Family at War  In the spring the following year, I suppose that I had been evacuated about eight months by then, another kind of evacuation was taking place.  Everybody seemed to be talking about Dunkirk.  Ted Clarke told me about how we were sending boats across the channel, all shapes...

Evacuation to Marsham in Norfolk   We were ending summer nineteen-thirty nine and I was barely eleven years of age. There was talk of war.  Joe took me to a place somewhere along Old Bethnal Green Road, I think it was to one of the few schools that were in that road.  I...

Us's & Co.  Bow and Bethnal Green   I have written this story, not in the pretence that I am a writer or even intend to be. But only to record to the best of my knowledge, certain events that have taken place. I have made a point of avoiding any...

PREFACE  “I have written this story, not in the pretence that I am a writer or even intend to be.  But only to record to the best of my knowledge, certain events that have taken place.  I have made a point of avoiding any form of guesswork or inventive material, which...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     Memes That Miss The Mark   These days it is ever so common to see memes posted on social media sites, that we are lulled into thinking that we are seeing pearls of wisdom.  In addition, it...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek    The Dirty Rifle   Every company in the training battalion at Fort Ord, California had an ongoing but unspoken competition for best company in each training cycle.  Basic Training in the US Army in those days of the...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek    With Tears in My Eyes Of the many times when melancholia starts to overwhelm his senses, the Footloose Forester is often visited by a couple of stories that can easily bring tears to his eyes.  Although he was...

­­ Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     Four Days to Uhuru Peak   In March of 1994, the Footloose Forester joined with nine other adventurers to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.  It was one of those bucket list adventures that got a high priority not...

DECEMBER 25, 1995   MY CHRISTMAS MESSAGE TO YOU   MY DEAREST ONE,               WE HAVE SPENT 48 CHRISTMAS’S TOGETHER. SOME WERE BOUNTIFUL AND SOME WERE LEAN.               I REMEMBER ONE PARTICULAR CHRISTMAS ON GREELEY’S COURT IN THE EARLY YEARS OF OUR MARRIAGE. I WANTED A WRIST WATCH SO...

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Into The Volcano The seminal Chronicles of a Footloose Forester has always been an unscheduled mélange of essays, stories, adventures, or dreams.  If he had his way, the adventures would predominate and the stories would follow. The dreams...

I came upon a love letter that I wrote to my dear husband George in 1995. Over two decades have since passed, and when I reread the letter it reminded me of just how deeply we loved each other, and how much we still do today after 70 years married. Instead of...

  Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek     Let’s Go Bend The Fig Tree   The Bengal Tiger first coined the words to the love sonnet “let’s go shake the mango tree” when we lived in Hawaii in the 1970s.  She sang that sweet...

    Like a slow-motion train wreck, with nary a whimper or a scream, the extended family and all the benefits it provides are disappearing one ‘byte’ at a time.     The typical American family has changed over the last couple of generations from predominantly ‘extended families’ to majority ‘nuclear families’....

Chapt 9           1987-1994            Columbus Ohio The next 8 years of 1987 through 1995 marked a new period for us as I finished my graduate work at Ohio State University and expanded my music teaching from a part time avocation to a full...

CHAPT 8 1978-1986 Columbus, Ohio These years were the most difficult period for our family in so many ways. There certainly were positive things that happened along the way, but it was also a period of many challenges, the likes of which we had never experienced as a family before. In...

                                Chapt 7                  1972-1978            Columbus, Ohio      As I  began to record this entry for the period of our lives between 1972 and 1978, it seems like it was just yesterday!  Yet, now at our...

Chapt 6     1968-1971      At Home in Devonshire Subdivision, Columbus, Ohio      In 1967 Keith and I, now in our thirties, were so happy!  We had a beautiful house in Columbus, Ohio with three children and our first foster daughter too.  Keith’s job at OSU was exactly...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Fliegerhorst 2017   The old Fliegerhorst Kaserne of World War II is becoming a modern housing complex.  Based on the construction activity seen on the most recent Google Earth satellite photos, the old military barracks building that the Footloose...