AN EPITAPH IN COOPERSTOWN
In the spring of 1968 I was chosen to attend one of the most prestigious and difficult training schools that AT&T had to offer. It was conducted in Cooperstown, New York at the grand hotel by the name, “The Otesaga Hotel” and it would take three-months to complete.
The subject matter being taught was the beginning of a new era of “digital” transmission in telecommunications. Computers, at that time, were huge in size and required massive air-condition systems just to keep the computer cool. Small personal computers (PC) were in the early developmental stages. The total data capacity that could be stored in those early commercial computers was hundreds of time smaller than the small home PC’s used in 2014.
The language of the computers and its memory technology was at that time, compared to today’s technology was like the horse and buggy vs. the modern automobiles today. This was the development of a brand new world of telecommunication being born, for both voice and data. I was a student of this new technology. To say I was not somewhat concerned I would be able to understand the course material and pass the required tests would be to tell a lie. Dropping below a grade of 70 in two of the eight subjects in any single week was a firm, no-questions-asked, dismissal from this school. Your bags would be packed, a cab standing by to take you to the airport to transport you back to your hometown. Those students would be called out of class, brought to the lobby of the Hotel where their bags and belongings were waiting, and board the cab for the airport. No time to say goodbyes or even to go back to your room. After seeing several students make an exit this way put a fear in the hearts of the remaining students, mine included. To go home like that was a sure end of climbing up the corporate ladder. Kiss you career good-by!
Classes began at 8:00am and lasted until 5:00pm, Monday through Friday. Saturday classes were only for half a day. All meals were served in the official dinning room of this beautiful hotel. No time for breaks and walking around the town. You were there to study only and study was intense as all of the hundreds of students, from all over the United States and some from other countries, buckled down after evening dinner to study.
Living in this beautiful five-star hotel, which was occupied by only the students of AT&T, the instructors and the hotel staff, was necessary because all classes were conducted in the hotel. AT&T made a special financial deal with the Hotel to use the entire hotel, and its staff, the coldest months of the year when normal tourist found a warmer place to vacation.
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Sundays, being the only day to rest from this three months study program, gave students time for their personal life. Many slept, others found other activities, but few went to church as I did. It was refreshing to just get away from this grind and see something other than the inside of this hotel and other students.
I found this very old, but quaint little Episcopal church on River Street, and attended Sunday services there. I must say I was sadly disappointed that I was greeted with an attitude of indifference. They didn’t know me, so they didn’t speak to me! I attended anyway!
The church cemetery surrounding this church was quite old and I found pleasure in just walking through the church cemetery and reading the inscriptions and epitaphs. Some were very interesting by the very date of that person’s death and that many family members died on the same date, giving reason to believe some dreadful epidemic took place that could have wiped out an entire family. On the side of the hills surrounding the town of Cooperstown I did discover one site that an entire family was massacred by the Indians, as per their grave stone dates and the epitaph inscription placed there by some friend.
One Sunday, while continuing my reading of epitaphs in this church cemetery, I stumbled across a table-top flat burial site. The top slab was about thirty of so inches from the ground. Being flat it suffered the damage brought on by the inclement weather conditions. The epitaph was engraved in this tablet-top stone, but badly worn over the hundred plus years of time and weather conditions. For some strange reason I was intrigued with this grave. Not many in this cemetery were “Tablet-top” style and thus the deterioration was worse being flat that the others that were standing vertical. The words were a challenge for me to read. When the Sun light comes from an angle, casting shadows, it enabled me to read the epitaph. When I did, my heart jumped and my compassion ran deep for a man from Barbados named R. H. Farmer. I hurt for the suffering he must have endured as he wrote these words:
Sept. 25, 1831
FRANCES F. M. FARMER
AGED 28 YEARS OLD
WIFE OF R. H. FARMER
OF BARBADOS
“Stranger hadst thou ever a wife, snatched from thee by death in the bloom of youth beauty and virtue? If thou never hadst thou mightest imagine but cannot feel the anguish of a disconsolate husband who has placed over her remains this tablet as the last but too feeble testimony of his tenderest affections and to mark the spot where lies the best of wives, the most affectionate of mothers and the sincerest of friends”.
As I wrote down these words, just the way they were written and spelled, I choked-up, and quietly gave thanks for these beautiful heart rendering words of a man who love his wife so dearly as to pour out his heartfelt feelings for ‘strangers’ to digest a husband’s true love for his wife. At that time, in 1968, I thanked God that I still had my wife. Even now, forty-six years later, I still give God my greatest thanks for my wife I love as deeply as R. H. Farmer loved his wife, Frances.
I have wondered how many times this grieving husband and his children gathered around this very gravesite, where I am standing, to bring flowers, say a prayer, shed a tear and recalled the blessed times they all had together before she was called home to be with the Lord.
Strangers, as we are, who read the writings and feel the emotions of others, we do not know for sure that Frances was a Christian, a true believer, but the love shown in this tribune by her husband and being buried in a church cemetery; gives reason to believe her faith was in the Lord.
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.
Romans 14:7-8