To the Editor:

My father, Raymond Shafer, celebrated his 100th birthday this year, giving us the impetus to look at his life as part of a long local family history.

He was born on Oct. 19, 1915, the son of Gula Catherine Waldron and Frank Shafer. Catherine, as she preferred to be called, was the descendant of Dutch Captain Jacob Van Aernam who fought with the Albany Third Militia during the French and Indian War and Revolutionary War. He helped in the capture of Tories in the Helderberg region.

Ray’s father, Frank, died young of a head injury due to a horse accident, leaving behind three sons: Raymond was 3, George was 4, and Howard was 1½.

Recently, Ray went to see the Shafer homestead. Nearly 100 years ago, a picture had been taken of his parents by a whitewashed fence, holding him and his brother George.

The current owner said the home was well built as Henry Shafer Sr., who was born in 1816 in Hess, Germany, was a carpenter and may have built most of the structure. It was here that Raymond’s father, Frank, grew up and met the daughter of his neighbor, George Waldron. He married her when he was 26.  He had a close relationship already with Catherine’s Uncle Henry too.

Raymond recalled his father, Frank, and Uncle Henry went to Schenectady to market. Uncle Henry had too much beer to drink and, always being a careful man, urged his neighbor and friend, Ray’s father, Frank, to please put him in the barrel in the back of the wagon for the ride home.  Frank couldn’t bring himself to do this so he held onto the older gentleman all the way while driving the team of horses back to Schoharie Turnpike.

As a devoted friend, one day Uncle Henry repaid the favor many times over as he would help raise little Raymond from 3 years of age through his adolescence.  

Frank was a fine looking young man, and, according to his World War I draft papers, received at age 30, he was short and of slender build, blue-eyed with light brown hair.  Recently, niece Dawn Shafer discovered a locket of that color hair in a special box belonging to Catherine.  It may have been Catherine’s keepsake of her first husband and father of her beloved boys.

Regardless of such loss, she was the best mother, according to Raymond. She put her boys in piano lessons with Orpha Quay. Ray admits he preferred to help Mrs. Quay peel potatoes in her kitchen over piano lessons.

The brothers attended Sunday school at the Knox Reformed Church. Their mother taught them gentlemanly manners. She was a gourmet cook and worked hard to keep the family going during the Great Depression.

She later purchased a house on Township Road next to what today is the Coulter farm; she had fallen in love with the house when she was 5.

The week of Oct. 6, 1922, when Ray was almost 7, his mother remarried, and they moved to the farm on Route 146.  During this time, Ray’s mother worked as a midwife and for Dr. John O’Keefe, brother to Dr. Daniel O’Keefe who later saved Raymond’s life.  Ray remembers traveling around with his mother, waiting for babies to be born.

In 1920, the family first came to Township riding in a large buckboard wagon led by a team of white horses.  Ray remembers the move in early spring; the wagon wheels were high, but the mud came eight inches up on the wheels.  All the roads were dirt and half of one side of the road was plank covered over with dirt.

His grandfather, George, drove the wagon as his mother held him in during the bumpy ride. With their belongings loaded in, they made the journey over the Schoharie Turnpike to Crow Hill Road, West Wind Road, Knox Cave, and finally down Township Road. The house has original release papers from the patroonship of Van Rensselear; $13 had been paid for its formal release by a registry in England.

From the time he was 9 to 12 years old, Ray often helped cut and load wood with his grandfather, using a horse and a sled to haul it out in wintertime.  It was quite dangerous work on a steep hill on the east side of Witter Road. It was hard, too, for a boy to use a one -man saw.  

One winter day while working, his grandfather told Ray that, because the Dutch tradition of being named after him had not been followed, he would never receive any inheritance.  It must have affected him because he worked all the harder every day to become the best farmer that he could be and learn as much as he could from his great Uncle Henry that his mother had now gone to live with.

At 12, Ray began using a horse and single plow, not an easy task with the reins around his neck as he was very small to be doing a man’s work. Ray would make certain every row that he plowed was perfectly straight. He said you could look down every furrow he plowed or every row he planted, and it was always straight as an arrow until he stopped at 98.

Raymond grew up in a rural area in the hardest of times.  But, fondly, Ray remembers those as being the best of times.  Winters, the boys would make their own sleighs out of wooden boxes with skis attached.

School was at the little Knox School District 2 on Witter Road where the boys at recess would play Duck On A Rock and get in trouble throwing stones in the pond nearby. Though he often felt somewhat bad about not getting past eighth grade, Ray still has an unbelievable mathematical mind that he thinks he got from his Uncle Henry.

Ray admired and loved this uncle very much and took after him a great deal.  But also, through stories his uncle told him of his father, he learned he was much like his father as well.

On summer vacations, Ray’s mother packed up the family in a touring car with picnic baskets for day trips to the Bennington, Vermont monument and to Sacandaga Lake.  She had wonderful birthday parties for the boys, inviting many guests and putting on a delicious luncheon.

Barn dances and home square dances were held around the town, and the families would gather with a meal for good fun.  Ray was a good square dancer, and the waltz and polka were two of his other favorites.

In later years, the Helderberg Grange Hall in Township would provide evenings of music and dance with many talented bands. Ray enjoyed especially the Pearly Brand Orchestra with a friend, Byron Quick, on guitar; Marion Vamosy on accordion; and Pearly playing guitar and calling squares. He’d go once a month on Saturday nights as well as to Pat’s Ranch in Altamont in his early days. 

But, work life started early on and in summers, starting at age 12, Ray was farmed out to the Truax family in Gallupville. He slept in an attic where temperatures reached over 100 degrees and worked the fields with his brother George and Mr. Robert Traux.

When he was 15, a horse stepped on his foot and a bone infection set in so badly that amputation was discussed. It took a long time to heal. At 17, he decided he could pay his medical bills and support the family income better by joining the Tannersville Civilian Conservation Corps Camp workforce.  Off he went to live in tents in September and through the winter of 1933.

The young men did backbreaking work, recovering old roads to a fire tower that had to be cleared of tall evergreens. People of all kinds were put together in tents with no heat, and the camps were run by retired military men who were former high-ranking officers.  The workers were at first required to salute them, but later it was deemed unnecessary.

In the middle of winter, Ray had pain and stomach problems.  Doctors at the infirmary said it was just stomachaches and to “work it off.” His mother realized it was much worse than diagnosed and took him to Dr. Daniel O’Keefe.

He drew a line on Ray’s abdomen on the right and the next day excised a ruptured appendix where peritonitis had set in.  The doctor related that, if one more day had lapsed, Raymond would not have been alive. Though recovery was long, in the spring, he walked and walked and regained his strength to begin work again so that he could pay his $200 bill for the surgery and weeks in St. Peter’s Hospital.

That first hospital stay was in 1934, and he would not enter a hospital for surgery again until he broke his hip planting potatoes in the April 2004 at age 89. Though a bad femur break, the following spring, he would be planting potatoes again, and hoe every hill and dig them that fall on his hands and knees.

Ray did get something upon his grandfather’s death after all.  Elizabeth, his grandmother, was very kindly toward the grandchildren and gave Raymond the choice of three farms to purchase.  He took the least expensive one, for $1,800, which had been left vacant for over a decade.

The fields were overgrown and untended, and yet Raymond used the skills his Uncle Henry had taught him; with his team of horses and one-bladed plow, he recovered the fields by felling the trees, pulling the stumps, and plowing and reseeding the fields with grains first and then hay. Raymond had acquired a 19th-Century ability to work the land.

In the early days of his farm with his wife, Elsie, he raised a silo though many said it couldn’t be done. It was an original stave silo from his mother’s farm on Township Road that was once to the west of the red Western-style barn.

From its concrete pad, he carefully removed the wire bands and staves and reconstructed it at his new farm. Elsie was instrumental holding it together with ropes as he slowly pulled the bands in place — quite an engineering feat for two people.

When he brought water to the house from a pipe, he sledge-hammered underground beneath the entire road from the house to the opposite side and is still today proud of such endeavors to provide for his family with skills learned from another era.

In addition, Raymond hunted and trapped to supplement the family farm and spent many years down in the Bozenkill — the “Bozy” as it’s affectionately called — hunting raccoon at night with his dog Tip by lantern light.  The Bozenkill is a rugged steep ravine and going alone was a feat.  Ray would sell the meat to families from the city, and the hides sold in Schoharie would provide additional income.

A good deer hunter, he used the drive method, which was always a part of his hunting life right up until the age of 97 when he went out with his son, Richie, on the Bozenkill farm and a last time with grandson, Gregory Sokaris, on the Sisson farm.

When he was in his 80s, Ray had helped Greg get his first eight-point buck. With pride, Grandpa gave the call to “shoot now,” and, though it was a long shot, Greg dropped it right away. Ray had always said he didn’t believe in target practice. When young, he was given one shell to shoot with and it better be done right the first shot.

His sons, Junior, Loren, and Richie, and daughter, Susie, and later grandsons, Anthony, Timothy, Loren Jr., and Dale, were a great team, providing venison for the family.  Although Ray could never stomach the smell of venison cooking, refusing to eat it, most all of his descendants down to the youngest granddaughter, Faith, enjoy the meat.

A legacy of living off the land and being good stewards of it resound throughout his family line and even a few of his granddaughters hunt today.

Ray’s Bozenkill farm provided enough acreage for a herd of 13 cattle, all dairy, along with hay and grain lots.  Ray was proud of his trefoil being the cleanest around.

Through his early 80s, Ray continued to plow and mow hay for other farmers.  Continuing his lighter agricultural work, neighbors and friends from as far as Lake George came for his delicious Red Chieftan potatoes. One year, he had a 2,000-pound bumper crop.

He always had beautiful carving pumpkins to sell as well. His grandson Greg and then his granddaughter Faith learned the business. He taught them that hard work and saving money earned is important.

Ray did other things later in his life, working on the State Thruway, taking tests and advancing with only an eighth-grade education. In his 50s, he studied and got high grades. He became a superintendent of highways for the state’s Department of Transportation, managing sections of the Northway and Interstate 90.

He had worked on many of the local roads in the 1930s, and put in telephone poles for the first phones for five miles of lines from West Berne to South Berne. He and his brother put electric lights in Knox Cave.

Ray also worked on early machines to help farmers transfer over to the new tractor equipment.  His boss, Howard L. Gage, hired him to help farmers fix problems with their new farming machines. He counted on Ray to solve problems.

Only one little thing came between Howard Gage and Ray: He traded his red International tractor (which Howard sold him) for a John Deere.  He remained a devoted John Deere man ever since. For his automobiles, he drove only Fords; his first was a Model T.

Ray built a house in 1960. He cut the lumber from trees and milled it, living in the cellar for a year while he waited for it to cure. He continued to work three jobs in addition to garden, fish, and hunt. He still lives in the home he built and loves it although he sorely misses his second wife, Shirley, who died a year ago.

When one looks back at a life, one can only hope for the kind of life and values that Ray has treasured at age 100 and throughout all of his life: of family and friends, hard work, love of the land, and “working with two hands and this little brain that God gave me,”  he says.

May all of us have a life to look back upon with such accomplishments that seem simple but are so profoundly rich.  Dad, congratulations on your 100 years!

Paula Shafer and family

Knox

If you know Raymond and wish to send him a little note or card for his 100th birthday, you would mail it to Raymond Shafer Sr., 215 Middle Rd., Altamont, NY 12009