In Conversation

Prepared by Nina H. Walsh
For the Cemetery Walk during Pioneer Oil Days 2008

WILLIAM HENRY HERNE, JR. & ETHA LUCILLE MOSES HERNE
1912 - 1976 1912 - 1988

BILL: As a kid, they called me Freckled Bill from Herne Hill. I was born in Scranton, PA on March 5th 1912. I was the 4th child in a family of 11 children. By the time I was 2, we were living in Corning, NY. As the second eldest son, I was required to drop out of school to help support the family. One of my early jobs was setting pins in a bowling alley. Then I became a retail clerk in a men’s clothing store, a haberdashery. I love that word. In fact, I enjoy words – their sounds, their usage, their meanings. As an adult I kept a dictionary beside my easy chair and perused it frequently.

ETHA: I was born in my Grandmother Etha Viola Putnam's house in Pleasant Valley, on June 17, 1912. My first name is after my grandmother’s first name.

When I was young, my family lived in Olean for a few years, then we moved back to Richburg. We lived on Factory St. next door to my Grandma Matie Moses and her two youngest, Uncle Ralph Moses and Aunt Ethel Moses who married Fernon Phillips. A few years later, we moved to a renovated house on Main St. next door to Floyd and Grace Saunders’ house. Floyd’s second wife, Ruth Saunders, still lives there.

BILL: My next job came from my brother-in-law who had a business of delivering newspapers. I drove one of his trucks delivering the New York Herald Tribune to the Allegany County area. In the spring of 1932, someone in Bolivar suggested that I would enjoy watching a well being shot in Richburg that day. I drove up there and found a bunch of people standing in a yard across the street from the shoot.

ETHA: He stood with the crowd on the sidewalk in front of *my* house!

BILL: In the group, I spied a gorgeous young lady with long, dark ringlets, named Etha Moses. It was her lawn that I happened to be standing on. I told her, "You don't know this now, but someday you are going to marry me."

ETHA: That summer, I had my long ringlets cut off. I thought I looked so much more sophisticated, so I sent Bill a picture of myself. He replied,

BILL: “Why in Sam hill did you cut your curl's off for? Didn't you realize, I admired them?”

Every time I managed to see her, I popped the question: “When are you going to marry me?” She usually just laughed me off, but one day in the spring of 1933, she knocked my socks off.

ETHA: “How about this summer?”

About two weeks before our chosen wedding date, some of my great aunts were visiting Grandma Putnam. They complained that they were going to miss our wedding and asked that we move the date up so that they could attend. We couldn't see any reason why not; I already had my dress. So we called Rev. Mason, who invented the gumball machine, and he agreed to come to the house the next day. We had the wedding on July 25th 1933, in my parents’ home with the favorite great aunts present. We honeymooned in Niagara Falls, the first time either of us had been there.

BILL: I quit working for the paper, because now I lived in Richburg – in that little house behind Betty Bartoo’s – the one that was recently torn down. I worked on the construction of the new two-story addition to the Richburg Central School. When that was finished, I took a job working for Etha’s grandfather, Frank L. Putnam. Frank was getting on in years, so the Putnam Oil Company was run by his sons, Elson and Mitchell Putnam. Gosh darn, if Uncle Elson didn’t tick me off. I quit more than once, but Eshie would make me apologize and go back to work.

ETHA: Along with that job came a company house on the top of Richburg Hill. We had a water well and a generator for making electricity. We had a small farm with a large vegetable garden, some chickens, goats, a cow, and a pig or two. Bill loved the animals! He had names for all of them, and they loved him too. I never understood how he could butcher them.

I had gone to Sunday School as a young girl, but Bill and I did not attend church. The thought stuck me one day in the early 40s that that my two little boys knew nothing about God and that we were all going to hell. I knelt down and asked Jesus to come into my heart; a life-changing decision. Every Saturday night, we got together with Al and Ellabelle Monahan to play cards. As a child, I had learned at church that cards were a tool of the devil. If I was going to be a Christian, I had to clean up my life, so I threw the deck of cards into the wood stove. That next Saturday, Bill went to get them from the cupboard. When he didn’t find them, he called,

BILL: “Eshie, what’d you do with the cards?”

ETHA: It wasn’t long before he too became a born again Christian, and the Monahens also. Our Saturday night gatherings became Sunday night parties after the Sunday Evening Service. The church became the focus of our lives, and we became active members of the Richburg First Day Baptist Church. We both taught Sunday School classes for many years, were active in the Missionary Society, and I sang in the choir while Dad was an usher.

ETHA: My grandmother, Etha Putnam, died on Christmas Day 1946. She was buried on the 28th, the day I gave birth to Nina May in Binghamton. No one told me that my beloved grandmother had died until after Nina May was born; they feared my grief might affect my heart during the impending delivery. We moved into my Grandma’s home at the corner of Main and Depot Streets a couple of months later. Since that house is currently owned by my grandson, Brad Herne, that house has been in our family for almost 100 years! Seven generations have lived in it (Ira Putnam, Frank & Etha Putnam, Nina Putnam Moses Brown, Bill & Etha Moses Herne, Brad & Dawn Herne, and their three sons).


BILL: In 1951, a position opened up for a custodian and bus driver at the school working under Harry Hardman. After Harry died, I became the Head Custodian. I worked for the school for 26 years. The principals loved me because I was so handy – I could fix anything and saved tons of money since they didn’t have to hire repairmen.

ETHA: I was afflicted by a fear of loud noises. There is a name for that – phonophobia. It wasn’t just any loud noise that bothered me; it was sudden loud noises – like guns and balloons popping – which made me scream until my throat hurt. My children were never allowed to have a balloon in the house. I think it started when someone threw a firecracker at me when I was a child. Before buying a ticket to the school play every year, I would ask if a gun was going to go off. Loud noises frightened me so badly that I was afraid I might have a heart attack.

BILL: In the 50’s, the Cold War was raging and everyone feared a nuclear attack from Russia. I joined the Civil Defense to help in any way I could. I was involved in the community in other ways too – I was on the board of the Colonial Library; at various times, I was a trustee or a deacon of the Richburg First Day Baptist Church. I taught the SOS (meaning Serving Our Savior) Sunday School class for many years, and served as a volunteer fireman.

ETHA: He also was very faithful to the Jail Service Ministry one Sunday afternoon a month at the Belmont Jail. No matter what the rest of the family wanted to do, he was committed to holding that service for the men.

I was never very healthy. I was born with a hole in my heart which prevented me from running as a child and doing any strenuous physical activity throughout my life. Dr. Hackett recommended that I quit high school just a few months before graduation, because I had a nervous breakdown which almost became St. Vitus’ Dance. I would have been the valedictorian. After David was born, I had Rheumatic Fever which further damaged my heart. Dr. Hackett warned us to never have any more children. But we did. Dr. Hackett felt inadequate to deal with my problems and suggested that I spend the last weeks of my pregnancies in a city with an obstetrician. So before both Gary and Nina May were born, I went to Binghamton and stayed with my sister Helen Wheeler until the babies came.

I began working at the Richburg Colonial Library as the children's librarian two afternoons a week at $.32 an hour in 1960. When the head librarian, Mary Baker, retired about ten years later, I became the Librarian. I loved working in the library and was there for a total of 22 years, retiring in 1983 at age 71.

BILL: By the late 60s, the school was required to install a new sewer system. The person who operated it needed a high school diploma in order to attend a two-week course at Cornell University. Even though I left high school to help feed our large family, I was what you call a life-long learner. I was always reading, learning new things, so I easily passed the New York State High School Equivalency Exam and took that course at Cornell. The Richburg Principal presented my diploma at the June graduation ceremony. Eshie framed it and hung it in the kitchen.

ETHA: I was very proud of him.

BILL: When we began construction for the new Richburg First Day Baptist Church, I took on the position of Clerk of the Works. I poured my heart and soul into that building. I saw a beautiful, simply designed, stainless steel bell tower at a church in Buffalo. We couldn’t afford the stainless steel, but we had plenty of oil pipe lying around. I figured the oil pipe would work just as well and add a bit of history to the bell tower. My grandson, Davey, was a young man and eager to help. We built that bell tower across the street over there and installed the electronic bell system. Only Davey and I knew how to operate the bells.

ETHA: By the time I was 61, the hole in my heart was causing extreme fatigue. I spent my days lying on the sofa. Medical science had advanced to a point where doctors were confident they could fix my heart. After my open heart surgery at the Buffalo General Hospital, I had energy I had never had before.

BILL: My varicose veins were giving me a lot of trouble, so I decided to get them looked after before my retirement coming up March 1977. I took some sick days and had the surgery in November 1976. The problem was that the doc didn’t seem to be too smart. He didn’t give me any blood thinners following surgery. A few days after coming home from the hospital, my leg was swollen up and hurting, so we went back to the doc. He told me that I needed to exercise that leg more. Well, it turns out that he told me the absolute opposite thing of what I should have done. On Sunday morning, November 20, I heard my daughter, Nina May Walsh, sing The Lord's Prayer live over WDCX radio from their church, Knox Presbyterian in Kenmore. My son Gary called that day to see how I was doing. David and Janet came up to the house too with their kids. Before retiring, I had my normal bedtime snack – a huge bowl of ice cream, and went to bed at around midnight. Something was wrong! I jumped out of bed, ran to the bathroom, thinking I was going to vomit. Eshie was so scared! She called Braden Skinner to come with the ambulance. The rest is history. Now we know that that darn blood clot in my ankle released from my leg due to my exercising and went to my lung.

On the Sunday morning after my funeral, Davey was not at the Richburg Church. During the sermon, the electronic bell began ringing erratically and no one knew how to stop it. I had my last laugh!

ETHA: At 70, I was afflicted with temporal arteritis. Prednisone was the only medication which gave me any relief, but I also knew it would shorten my life. On November 28, 1988, I left my old body on a bed at WCA Hospital in Jamestown with my daughter-in-law, Janet, and grandson Davey at my side.

BILL: Out of a family of eleven children, six of them boys, I was the only one who had sons to carry on the family name. My sons, David and Gary, each had two sons. David's older one, Davey, has one son, and he now has a son. David’s younger son, Brad, has three sons. Gary's older son has one son and the younger has three. Today, I am the progenitor of two sons and three generations of grandsons which currently add up to fourteen living males bearing the name Herne.

ETHA: Some of my other community activities included teaching Released Time Religion Classes (when they were still allowed), membership in the town’s Literary Club, and, for many summers, serving as camp counselor or cook for a week or two at the church camp at Odosagih. One of my greatest honors was something Bill did for me: he paid for the pulpit in the new church.

BILL: And I attached a plaque reading, “In honor of Etha Herne, the best preacher this church ever had.”