CORNWALL Ontario – A wonderful senior will be celebrating his 90th. birthday on June 24th. He is a Navy Veteran, Sonny (Richard) Herrington.
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Apparently when our Grandfather Herrington first held Sonny for the first time as a baby, Sonny smiled at him, probably with a toothless cute little grin.
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My grandfather , thrilled at the wonderful smile on this little baby boy said that the little guy would surely be a ‘Sonny boy’. Everyone called him ‘Sonny’ after that .There is an old story of Sonny and some lads going to Montreal during WW2 in 1942 to enlist in the Navy. They were not of age but lied about how old they were.
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They couldn’t do that today but it worked at the time. When my sister died in 1944, my Mom said that they couldn’t reach him: the whereabouts of the ships were secret. He came home safely and married his beautiful girlfriend Viola Lamesse . Together they raised seven boys.
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Sonny was very active in our community and received many awards. I remember that they called him, ‘Mr. Lacrosse.’ Two years ago he received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. He is very humble about all that and never talks about getting awards. He was President of the Navy Club for years and with the Navy Veterans, did a great deal to contribute to our community and Veterans.
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He is my big brother and I am very proud of him but not because of all his awards. I love him very much because of the wonderful man he is. A loving father and brother. Always pleasant and fun, kind and nice to everyone. The greatest guy anyone could ever meet or have as a brother. An inspiration to me. Happy Birthday Sonny boy.
Here is a nice picture of Sonny( Handsome Guy)
Coming out of a corner store the other day, I saw an elderly gentleman smoking a stogie and wearing a red Yankee baseball cap. I had my car keys and Yankee key chain in my hand so I showed him my key chain and said to him that it seemed we both liked the Yankees. He wanted to give me the red baseball cap but I declined , not wanting to take it from him .
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Then he told me about all the games and the players he has seen over the years: Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Casey Stengel, Willie Mays and many more. We then talked about the Expos and he told me of meeting one of the players. I had lived in Montreal during most of the Expos era and had met a couple myself.
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Then he talked about seeing Jackie Robinson. I told him that I remembered my older brothers talking about Jackie when I was young. And with that, he started to sing, “You must have been a beautiful baby. You must have been a wonderful child. When you were only starting to go to kindergarten, I bet you drove the little boys wild…”
He sang the whole song to me. Then, he finished it with a swoop of his arms singing, “You must have been a beautiful baby ’cause baby, look at you now.” Wow!! I have never been serenaded in my whole life. It was wonderful to hear him belting out this old song. What a darling . I finally said good bye and, passing a lady in a car who was waiting for him, I could see she was smiling. So was I.
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I am wondering what is exactly is a ‘Senior Moment’?? It seems to me that anything I forget now, I probably forgot when I was forty, like walking into a room, on occasion, and not remember what I wanted to do there. Dr. Daniel Amen, Psychiatrist and Brain Disorder Specialist, says that when we age we accumulate more files in our brain and it just takes a bit longer to get the info sorted out. I believe that. Sometimes if I don’t remember something, maybe a name, just as I am dozing off to sleep, the answer suddenly pops up in my head. Dr .Michael Ramscar , of the University of Tubingen said that the slowing of our brain as we age is only because we have more info in it as we gain more knowledge…must .means we are pretty smart and well informed as Seniors.
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However, here is what happened to make me believe that a “Senior Moment ‘ is a real thing. I was having a birthday party for my younger brother, Brian. I asked him what he wanted as a gift. He said jokingly, “Money, Honey, is always good.” so I decided to give him money but not a gift certificate.
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Real money in cold hard cash: a bunch of Loonies and Doonies. The day of the party I realized I was three dollars short of what I wanted to dump on Brian. I called my other brother Ron and asked him if he had a Looney and a Dooney. He didn’t seem to know what I meant. So I asked him for three dollars in coins. That he had. At the party when I thanked Ron for the Looney and Dooney, he said that he didn’t know what I meant by’ Dooney’. I thought to myself that he was having a ‘Senior Moment’. Then a friend, Mary, piped up and said to me that it wasn’t a Dooney but a Tooney. This was incredible. Two people having a ‘Senior Moment’. Ron then said that it is not a Dooney…it never was called a Dooney.. it is a Tooney. Could that be true ? It was true. I somehow made that up in my head and believed it. Maybe it was my hearing loss, hearing a ‘d’ instead of a ‘t’ ?? Maybe a ‘Senior Moment’? They said it was a Tooney from day one. Everyone in Canada knew that but me!!
But Mary saved the day. She said not to feel bad because she grew up believing that everything in front of her was North until she was about twenty-three and took a trip south to Tennessee. In school she had been taught that on a map North was always at the top of the page which meant in front of you. She took it literally even without the map. So she thought she was always going North. And this woman drove a car! It is a wonder she didn’t end up at the North Pole. Well, I did feel better . I was not alone. Two ‘loonies’, I guess.
Here is a cute joke :
A guy goes into a bar and the bartender says to him, “What will it be, Sam? The usual ?”Sam says , “No, I am celebrating. I would like a glass of champagne.” The bar tender is surprised because Sam is a beer drinker. What’s the big occasion?, he asks. Sam says, “Well, I am very proud of myself. I finished a crossword puzzle and it only took me two weeks.” The bartender stares at Sam for awhile and then says, ” What ‘s so special about that?” Sam replies,” On the box it said three to five years.”
Have a nice week, Dawn
It’s not a Dooney?