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Tag: Indiana University

Card to Mom from Madeleine L'Engle
Love & blessings, Madeleine L’Engle

Love & blessings, Madeleine L’Engle

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They were friends, Mom and Madeleine L’Engle. Dear friends. Sifting through the bulging folder of their correspondence, I can trace the history of their friendship. They met during the 1976 Midwest Writers Workshop, when Madeleine, author of A Wrinkle in Time, served on the conference faculty (Mom would go on to do the same a decade later). They became fast friends: She wrote, in part: I am very grateful that you were at the Writers’ Conference and that we spoke…

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1951 Dad at Providence College
Dad’s first 24 years

Dad’s first 24 years

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In a file folder containing Dad‘s retirement documents from 1988, I came across a five-page typewritten document. Titled: Autobiography A handwritten note at the top of yellowing paper indicates it was completed on July 21, 1954. Was it written by request of a potential employer? We may never know. Here it is, in its entirety: Autobiography by Harold E. Vayo, Jr. My birth occurred, I have been informed, at St. Luke’s Hospital, Utica, New York, about four-thirty on the morning…

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1992 40th class reunion Saint Joseph College
Memories of Mary Fleming

Memories of Mary Fleming

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Mom had a really good friend named Mary. Two friends named Mary, come to think of it. Mary Donahue and Mary Fleming. Turns out they were the same person. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this is a recent discovery on my part. When they met in college, Mom was Joan Cassidy and Mary’s last name was Donahue. They were thick as thieves, those two, along with Gloria Dowaliby. Here’s Mary’s yearbook page from 1952, graduation year: Their final year…

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1978 blizzard
The Great Blizzard of ’78

The Great Blizzard of ’78

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“Meat! Don’t you have any meat? I need meat!” An Indiana University football player hollered across the counter at me 45 years ago today. The poor fellow, and his beefy friends, were looking nervous as they made their way through the dorm cafeteria line and slowly realized the dinner menu was not quite as protein-laden as usual. That’s because we were under a state-wide “snow emergency” as three days of blizzard conditions (on top of previous snowfall) had closed the…

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1950 Modern American Verse
‘Waiting Is Winter’

‘Waiting Is Winter’

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The weather was so warm over the weekend. And then, around two o’clock this morning, a wild storm brought winter back. Ah, well. Guess we’ll just have to wait. Perhaps there were similarly fluid weather conditions when Mom wrote this sonnet, called “Waiting Is Winter,” in April of 1949, while a freshman at Saint Joseph College. (You remember sonnets, right? Traditionally, a sonnet is a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter. It follows a specific rhyming pattern and focuses on…

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1950 Mom in Twelfth Night
‘Twelfth Night’

‘Twelfth Night’

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Shakespeare. Near the top of the list of topics I wanted to talk to Dad about for this family blog was his – and Mom’s – love of Shakespeare. Over the months following Mom‘s passing in 2019, I found it best to introduce a potential story topic to Dad during one of our nightly calls, with the intent to bring it back up three or four times. As Dad reminisced, I scribbled notes madly. Alas, we only talked about Shakespeare…

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1951 Dad at Providence College
My father’s voice

My father’s voice

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Back in his college days, Dad was an editor of The Alembic student literary magazine at Providence College. In his senior year, as editor-in-chief, he wrote the occasional opinion piece. It’s been so interesting to read what he and the other editors thought about back then, 70 years ago. The following is from January 1951, a big year for the fledgling television industry. Along with advances in technology, shows such as the Hallmark Hall of Fame, Dragnet, and I Love…

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inside Boy Scouts book
The Good Scout

The Good Scout

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We heard it every Sunday whenever there was a chill in the air: “Who wants a fie-oo in the fie-oo-place?” Dad loved to build a good fire, hear the crackling sound of properly dried kindling, poking the coals together in the late evening, and maybe even taking a snooze in a nearby comfy chair. It was only this week that I realized his obsession with building fires traced back to his youth. Way back Ever since posting about Dad’s college…

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Harold E. Vayo, typing while an English major at Providence College.
Class oration 1951

Class oration 1951

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It’s amazing how the memory works. While putting together a post last week about my brother Dave’s high school valedictorian address, a vague memory surfaced that our dad was valedictorian of his college class. On a lark, I looked up the contact information for the alumni-relations department at Providence College. After pausing to appreciate their punny slogan, Ease on Down the Rhode, I sent an email asking if they might have information regarding Graduation 1951. My somewhat hazy recollection is…

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Carmen 1978
Carrrrmen!

Carrrrmen!

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“… and it is a longstanding tradition that the Singing Hoosiers provide the chorus for this opera.” Opera, you say? It was the fall of 1977, my sophomore year at Indiana University. Bob Stoll, the director of the Singing Hoosiers (think Glee for college students; indeed, Ryan Murphy was a Singing Hoosier) had just broken the news that that a factory girl named Carmen was in our future. Here’s Mr. Stoll (who passed away in 2020) warming us up before…

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