|
 |
 |
 |
"These Memoirs are the result of a joint effort by Nelson W. Tobey, Colonel, Retired, US Army and Barbara J. Merhege, caregiver, Home Instead Senior Care, an organization that provides companionship and help to Senior Citizens. Barbara was a legal secretary prior to become a caregiver (for me it was like finding a perfect diamond in a mixture of jewels).
"Initially complete strangers, we worked for two hours (1:30 - 3:30) each Wednesday and Thursday. Barbara was at the computer keyboard facing the monitor, I was beside the monitor facing Barbara, reciting the story from notes prepared in the morning. She became totally involved in the story. We shared the pain, we shared the joy. We put the story together sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, page by page for 42 pages. What you are about to read is the end result."
| /s/ NELSON W. TOBEY Colonel, Retired, US Army |
"Member of the Nation's Greatest Generation by virtue of my birth to Sarah Burgoyne Tobey and Herbert Lester Tobey at Melrose Hospital on October 7, 1916 in Melrose, MA. At that time the Tobeys resided on Mill Road in Hampton, NH with my grandmother, Mary Burgoyne. I joined a family made up of brothers and sisters Lester Burgoyne Tobey, Constance Tobey, and Paul Layman and Margaret Tobey (twins). Lester B. Tobey attended high school in Newburyport, MA; the rest of the children attended public schools in Hampton, NH. Lester, Constance, and Margaret attended and received degrees from the University of New Hampshire; Paul graduated from Clemson College in South Carolina with a degree in Textile Chemistry and a 2nd Lieutenant Commission Infantry in the Army Officer Reserve Corp; and Nelson graduated Virginia Military Institute with a degree in Chemistry and a 2nd Lieutenant Commission Artillery in the Army Officer Reserve Corp.
"It was an active, energetic, disciplined household that we grew up in; all but Nelson started school in a multi-grade one room schoolhouse. Nelson entered the first grade in the brand new (1921) brick Hampton Centre School that housed the first nine grades, with the first six grades on the ground floor and the seventh, eighth, and ninth grade (Junior High School) on the second floor. All took music lessons and by junior high played in the school orchestra and band and participated in baseball, football, and ice pond hockey. We all walked or biked to and from school, depending on the weather.
"Our neighbors, mostly named Blake, included a civil war veteran and his wife, a blacksmith and his family, two full time farmers (cash crops: eggs, pop corn, milk), a lobsterman, a carpenter, and a handyman. They were for the most part self sufficient — horses for work and local transportation, cows for milk and meat, a flock of hens for eggs and meat, pigs for meat, fish and lobsters from the ocean or bought from full time lobstermen. All were friendly, tolerant of youngsters and their pranks, and willing to share doughnuts, right out of the boiling fat, and cookies still warm from the oven of the wood burning stove.
"The kids all had chores, the girls inside the house dish washing, cooking, house cleaning, bed making, the boys lawn mowing, garden tending, snow removal, emptying ashes and rubbish, bringing in wood for the stoves and fireplaces.
"There was also time for play: inside games such as checkers, Parcheesi, and card games; and outside tag, hide and seek, snowshoeing, and skiing with extremely low tech skis (beginners' skis were barrel staves and bindings were a strap across the arch of the foot). Skating was done with skates that clamped onto street shoes, beginning with double runners. Shoe skates were available about the time one entered high school. We had three natural ponds in the neighborhood, Jed's Ditch, the peat hole, and the frog pond.
"We learned self sufficiency, discipline, leadership, and fully as important, how to follow.
"In my view the most important event in my life happened in the 5th grade in 1927. Our teacher, Miss Elsie Bartlett introduced a young girl as a new member of the 5th grade. She had straight black hair with bangs covering her forehead, and hair covering her ears down to the jaw line. Her eyes were sparkling black, looking straight ahead. She wore a knee length dress, stockings, and black shoes. She was introduced as Beryl Crockford and was escorted by Miss Bartlett to a seat in the back row, right past my seat. We were married twelve years later, a marriage that lasted sixty-one years. The twelve years were taken up with constant companionship through high school and four years of intermittent dating during school vacations while I was at Virginia Military Institute and Beryl completed her secretarial schooling in Boston and got a job with United Business Services. The southern girls I had blind dates with while at the VMI didn't sway me away from Beryl, nor did Beryl get carried away with the students from Harvard, MIT, or the other schools of higher learning in Boston.
"VMI had an impressive Military Ball known as "Ring Figure". At that event 2nd Classmen and their dates tarried under an arch of flowers and placed a miniature of the VMI class ring on the date's ring finger. For some, including Beryl and me, it symbolized an engagement. To be sure that everyone understood the arrangement, I saved all the money the Army paid me for attending ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Camp) and bought a diamond ring to present to Beryl in the summer of 1938. We were married July 15, 1939 in Exeter, Nil and honeymooned along the coast of Maine.
"My first job was with Marietta Dyestuffs Company in Marietta, Ohio, starting in mid-August, '39 at $60 a month, a $12 a month increase from my high school summer job! However, a month's rent for a five room house on college campus cost only a week's pay......"
One can continue reading this book as it is now available at the Lane Memorial Library as it was presented to Bill Teschek of the Lane Memorial Library on Tuesday, January 14, 2003, by Nelson's sister, Margaret Tobey Barry, along with her daughter, Peggy McCarthy, and her son, Tobey Barry. Also in attendance at the presentation was John M. Holman, Hampton History Volunteer and Nelson's long time good friend, David F. Colt, Jr. who had the following comments on Col. Nelson and his recently completed book:
"The 20th Century was a period of rapid and dramatic change.
"Early in the 1900's, the age-old animal drawn modes of land transportation began giving way to motor vehicles.
"The horse and buggy on dirt roads was rapidly being replaced by automobiles on multi-lane highways.
"This book is the story of a Hampton boy who was born when horse-drawn vehicles were still a very common sight on the streets & roads of Hampton.
"Nelson went to the Hampton public schools when our school facilities were just changing over from one- or two-room buildings to larger multi-room structures.
"From Hampton Academy, graduating in 1935, he went to a military college and graduated just in time to go off to war.
"Nelson was available to his country just when we needed him and he helped in the transition of a 200,000-man army into an eight-million-man force.
"He served as a Battery Commander with the 1st division in North Africa and Sicily before landing in Normandy on D-Day to lead his troops across France, Belgium and into Germany.
"Nelson stayed on to help develop a peacetime army to prevent another worldwide holocaust from starting.
"In his high school days, Nelson worked for my father (David F. Colt, Sr., owner of the newly established Colt News Store) and that's when I first met him. He took me on a few hiking trips in 12 shares (off White's Lane & Jonty's Lane) and helped me with a school project and I became a life-long fan.
"I met Nelson again at VMI (Virginia Military Institute) when the Army sent me there for a short course.
"He was a Major and I was just a Pfc. (Private First Class). But, he didn't let that bother him. He had me over to his quarters for dinner with his family, Beryl and Patricia.
"I understand that this book was undertaken at the urging of his family and I'm so glad that they convinced him to do it.
"As a contemporary, I found the book very interesting and I'm so very glad that Colonel Tobey took the vast amount of time and effort necessary to produce this record of how a Hampton boy faced the challenges of the 20th century. A century of great change and great and terrible wars.
"I highly recommend this book."
Following Mr. Colt's comments, Mrs. Margaret Tobey Barry continued, thusly,
"With me, are my daughter Peggy McCarthy, my son, Tobey Barry and Nelson's long time good friend, David Colt Jr.
"My brother, Nelson, has asked me to mention that his two brother's also served in World War II.
"Lester served in the Navy -- he was an electrician on the warship Boxer.
"Paul served in the US Army as an Infantry Officer, serving with distinction with 'Merrill's Marauders' in Burma. His book, 'Sitapur Incident' ('The Americans and Chinese Meet the Japanese in Burma: 1944 - 1945'), is also in the Lane Memorial Library.
"It is with great pleasure that I have the privilege to present Nelson's book 'My Memoirs' by Nelson W. Tobey, Colonel, Retired, U.S. Army, to the Lane Memorial Library.
"Nelson, with his brothers, Lester and Paul, and sisters Constance and Margeret, 'grew up' in Hampton from 1913 thru 1935.
"As 'Hamptonites' read this book, I am sure Nelson will be remembered as a man who achieved great things in his career, and will be justly proud, as is his family.
"I am pleased he chose to share his experiences with us."
 |
|
Peggy McCarthy, Tobey Barry & Dave Colt. Seated, Mrs. Margaret Tobey Barry, sister of Col. Nelson W. Tobey. [Photo courtesy David F. Colt, Jr.] |
 |
seated at table, expressing her thanks. [A Colt Photo] |
 |
to the Library for accepting her brother's book. [A Colt Photo] |
