Memory, Disintegrating

That morning I unearthed a box filled with flakery reminiscent of friable asbestos in the basement or my collection of desiccated horseshoe crab carapaces.The box was labeled WW2 and was in fact filled with brittle rolls of film, mouse-nibbled packages of negatives, and dozens of envelopes containing black and white photos taken by my father in Japan, right after the end of the war in 1945. There were pictures of Japanese tombs, Japanese tunnels, destroyed Japanese warplanes, and what appear to be picnics in the countryside. There were multiple photographs of Miss California, flanked by smiling soldiers.

It was a good thing to find before taking my mother to visit the neurologist. It was pure chance, or maybe just a respite from the cosmos, that the neurologist we visited was from Lebanon and my mother grew up in Egypt, and if nothing else, she recalls Egypt well; and in her mind, Beirut is still the Paris of the Middle East. So the doctor’s name was familiar and reassuring. So reassuring, perhaps, that my mother did not register or hear and acknowledge the diagnosis, so reassuring that she had no reason to recollect the discovery of Alois A. more than a century ago of the neurofibrillary tangles causing us so much dismay; but I did: I heard, I registered and recalled. I have never been to the Paris of the Middle East.

Back home we sat at the kitchen table and rifled through the box of old pictures. We did not discuss the diagnosis or anything at all about the visit to the neurologist. From handling the old photographs, we had to wash our hands frequently. Or I did. (I am only slightly paranoid about hanta virus and its variants.)

My father signed up during his sophomore year at Harvard, and he was sent to the Navy’s Intensive language school in Colorado to learn Japanese and Korean. (Good call: he was already fluent in French and German, as well as his native Esperanto.) Later he was selected into the Naval Intelligence Service and sent to Hawaii where he translated intercepted Japanese messages. Later, he assisted Admiral Jerauld Wright at the surrender of the Japanese Navy in Korea. . We don’t know anything else he did in the war. He never spoke of it - as in never, or only slightly more than he spoke of his mother, about whom he never spoke voluntarily - until the last five years of his life, by which time he had suffered a stroke and his older memories became the most vivid for him. He was stationed in Japan when the war was over, and stayed on to debrief Japanese soldiers and assess the situation. The war was now over, so he was finally allowed to take photographs; he took lots and sent them back to Hingham to be processed. Sixty years later, he still had his prescriptions filled at the same pharmacy.
Here are some Japanese planes. I wonder if even back then, Dad was wondering how the scrap metal might be profitably recycled.

Dad's caption for this reads: If a family doesn't have enough money to build a tomb they make a special thatched hut like this and put the ashes there.

On the back of the above he wrote: The Okinawa thatch is different from that in Europe or England but equally effective.
And here are the young soldiers with their beloved Miss California.

I can't begin to explain this except to marvel at Dad's observations (and knowledge of gemology?)

R.I.P. Philip Lehner

This is the notice that appeared in today's New York Times. What it doesn't say is how remarkable his death was, surrounded by his wife, a grandson and all five children, singing hymns and reciting poetry, Yeats, Kinnell, and Robert Service, specifically. (Though there was some concern that the off-key singing hastened his end.) We had brought him home from the hospital a week earlier to start with hospice care, and many friends and relatives were able to visit him at home and say good-bye. Saturday afternoon his closest friends from Central America, Alfonso and Carlos, arrived and visited with him - though by then be was not responsive. Still, his impressive eyebrows twitched until the last.


LEHNER--Philip, born October 24, 1924 of Hingham, MA, died peacefully at home on January 5, 2013, surrounded by family. The son of Hans Lehner, from Germany, and Germaine L'Eveque, from France, Philip was born in Boston. He entered Harvard College in 1941. During sophomore year, he was selected into the Navy Intelligence Service. After one year learning Japanese in a Navy intensive language program, he was stationed in Hawaii translating intercepted Japanese messages. Philip quickly was promoted to Lieutenant (jg), one of the youngest naval officers in WWII. At the battle of Okinawa, he interrogated Japanese prisoners. He assisted Admiral Jerauld Wright as a translator at the surrender of the Japanese naval forces in Korea, and joined an intelligence team to determine the Japanese military capacity. He returned to Harvard and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1948. He joined Leigh Textile Company, a family fiber recycling business based in Boston. Philip and his family members built Leigh Fibers into the largest textile and fiber reprocessing and recycling company in the United States. Leigh opened an office in Montreal and eventually became the largest textile waste company in Canada. On round-the-world voyages trading textile waste, Philip's facility with languages - German, French, and Spanish as well as Japanese - allowed him to form close relations around the globe. In the early 1960's Philip partnered with two other families from Central America, to establish Grasas y Aceites, S.A., which grew to be the largest vegetable oil mill in Nicaragua. Philip bought Cafetalera Aquiares, a coffee farm in Costa Rica that has become a model for ecologically sound management. Philip led his partners to invest in Ingenio Taboga, helping to build it into the largest and most sustainably managed sugar cane operation in Costa Rica. Philip loved sailing in Hingham Harbor and in Maine, passing on that love to all his children.
Philip established funds at Harvard, Smith, MIT, Brown & Nichols, and Milton Academy, and supported environmental and childhood education programs. Philip is survived by Monique Brancart Lehner, his wife of 61 years, his brother Pete of Hingham, MA, five children - Christine (Chucker) of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY; Carl (Sandra) of Holderness, NH; Michael (Monica) of Boston, MA; Peter (Fritz) of New York, NY; and Brigitte Kingsbury (Hal) of Cape Elizabeth, ME, 15 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Donations in Philip's memory may be made to: The Trustees of Reservations, 572 Essex Street, Beverly, Massachusetts 01915; www.thetrustees.org.

There will be a funeral service at St Paul's Church in Hingham, Massachusetts this Thursday, January 10th, at 11 a.m.

The fate of the Henry Hudson Hotel

My parents are here for a few stays. Mom decided she needed a dose of NYC culture, and Dad agreeably accompanies her. Not that there is any choice, for her or for him.
Thus far they have visited the Onassis Cultural Center for the “Worshipping Women” Exhibit, MOMA to get confused, and the Met for Islamic tiles and Dutch landscapes. My mother is researching the lineage of the spiral design and has traced it as far back as the Bronze Age. This pleases her enormously.


Dad wants to know about the Henry Hudson Hotel. The NYC he remembers is circa 1944, when several floors of the Henry Hudson Hotel were commandeered by Naval Intelligence, and he lived there for a few months learning codes. The Henry Hudson Hotel was built in 1929 as the Women’s Association Clubhouse, with 1250 rooms and a swimming pool. A quick Google search tells me that back in 1997 Ian Schrager bought the building with plans to renovate it and turn it into a$75/night hotel. A lovely idea, but did that happen? The Internet trail turns chilly after one fascinating article about Schrager’s project and Anne Morgan’s role in the establishment of the Women’s Association.

An Internet site called EveryBlockNYC, tells me that in 2008 three Applications for alterations were denied at 353 West 57th. Having been denied a variance by our own misguided Zoning Board (for a barn, no less) I can only imagine the bureaucratic posturing and the gnashing of teeth, the lamentations and recriminations. Or maybe it’s not quite like that on the West Side.
The flat Netherlandish landscape may be fine, but this is all Dad wants to see. A visit is in order.
You probably would not expect the patron saint of hotel keepers to have much in common with Oedipus. But such is the sad case. He was out hunting when the stag he pursued predicted Julian would kill his parents. Julian promptly moved to Galicia and married a wealthy older woman. Twenty years later his loving parents found out where he had decamped to and popped in for a surprise visit. Julian's wife graciously gave the older couple her and Julian's bed. When Julian came home (from hunting, of course) and saw them sleeping there, he assumed it was his wife with another man and killed them both. And there is much more. But most likely none of it is true.