1971 Hitch Hiking Adventure - Last Visit with Granddad Weaver and Virginia

Here is my last visit with Noah Elwood Weaver at Bethany Lutheran Village, Far Hills Ave, Dayton OH. He and Virginia lived here in assisted living after selling their home in West Carrollton. She passed at age 86 in 1971 soon after my visit and he two years later. , I was on a hitchhiking trip back from Mexico City, New Orleans, through Mississippi and Alabama for 6 weeks, as I took a hiatus from med school studies. (Note the Carleton Green and yellow sweat shirt under my Paul Bunyan shirt, and the stylish pants the never seemed long enough! ) Elwood's story of finding love at 60, after his first wife, my grandmother Edna, whom I never met, died from breast cancer during WW II. For me, his home at 321 E Main Street West Carrollton OH was the place of fresh cherry pie out of the oven baked my his second wife, Virginia Magee Weaver, whom Elwood married at age 60. She had stayed home to take care of her elders near the town of Wilmington OH, and went back to nursing school, and had met Elwood, so the story goes, through her nursing classmates who took care of Edna Eicher Weaver after she was treated for breast cancer. I never met Edna, and my Dad, would tell stories about her being a country school teacher, and how she was 6 feet tall, and her dad, Henry Eicher was 6’ 5”. It seems that the German height genes are carried through the Eicher-Weavers as well as the Glessners on my mom’s side. I also recall having to visit Aunt Esther, the single aunt, even over 6' tall. (see apple orchard photo to follow) who stayed to take care of her father, Henry Eicher on the old farm and then in a house on Alexanderville Pike east of West C. I have her diary, and she was very dutiful to take care of her father, and it is a diary of depression and sadness. I seem to recall she died alone in a residential home according cousin Bill Eicher, whom I got to know after visiting him in Kettering in 1984 on our way to Vermont and later in Florida when our family did the Disney World, Cape Kennedy, Everglades thing back in the early 90's. The Glessners will be another story!