Thursday, December 30, 1999 Older Editions

A century of memories: WW I, a president's funeral and Haley's Comet -- twice

By Neil Fater

The memories of an entire century are captured in the mind of Walter Whitley -- great, historic memories of the first World War and of man walking on the moon. Or better memories, such as an afternoon spent with his late wife, Ethel.

Born in 1900, Walter Whitley has been around for every year of the 20th Century. As an air-raid warden during World War I, he tossed pebbles at people's windows so they would shut off their lights.

Gentle hug -- Whitley embraces great-granddaughter Regan Miner, 8.

"He's seen Haley's Comet -- twice. He's seen (President) Harding's funeral," says his son, Paul Whitley, of Virginia Road. "A year ago, he would have talked your ear off."

That is no longer the case. Walter is more quiet than in years past, although it's clear his family still enjoys visiting the gentle man, and his great-granddaughters enjoy climbing up on his knee and receiving soft hugs and kind words.

Currently a resident at Academy Manor Nursing Home, Walter Whitley says his "memories come like whiskers now," which is to say, slowly.

Today, it is his family -- his son and daughter-in-law, his four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren -- who often tell his stories.

But, as a new millennium dawns, 99-year-old Walter Whitley can know his stories will be shared with future generations of Whitleys.

Several years ago, he put pen to paper, essentially preserving the 20th century. These stories have been compiled by his family.

Childhood and Haley's Comet

Whitley has fond memories of Somersville, Conn., the town of his early youth.

"There were nice people there," he says. "I was very young then, but I remember that."

In his writings, he recalls peddlers who came door-to-door, including a man who caught skunks and sold their malodorous oil as a cure all (see box).

He also remembers the day when his father added several leaves to the dining room. The young Walter wondered who was coming to dinner, but it turned out his father was preparing an operating table. A doctor was coming to remove Walter's mother's near-ruptured appendix.

"Was the operation a success?" he asks, in his writings. "Mother lived to be 94 years old."

Another story is about the first time he saw Haley's comet, in 1910.

"I remember my father ushering Mother and me out onto the front lawn one evening, not telling us what to expect. Then I saw it! It was an awesome sight, a huge, glowing fireball rising slowly, ever so slowly, over the tree tops of a woods behind our house.

"I held my breath as it passed too close to a neighbor's roof without setting it on fire, and felt relief when it gradually reached the open sky. Only then did I notice the seemingly endless tail of smoke that followed it."

Whitley saw the comet again more than 70 years later, but this time he watched it on TV.

His youngest granddaughter, Layne Whitley, says her grandfather felt that, as a whole, people became more insensitive between those two heavenly visits.

Although Whitley built his first radio and his own camera at one point, he also had some reservations about the number of technological innovations during that time, says his family.

Perhaps this slight technophobia was something he inherited from his Grandma Ladish. Whitley says that when he and his parents moved to Lawrence during the 1910s, his maternal grandmother wouldn't join them.

The reason? Well, people in the cities had indoor plumbing.

"She wouldn't come visit because she 'wouldn't go anywhere where people would do their business in the house,'" explains Layne.

Pomp and circumstances

Walter Whitley and his parents moved to Lawrence, Mass., for his father's work and his own schooling. But, with America entering World War I on the year of his graduation, Whitley graduated without a prom, or even a real graduation ceremony.

The Lawrence High School principal called an assembly before graduation to talk about it.

"I remember him starting by demanding, in effect, 'Don't any of you buy new clothes for your graduation. Our country is at war and needs all its resources to win that war!" writes Whitley.

A few years after graduating, Whitley happened to be in Washington D.C. on Aug. 2, 1923, for the funeral of President Warren Harding.

After waiting for several hours under a tree on Pennsylvania Avenue, he says he saw the president's casket pass, followed by several past and then-future presidents, including Taft, Wilson, Coolidge and Hoover.

"Not far behind them were the members of the Senate, members of the House of Representatives, and Justices of the Supreme Court. The entire high personnel of the United States government was passing before my eyes only a few yards away!" says Whitley. "To a Methuen, Mass. yokel, it was all an impressive and exciting experience!

"Not far behind the presidential group was Colonel Lee Crandall, a 90-year-old soldier who had fought under Stonewall Jackson in the Civil War. He refused a carriage and walked the entire route in his Confederate uniform. The temperature was 102 degrees. Newspapers reported 170 prostrations that day."

Mills and marriage

After his high-school graduation, Whitley worked in a Lawrence mill, and received patents for several inventions, say family members.

"The mill he worked for, the Pacific Mill in Lawrence, was at one time the largest mill in the world. It extended for one mile, all along the canal," says Paul Whitley. Many of Whitley's writings are about people he met in that mill.

But perhaps the sweetest of Whitley's writings is a poems about his wife, Ethel, who died before him.

"They were inseparable," says Paul. "In all the years that I was with my parents, I never heard my parents argue."

Walter Whitley believes he will join his wife in heaven someday.

Layne Whitley says her grandfather once told her that his mother, on her death bed, "raised her arms, sat up and said, 'It's so beautiful,' and then dropped dead."

While many are fretting about what the new millennium will bring, it seems Walter Whitley -- who saw everything this century has to offer -- is neither afraid or what the next century, nor the next life, has in store for him.