The First Post of Winter

Gratitude for Everything and Everyone Sharing this spin around the seasons.

Four Generations of Gill Men in 1933

The Harold B Gill Foundation celebrates the babe-in-arms in the picture above. He passed away at the age of 91 on April 7, 2024. I was standing by his left side. My mother was on his right. I’ll remember that so long as I have the capacity to remember. The other three adult men are my father’s father, Harold Bledsoe Gill, Sr., Charles Clinton Gill, Sr. - then the proprietor of CC Gill and Sons Hardware on Main Street in Orange, Virginia and, on the left, William Samuel Gill - born in 1851, the retired schoolmaster of Amherst County, Virginia. He was the son of Curtis Gill who was the son of Jones Gill. My father and I placed the stone commemorating Jones in the graveyard at Indian Creek in Amherst County in October 2015. It’s good to have roots. As the year wraps up, I’m just beginning to come to grips with the archives that I have moved from 100 Underwood Road to my place here in Washington, DC. It’s been quite the year.

So, we are at the solstice - a few clicks beyond - and I am here writing again after a hiatus of a few weeks. I’ve been ill and I’ve been depressed. My mother’s situation is stable, but she’s suffered significant cognitive decline and, after a fall in the home she’d shared with my father since 1977 - just three months to the day after he passed away - breaking her pelvis in two places, a week of acute hospitalization was followed by two weeks of rehabilitation hospital treatment. Since the end of July, she’s been living in Charter Senior Living at McClaws Circle very close to the home in Kingsmill on the James.

We can count ourselves very lucky to have had the lives we’ve lived and the careers that sustained our family over the years. I’d leave Williamsburg in 1994 for Pittsburgh via the Goethe Institut in Prien am Chiemsee. The Chiemsee is the largest inland lake in Germany. The Alps come down to its southern shore. My father helped me pay for the immersion program there as I prepared to go to the University of Pittsburgh and take up my role as Teaching Assistant for the German Department there as I earned my Master’s degree. His support was invaluable as I incurred significant debt which I’d spend years paying down incrementally - wrapping it up in 2008. That adventure came just before I got onto the Internet and I was thrown into contact with people from all around the world.

One of those connections was with a young Croatian diplomat in training, Drzislav Skeljo who was also studying that summer in Prien and also lived in Bahnmeisterei - a former station master’s house just by the train station in Prien. He and I did not have a common language other than German at that time and we’d stay up late talking about his experiences as a fighter for Croatian independence. He’d lost a brother in the war. After completing my studies, he headed for Berlin to get more diplomatic training. I’d head first to Vienna on my own, and then make my way to join him and a few other friends from the Goethe Institut who were at the same school in Berlin. We’d go looking for relatives with whom he’d lost contact at a Croatian church while I was visiting. It’s one of my most cherished memories, traveling there and then back to Munich to fly back to the states.

I was very fortunate in being able to have these experiences. I’d teach German for 11 semesters before moving to Copenhagen, Denmark for an opportunity to join a small Danish Web Content Management software (CMS) company called Web500. Our product ended up being the first .Net-based CMS on the market - written in the new C# coding language. Being the first isn’t always the best thing, however, and after 9/11/2001, our fortunes tanked. Two of us though on the documentation team architected and delivered a single-sourced online help and print documentation solution which won an Award of Merit in the European Technical Publication Competition of 2002. By the time the award was given in Paris, however, the company had cut me and I was back in the states. I had had two opportunities offered to me when I got back. One was to come back to Europe and work for Siemens in Milan. A fellow American expat who was the tech writer for that company had created a position with me in mind. However, I took the safer option (slightly more lucrative) to stay in the US, live with my folks, and serve on a team documenting the requirements for the Ordnance Information System for the US Navy. Our leader in that team was an ex-Navy Seal who got his cybernetics degree in his spare time. He also played accordion at our Christmas Party. I contributed the tin-whistle and fife accompaniment. I believe my father was genuinely glad to have me living at home again during that time and I made sure that I paid him rent as well.

Why am I writing all of this? Well, it’s about showing how much support my parents provided as I moved through these experiences. They were not perfect, but they did as much as they could for their adult children. My sister was carving her way through a career in development. Following her graduate studies at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, she worked for various organizations and currently is the Chief Development Officer of Jamestown-Yorktown, a position she landed just as my father was diagnosed with lung cancer and began undergoing radiation treatment which, thankfully, was successful at killing the cancer but also gave him radiation-induced pneumonia. He survived that too although it left him requiring supplemental oxygen in the last 18 months of his life and took his ability to do much - even requiring a stair lift. Still, he continued to work. He had a book about the advertisements of 18th century tradesmen in progress - something that I hope I might be able to complete if I can reconstruct it from his files.

Generosity and kindness characterized my father. He was patient with us as we went through the various seasons of life. We were fortunate. Again, I’ll say that we were not perfect but we were diligent and have arrived at a place where I believe both he and Mom were proud of us both, my sister and me. My mother had a 32 year career as the Registrar of what became, before her retirement, the Department of Collections and Conservation. She took the Collections Departments systems from card catalog to a modern Web-based system which stands as a monument to her work even now. emuseum.history.org will get you a look at it. I’m very proud of all that she has accomplished.

When I started writing, I wasn’t sure where this would go but I got some encouragement by getting a call from a friend I made in Denmark who is still there. Tina Ditlevsen is an accomplished artist - a singer/songwriter - and generally a bright spot on the planet. Another friend, on reading some of what I wrote in my Facebook Group which I call “Friends of Hal Gill” also called to say that my writing moved her to pick up the phone - so I dropped the call with Tina and took her call from Raleigh North Carolina.

I’m reminded of what my personal guru (who styles himself as both “Nobody’s Fool” and “Temple of Accumulated Error”) Wavy Gravy says, “My wealth in this world are my good friends.” - and isn’t that true of us all. I’d love to hear your comments and promise myself and you that I will endeavor to make the gap between December 9 and today the longest silence that Harrowings will witness.