During this stage of her life Betty would settle down into an upper middle-class life of being a wife, mother and homemaker.  Then, after 20 years of marriage, she would suddenly end up divorced and move back to her childhood home of St. Louis, Missouri.

Marriage

Photo Given To Fiancé Kirt for Christmas, 1941

Betty had known and socialized with a number of Yale students and graduates ever since starting at Finch College in 1935.  I recall her saying more than once that she had often heard of Kirt Hine (Edward Kirtland Hine) from mutual Yale friends but had never met him since he always seemed to be off skiing while others were attending parties and dances.  (Kirt Hine was a top competitive collegiate ski racer in the late 1930's.)

Betty, along with a number of other guests, spent Labor Day Weekend, 1941 (early in September) at the charming vacation home of Yale friend Bob Nims' family on a hill overlooking the small Vermont village of Dorset.  Kirt Hine was also there and apparently Betty and Kirt hit it off.    Kirt, my father and a Seattle native, was working for Curtiss-Wright Corporation's Propeller Division in New Jersey not far from New York City where, as a Yale educated Electrical Engineer, he designed and tested high performance military and civilian airline propellers.  I believe mother once said that Kirt drove her back to New York City after the long Labor Day weekend.  He then showed up unannounced at Betty's place-of-work in the city mid-day early the next week and asked her to lunch.

Wedding Photo

Honeymoon

Their engagement was announced in November of 1941.  A surviving letter from the school where Betty was taking evening typing and shorthand classes indicates she withdrew due to the pending wedding.    Betty continued to work for Charles of the Ritz into early 1942.

Betty and Kirt were married on February 21, 1942 at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in New York City.  It was not a large nor fancy wedding.  World War II had started a little over 2 months before with the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese and shortages and travel restrictions were already appearing.  In addition, Betty's mother would not have been in much of a financial position to afford anything more than a small ceremony given the family's financial woes after her husband's incarceration.  Betty's mother (Hazel), sister (Harriet and husband Ben) and brother (Bud) attended the wedding as did a group of close friends of both the bride and groom.  Betty's father, C. Earl Hulburd, could not attend due to his imprisonment in Missouri and Kirt's parents did not make it from Seattle, likely due to the cost and wartime travel restrictions.  The wedding reception was held at the nearby apartment of sister Harriet and Ben Erstein.  Betty compiled a wedding scrap book which has survived and it's clear from looking at the photos that they were not taken by a professional photographer, another sign that the wedding was performed on a tight budget.  Apparently no photos were taken at the church and the photos taken at the reception suggest that Betty did not wear a traditional fancy wedding dress.

Photographic evidence shows that the newlyweds spent their honeymoon skiing at Mt. Tremblant in Canada.  Skiing would clearly have been Kirt's idea since I suspect that Betty had never been on skis before.  I recall hearing that the honeymoon also included seeing Niagara Falls which would be consistent with a drive to Canada.

The War Years

Greenbrook Rd. House - January 1945

The couple's first residence was a second floor apartment at 24 Day Street in Clifton, New Jersey, not far from New York City. 

Sometime in the spring or early summer of 1942 the newlyweds would move and settle into married life and the war in a somewhat isolated, but comfortable three bedroom, two story rented house at the corner of Greenbrook Road and Woodland Avenue in North Caldwell, New Jersey.  Their new home was only about a mile and a half from where Kirt worked.  North Caldwell was a small rural town in those days, mostly wooded but with a few farms and fields around.  It was an oasis of rural living surrounded by sprawling Northern New Jersey and was only about 20 miles from Manhattan.  This would be the start of many years of "rural" living for Betty.  With the exception of about 10 years after her 1962 divorce, Betty would spend the rest of her life living away from the hustle and bustle of city living in stark contrast to her urban upbringing in St. Louis and time spent in New York City.

July 1944 at home.

Kirt spent the war working 80 hour weeks designing propellers and running the Curtiss-Wright propeller flight test program.  Housing in the area was in short supply and some of father's test pilots, usually having recently returned from overseas combat, would live with the Hines and, according to stories mother told, regularly "buzz" the house in high performance fighter or bomber aircraft.

Betty spent the war doing considerable volunteer work for the Red Cross and being a homemaker for Kirt and the temporary guests who lived with them.   Like everyone during the war, the Hines suffered through the rationing of food, gasoline, and most other things and grew a "Victory Garden" to supplement their food supply.  Betty's mother, Hazel, passed away at age 50 from a brain tumor in early 1944 in New York after a year of hospitalization.  With no where else to go, Betty's brother Bud lived with the Hines and attended high school nearby.   Her father was released from prison in Missouri in late 1943 and frequently visited the Hines in New Jersey before passing away in St. Louis in 1952.

Kirt was always a dog lover and the Hines had a dog named Sport during the war.  Sport was a mongrel and was traded in for a less rambunctious Boxer named Nan when I was born in April of 1945.

Sept. 1942 at home on Greenbrook Road.	Leavenworth, Washington visiting Kirt's Sister - 1943	With Sport At Home July, 1943

Betty made friends easily and acquired many of them over the years but probably her best friend was Charlee Wilbur who she met during the war.  Charlee was living just up Greenbrook Rd. from the Hines with her husband's parents while he was off serving in the army in Europe.  They met in 1943 or 1944 when Charlee was out taking a walk in the neighborhood.  They spent much time together during the war.  In later years Charlee's husband, Richard (Dick) Wilbur would go on to become one of the best known living contemporary poets in the U.S., would win several Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, and in the 1980's would be honored by being selected as the second Poet Laureate of the United States.  The Hines and Wilburs would visit each other regularly during the 1950's and 1960's after the Wilburs had moved to Connecticut and then Massachusets and the families even vacationed together in Vermont and on Martha's Vineyard of the coast of Massachusetts.  Charlee and Betty would remain best friends and stay in close contact for the rest of their lives.  

The Family Grows

April 1946. My first birthday.

The family started to grow when I was born in April of 1945, only months before the end of World War II.  Greg was born in June of 1947 and Henry (whose childhood names were Scamp and Hank) in July of 1951.  I recall mother once mentioning that she had had a miscarriage before I was born which I believe she indicated would have been a girl had the baby survived.

Between late 1945 and 1949 the Hines, along with friends the McKelvy's and later the Walkers, built and ran a small ski area in Northern New Jersey which they called the Vernon Ski Tow due to it's Vernon Township location in Sussex  County.  It was about a 45 minute drive from their North Caldwell home and it was open only on weekends and holidays when snow conditions allowed.  Run mostly as a hobby, the ski area operated on land leased from a farmer and engineers Kirt and Bill McKelvy built the rope tow lift using a old automobile engine.  While it was primarily Kirt's venture, Betty spent her weekends during the winter selling ski tickets, hot dogs, and hot chocolate to the skiers while Kirt ran the rope tow ski lift and monitored the ski runs.  According to mother the venture only made money one year and was permanently closed after a couple of years of bad snow conditions.       

Sometime, I believe in the late 1940's, Betty and Kirt had the honor of accidentally briefly meeting Albert Einstein, the famous physicist.  He was a close relative by marriage of one of Kirt's good friends, Bill McKelvy, and they happened to run into each other at an office in New York City one day.

The "Coop"

In 1949 the growing Hine family moved into a new home just 1/4 mile up the road from their rented Greenbrook Rd. home.  They purchased some land from J.D. Armitage, a wealthy retired industrialist turned gentleman farmer, who was slowly selling off parts of his formerly working farm to individuals to build homes on.  (It was not a "development" as seen so often today with a developer "subdividing" and building many similar houses at once.  Mr. Armitage was selling to individuals who built custom, one of kind homes.)  The property, at 427 Mountain Avenue, North Caldwell, wasn't large, only about 1 acre, but it contained a number of the former farm's old out buildings including a huge stucco barn with two tall silos attached (and with an indoor badminton court upstairs) along with several smaller but still substantial structures.  The original plan was to build a home in part of the barn but upon examination by an architect it was decided that this was not feasible and instead the old chicken coop was converted into a long, skinny one story "1950's style" home.  It soon became known to the family and all our friends simply as "The Coop" and provided a marvelous place to live and raise a family.  There was plenty of space for hobby projects, work shops, and gardens, and the many nearby fields, wooded areas, and orchards provided ample space for the kids to play and for dogs to run free.

Fall 1957 Photo of "The Coop"	1950's aerial view of "The Coop" (the long structure in the upper center) with the Hine family barn and other out-buildings directly in front.

The 1950's

Undated 1950's photo of Betty and Kirt

The 1950's are now described fondly by historians as mostly a period of peace and prosperity, an idyllic time to raise the post World War II "Baby Boom" generation, and a time of "perfect" families and family life.  Looking back at it, the description fits the Hine family pretty well.  Kirt had a good and secure job designing propellers which provided ample money to allow Betty to be a stay-at-home mother and devote herself to family affairs.  She was a very good wife and mother and during these years would prepare breakfast each morning for Kirt and us kids and send us off to work and school.  We had a sit down mother-cooked family dinner at the same time each night.  Betty did the shopping, cleaned the house (with the help one day a week of a maid), delivered the kids to after school activities such as Cub Scouts, and did all the other things associated with being a good mother and homemaker in the 1950's including being a good hostess to visiting friend and neighbors.  Mother always made sure us kids were involved in all the usual fun childhood activities revolving around the usual holidays and events of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc.

1955 Trip to Seattle

The neighborhood we lived in became known as the "Farm" due to it's roots as a working gentleman's farm and it maintained it's charm and uniqueness even as North Caldwell started growing substantially during the 1950's with housing developments popping up everywhere.  The "Farm" neighbors all become close friends and were mostly college educated businessmen, engineers, and other professionals.  Over time a pattern of fun annual neighborhood parties developed which were attended by both parents and kids.  Each year the Mueller's on the nearby hill would put up a large outdoor Christmas tree (visible for miles around) and would have a Christmas Tree Lighting party in mid December.  The Walkers each year held a "Twelfth Day" party after Christmas.  All the neighbors would bring their recently taken down indoor Christmas trees, place them in a big pile in the Walkers field near the neighborhood ice skating pond and we'd all watch and celebrate as the trees burned in a huge bond fire.  The Hines held a "Barn Party" for the neighbors for a number of years in the upstairs of our barn in the fall.  I remember mother cooking up huge pots of Boston Baked Beans and other goodies for everyone to enjoy.

Betty as Peter Pan (left) with Tinker Bell

Records show that Betty was a member of the Presbyterian Church while growing up in St. Louis.  By the 1950's however she was a member of the Episcopal Church and each Sunday throughout this period she would get us kids all dressed up and take us to Church and/or Sunday School at St. Peters Church in nearby Essex Fells.  (Kirt was not a church goer but never objected to Betty and the kids regularly attending.)

Betty's ceramic "lama lamp". She likely made it in the 1950's (2002 Photo taken in my home)

Throughout the 1950's Betty would remain semi-active in the Red Cross and for a time was very active in the North Caldwell Public School's Parents-Teachers Association (PTA).  She once played the part of Peter Pan in a fun PTA play put on over several evenings for local town residents.

As a hobby, Betty became very involved with, and very good at, ceramics.  She set up a studio in an unfinished room at the end of "The Coop" where she worked with clay and fired her work in a small electric kiln.  To the best of my knowledge she never attempted to sell her work but did regularly enter it in local and regional art shows where she regularly won ribbons.  She give finished pieces to friends and relatives.  A lot of her work has survived and currently decorates her son's homes.

1954 Photo of one of Betty's ceramic owls.  It was always on display somewhere in Betty's homes over the years and today is on display in my living room.

Among Betty's surviving papers is a file folder labeled “Patent Business”.  The contents suggest that in 1953 and 1954 she, with substantial help from Kirt, was looking into patenting and merchandizing (with friend Bill McKelvy’s help) a ceramic cold drink coaster that absorbed water.  The results of a patent search are in the folder.  Apparently the project never proceeded past the research stage.  Years later decorative water absorbing ceramic cold drink coasters would become commercially available from numerous other sources, particularly at gift shops.

Betty also liked to knit sweaters and the like.  During these years she always took her current knitting project with her where ever she went and during times when things were slow or she was otherwise waiting she could be found sitting and peacefully knitting away with her needles and yarn.  She usually knit sweaters and scarves for her husband and sons.

Betty (left) with sister Harriet in Oct. 1952 at home in kitchen.

Sister Harriet (Dede), Betty's only living relative from her St. Louis days after the death of her father and brother in the early 1950's, continued to live in nearby New York City (with the exception of a few year in the early 1950's when she and her second husband, John Nalley, lived in Thailand and the Philippines).  The Hine family frequently visited the Nalley's in New York City and likewise the Nalley's visited the Hines in New Jersey, particularly around holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Due to living less than an hour from Manhattan, Betty and Kirt often (perhaps 4 times a year) went into New York City to see Broadway plays and/or to enjoy the other cultural attractions the city had to offer.
 

1952 at kitchen table with sons Ted and Greg

Betty was certainly not what anyone would call a gourmet cook but she was a great home-style cook and the family was always well fed with a variety of foods considered healthy at the time.  The Hine family's home furnishings and decorations were what Betty always called "Early Matrimonial" in style.  Everything was functional but not fancy or expensive.  The living areas of Betty's home always conveyed a sense of being friendly and inviting in nature as opposed to being formal and stiff.  Guests always felt "at home" and not intimidated by both Betty's personality and the character of her home.  The home was cleaned weekly with the help of an African-American maid who commuted from Newark, NJ by bus to nearby Caldwell where Betty would pick her up in the morning and drop her off in the afternoon to catch the bus home.

July 29, 1956.  Parents weekend at camp Mowglis in New Hampshire where Betty's sons spent summers for several years.  Betty's brother Bud had attended this camp as had Bob Nims who had introduced Betty and Kirt in Vermont.  In  addition, Kirt's college friend Bill McKelvy, who served as his best man at Betty and Kirt's wedding, had attended Mowglis in the 1930's.

Both Betty and Kirt were heavy cigarette smokers and "social" drinkers of alcoholic beverages as were most of their friends in those days.  Smoking and drinking were very socially acceptable activities for their generation and lit cigarettes were always around as I grew up.  Each evening when Kirt would come home from work he and Betty would have a before-dinner cocktail or two and likely one after dinner also.  Whenever friends would drop by (which was regularly) the cocktails would soon appear.  Their mixed drinks of choice included Manhattans, Old Fashions, and Martinis and neither was much of a beer drinker.   Whenever and wherever the family traveled my parents always packed the "bottle-bag" which contained the fixings to prepare their mixed drinks in our hotel/motel in-route and at our destination.  Both Betty and Kirt were very social by nature and friends regularly visited our home both on week nights and on weekends.  They also often were invited to parties and get-together held by others.

Like many middle class women of her generation, Betty regularly used makeup and perfume, maintained long fingernails decorated with red nail polish, and almost weekly made a trip to the local beauty-parlor to have her "hair done" by her favorite hair-dresser.

1960 in living room with Budget and Roué

Throughout their married life together Betty and Kirt always had one or more dogs.  I grew up with Nan, a Boxer they had acquired about the time of my birth.  Nan passed away from old age in the mid 1950's and was soon replaced by Happy (short for "Hap Hazard Investment"), a Boxer puppy, who was unfortunately hit and killed by a car shortly after we got her.  Next came a female Standard Poodle puppy.  Several days after bringing "Budget" home Betty decided that one puppy just wasn't enough and she and Kirt went back to the breeder and came home with a second puppy (male) from the same litter.  Budget and Roué were great pets, went almost everywhere with the family and would move with Betty back to St. Louis in 1963 and on to California with her in 1968.

Oct. 1949 in Dorset, VT with friends. (Betty third from right, Kirt second from left)

Betty and Kirt had met in Dorset, Vermont and a family tradition throughout the 1950's was a fall and a spring  pilgrimage to the Nims' vacation home there.  The house was closed up for the winter and the Hine family would go up for a weekend in the spring to help get the house ready for the summer season and again for a weekend in the fall to close it up for the winter.  It was always a long drive but well worth it.  One year the family spent a week during the summer there.

A major event in the mid 1950's was the 1955 family trip to Seattle to visit Kirt's relatives.  A brand new 1955 Buick Station Wagon was purchased and the family packed up and drove west.  Since Kirt could only take a two or three weeks vacation from work he took an airplane back home from Seattle and Betty spent another several weeks driving us kids back across the country while seeing all the tourist attraction along the way.

Skiing with the family - 1958

In the mid 1950's Kirt, being a former top-ranked competitive skier while in college, got the entire family involved in skiing, first at a small ski area nearby in New York State where we took day trips and then for weekend trips to Vermont where we stayed in quaint New England ski lodges.  Throughout the late 1950's and into the early 1960's the family spent several such weekends in Vermont each winter.  Betty would never admit it but the sport of skiing as such was never really her "thing".  She never progressed past the beginner stage on the slopes but she loved the social life that went with the sport... the après ski life at the ski lodge and loved being active with the family even if she couldn't keep up on the slopes.

For a few of years in the mid to late 1950's Betty and Kirt sent the kids off to summer camp in New Hampshire and began vacationing for several weeks each summer at the Kennebago Lake Club, a marvelous lodge on an isolated lake in Maine.  Several summers the entire family vacationed together at Kennebago.  In 1959 the family vacationed on Martha Vineyard (Massachusetts) and in the early 1960's Betty and Kirt took a couple of winter vacations aboard chartered sailboats in the Caribbean.

The Divorce

In about 1959, after 20 years at Curtiss-Wright Corp., Kirt had comfortably retired with the aid of a small inheritance from his father and uncle and was dabbling at starting his own engineering firm.  By the early 1960's Betty's two eldest sons (myself and Greg) were attending private boarding schools in Vermont and New Hampshire respectively as Betty and Kirt had wisely decided that the local public high school in New Jersey did not offer the best education.  Youngest son Henry was still in grade school in North Caldwell.

October 1960 at a Nurses Aid function.

In the summer of 1961 Kirt rented the family a vacation home directly on the water at Stage Harbor in the Cape Cod town of Chatham, Massachusetts for a month.  He spent weekends there with Betty and the kids but would go back to New Jersey during the week to attend to his engineering firm.  When the month was over we had enjoyed Cap Cod so much that Kirt rented another house for us to use for the second part of the summer.

In early 1962 Kirt suddenly announced that he was seeking a divorce from Betty and moved out of their North Caldwell home and into a nearby apartment.  It soon became apparent that Kirt had been having an affair with a neighbor who had recently been separated from her husband while the rest of Kirt's family had spent the previous summer on Cape Cod.  I was away at school that fall, winter, and spring and never saw the divorce coming and don't ever recall seeing or being aware of any discord in my parents relationship.  It came as a big surprise to me and suspect that it did for mother as well.

In the early 1960's divorces were difficult to obtain in most states and could take a year or two to process even if appropriate legal grounds could be proved.  It was therefore common for those who could afford it to establish residency in Nevada which had the most liberal divorce laws in the country at the time.  Kirt spent the necessary 6 weeks there in May and June of 1962 and the divorce decree was issued there on June 27, 1962.  Almost immediately thereafter Kirt married our former neighbor, Mary Williamson.  It was not a messy divorce, at least as far as I could tell and both of my parents dealt with it in a matter-of-fact manner.  Mother kept the house in North Caldwell and, as an alternative to alimony, a small trust was set up and funded for her by Kirt which provided enough income to live on.  In addition Kirt provided child support payments and Betty took custody of the children though for Greg and myself this was largely academic as I was close to entering college and Greg was still attending school in New Hampshire.  

In future years Betty maintained contact with her former husband to the degree needed to benefit and coordinate the children.  There was never any fighting over us that I recall and both my parents dealt with each other in a civil, mater-of-fact way when communicating till Kirt's 1977 death.

1112 Terrace Dr., St. Louis - 1968

In August of 1963 Betty put the North Caldwell home on the market and moved back to St. Louis where she had grown up.  When her "farm" neighbors learned she was moving they held several going-away parties in her honor and presented her with mementos of their many years of friendship.  Betty would stay in close contact with her New Jersey friends for the rest of her life.

Betty bought a nice little white house at 1112 Terrace Drive, Richmond Heights (a St. Louis suburb), MO 63117.  I was just starting college at the time and Greg was still at school in New Hampshire so we ended up really never living in this home but rather visiting during school breaks and vacations.  Henry on the other hand lived there and attended high school in the Clayton, Missouri school system which provided as good an education as could have been obtained at many private schools.

Betty had maintained many of the friendships she had made in St. Louis as a child and when she returned had little trouble re-establishing herself socially in the community.

For a brief time after re-settling in St. Louis Betty took a job to supplement her trust income as an administrative assistant for a dental-assistant training school.  In later years she told me she left this position because the school evidently misrepresented it's ability to place graduates in jobs though the quality of the education was apparently good.  In order to find this position Betty prepared a detailed resume in 1964. 

Portrait of Betty Taken in August, 1967 at age 50. Copies were given to relatives and friends.

During the 5 years she would spend back in St. Louis mother would continue working with ceramics (her kiln was set up in the basement) and she regularly played Bridge with friends.  Betty joined a nearby Episcopal church and continued to attend services periodically.

In 1964 she took all of her sons on a week long ski trip to Taos, New Mexico.  We took the overnight train from St. Louis to Raton, NM because mother wanted us to know what it was like to travel and sleep on a train as it was widely believed at the time that passenger trains would soon become extinct due to the emergence of jet air travel.  (Interestingly, as I write this almost 40 years later, cross country rail travel is still available though it's mostly government subsidized.)  Twice that I recall when I visited St. Louis during college vacations mother paid to rent me a tuxedo and sent me off to debutante parties being held for the children of her childhood friends.  One summer Betty and a adventurous friend took some of us kids on an overnight canoe trip down a small Missouri river.

Betty served for a time during this period of her life as alumnae secretary for both her Mary Institute and Finch classes (in 1964 and  1967 respectively).  In this capacity she reported about classmates for the respective alumnae publications.

During this period Betty started sending typed annual newsy Christmas letters to family and friends, a tradition she would continue well into the mid 1970's.  Copies of these letters have survived among her papers and provide an interesting summary of her life during this period.

Kirt Hine took 8mm Movies of the family during the late 1950's and early 1960's and the family also had a 1/4" reel-to-reel tape recorder during this period. Both were new state-of-the-art home entertainment items of the period.  Click on the links at the right to view or listen to Betty.  Note that the movie footage contains no sound and that the audio clips were digitally enhanced and "cleaned up" to remove background noise and hiss.  These are the only audio and movie clips to survive from this period of Betty's life.