Uncle George

Right around the first of March each year, my mother's disposition would show signs of improvement and she'd get even nicer as the fifteenth came closer.  On that day, second in joyfulness only to Christmas at our house, my parents would crack open the Standard Ale and raise a glass, many of them, to Uncle George. The revelry lasted for a week or so, and the beer flowed, and Uncle George was toasted up the wazoo. So were my parents. We'd get a new washer, some years a new car, if the old one was junked up enough. Fresh blacktop on the driveway.  Things that make life good.  Then everybody would simmer down and go back to their normal mood.

That annual bonus was a big reason why people liked working for Kodak. My father had other reasons to enjoy his job.  As a chemical engineer, his profession combined his hobby, photography, with his expertise, mixing chemicals. He learned how to do that in the Army. Chemical warfare specialist Captain Charles E. Osborne was always shooting film, then he'd take it into the lab and futz with ways to make reds less yellow, greens less blue. Walt Disney was Kodak's biggest client.  Our refrigerator stored so many yellow boxes of Kodachrome, Ektachrome, Kodacolor, Ektacolor and various versions of Koda and EKta, there wasn't much space for food. Until we got a new refrigerator. That, too, was paid for with the check from Uncle George.

It did somewhat puzzle me that although he was rolling in dough, Uncle George didn't give us a lot more money a lot more often than once a year.  If we were related to somebody that rich, what explained why I was driving a second-hand bike?  And how come we couldn't have a pool in our backyard?

We'd drive by Uncle George's magnificent East Avenue mansion and I'd go, "Why can't we go inside and get some money?"  

 Uncle George's house.

  
 Our house.

Kids who grow up in Rochester NY learn about George Eastman along with George Washington. We had the Eastman School of Music, the Eastman Theater; our bank was Eastman Savings & Loan.  I attended Durand-Eastman School.  We took our sleds to Durand-Eastman Park.  Try to avoid knowing who George Eastman was, you couldn't.

Being a fairly smart kid, it didn't take me long, just most of my childhood, to figure out that George Eastman was MY UNCLE GEORGE.


Uncle George
 
Eventually I learned the reason I'd never met him. He was dead.  Dead people held special allure for me.  I had a grandmother who was dead; she fascinated me. But Uncle George had been terribly rich, so I was especially sorry that he was dead.  If he'd stayed alive, he could have met me and we'd have been friends. Because he never married or had children, I could have been the daughter he so much longed for, in which case I'd have had a really beautiful bedroom with my own TV set, HiFi, Princess phone, and canopy bed in his enormous mansion. Not to mention a decent bike. Plus a horse, there was tons of room for one.

However, and isn't this just how life goes. Instead of buying me the lavish lifestyle I could have had if he'd just stuck around and gotten to know me, George Eastman left his money to the University of Rochester, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Tuskegee Institute. Go figure.