Wednesday, December 07, 2016

WWII sailor Joe Hittorff, with roots in Kent, is laid to rest at last

Contributed photoEnsign Joseph P. Hittorff Jr.
Contributed photoEnsign Joseph P. Hittorff Jr. 
Editor’s note: About two weeks ago, The Register Citizen was notified by a local funeral home that the recently identified remains of a WWII sailor, lost in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941, had arrived in Connecticut for burial. Not long after, a representative from POW/MIA CT Forget-Me-Nots, Inc. contacted us on behalf of Ensign Joseph P. Hittorff Jr.’s family asking that we not seek an interview. The family, however, provided a great deal of information about Hittorff’s life and service. Hittorff served on the USS Oklahoma and his long-overdue funeral will take place in Kent on June 18. Hittorff’s cousin, Dianne Lang, wrote the following piece about her relative and how his remains came home.
As a baby boomer who missed World War II by a few years, I never thought much about how the war had impacted the older generation who lived through it. We certainly studied it in school, but it somehow seemed remote to me. I do remember the infrequent occasions when my uncle, Robert Keene, would reluctantly talk about the time he spent in an army tank. I just knew it had been an awful experience for him. I also remember my father, Philip Camp, talking about the rough treatment farmers were given during the last call for recruits before the war ended. He was the sole support for a multi-generational family unit, and a food producer, so had been deferred up until that point. Farmers were almost considered anti-American by some in the military as they had not been expected to serve. No one spoke much about those times, and I felt disconnected from that period in history.
Then everything changed. My mother, Marie Camp, was contacted by Robert Valley, Volunteer Coordinator of the USS Oklahoma families. Information had been uncovered by a researcher that led him to believe that the remains of my mother’s first cousin, Ens. Joseph Parker Hittorff, Jr. could now be identified.

Tuesday, December 06, 2016

Everybody tells me not to hit back at the lowlifes that go after me for PR--sorry, but I must. It's my nature.

Monday, October 31, 2016

I can't take it anymore (Clinton/Trump)

I can't take it anymore...

'Bill Clinton cheats on his wife. Impeach him. Trump proudly brags about sexual assault (and has cheated on his wives). Elect him.

Hillary oversaw the department of state while 4 people died in an embassy attack. Put her in jail. 2 Republicans were in office while over 200 people died in embassy attacks. No problem.

Immigrants don't pay taxes. Round them up and kick them out. Trump doesn't pay taxes. He's a business genius.

Hillary's foundation only spent 87% of their donations helping people. She's a crook. Trumps foundation paid off his debts, bought sculptures of him, and made political donations to avoid investigations while using less than 5% of funds for charity (and he got shut down by NY State). So savvy... Put him in the white house.

Trump made 4 billion dollars in 40 years, when an index fund started at the same time with the same "small loans" he received would be worth $12 billion today... without a trail of bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits and burned small business owners. He's a real business whiz. Hillary took a loss of $700k. She's a criminal.

Trump is the first candidate in the modern era not to release his tax returns, and took a billion dollar loss in 1 year. Genius. Hillary takes responsibility for private email servers and apologizes. Not credible. Trump denies saying things (on the record) he actually said (on the record), he's just telling it like it is.'

To those who support him:

Your arguments are thin. Your ignorance of reality is shocking. Your double-standards are offensive, and your willingness to blindly support him and recycle the rhetoric is absurd. Your opinion is not fact. Your memes are not news articles. And your hypocrisy is not a platform.

#rantover #imwithher #proudnastywoman

Sunday, August 14, 2016

MARGARET HANNAY Obituary

HANNAY--Margaret Lois Patterson, died on August 11, 2016 after a four-year struggle with brain cancer. She was born in Rochester, NH, on December 20, 1944, the eldest child of Dr. Lois Kunz Patterson, biologist, and Rev. Dr. Ralph Patterson, pastor in New England with summers as a Christian camp director, mostly at Deerfoot Lodge in Speculator, NY. Margaret had two brothers, Ronnie who died as a 'blue baby' on the day of his birth, and Ken, a Vietnam Veteran and Chief of Operations of the Portland, OR District Navigation and Hydrographic Survey Missions of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He died less than a month after his diagnosis of Glioblastoma Multiforme at age 49.

Margaret received the same diagnosis in October 2012, but advanced cancer care gave her a much longer life. She was very grateful for the excellent care of her doctors, home health aides, and Community Hospice of Albany County. Margaret went to Wheaton College in Illinois, where she had an excellent education in English literature; she met David Hannay when they were 18, and he was the love of her life. They were married at age 20 and spent more than 50 happy years together. Both Margaret and David continued with graduate school through the Ph.D. and became professors, Margaret in English Literature at Siena College and David in Computer Science at Union College.

Along with David, she was proud of their daughters Deborah Hannay Sunoo, a Presbyterian pastor married to Ken Kyung Sunoo, and Catharine Hannay, a teacher and creative writer married to Eric Peterman, and of their granddaughters Rebecca Catharine Jin Sunoo and Alina Margaret Yun Sunoo. She felt blessed to live near so many of David's family, raising their daughters in a home inherited from David's grandparents in Westerlo, NY.

Dr. Hannay was Professor of English at Siena College from 1980 to 2013. Her specialty was the literature of early modern England, and she frequently taught Elizabethan Literature, English Renaissance Literature, and Shakespeare, as well as the Honors Great Books class for first year students. In 2000 she received the first Raymond Kennedy Excellence in Scholarship Award from the College. At Siena she served as chair of the core curriculum committee, chair of the committee to establish the Honors program, and chair of the English department. Her publications include more than fifty articles and seventeen books, including biographies of C.S. Lewis, Lady Mary Wroth, and Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke; seven volumes of editions of works and correspondence by the Sidney family edited with Noel Kinnamon and Michael Brennan; and essay collections, most recently the two-volume "Ashgate Research Companion on the Sidneys, 1500-1700," edited with Michael Brennan and Mary Ellen Lamb (2015). Her books have received various "Book of the Year" awards, and her volume on Dorothy Sayers was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

Over the years Margaret received a number of research fellowships including three from the National Endowment of the Humanities and three from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. She has served on boards of the Modern Language Association, as Council Secretary of the Renaissance English Text Society, and as national president of the Conference on Christianity and Literature. She was a founder, secretary, and then president of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, from which she received a Lifetime Achievement Award. She was secretary and president of the International Sidney Society, which gave her the Jean Robertson Lifetime Achievement Award. Each of these things, she said, was a great joy; she loved teaching, caring for students, attending conferences on the English Renaissance, and sleuthing in the archives in England and Wales for her research.

With David, Margaret was an enthusiastic member of First Presbyterian Church of Albany, NY. She served on session, taught classes, and was most recently on the welcoming Membership Committee. She was blessed to have such good friends and pastors in this historic church that welcomes all people and strives to serve those in need. She was most grateful for the similar ministry of Franciscan ideals at Siena College, and for the deep friendship of colleagues there. She also treasured her friendship with colleagues across the English- speaking academic world who shared her research interest in early modern writers.

A memorial service will be held at First Presbyterian Church, 362 State St., Albany, NY 12210, on Sunday, August 28th at 1:00pm. Memorial donations in Margaret's honor may be given to First Presbyterian Church of Albany for Mission and Outreach.

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Marie Camp obituary

Camp, Marie Anna.

Marie Anna (Neels) Camp of South Kent, CT died unexpectedly on April 15 at the age of 97. She was the daughter of Gustav and Matilda (Hittorff) Neels. Marie was born on December 24, 1918 in the Bronx. Birch Hill in Kent became her full-time home in 1933. Marie graduated as the valedictorian of her class at Kent High School in 1935 and then from Crandall's Secretarial College in Danbury. .

Marie married Philip W. Camp at the Kent Congregational Church on October 18, 1942. She helped her husband as a farm wife, worked at Nellie Rothe's Kent Inn, and was a secretary for South Kent School, Kent School, and the Town of Kent. Marie was an 82 year member of the Kent Congregational Church and a member of the Kent Historical Society, the Monday Morning Art Group, the Kent Informal Club, the Kent Library Association, and the Merwinsville Hotel Association. .

Her friends all enjoyed her paintings, especially her yearly Christmas card with birds on it. Marie loved to spend time researching her family tree and families from Kent. .

She is survived by her two children Philip W. (Bill) Camp, Jr. ( Brenda) of Myrtle Beach, SC and Dianne Lang (Philip) of South Kent, CT; two grandchildren Robert Camp of Myrtle Beach, SC and Charles Camp of Staunton, VA; one great grand-daughter, Colleen Marie Camp; and Marie's sister, Amy Nissen of Nassau, NY. She was predeceased by her husband. A memorial service will be held on June 19, 2016 at 2:00 in the Kent Congregational Church, Kent CT. Burial will be at the convenience of the family. Contributions can be made to the Kent Historical Society or the Kent Congregational Church. .

Published in News Times from Apr. 20 to Apr. 29, 2016 -

Obituary: Joseph Hittorff Jr.

Ensign Joseph Parker Hittorff, Jr., was born in Kingston, NJ on December 2, 1916. He died 25 years later on the Oklahoma after it was bombed in Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on December 7, 1941. Joe (or Bud, as his older sister Marion called him) was the son of Joseph Peter Hittorff and Ethel (Van Wagenen) Hittorff.

Joe’s family resided in Springfield, MA for a brief time where his father was a commercial traveler for a coffee company. Marion, Joe, and their parents then moved to 211 Virginia Avenue in Westmont, NJ. When Joe was a junior in high school, his mother died. In 1934, Joe graduated from Collingswood High School. He had managed his high school football team during his senior year and had attained the rank of Eagle Scout. After graduation, he attended Brown Preparatory School for English and math. Joseph had always wanted to go to sea, and so he chose to start a career in the Navy.

In June of 1936, he entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and graduated in 1940. His initial assignment was serving on board the battleship USS Oklahoma, a 583 foot battleship attached to the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii. Joe had completed all of the requirements for being promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade but his commission had not come through at the time of his death.

Joe sent frequent letters home. In one from November 2, 1941, he expressed concern that there were war clouds on the horizon, and he was "expecting the worst -- and hoping for the best." On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The Oklahoma sank, and Joe was among the casualties along with 395 enlisted men and 19 other officers. Seven days later, a telegram was sent to his parents and sister saying, "The Navy Department deeply regrets to inform you that your son, Ensign Joseph Parker Hittorff, Jr., United States Navy, was lost in action."

Joe’s Naval Academy ring was recovered from the wreckage at a later time. Also returned to the family was a ceremonial sword from Annapolis. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, the Victory Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, and the American Defense Medal.

On March 7, 2016, seventy-four years and three months later, Joe’s remaining family members were notified that his remains had been identified after being disinterred from the Punch Bowl Cemetery in Hawaii. Sadly, his oldest living relative, Marie Camp of South Kent, CT passed away early this April. Marie, her sister Amy Nissen of Nassau, New York, and cousin Norma Medlicott of Zephyrhills, FL were all first cousins of Joe and Marion.

A funeral has been planned for June 18 at 11:00 in the Kent Congregational Church, Kent CT with burial immediately after in the Kent Congregational Cemetery.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Invocation of Peace by Fiona Macleod

Deep peace I breathe into you,
O weariness, here:
O ache, here!
Deep peace, a soft white dove to You;
Deep peace, a quiet rain to you;
Deep peace, an ebbing wave to you!
Deep peace, red wind of the east from you;
Deep peace, grey wind of the west to You;
Deep peace, dark wind of the north from you;
Deep peace, blue wind of the south to you!
Deep peace, pure red of the flame to you;
Deep peace, pure white of the moon to you;
Deep peace, pure green of the grass to you;
Deep peace, pure brown of the earth to you;
Deep peace, pure grey of the dew to you,
Deep peace, pure blue of the sky to you!
Deep peace of the running wave to you,
Deep peace of the flowing air to you,
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,
Deep peace of the sleeping stones to you!
Deep peace of the Yellow Shepherd to you,
Deep peace of the Wandering Shepherdess to you,
Deep peace of the Flock of Stars to you,
Deep peace from the Son of Peace to you,
Deep peace from the heart of Mary to you,
And from Briget of the Mantle
Deep peace, deep peace!
And with the kindness too of the Haughty Father
Peace!
In the name of the Three who are One,
Peace! And by the will of the King of the Elements,
Peace! Peace!

(From "The Dominion of Dreams. Under the Dark Star by Fiona Macleod (William Sharp,1895))

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Norman Nissen Obituary

Nissen, Norman NASSAU Norman Nissen, 57, passed away unexpectedly at home on Wednesday, June 15, 2016. Norman was born in Cobleskill, on October 7, 1958, to a dairy farming family and he grew up with a love of the farming life. He graduated from Cobleskill High School and earned degrees from SUNY Cobleskill and SUNY Plattsburgh, where he graduated with a bachelor's in geography. Upon graduation, he returned to his family farm. He spent many years as a member of the Cobleskill Town Planning Board, including time as chairman. For the last 19 years he worked at the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, where he was known as a loyal and stellar bookseller. Norman was a warm, intelligent, caring man with an infectious laugh, and he touched many with his compassion and humor. He loved books, music and the outdoors and was enthusiastic about life and learning. Most of all, he was deeply devoted to his family and was a best friend to his wife and children. Norman is survived by his wife of 25 years, Janice Nissen; his children, Samuel and Abigail Nissen; his mother, Amy Nissen; and his brother, Steven Nissen of Binghamton. He was predeceased by his father, Arne Nissen. Calling hours will be held from 4-7 p.m. on Wednesday, June 22, 2016 at the W.J. Lyons Jr. Funeral Home, 1700 Washington Avenue, Rensselaer. A memorial service will be held at the funeral home Thursday, June 23, 2016, at 11 a.m. A celebration of life for Norman will be held at the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza from 6-8 p.m. on June 23, 2016. All are invited to come and share memories and stories of him. In lieu of flowers, Norman's family ask that donations be made to Homeward Bound Dog Rescue of New York, Ltd., PO Box 5782, Albany, NY 12205, or to The Conservation Fund, 1655 North Fort Myer Drive, Suite 1300, Arlington, VA 22209 (online to: community.conservationfund.org/donations. Condolence page at wjlyonsfuneralhome.com.

Saturday, February 06, 2016

Joseph Francis Alaskey III Obituary

Alaskey, Joseph Francis III GREEN ISLAND Joseph Francis Alaskey, III died peacefully in his home, with his brother by his side on February 3, 2016, in Green Island, at the age of 63 after a strong battle with a short illness. Joe is survived by his brother John Ned Alaskey, his beloved nieces and nephews and his dearest friend and cousin, Mark DeSorrento. 

He is preceded in death by his parents, Joseph F. Alaskey, Jr., Domenica "Dorothy" DeSorrento DeLuca, and his sister JoAnne M. Valente. Joe was born April 17, 1952, in Troy. Joe was raised in Watervliet. He graduated from La Salle Institute, and attended Siena College. 

After moving to Los Angeles, he began working steadily as a comedian, impressionist, and actor, and won an Emmy for his work as the voice of Daffy Duck. He was known to his fans as "The Man of a Thousand Voices," and is remembered by loved ones as a kind, quick-witted man who brought laughter and joy to every room he entered. Joe was an accomplished artist who excelled in almost every medium. A director, writer, actor, and cartoonist, he leaves behind a large body of work. He was a talented individual who loved nostalgia and was passionate about classic TV and radio shows. He was an avid comic book collector, loved reading, and authored several published books. More of his work will continue to be released. 

Relatives and friends are invited to call at the Parker Bros. Memorial, 2013 Broadway, Watervliet, on Monday, from 4-7 p.m. The funeral service will follow the wake at 7 p.m. at the funeral home with Reverend Sandy McGowan officiating. Joe's ashes will be interred on Tuesday at 2 p.m. at St. Patrick's Cemetery in Watervliet. All are welcome to attend and celebrate Joe's life. 

In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Please Remember Me (to assist our veterans), c/o Gene Loparco, 22 Furlong Dr., Albany, NY 12205 or to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital , 501 St. Jude Place, 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis, TN 38105 or stjude.org. The family would like to thank Susan Cavanaugh McCabe, Community Hospice and Dr. Numan Rashed for their compassionate care and dedication to Joe. Condolences can be sent to ParkerBrosMemorial.com.
logo
- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/timesunion-albany/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=177617544#sthash.NyAvBbhy.dpuf