As things turned out, our two years in Germany did not leave my career high and dry. Brandeis University offered me a full, tenured professorship, and the National Institute of Mental Health awarded me a research scientist stipend for five years which was later renewed for another five.

As I now write about this happy circumstance I am mindful of the career sacrifice that Peg made all these years. From the time in Heidelberg where she decided to turn down the fellowship to the University of Munich in order to stay with me in Heidelberg, she dedicated herself to my professional career -- not hers. She never had the chance to teach history of art because no such opportunity presented itself where I was at Hofstra and Alfred. And now I realize that she never complained about not being free to pursue her teaching career in art history. While I spent the first year after Heidelberg on the Hofstra faculty, Peg improvised ways of making a living until we were married at the end of that year. While I was paying off my debt to my parents and saving money for us to get married, she did substitute teaching at the swanky Miss Hewett's School and then went back to tutoring children, in this case Loretta, daughter of the rich Howard family of Aiken, South Carolina. As indicated above, for several years she taught German at Alfred University. Then after I came to the Brandeis faculty, she taught German again for a number of years at Rivier College in Nashua, New Hampshire, near our home in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts.

Teaching was in her bones. Besides tutoring and teaching German, she had taught children how to ride horseback. On a number of occasions she gave lectures in history of art, and as we shall see, she also gave lectures in violin making and maintenance.

But now, back to the time when we left QIAR work for Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts. We wanted to buy a house, but needed somewhere to live in the meantime. An acquaintance of mine on the Brandeis faculty was leaving with his family for an international assignment in Pakistan, and we rented his house in the town of Harvard, Massachusetts. It was more than a month before they would vacate the house, so we once again spent a number of weeks camping on the two-acres of land we had held onto in Alfred.

We all camped in a large tent which had replaced the often-used pup tents. And of course there was lots of music in ad hoc orchestra gatherings and pleasant reunions with old friends.

Before the college year began we moved into the rented house in Harvard, and soon started hunting for a house of our own. It was kind of fun looking around for preferably older, New England Style houses. We finally had incredible luck in finding a stately house built in 1693 (stet) with eight fireplaces, at a reasonable price though it stretched us a little. The house was in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, overlooking the Merrimack River Valley.

It was some time before we could move in, but meantime Peg and I and Robin took things up there weekends and slept on air mattresses on the floor. When we finally moved in, Peg planted a garden and also constructed a stone terrace just outside the kitchen door, using plentiful rocks from an abandoned stone wall. I hauled the rocks, but wasn't much good at laying them or building the low walls for the terrace, so that work was all Peg's.

Upstairs in the hallway she constructed and painted the largest set of bookshelves yet. It must have been fifteen feet long, and reached to the ceiling. There were not only shelves, but also boxed in areas for placing displays or trinkets, with one of them large enough to contain a favorite framed painting.

Tyngsboro, where our house was, had no high school, so the local students were bussed to Ayer, where there was a big Army base and where the town was hardly the best. So Peg inquired at a nearby Catholic school, but finally settled on the high school at Nashua, New Hampshire, across the border from Massachusetts but only five miles away. So among her other duties, Peg shuttled Robin back and forth to Nashua every school day.

She didn't let up on Saturdays, when she drove Robin some 30 miles into Boston to the New England Conservatory for violin lessons and orchestra playing and stayed with her until the drive home in late afternoon.

Soon, Peg and Robin and I began playing in the Nashua Symphony Orchestra and continued that until we left the area many years later. At one concert, Peg had her moment of glory playing the beautiful cello solo in San Saen's Carnival of the Animals -- The Swan. She also was very active for a time in raising funds for the New England Conservatory, going around as a volunteer soliciting gifts from well-healed people. I recall a nice private lunch at the Conservatory with the Conservatory's famous director, Gunther Schuller, and the financial manager, thanking Peg for her work.

Peg had an interesting experience at a Brandeis faculty cocktail party. We were talking with separate people at the time. Later, she pointed out to me one of the professors and said, "That man introduced himself to me and said, 'Oh, you are Roland Warren's wife. You know, he is the homeliest man I ever saw.'" I don't recall Peg's response, but I remember that both of us wondered if that was that man's usual conversation opener. (Or, God forbid, was he in earnest!)

The fifteen years or so while I was at Brandeis were among the happiest of our lives. My professional career was at its peak, and the people at Brandeis were spoiling me.

Keeping in mind our intention to move back to the beautiful Alfred area when I retired, we bought a small house with the plan to enlarge it when we wanted to move in. We rented it out to students in the meantime. There was a big fire which destroyed the roof and much of the small upstairs. With the insurance money, Peg and I worked all one summer reconverting the house while we camped not far away on our land. But we gradually became convinced that this house was not the one for us, so we eventually sold it.

While living in Tyngsboro, we started our long history of traveling in recreational vehicles. We started with a camper body on our pickup truck, but soon graduated to a small cab-over motor home. Later, we got into trailers, then into a fairly large motor home, then finally into a much smaller one. We made our Memorial Day weekend trip to Fiddler's Grove in Union Grove, North Carolina every year. Once, we made an extensive trip across the country with a trailer to British Columbia, where I gave a week long institute at the university there. Besides the fee for this, we were able to save the expenses for my transportation there and upkeep there since we lived in the trailer.

On a different occasion, Peg and I drove the large motor home on a tour of the West, which included several days with our son David and his family in Riverside, California.

One summer, we camped for two weeks (all five of us, including David and his then wife Lynda) in Assateague and Chincoteague, Maryland. Representing the American Friends Service Committee, we took our trailer along to New Brunswick to attend the annual meeting of Canadian Friends.

There must have been other trips as well, until this last one when we came down from Andover, New York to The Arbors of Bedford in Bedford, New Hampshire, in our small motor home, with Robin driving.

Continue with Violin Making and Repair
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