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The Raymonds of
Cambridge – 100 Years Tom Raymond, CCS Class of 1964
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As the 1930s opened in Cambridge, America was sliding into economic depression. Soup lines in cities served as best they could while Washington County fared a bit better with pantries stocked from local fields and barns. Blossom Raymond’s cousins, Walt Perry out in Coila and Delia and Emory Clark down in White Creek, supplied lamb, corn and squash to the table at 120 West Main Street. McWhorter’s Market and Skellie’s delivery truck also kept food on shelves around town, as did chicken coops and gardens tilled and harvested in back lots from Ash Grove along Main Street out to Tannery Pond. The daily news centered on the nation’s high unemployment and the Dust Bowl. FDR uplifted the country with his Fireside Chats beamed into Cambridge from Schenectady over the airwaves of WGY, and retired Army Colonel Robert R. Raymond followed AP and UPI dispatches of overseas unrest in The New York Times. After a decade in their adopted hometown, Rob and Blos found the nest empty in 1930, save for eldest daughter Caroline, gainfully employed up the hill at Mary McClellan Hospital. The two youngest, Charles and Virginia—1926 and 1929 Cambridge Union graduates, respectively—had struck out on their own, as had four older siblings earlier. Charlie was a Second Year Cadet (junior year) at West Point, while Ginny was a freshman at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. During the 1930s, the high school graduated future leading citizens of the Cambridge District, familiar names who left their marks on Cambridge culture: teacher Evelyn Holden (Class of 1930), publisher Gardner Cullinan (1931), farmer Ben English (1934), businessman Charley Ackley (1936), and grocer Ed McMorris (1938.) Hardy folks, they were more than acquaintances to the Raymonds, but became good friends. In the 1930s, Robert continued serving the community at Mary McClellan as Treasurer, on the Cambridge Union School Board, and on the vestry at St. Luke’s Church, rubbing elbows with the village mayors, Earl Shaw, Jim Robertson, Robert Burns, and Bill Robertson. Firefighting by 1930 was the responsibility of the Cambridge Fire Department with some of the old private hose companies still assisting. Hangers-on from the previous century, they were finally disbanded in 1932, their members absorbed into CFD creating a force of 30, which rose to 40 by 1937. In his youth, Charlie Raymond had become a huge fire buff, a passion maintained for life, chasing fire trucks on his bicycle and building model and toy fire equipment, from the horse-drawn steamer era to modern fire engines. In 1932, Cambridge residents approved talkies on Sunday nights at the Fisher Playhouse on Main Street, today’s A&M Printers. They were likely entertained by Grand Hotel, that year’s Oscar winner, with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and John Barrymore (Drew’s granddaddy); and perhaps The Wizard of Oz, which everyone knows was an allegory for better times ahead, what with a Yellow Brick Road, a metaphor for precious gold, and an Emerald City reflecting the crisp, vibrant green of solid U.S. green-backs. In June 1931, Charles received his 2nd Lieutenant bars, likewise classmate Chester W. Ott of Erie, PA. Virginia and Chester were introduced, then engaged and married at West Point in April 1932. Both young soldiers were posted on active duty, gratefully, in the early stages of the economic downturn, Charles as a Field Artillery officer, Chester in the Army Corps of Engineers. Ginny was the third daughter, after Katherine and Clara, to bring a son-in-law into the Raymond family circle. The Otts were in Pittsburg in 1934 for the arrival of their first child, Virginia, “Ginny”, and by mid-decade, Lt. Ott had orders to the Panama Canal Zone where son John was born in 1937. Which, by the way, was sovereign American soil by international law—we built the Canal, brought new prosperity to the Panamanian people, and helped them gain rightful independence from Columbia. To be clear, both John McCain and John Ott would be eligible for the highest office of the land. Lt. Charles Raymond’s first duty station in the summer of 1931 was to Fort Lewis, Washington, south of Seattle, reached by rail in several days from Albany. He joined his new Field Artillery unit at the foot of massive Mount Ranier and soon purchased his first automobile, a 1931 Model A Ford. In 1934, new orders were cut for Fort Sill, OK, for advanced artillery tactics. Before reporting, he took leave and drove back to Cambridge, plotting his course to Army posts en route for fuel, a hot meal and a bunk at the posts’ BOQs (Bachelor Officer’s Quarters.) He crossed endless miles of a still wide-open West on roads of gravel to mid-continent, and likely picked up concrete pavement approaching the Mississippi. He later admitted to some sketchy stretches across Wyoming where he thought it best to keep rumbling along, and don’t look any bears, or some cowboys for that matter, in the eye. Not that his sidearm wouldn’t have served the purpose. At Fort Sill, Lt. Raymond soon met Anita Cervi, of Denver, an Army Nurse stationed at Fort Sam Houston Army Hospital in San Antonio. They were married in 1936 and received new orders to Madison Barracks, NY, near Watertown. Their first son, Charles III, was born at Mary McClellan the next year. Meanwhile, in Portland, Clara and Paul Spangler had their fourth child, a son, Paul. The year 1937 was a bit of a banner year for the Robert Raymonds, with three first-cousin grandsons arriving by stork within six months of each other: John Ott in March (CZ), Al Spangler, July (Portland), and Charles Raymond III, September (Cambridge.) Seven grandchildren grew to thirteen before decade’s end. 120 West Main Street hosted regular family gatherings for holidays, vacations, and weekend getaways. These included the Burlingames, Cris and Katherine and the four boys, living then in the New York metro area after Cris had left the Army in 1922. He and Kattie resided in Oyster Bay, Long Island, for a while, then operated a school for youths in northern New Jersey called Junior Haven School. Cris kept in fine physical shape by competing in top-flight amateur tennis matches. They also lived on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan where youngest son, Bob, recalled hours of dirt-lot baseball and countless innings of Major League action at the Polo Grounds, cheering on his New York Giants against the Brooklyn Bums and the even more despised Bronx Bombers. Due to Dr. Spangler’s practice out in Portland, OR, with Clara and their three daughters and son, they visited 120 only on occasion in the 1930s. Though Richard and Anne Raymond also lived out in the Columbia River Valley as the decade opened, they soon came to Cambridge to seek employment in the bleak economy, where Richard III was born in late 1930 at Mary McClellan. Sadly, their second son, Charles Carsten, lived only six months in 1935, but joy returned to the family the next year with the arrival of Caroline King Raymond in 1936, also in Cambridge. In 1938, the Charles Raymonds headed to a new duty station out on the Island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. This would afford the lieutenant fond childhood moments from two decades before, 1916-1919. Charles, Anita and the youngest Charlie passed through the 25-year old Panama Canal aboard a military transport—the photo shows their crossing over Gatun Lake—from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific. Once out of the Canal, they sailed up the West Coast to Fort Mason, San Francisco, then onward to Hawaii. They arrived in Honolulu in mid-summer to begin two years of tropical island life.
Charles was assigned to an artillery regiment at Schofield Barracks, north of Honolulu. They discovered mai-tais and mahi mahi, stunning sunsets and jaw-dropping waterfalls, lush coastlines with steep pali plunging to the surf, bubbling caldrons and lava tubes and Polynesian legends. Anita swayed to the hula and Charles plunked away on the ukulele. She joined the other officers’ wives for benefits, bridge and canasta, and together they were the “project couple” for several Regimental parties. They hosted Anita’s sister, Marie, Army WAC, who met and dated Army officer William Westmorland; yes, the one and the same.
After their move to Cambridge in 1920, Robert and Blossom, on the other hand, travelled little beyond the Capital District. However, two interesting trips bear mentioning, in the winter of 1937 and late in 1939 (covered in the next month’s chapter.) For a brief respite away from the bitter cold, and with the nation easing out of the doldrums by ’37, they sailed from New York to Panama to visit the Otts. Life in the Canal Zone for Virginia, Chester and four-year old granddaughter Ginny included dealing with the relentless heat and humidity. Yet the Canal’s waterworks and a modern electrical grid powered abundant electric fans, lights, and refrigeration, not to mention, of course, the Canal’s own heavy equipment. Virginia later recalled that wardrobes in tropical residences were typically stored in windowless rooms built for the purpose of controlling moth damage by the dry high heat of brightly lit filament bulbs. By mid-decade, the nation was pulling itself up by the bootstraps with a variety of alphabet soup building projects like CCC, WPA, and TVA, and Dick Raymond found steady employment as an officer with the Civilian Conservation Corps up in the Adirondacks. The 1930s yielded historic success for our nation’s infrastructure. Across the countryside you’ve seen those little bridges over brooks with a “1933” or a “1937” cast into their cement pillars. More significantly, timbered lodges went up in National Parks across the West, and huge concrete and masonry dams arched deep canyons, steel bridges were strung high above, and tubes bored beneath, wide rivers and bays. Grand city high-rises fueled the resurgence, as did great longshore docksides and shipping fleets and the emerging mega-industries for the horseless carriage and the nascent commercial airline system. We the American people were also granted a host of government bureaucracies for regulation and handouts, FDIC, FHA, SEC, Social Security and others, subject to political wrangling with many New Deal line-items passing legal tests, while others were deemed unconstitutional and tossed out. Through the lens of history, we see that the 1930s turned into a rather distinctive chapter in the story of Cambridge and of America. Though the Robert Raymonds and their neighbors faced tough times, sound paths were chosen and successes achieved through what we now call American exceptionalism. In September of 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, and our mother country, unable to stand idly by, declared War on Germany. In early 1940, the heat turned up in the Far East, while in Europe, England’s Darkest Hour descended upon our closest ally. It wasn’t long before we were drawn in. Retired Army Col. Robert Rossiter Raymond, Sr., although furloughed by 1940 for two decades, would surely have significant skin in the game, as they say … as we’ll see. Next Time - Chapter 7: 1940-1949, World War Two and Robert’s Last Years
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