I was born on December 9, 1913 where my parents, Clara and George Frysinger lived on a dairy farm owned by Bonnymead east of Paxtang, Pennsylvania. My dad delivered the milk door to door in Steelton and my mother cooked for the three other men who worked on the farm. My brother, Hiram, was 5 years, 7 months old when I was born. My brother, Harry, was born on May 15, 1925.

In March 1914, my parents bought a 23-acre farm in Lower Paxton Township, 3 rniles east of Harrisburg, between the Union Deposit and Rutherford Roads. We started going to the Paxton Church of the Brethren which was part of the Big Swatara congregation. So I started Sunday School at age 4 months and haven't ever stopped going. Our business on the farm was mostly chickens and a truck patch where we raised vegetables. Dad followed his old milk route in Steelton and sold eggs, dressed chickens and garden crops door to door. Hiram went along when he was old enough. When he went to college and was away from home, I went along and later Harry went. That was a very good experience since we sold to several kinds of people that included Jews and the "colored" part of town.

I started school at the Mt. Pleasant country school in 1919 when I was five years old. I would be six in December. My first teacher was Mr. Willard. Before I started school, my mother read to me a lot and I had learned to do some reading. My brother Hiram had taught me to add and to subtract. So when I got to school I knew more than the othcr people who were in first grade so the teacher put me with the ones in second grade so I had two years schooling in one year. My third grade teacher was Miss Fetterhoff. She also taught piano lessons and I had thirteen piano lessons from her.

I can't remember the names of my fourth, fifth, and sixth grade teachers. My seventh grade teacher was Mr. Sollenberger. We had to take a test to get into high school. That was to be at the end of eighth grade but Mr. Sollenberger told me to take it at the end of seventh grade. I took it and passed with a good grade. So, I entered Lower Paxton Vocational High School at age 12 in September, 1926.

I had to walk about two miles and then take a trolley for about one and one half miles to get to the school in Paxtonia. There were several families of children who walked: Clem, Russ, Dick and Pete Miller, Jim Nace, Ralph Hocker, Paul and Charles Lenker, and Gertrude, Charlotte, and Anne Stauffer. In the fall of 1929 the Miller boys got a model T car and took me along to school. My brother, Hiram had graduated in 1925.

Since it was a vocational school, besides the courses in arithmetic, English, etc. the girls had cooking and sewing classes and the boys had shop, etc. the first two years. Then we could decide to take the Academic course if we were going to college so I took that. I graduated in 1930, at age 16, as Salutatorian of my class of 19 graduates.

I started attending Elizabethtown College that fall. I lived in the dorm. My roommate was Naomi Weaver. But Olive Jamison, who needed braces and crutches to walk, was living with her cousin Isobel Van Ormer in Memorial Hall, which was farther from most classes and had more steps. So arrangements were made for Olive to room with me on the second floor of Fairview Hall and Naomi and Isobel would room together.

I enjoyed college and had lots of friends, including boys. We were not allowed to date the first semester except when we went Christmas caroling. Then I went with Harry Saylor. We were friends in college but not "special."

In the years 1930-1932, I took the two-year teaching course and got my certificate.  In September of 1932, I started teaching in the Oak county school--grades 1-8.  There were five girls and three boys who were as big as I was and almost as old--since I was just 18 at that point. I also had many other pupils, my teaching job was not easy, and I did not like it.

During those two years I often went back to Elizabethtown College to visit my friend and college roommate, Olive Jamison. At that time there was a saying, "I'd give a nickel for a date with _______." Olive's friend was Luke Buffenmyer and he had a roommate, Lawrence Hoover. His family always called him Lawrence but his college name was Larry. So I said, "I'd give a nickel for a date with Larry Hoover." So Olive set it up and in January 1934, we had our first date. Larry had brown hair and gray eyes. He was 5" 11" and weighed 163 pounds and I thought he was very good-looking.

I saw him first just at the college but then he also started coming to see me at my home. He walked to the trolley at the square in E-town, changed trolleys in Hershey and got to Rutherford Heights where I picked him up and reversed the process on Sunday evening. He had a girlfriend in New Enterprise but went home at Easter and broke up with her.

He was one of three young ministers in the Koontz Church near Loysburg, Bedford County. The other two were Charles Heltzel and Merle Detweiler who were also our best friends. During the summer he borrowed a car and came to see me a few times. In July, we decided to get married so we ordered an apartment in Fairview Hall at the college. We got married September 22, 1934. That was the depression and married women were not allowed to teach so that gave me a good OUT.

We lived in Fairview Hall at the college, which had apartments on the first floor and a boys' dorm on the 2nd and 3rd floors. Larry's parents paid his tuition and I worked for a professor--doing reading and writing for him while he worked on his Master's Degree-and other work around the campus. But I got pregnant and Larry decided not to keep on with college.

At the end of the school year, we moved to my home and Larry worked on the farm. Marie was born at the Hershey Community Hospital on September 9, 1935. At the end of that month, we moved to a dairy farm at the foot of a mountain along the road between Harrisburg and Linglestown. We lived there until the end of March, 1936, when we moved to a farm owned by the Littles near New Enterprise. Joyce was born on August 19, 1936 in the Roaring Spring Hospital. In the spring of 1937, we moved to the Eickler farm where Grandpa and Grandma Hoover had lived. We lived there until 1939 when the Hoovers wanted to move back. John was born on March 3, 1939 at the Roaring Spring Hospital and we moved to a farm between Martinsburg and Williamsburg in April.

Larry had some pains around Christmas, 1938. He had a testicle removed in January and had nosebleeds. We moved in April but he never was strong enough to farm. We had Jimmy as a hired man and Mahlon Burket (Elizabeth Hoover's husband) three miles away who worked the farm. We had 14 cows. Marie, Joyce and John slept in the morning when I got up about 5:00 a.m. to milk. In the evening, they went along to the barn.

We took Larry to Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia where he was diagnosed as having lung cancer. Larry had chemotherapy but the lung cancer progressed and he had lots of pain. He needed injections of morphine. He died on July 30, 1939 and the funeral was on August 3. He is buried in the "Hoover" burial plot at the Koontz Church near Loysburg.

Before he died, Larry talked about his death and said, "It's not my choice to leave you to raise our three children, but you're a strong person and can do it." That did wonders for me. If I wasn't before, I became a strong person and did what needed to be done.

My brother, Harry Frysinger, and Aunt Sallie Schaffner were there for the summer until September. The people of the Koontz Church were wonderful--often bringing boxes of food when I wasn't sure where the next meal was coming from. The best were Charles and Pauline Heltzel and Merle and Elda Detwiler. Charles, Merle and Larry had all been chosen as preachers in the Koontz Church in 1932.

I finished our year's lease for the farm and had sale the end of March, 1940. Grandma and Grandpa Frysinger were there and took Marie, Joyce and John with them back to their farm. I went in early April after taking care of the settling up business.

In June 1941, I went to the commencement at Elizabethtown College. Harry Saylor was there and we renewed our friendship. When he came to see us, the children called him Harry Saylor to distinguish him from their Uncle Harry Frysinger. But as soon as we were married, they called him Daddy. We were married in the yard at the farm on June 26, 1943. Harry Saylor was a good father for my    children.

In September of 1943, we moved to a house that was built over a creek at 40 North Poplar Street in Elizabethtown. The house was flooded in 1945. We stayed in the house and watched it from the 2nd floor roof. It was from that house that the children went to school. They came home from elementary school-about two blocks away-to eat lunch and they got their own because in 1946. I started teaching in the Fairview School in Mt. Joy Township, about two miles from home. Whenever the children had school holidays that I didn't, they wanted to go with me to the eight-grade one room country school. After I started teaching in 1946, I needed a few college courses so I decided to get my degree. I took courses at Elizabethtown College on Saturdays, evenings and summers and got my bachelor's degree in 1951.

My father died in April, 1949 after having had a stroke a few years earlier. Marie graduated from Elizabethtown High School in 1953 and Joyce in 1954. John went to Hershey for grades 9-12 because he wanted the agricultural course. He graduated in 1957.

I spent quite a few years as a counselor or director of the Junior camps at Camp Swatara, the Church of the Brethren camp at Bethel, Pa. Joyce met Dave at Camp Swatara while both were counselors the summer of 1955. 1 was the assistant leader of two Girl Scout troops. One was Joyce's troop in the 50's. We took a two-week trip to Florida in 1954 right after the girls graduated from high school. We took trips to Cowan's Gap State Park several summers. The second troop was in the 60's.

Marie and Joyce went to Elizabethtown College as Day Students. Marie graduated in 1957. Joyce got married to David Willoughby on August 26, 1956 but finally got her degree in January, 1967 after she and Dave moved back to Elizabethtown from Ohio in 1960.

Marie married Don Willoughby on August 22, 1958. Don had been in BVS (Brethren Volunteer Service) rebuilding Karlsschul, Austria. Marie spent the summer of 1958 in Austria directing a Junior International work camp with Don and they were married in Vienna before they came home. Marie taught 5th grade for several years in Elizabethtown.

In 1956, the country schools were closed and I taught a self-contained sixth grade in the Millroad school until June of 1968. I was also building principal. In 1968, the sixth grades were transferred to the building that had been the high school on South Poplar Street before the new one was built on East High Street. For two years, I taught science and arithmetic and for another two years, I taught science and social studies. Then I taught just science.

During those years, the school board offered to finance work for a master's degree. So, I enrolled in the program from Temple University which was given mostly at Frankim and Marshall College. I got my Master's in May, 1965.

In the summer of 1965, Harry began having nosebleeds. He was later diagnosed as having leukemia. He was in the hospital in Lancaster and then transferred to the Health Center in Baltimore, a study hospital, where he died on December 27, 1965. He was buried in the Chicques Cemetery.

My mother died in January 1975 after living in a nursing center on Progress Avenue in Harrisburg for about 3 years. She had been in an automobile accident and did not recover well physically or mentally. She was 86 years old.

In the second semester of 1972, another teacher, Alma Espenshade, and I had taken a sabbatical and traveled across the United States and around the Pacific. We were gone from February through July. The trip included a bus tour of Mexico and visits to Hawaii, Fiji, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and Alaska We attended John's wedding to Loma Catedral on May 14, 1972 in the Philippines. In the summer of 1974, I went on a "Three Continent Tour" which took me to Brazil in South America, Victoria Falls, Kenya, Tansania, etc. in Africa, and to Greece and Italy in Europe.

In 1975, the new Middle School attached to the high school was opened. I taught in one of the sixth grade science rooms there and retired in June 1976. Retirement allowed more time for travel. In 1977, Sara Myer, Martha Eshleman, and I went on a tour to the Canary Islands and into Morocco. A 1978 Bible Lands Tour included visits to Rome, Athens, Corinth, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Istanbul. In 1980 I attended the Oberannnagau Passion Play and visited The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and Germany. Marie went with me on a trip to the Bahamas in 1983. And, over Easter of 1994, I flew to Acapulco, Mexico to get on a "Love Boat," cruised through the Panama Canal, and visited Costa Rica, Colombia, St. Thomas, San Martin, and Puerto Rico before flying home.

Retirement has also afforded more time for volunteer service. I worked as a volunteer at Brethren Village the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month. First, I worked in the Health Care Center-filling water glasses, combing hair, feeding, etc. Later I worked in the Craft Room. I also delivered Meals on Wheels in the Elizabethtown area. In 1981, I became Coordinator of that program and continued until I moved here to Brethren Village in 1993. During the years I have nearly always taught a Sunday School class-young married, youth, older women and now at Brethren Village several times a year.

My brothers and I began to get together once a month-alternating our three residences and going out to eat. We learned to know each other better than we did growing up. These pleasant meetings continued until Hiram's final illness that led to his death on August 20, 1997. My brother Harry died on July 26, 1999.

From 1984, I had a special friend, Joe Greiner, until he died in 1992. Now I have another special friend, Milt Brubaker. It's so nice having someone with whom to go places and do things.

After moving to Brethren Village on June 12, 1993, I continued my volunteer help in the craft room. I joined the Green Thumb Society whose job it is to see that all flower-beds have flowers. I was chairperson of the program committee for two years and president in 1997 and 1998. The programs are strictly entertainment and not connected to the work of Green Thumb. I served on the Spiritual Life Commission and arranged for ushers for worship services in the Chapel.

Once a month, Tori Hostetter and I go to the third-floor dining area of the Nursing Center where people are brought in for a Sing-Along. Tori plays the piano and I lead the ladies in singing old hymns that they know (their favorite is "Jesus loves Me"). We also sing old songs such as "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean" and others that they sang in school as they were growing up.

On the fourth Thursday of each month, another lady and I read short stories to people in wheelchairs who have been brought to the library. In both the singing and the library, several of the ladies sleep most of the time but it gets them our of their rooms for awhile. I also lead the hymns for a monthly Sing-Along in my Fieldcrest apartment building.

I have many friends here at Brethren Village and there are so many activities to choose from. Life is terrific!

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