The Way Things Used to Be | | CONTINUED FROM PAGE 75
Mary Hebner, 108, East Greenwich
AS TOLD TO SAMANTHA LABRECQUE, WITH ASSISTANCE BY HER DAUGHTER, MARY CASSIDY
I
was born in the town of Lincoln her good old foot-mobile, though — we would have to walk or run
in a house in Lincoln Woods. if we were late for work. Half of the time we were late.
And we would skate on the pond I got as far as the eighth grade in school and then went to work at
during the winter. It was a large a mill in Pawtucket with my sister, Florence. It was the JP Coats mill.
family. My grandfather, George Washington
Olney, had his oxen help pull the emptied them off the medium-height frames. It wasn’t an easy job.
I was a teenager and I doffed there. I took the bobbins of thread and
pillars when the Arcade in Providence As I got older, I worked at the Lincoln Downs Racetrack concession
stands and she also worked in the service industry as a waitress
was being built.
Our family cemetery is actually also in Lincoln Woods. As children
living near Lincoln Woods, my siblings and I were great swim-
Rehoboth, too.
in many places. I was a waitress at Crestwood Country Club in
mers and they would swim at Olney Pond and go canoeing and Even after retirement, I worked into my seventies. I really loved
boating during the summertime. Champion swimmers who were ballroom dancing and I would go to Moseley’s Ballroom with my
affiliated with the Pawtucket Boys Club would swim laps at the friend Mary or the German Club in Pawtucket. We used to have a
pond and my sister, Florence, and I would jump right in and join lot of fun. It was nice.
them. I knew Lincoln Woods like the back of my hand and would I remember seeing the first moon landing televised on TV. I
romp around the woods like it was our playground, more or less. didn’t think that I would have liked to be there. I was always very
We also had a lot of fun piano playing and dancing to the sounds independent and loved to take off in my car and go on long trips.
from a phonograph. My sisters and I were singers too, and we On a whim, I would just take off and it was quite often. As a matter
would go around to local churches of different denominations and of fact, I would even go into downtown Providence just as jobs
sing at them.
were being let out and would get right into the traffic. I just loved
When we were kids, we went through the Depression and my the thrill, I guess.
brothers and I would stand in the bread lines. It was kind of tough, I drove up until I was ninety-nine years old. Up until last year,
sometimes. Back then, there was no electricity. We used oil lamps. when I was 107, I lived in my own apartment in Esmond Village
We had lamps in every room. And at night we used to heat stones and I even traveled to Florida from December through February.
and put them at the foot of the bed about an hour before we would Lately, I get my hair done every Friday and get treated to having
go to sleep to stay warm. I remember we always had coal burning. my nails done.
We had a coal stove downstairs. It heated the house. Sometimes I hardly ever had a drink and didn’t smoke, though. I’ll tell you
we slept with two people in one bed.
one of my secrets about having a good, healthy life: There was a
To use the bathroom, we had to go outside to the outhouse. If we young girl that lived next door to my childhood home in Lincoln
had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and it was cold, Woods who convinced me to smoke cigarettes that she stole out
we would use a chamber pot. We used to always have a can out in the of her brother’s drawer. People would come to Lincoln Woods to
hallway. It was like a big milk can and was cleaned out every day. enjoy the pond and a man had walked by who was smoking a cigarette.
I wanted to snatch the cigarette from the man’s hands because
Growing up, there weren’t too many automobiles around. It was
very seldom. However, the boy I was dating had a car. It was a Ford, I felt like I was getting into the bad habit. I went down two times
I think. He had a motorcycle, too. I used to have to get permission with her and I told her, “no more” because I felt like I was doing
from my mother to go on it. She always said she would have to use wrong. That was it and it was over for me.
The Way Things Used to Be:
Alice Eichenbaum
| | CONTINUED FROM PAGE 70
back to Sofia. Everything was bombed. But
I finished high school. Then, I went to Vienna
to stay with an uncle who survived Auschwitz
to study in school [college] there. My
parents left for Israel in 1952.
I became a chemist. I was an organic
chemist all my life. I was supposed to join
my parents after I graduated and I went to
visit them a few times, but then I met my
husband. My husband came from Poland.
He was first in the Lodz ghetto from April
1940 to August 1944. He lost his entire family
in Auschwitz. He was fourteen when he
went into Auschwitz in September 1944. I
always say how lucky I was compared to
him. He was ten years old when he was in
the ghetto and had to work in a tannery and
make belts for the German soldiers. He
worked at ten years old from eight to five
with only one loaf of bread per week. If you
were capable to work, you worked. If you
were not, you went to the ovens.
It was in March, when I was already
home and back to school, that the Americans
were coming in. On April 20, 1945, the
Americans liberated him. He weighed fiftyone
pounds at fourteen years old. He was
the only survivor of a big family. He went
to a displaced person camp when he was
fifteen. He was told he could go to Israel
or America and he chose to go to America.
When he came here, he went to New York
to an orphanage then to Chicago to an
orphanage, and from there, to foster parents
in Providence. He went to Nathanael Greene
and to Hope High School. Then he was
enlisted in the Korean War.
When he got back he had no family again
PHOTOGRAPH (TOP) COURTESY OF MARY HEBNER AND FAMILY.
128 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l MAY/JUNE 2020