MARLBORO- The Hamilton name is as familiar to the area’s natives and regular visitors as Hogback Mountain itself, since Dick Hamilton and his wife Joyce established the Skyline Restaurant in the late forties. The account of how the business came to be is only one of the chapters in their remarkable story.
The Hamilton farmhouse at a bend in Route 9 is an exceptional setting to reflect on a life well-lived and Dick is surrounded by his reflections. His dining room table is covered with papers and books and the living room is home to maps and photos blown up to portrait size as well as other memorabilia.
Among the reproductions is a large map of Germany and surrounding countries marked with numerous “Stalags” among them Stalag Luft 4 in Tychowo, Poland, near the Baltic Sea where a very young Dick Hamilton would endure the terror and privations of a prisoner of war.
Dick is a slight man, erect in his bearing with a soft voice and gentle eyes. His retelling of the war and his harrowing experiences reflects no bitterness or loss of faith. In reality, faith was Dick’s bulwark during his darkest days. To this day, Psalm 91 has special significance for Dick: “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday… For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.” It would seem that angels have been with Dick Hamilton for quite some time.
Richard H. Hamilton was born in Brattleboro on September 28, 1922, one of five children of Madge and Ray Hamilton. His grandfather bought the family farm (now owned by nephew Kevin) on Hamilton Road in 1897. Dick calls the enterprise a “typically diversified New England farm” with cattle, pigs, chickens and their products. His farming dad died at age 39 from pneumonia and measles in the days before easy access to vaccinations and antibiotics. Dick describes his mother as “outstanding” as a parent, a cook, and a farmer herself who kept her home and family safe and secure during an insecure time.
“I didn’t realize until after the service how fortunate we were during the Depression. We never knew what hunger was.” The children were taught to be careful and if sugar was spilled, there was a reminder that there may come a time when there might not be any sugar.
There were chores, as always on a farm: milking the cows, separating the milk from the cream, then stirring until butter was formed and eventually rolled into molds and wrapped for delivery along with cottage cheese once a week to customers. Until Dick left for the service, there was no electricity on the farm and bath water was heated on the stove and put in a tub on the kitchen floor for little bodies to be scrubbed once a week.
Beyond the chores, childhood for the Hamilton kids included fishing in Holiday Brook, Dick remembering the feel of the sandy bottom beneath his feet. At the Whetstone Brook, nicknamed Went-for-a-swim, the kids moved boulders to create a pool for their dips. Their mother’s cooking they elevated to greatness, always looking forward to meals, even the ones made with leftovers. Gingerbread was among the favorites and after fishing, the children would happily anticipate a meal of eggs, mashed potatoes and vegetables. In 1970, Madge Hamilton would be honored as Mother of the Year by Governor Dean Davis and Dick remembers with pride celebrating the event at a luncheon in Montpelier
As for many kids of their time, school was a half-mile hike to the “bus,” a horse-drawn wagon ride to the Academy School in West Brattleboro. In 1940, Dick graduated from Brattleboro High School. While still in school, he worked part-time at the Eastern States Farmers Exchange, a poultry business with over 500 chickens, some laying, some bred for broiling and taken to public markets. That job became full-time at 40 cents an hour for a 40-hour week and Dick continued that work until after Pearl Harbor, when he was drafted into the Army Air Corps in 1942. His was interested in training to be a radio operator and began what can only be described as a military experience of extremes.
Leaving on a troop train, Dick arrived first at Fort Devens, MA, then on to Miami Beach where he was required to polish bathroom fixtures. The Army had insufficient barracks and housed some enlistees in hotels. Dick recalls South Florida as “not a bad place to start Army life” and training on the streets of Miami as “quite a change for a farm boy.” Guard duty on the beach may sound like a cushy assignment but it was taken quite seriously as Germans had already come ashore in New Jersey intending sabotage.
From Miami, Dick traveled to Chicago, Sioux Falls, and finally Yuma, AZ, for radio and gunnery training. The blowing sands of Arizona were a far cry from Christmas in Vermont but more changes were coming.
In January 1944, Dick came home on leave and presented a diamond to his sweetheart Joyce White who said at the time “it wasn’t the size but the sparkle.” In Louisiana, Dick became part of the crew of a brand-new B-17 and, putting the anxiety of flying over the cold North Atlantic behind them, the young men of “Destiny’s Child” would fly on to England and eight successful missions before the one the crew could not walk away from.
On July 20, 1944, Dick remembers, on their ninth mission, an anticipated escort never arrived but enemy fighter planes did and the B-17 was attacked from the tail. The pilot, navigator, engineer and tail gunner were killed in an assault lasting about six minutes. With fire in the bomb bay, the surviving crew knew the plane was doomed and at 18,000 feet, Dick and one other crewman bailed out over enemy territory. Trained to free fall as long as possible to avoid being slow-moving targets, Dick discovered that he could stop tumbling by extending his arms. There were no practice jumps during training, he explained, to avoid unnecessary injuries. As it happens, jumping from a burning plane is training in itself and Dick pulled the ripcord at about 5,000, feet landing unharmed in a wheat field. But he was soon greeted by villagers with clubs, pitchforks and pistols herding him toward town.
Tech Sergeant Hamilton was turned over to the German Army, interrogated, rounded up with other new prisoners, and taken to Stalag Luft 4 in Poland.
It’s difficult to imagine that any part of this experience could be more or less terrifying than any other but Dick said that as the flyers arrived at the camp, they were met by elite SS units with fixed bayonets shouting the names of German cities that had been bombed. While they walked with their Red Cross parcels, threatening dogs trotted along besidethem, when they were not attacking those who had fallen behind.
In one of those blessings that have become family lore, Dick recalled how he was always finding four-leaf clovers before his service days. When his mother was told that Dick was “missing in action,” she found her first four-leaf clover and, two months later, she received notification of what she already knew: that he was alive and a prisoner of war.
By August, the Red Cross was sending reading material, sports equipment, and most importantly for Dick, the Bible. He recounts that the page fell open to Psalm 91 and he committed the words to memory. In the winter of early 1945 the prisoners could hear artillery on the Russian front and, by February, they were on the move. Hitler had given an order to eliminate the POWs but, according to Dick, “his generals displayed a bit of sanity.” Stopping in barns at night, if barns were available, the group 258 men marched for 77 days on water and irregular food, such as kohlrabi (a type of turnip), potatoes, and powdered milk.
Sometime in April, Dick fell back with blistered, infected feet to the “sick” group of fourteen who found themselves with no guards. Then one day, two Russian soldiers arrived on horseback and the ordeal was almost over.
Dick waited with others for a bridge over the Elbe River to be repaired and for the Allies, British, American, and Russian, to meet and begin the final assault. Dick went on to Camp Lucky Strike in LeHavre, France, boarded a Liberty Ship, and returned to the United States, passing by the Statue of Liberty, an experience he found unabashedly emotional. At Fort Dix, he recalls German POWs serving the Americans.
The war in Europe was over but Dick does not remember any carnival atmosphere, although his celebrations were yet to come. He arrived home in Marlboro on July 8 and a month later he and Joyce were married. His car, a 1940 Ford convertible that was Dick’s first major purchase with his own earnings, was waiting for him as well.
Joyce’s father owned property on Hogback Mountain at the time and the Skyline was a tea room before the war. Dick went off to the Fanny Farmer School in Boston on the GI Bill and he and Joyce went into the restaurant business, providing base lodge food for the fledgling Hogback ski area. The Skyline Restaurant was firmly established, Joyce as waitress and Dick as chef. The building would be winterized and serving year-round by 1964 and the Hamiltons would work there for 48 years until retirement in February 1994. Their skills at being restaurateurs, neighbors, friends, employers, and parents would serve their community and the tourist industry very well.
Dick and Joyce had four daughters, Marcia, Rebecca, Barbara, and Carla whose combined names form the sign on the porch of his home: Mar-Re-Bar-La, and all four daughters live nearby or close enough.
Dick has seven grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. Huge pictures of family are propped around the house, the matting “Marcia’s project,” but the oldest of the memories are Dick’s. One portrait is of Dick, his mother, and his brothers, joined by the Jaffe Brothers, who came from Germany in the late thirties through the Fresh Air Program. Over time Dick would realize that his friends were young Jewish refugees who fled more than left Germany. He is still in touch with Fred Jaffe, who lives in New York City.
How Dick and his family came to live on the quintessential Vermont farmstead with the kind of pond and surrounding landscape only painters and poets could do justice to is another amazing chapter in his story.
Although sited in a slight hollow near busy Route 9, the evidence of tourist traffic and rumbling trucks is barely discernible. The property belonged to George and Mary Hughes who had wanted Dick to work the farm for an agricultural deferment. When Dick declined, the offer was made again after the war and this time, it seemed to be an offer Dick couldn’t refuse: if he worked for George for a number of years, the farm would be his.
With the Skyline only a summer business and skiing still in its’ infancy, Dick and Joyce moved in and shared lifestyles and farming habits with the Hughes. “Mr. Hughes would sew his own britches when the knees wore out,” Dick said. With six hundred and fifty trees tapped for syrup, those knees would wear out frequently while Joyce and Mary were using muscles of their own putting by four hundred quarts of food. Eventually, the restaurant would become their full-time employment.
For more than half a century now, this bucolic setting has been the Hamilton home. It was from here that the girls went off to school and adulthood and it was here that Dick and Joyce made their long, sweet life together until Joyce’s passing in 2005, after fifty-nine years of marriage.
Hunting was always a fact of life before it became a hobby that Dick pursued until very recently. Since he has retired from hunting (after bagging a 198-pound buck at age 80) and recently celebrated his 87th birthday, Dick’s pastimes include helping Marcia with mounting and matting pictures taken over the years.
Some time ago, Dick came upon Margaret Green’s collections of obituaries, anniversaries, and special occasions at Pettee Library in Wilmington, and he was inspired to start collecting and scrapbooking obituaries of friends, acquaintances, and local notables that now fill a large binder.
Some may consider this a bit of a morbid pursuit but for Dick it is a living book of memories that has relevance as long as someone is around to remember.
Dick’s memory is as long as his smile is genuine and his demeanor is gentle. There are joys and sorrows behind that smile but like the fields or the pond at dusk or just across the living room in the open Bible, there is a profound sense of peace.
Post a Comment