An Interview with Harriet and Ruth Van Vleet Wagner

By Paulette Likoudis

During the summer of 1993, I was browsing through a collection of little Beatrix Potter children's storybooks at the Lodi Whittier Library and noticed they were a contribution by Harriet and Ruth Van Vleet Wagner. Presuming they were sisters, it felt as though I knew them.VanVleet Family: Lovina, Ruth, Stanley, Harriet and Lawrence VanVleet

Over the years, I have gotten to know Harriet and Ruth bit by bit, and their older brother Stanley Van Vleet, owner of Tommy Creek Farm. Two other brothers, David of Phoenix, AZ and John of W. Lafayette, IN, are the youngest of the five siblings. All were born in the Ovid-Lodi Town Line Road home where Stanley now resides.

Their mother, Lovina Woodman, arrived here to take a teaching job at the Lodi School on W. Seneca Street (no longer standing) after graduating from Mount Holyoke College. Soon after, she met and married Lawrence Van Vleet, whose parents Fred and Hattie lived at the Herman Eastman estate, now home to Duane and Marilyn Peet.

Harriet was born on July 11, 1928 and Ruth followed on July 22, 1930. As children the two celebrated their birthdays separately, even though they were in the same month.

Their education began in the one-room Coan School, still standing on the west side of State Rt. 414 between Lodi and Ovid. The schoolhouse is now surrounded by Dave Eastman's grain storage bins.

Once a week, the two sisters rode a bus from the Coan School to the home of their piano teacher, Miss Alice Lott, at the south corner of Orchard and Main Streets in the village of Lodi. Harriet attended the Coan School for four years and Ruth for two, before the school was centralized with the Ovid district.

They liked "everything" at the Ovid Central School, where Latin was offered in the education of area youth. Ruth learned to play flute and Harriet played clarinet. In warm weather they traveled with the school band, playing in parades.

While students at the Ovid school, Harriet and Ruth became friends with children whose fathers were stationed at the Sampson Naval Base. Some of those students had lived in many places. "We were introduced to quite a wide range of folks," recalls Ruth.

 

After school, the sisters returned to their parents' Van Vleet Brothers Farm for a snack, homework and chores. They learned to drive workhorses and care for the family's cows, chickens and flock of Shropshire, Suffolk and Oxford sheep. Ruth's least favorite cowkeeping chore was using a cream separator, operated by a hand crank.

Harriet and Ruth's Uncle Roy Van Vleet and his sister Jennie continued to lived on Fred and Hattie's farm after they passed away.

When Lovina and Lawrence's home was electrified in 1938, the children listened to radio programs such as "Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy" and "Dick Tracy." The whole family gathered to listen to "Lowell Thomas News," "Easy Aces" and "Amos & Andy."

Lawrence Van Vleet served as Lodi town supervisor from 1940-52. On Sunday afternoons, he took his family for drives around the area, often to see sheep pastured on "the government land," or those raised on other farms, such as that of Byrd and Gilbert Townsend of Townsendville. Eating out was going to church suppers. Lodi's Methodist and Presbyterian Church congregations were large and active in the community, as was the Lodi Grange.

Harriet and Ruth often rode with their father to the Lodi train station, where crated, purebred sheep raised on their farm were shipped by rail to other growers.

Occasionally, the family attended the New York State Fair to watch their sheep being judged in competition. Ruth's face glows when she recalls the fair's Ferris Wheel. It was probably tiny, in comparison to anything offered today, she chuckles.

What did 1940 downtown Lodi look like? The small house south of Charles and Virginia Jennings' Main Street home was Mildred Farr Covert's wallpaper store.

The imposing structure now occupied by Lodi town offices was a Masonic Hall, where traveling minstrel shows and amateur talent shows were staged on the second floor. A ticket office window still in the foyer is a reminder of those days. Lodge meetings took place on the third floor. Though many Lodi families were Masons, the Van Vleets were not.

The small blue-grey building that will be home to the Lodi Historical Society Museum was the town hall. In the Farrell & Pulver store, south of the Swick home, residents could buy shoes, meat and dry goods. Harriet and Ruth refilled their mother's molasses jug there. At Christmas time, simple toys like sleds and dolls could be found upstairs.

Melanie Ahouse's "Blue Crow" gift shop was a drugstore, and a meat market was between that and the Townsend Hotel, then owned by Bill Dohrer. On the south corner across from the hotel, meetings of the Grange and the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows were held in the large building where the Market Basket grocery store was located. Harriet could find her favorite cereal, Shreds, there.

An undertaker's business was just south of the Market Basket, in a building no longer there. On the southeast corner of Main and Seneca Streets were a barbershop, telephone company office and a beauty salon where Harriet and Ruth received their first hair permanents at age ten.

At the northeast corner was a Gulf service station and to the north the Lodi Post Office was in the same building as now. Dr. Stanley Folts practiced medicine in the large house next door, presently the home of Fran and Pat Steverson. In those quieter times, a trip to the Lodi library on E. Seneca Street was a weekly event, and very important in the lives of Harriet and Ruth.

After attending college, Harriet and Ruth married men who were cousins and fruit growers. They raised their families in the hamlet of Caywood, where they now live just a stone's throw from each other.

Harriet and Ruth have not only nurtured their children and grandchildren, but have been quick to offer support to other children and parents in the community. They are lovers of all the arts and wise collectors of historical items. The Lodi Historical Society has benefited greatly by these special sisters' willingness to share.

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