Halloween, a favorite of Leif's

I suppose Leif and Peter Anthony were like most brothers. Sometimes they were good companions, and sometimes they competed. Sometimes Peter teased Leif and Leif got mad and went on the attack. I used to tell Peter that he was lucky Leif was six years younger than he was, because he was to big for his age. I think that in the years after Peter left home, when Leif was twelve, they grew apart and forgot all the good times they had together when they were younger.  This photo is an example. It was Halloween and Peter, who was nearly nine years old and in third grade, was a classy vampire with a ruffled shirt. He was already in costume way early, as we were having a party at our house for him and his friends. His dad dressed up as a sort of swami fortune teller. I looked ridiculous in a true 1970s tie-dyed dress, leopard print hat, and fish net stockings, or at least that's what I think I wore.

Look at the expression of pure delight on Leif's face, the cute body language as the vampire leans over to bite and Leif expects it will tickle. Yes, Peter did bite, and yes, it did tickle. There was a lot of laughter.

Leif was only two-and-a-half years old then and not really old enough to understand much about Halloween except that he got to go beg for candy at a few doorways in the stairwell, but he certainly understood the idea of having fun with his brother.

When Leif was grown, Halloween was one of his favorite times. He loved to have parties and was devilish and cute. I wish he was here this Halloween with us.

Leif - The Cutest Devil - Halloween 2002?

I'm not sure precisely when this photo was takenm though I think it was October 30, 2002. It was on Leif's computer, along with a bunch of other photos taken at this party, which he apparently gave in Manhattan, Kansas in the house at 710 N. 9th Street.

I didn't recognize hardly any of the people in the pictures. Since they were all in costume, it would have been fun to show more of this one, which I think is really cute of Leif, Shazbot the snake in hand, placing devil horns on his head and looking like a happy rascal. As it is, I just cropped the picture to show just his face and hands.

Leif moved into the house on 9th Street for the second time in July 2002. We had purchased it at auction in 1997 for Peter W.'s mother, Ellen (Oma to our kids), to live in when we moved her from Monterey, California to Manhattan to be near us so we could care for her. When we first bought it in the spring of 1997, before we moved Ellen there that summer, Leif and Nikko lived in the basement of the house while we were painting and cleaning it and getting it ready for Ellen.

Ellen died September 22, 2002. She fell and crushed her femur in June and never recovered. While she was in nursing care during her last months, we didn't want the house to stand empty, a target for thieves, so we asked Leif to move into it. He had just signed a lease for his apartment on 11th Street, and had to break the lease in order to move into the house. But luckily for him, he went from a tiny apartment to a whole house.

Leif lived there from July 2002 until he moved with his dad to Florida in March 2005. During those years, he went through a lot, pulling out of the depression he was in when he came back to Manhattan from the army in May 2001, graduating from college in May 2003, meeting and falling in love with J. in the fall of 2003, when he was the happiest I remember seeing him since high school in Puerto Rico or when he first married Nikko. And then the heartbreak when the romance didn't work out and he was depressed again in early 2004.

He was involved in SCA, worked as a school crossing guard while in college, and then worked at what was then Western Wireless (now taken over by Alltel), and enjoyed the night life of Manhattan in Aggieville, where he liked to play pool occasionally. The trouble was, he felt he couldn't find women his age in the college town, that the "good ones" were all taken, and that he didn't have much in common with the college girls at his age. The career opportunities were slim, too, and he felt he would have a lot more opportunity in Florida.

Leif had friends in Manhattan and more of a social life than he developed in Florida. He also was heavily involved in ZAON. It's a shame he didn't connect more with people here. He was never very outgoing, an introvert, though when he knew people and liked them, he could be the life of the party. Meeting strangers was harder. I understand that very well. I think he got that "hang back and watch" trait from me.

But enough of all that. It's Halloween, a holiday Leif enjoyed. This is the last photo I have of him having a good time on Halloween, and I hope those who were at his party enjoyed it, too.

Happy Halloween, Leif, wherever you are.

Leif - Halloween Shaving Cream - Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico 1991

We moved to Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico in the summer of 1990, barely a year after the island suffered devastation from hurricane Hugo, and just a month before mobilization for what was then called Operation Desert Storm began. Life there could have been a relaxed, Caribbean sojourn, but instead it involved a lot of stress and many, many extra hours of hard work for Peter W., who became the mobilization officer, and me, as I chose to work with family support activities helping with programs for many frightened wives who would see their husbands off to war.

Leif had some initial trials as the new, tall "gringo" at Antilles High School, but he got through them and made some wonderful friends. In some ways, I think his two years in Puerto Rico may have been the happiest of his life once he was accepted.

These photos were taken after we had been in Puerto Rico for a year and although I am no longer sure, I think Leif was going to a Halloween party. You can see his wild humor in these photos, covering his head with shaving cream.

We had very special neighbors who became our friends at Fort Buchanan, too. The friends we made helped to make a stressful time into something shared and in many ways pleasurable. One of those friends, Jennifer, shared these thoughts with us after hearing about Leif's death:

I remember him as an intensely intelligent young man with such a distinct sense of humor!

I remember you telling me that he got the part in the High School production of "Grease" and it was so delightful to see him on stage and to hear about the mishaps with the main prop - the car!

Tim and I being childless and far from family most of our military career, didn't have the privilege of attending our siblings family events very often, so seeing your handsome Alex up there was a memorable treat for us.

I remember Halloween in the tropics....what to wear as a costume that you wouldn't sweat to death in was a serious challenge....Alex was GENIUS here- and covered his entire head with shaving cream!

I remember having a conversation with you about having ones ears pierced and chiming in that I had been the one to pierce all of my younger sisters ears.

Jerri, I thought your attitude was sooo coool to let Alex be one of my clients! I remember that he studied Marshal Arts, and was very disciplined in mind over matter. He didn't flinch at all during the procedure. I'm sure he was thinking about the outcome and the benefit that he would experience because of the short discomfort he'd experience in my kitchen that day.

It has been a pleasure seeing him grow to adulthood through the pictures in your yearly newsletters.

How well I remember Leif getting his ears pierced! I wish I had photos. He did have to exercise some mental discipline during that procedure, as he could take pain, but didn't like to see blood.

Leif wore an earring off and on for several years, throughout the rest of high school and his initial years of college. Even during military service, he sometimes wore one when off duty. But later, as he got older, he ceased wearing them.

Leif as Dracula - May 23, 1987 - Fort Sheridan, Illinois

These photos weren't taken at Halloween, but they seem to belong in a Halloween time frame. Our family enjoyed dressing up and taking pictures every now and then. It seems to run in the family, as my mother did that, too, and so did my brother and sisters and I when we were kids.

If I remember correctly, we were dressed up for some other occasion. Either Peter W. and I were going to some formal event and were dressed in a tux and formal, or Peter A. was going to his high school prom. We have a lot of other photos taken at the same time that show us in such clothing, and the guys posing with fake guns and acting like James Bond. I've already posted some of them. We all had a good time taking pictures like this.

Here, Leif is wearing his dad's white dinner jacket and his red satin lined opera cape, and vampire fangs.

These were taken in our small living room in our quarters on base at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. We moved there from Hawaii in August 1986. Peter W. was assigned as the JAG (legal advisor) to the Military Entrance Processing Command at Great Lakes.

We chose to live on base at Fort Sheridan, though we could have lived in a housing area nearer to Great Lakes or in any of the surrounding civilian communities, because it made it possible for our sons to go to school in Highland Park. We had investigated school systems and private schools around the area and these seemed to be the best possibilities for them. Indeed, Peter A. had a great senior year at Highland Park High School, and Leif did some of the best schoolwork of his entire education at Northwood Junior High.

Leif was 12 years old in these photos.

Leif & Peter W. Carving Pumpkins - October 1983 - Honolulu, Hawaii

Between the last post, from 1977 in Germany, and this one in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1983, we had moved from Germany to Japan (1980-1983) and then to Hawaii. This photo is of Peter W. and Leif carving pumpkins on the floor of our kitchen. Making jack o'lanterns is a messy job, but such a tradition that you have to do it as long as you have children living at home . . . or grandchildren visiting.

I don't know whether Leif got dressed up and went trick-or-treating for Halloween in 1983 or not. He probably did, as he was still three months before his 8th birthday, but I couldn't find any photos. Halloween was definitely not cold there, and kids could wear just about anything for a costume. I'm still surprised that we have so few Halloween photos.

In Honolulu, we lived in the Aliamanu Crater Housing Area, a military housing area that was in the bowl of, and on the outside slope of, the ancient Aliamanu volcanic crater. Our townhouse had a lanai (porch) facing Pearl Harbor on the outer slope of the crater. It had a lovely view, and it was magical at night with the lights of Pearl Harbor, Pearl City, and Aiea.

Carved pumpkins didn't last long in Hawaii or Puerto Rico. It was too warm and if you left them outside as a decoration, they decomposed much more quickly than they did in cooler climates.

Leif (who started using the nickname "Alex" when we moved to Hawaii) went to Red Hill Elementary School, and was in third grade when this photo was taken.

Peter Anthony the Vampire & Leif - Halloween 1977 - Fuerth, Germany

Peter Anthony was very interested in magic, stage makeup and the like. During the time we lived in Fuerth, Germany (right next to Nurnberg), he had both a magic set and a horror makeup set. I don't know which one the boys had more fun with.

The horror makeup set had some kind of a gel that would set up and result in a pliable, translucent plastic. The kit came with molds in which to shape the gel into "scars" that could be applied to the face or body with a supplied adhesive. There was, of course, fake blood, and makeup to color the scar and apply around it to make it look like part of one's skin.

Naturally, vampire teeth were supplied, along with other appurtenances.

This fall, 1977, when Peter A. was almost 9 years old, and Leif was not quite 3 years old, Peter had a great time mixing up scars, making himself up as the horror star of some wild story, and involving Leif, or his friend Baker Jordan, in his adventures.

In the photo above, Peter the vampire, in his fancy dress shirt and his dad's opera cape, is pretending to bite Leif in the neck. Leif was happy to cooperate in this game.

Halloween - Sagamihara, Japan - October 31, 1982

Given the importance of Halloween to American kids, even those living overseas on US military bases, I'm surprised that we don't have more photos of the boys in Halloween costumes.

Unlike kids today, who wear purchased costumes or who have talented mothers who make terrific ones, our kids did the same as I did as a child and concocted their own costumes out of whatever they had that appealed to them. I've already posted the photo of Leif as Luke Skywalker, when he was in kindergarten in Japan.

These photos were taken a couple of years later. Peter A., who was almost 14, decided it would be more fun to stay home and scare the other kids. He and Leif made a "ghost" using a ball, rope, stick and sheet (which they got from me) in which they put holes for eyes. The sheet did double duty as a costume and a scary ghost.

In the photos above, you can see Leif up on the roof of the little porch roof over our front door, holding the pole with the rope attached to the ball, over which the sheet was draped. Peter Anthony is pretending to be frightened of it. There is considerably more light in these photos than was actually out there, because I used a flash to take them. It was actually quite dark and frightening, at least from the kids' point of view.

It was easy to get onto that little porch roof by climbing right out of Peter Anthony's bedroom window. The head in the bottom of the right photo was the parent of some of the kids who had come to get candy. The bottom of that photos is unfortunately way overexposed.

What they did was, bobble the ghost up and down and wave it about in the dark, while one of them shined a flashlight on it. The effect was quite eerie, especially with the scary noises they provided, with the conspiratorial help of their dad, who hooked up a microphone to the stereo system so it functioned as a PA address system. He, and they, could moan, whoop, scream, and make any other frightening noise they could come up with, as well as saying things to the trick-or-treaters in deep and monstrous voices.

They had a lot of fun, and practically scared some of the trick-or-treaters completely away. We had to coax them back. You can see a stainless steel bowl on the porch step. It was filled with candy to give out, but any kid who wanted some had to endure the scary ghost first.