Wallace Douglas Reid

Hello, family and friends,

We welcome you to the memorial site for our father. We wholeheartedly invite each of you to add your personal memories to our stories. Without your additions our history is incomplete. We have posted here our initial memories but we expect to add many more over time. This website is active for 13 months so there is plenty of time for all of you as family and friends and us as daughters to reminisce and celebrate the lives of our parents. We included our mother here because at her passing we did not have the advantage of time to honor her memory. We have no pictures at all of Dad as a child so we are hoping you all have some to offer. We cherish your shared memories so please leave nothing unsaid that will bless our family history and bring us comfort and joy to hear from your heart.

Also, Lynne has the urn from Dad’s cremation and our plans are to bring them to Canada for a memorial service and interment at Rest Haven beside Mother at a time to be determined. It will be a couple of months and we will let everyone know through this website and through family contacts with Reid and Anderson clans and friends.

What we have written here as daughters is from our best efforts to recollect correctly. However, you all are now our only point of reference for accuracy. So if some details are stated wrong or missing, we would greatly appreciate hearing from your perspective!

Please remember that we have this website until March of 2017 and we have an allowance of 10,000 words. What we have already written here is under 2500 words so there is lots more space for your reflections. So please help us out because you know things that we don’t and we are eager to hear them.

Susan’s memories:

Our father from earliest memories was an eager, intelligent and earnest working man. At the ages of Susan 5, Barbara 3 and Lynne an infant, we moved from 378 Rhodes Avenue, Toronto Ontario to 25 Kerr Crescent, Trenton Ontario. Dad had been hired for a Civil Service job at #6 Repair Depot (6RD) at Trenton air base as an aviation Instrument Technician. He worked there from 1949 until 1965. Some days he rode his bicycle to work and back. He used clips to fold back his pant legs to avoid them getting caught in the bike chain. One day he forgot he had ridden his bike and bummed a ride home! Dad’s memory power was an inside joke for all who knew him.

As the house in Trenton was now getting too small with three growing children and one on the way, Dad received a Veteran’s loan and qualified for a 3 acre lot on Wooler Road, north of Trenton in 1953. Walter Miles hand-dug our well for the water supply but later it had to be drilled because of water hardships. Our mother could attest to this!

Our brother, Paul Wallace Reid, was born September 15, 1953. Dad was thrilled with a son and our family was complete. We have many cherished memories from this time.

We also had wonderful neighbors, the Harrisons on the north side and Frankie Miron to the south. As we grew older, the water supply worsened and there was no school bus into Trenton. Mom and Dad sold the house and we moved to Belleville in 1959.

I was married in June 1965 in Belleville. Due to job opportunities, the rest of the family relocated to Chicago, Illinois. Barbara, Lynne and Paul married and grandchildren followed – Jeffrey, Andrea, Adam, Stephanie, Allison, Paul Stephen, and Melissa along with Kim and David. Christopher, Patrick and Corey were born on the Canadian side. To date, there are 11 great grandchildren.

Mom and Dad helped me pack to move many times over the years and Dad installed air conditioners and hung rods and drapes in multiple apartments. Whenever I could, I visited them and greatly enjoyed our times together.

Barb’s Memories:

I was about 4 years old and wanted to ride my tricycle but I was too short! So Dad put big wooden blocks on the pedals and away I went. (Trenton ON)

Dad took the children that were old enough to skate to a pond by O’Malley’s store. We skated and drank hot cocoa until our toes got too cold – then home we went! So as not to fear lightning and thunder storms, Dad had us watch storms from inside looking out a large picture window in the living room. It worked for me. (Wooler Road, Trenton ON)

We moved to Chicago IL in June 1965. Dad taught me to drive on side streets and then expressways. Lynne and I shared a car which had no working windshield washer so we just squirted water on the windshield as we were driving. It just didn’t work well in winter! During an epic blizzard in Chicago January 26, 1967, 23 inches of snow brought Chicago to a standstill. It prevented all cars or buses from driving on the streets, but resourceful Dad snow skied to the corner store to buy bread, milk and eggs for our family – within 2 hours the store was sold out! Then Dad skied over to the Kennedy Expressway to view all the abandoned cars – thousands of them all over the city. We were from Canada but had never seen a storm like this one!

Our family moved to the suburb of Lombard IL in 1967 where Dad had beautiful flower gardens at our newly built home. He taught me how to grow, weed and maintain flowers and plants. I got my “green thumb” from Dad.

Mom and Dad moved to Ft. Lauderdale FL in 1974. I visited them in 1978 when Andrea was a baby and Jeff was 4 years old. Jeff helped “Grandpa Honey” as he called him. Jeff held the tools for Grandpa and watched him while he worked.

We had many visits over the next several years and I moved from Illinois to Ohio in 1994. I will be adding my memories from these years in the near future on this website.

In May 2014 Dad came to live with Tim and me in Ohio. Mother had just passed away in April, shortly after her 90th birthday. He loved to sit on the patio and watch the birds and be a part of nature. I think this was a peaceful time for Dad. He later joined Lynne in Kansas.

Lynne remembers the many trips to Olathe, KS that Mom and Dad made and has many video tapes of their visits. Stephanie can remember Grampa teaching her about the solar system with our multiple selection of toy box balls! Gramma was always a good bather of newborns and taking the ones that could walk, up and down the street for exercise and to use up some of that energy of youth! One time Melissa came with them and we have her on video tape riding a bicycle.

Dad loved to:

play tennis – he kept tan and fit and played for hours at a time for many years

go roller blading - which he also taught to his grandchildren, Adam and Allison

go bicycle riding – one time he had an accident while at my house and scraped the skin off the whole top of his hand and my neighbors in the cul-de-sac doctored him up before he came back to the house. He was in his 60’s!

play bridge and euchre – untold hours with Mother as his partner

go dancing – ballroom, square, polka and whatever the band was playing

go horseback riding – when he first met Mother

be an Air Cadet leader – Batta squadron – on a bivouac trip one of the cadets got cornered by a bull and Dad rescued him!

play Cribbage – he had a cribbage board made out of an airplane propeller that he donated to the museum at Trenton air base

go on Cruises – out of Florida

be a part of the Anglican church choir – as a young boy. He rode his bike there.

belong to the Glee Club – he had a great bass voice

build the house on Wooler Road – their 15th anniversary party preparations involved mowing the grass way behind the house and Dad ran over a bees nest. He made a beeline for the car and drove out to the mower to turn it off and then used the tires to get rid of the nest!

Florida friends gave Dad a surprise 80th birthday party. They had a huge cake with his life story on it made with tiny props! It was a lot of fun. Melissa and her new baby were able to be there too.

Mom and Dad also had parties for their 25th and 50th anniversaries. The half circle mirror given to them as a gift at their 25th anniversary is here at my house!

Dad worked as an electrician for several different companies, a nuclear power plant building site, a condominium as a superintendent of maintenance and did many projects in the homes of friends and family. He painted many walls in my house using self-made scaffolding for the high places, sewed a piece of carpet to cover the brick hearth to protect the children, built storage shelves in the attic and anchored many shelves and bookcases to walls to keep the children safe.

While Dad was here with us, Paul loved to walk by Grampa and kiss his head and always came to say goodnight to Grampa. He would make Grampa’s bed in the morning and bring his glasses and lap blanket to him. Dad and I took Paul bowling on Thursdays when it was our car pool turn and cheer Paul on. We also went to Paul’s concert with Special Chorus and his concert for hand bell choir. Paul loves to dance and we have told Paul that Grampa can now dance on heaven’s gold street.

Allison talks about learning to play by ear on the piano from Grampa when he would play a melody that was way before her time! She learned to play the bass and the chord progressions to songs she hadn’t heard before while sitting at the piano with him. Grampa also encouraged her to learn how to fix things when they break. Allison came to visit Grampa the week before he passed and she sat beside him and played her guitar and also the piano in the same room and covered all the songs that they used to play together from Dad’s generation through John Denver and Kenny Rogers. Such things are the treasures in the hearts of each grandchild.

We will always miss you Dad but we are greatly comforted knowing that you are with Mother now, with our brother Paul and with the God who created you. Dad would have turned 96 twenty days after his passing. We will always treasure the years that we were given to be with them. Love you Mom and Dad always and forever.

Stories that Dad told us:

Dad had learned at his VoTech high school how the mechanics of an automobile clutch worked so he purchased a car without having any driving experience but without a driver’s license could not drive the car off the lot! So he called Billie, his uncle’s wife, and talked her into coming to help him so he drove off the lot and all the way home beside street cars and everything with no driving lessons! But here’s the rest of the story! That weekend Dad and two of his sisters were driving up to visit an uncle who was leaving from home with the army. They were on a gravel road and Dad lost control of the car and they ended up in water with undercarriage damage and a broken windshield. The trip was over. But Dad soon took the car to take the driving test and the examiner commented on the open air breeze from the missing windshield! We would love to hear this story from the sisters’ perspective!

I believe it was for Aunt Eva’s wedding that Dad was put in charge of picking up the bridesmaids and delivering them to the church. Dad’s story is that when he arrived at the house no one came to answer the door so he figured that they had left already. His calculation was incorrect and they had to call someone else to get over there quick!

One day as a teenager, a friend invited Dad to join him at a golf course to be a caddy. Afterwards, they rode their bicycles to go swimming and one of the times Dad’s friend jumped in he didn’t come up. People tried to help save him but couldn’t find him. The friend had drowned and they found him the next day. Dad had to ride his bike all the way home after that happened. He was only 17.

One time a farmer friend asked Dad to come help him birth a calf that was struggling and the farmer wanted to use a chain to pull out the calf. Dad told the farmer that he would have to call his brother and Dad left. He felt that the chain would kill the calf.

Another time he was up on a roof and slipped and the only thing that stopped him was some kind of lip at the edge of the roof.

During Dad’s time in the Royal Canadian Air Force one job he had was calibrating flight instruments on planes. There was a time when some planes were actually losing their way during their flight and no one could figure it out for a while. But finally it was discovered the problem was with the ladders. Each plane had a ladder for the pilot and crew to get in and out of the plane and they would just throw them onto a pile and grab one the next time. However, the instruments had been calibrated for that particular ladder on the plane at the time and because they were using a different ladder each time, it threw off the instruments and so they were seriously off the coordinates. So the answer was to attach the ladder to the plane with every take-off and landing!

More to come with your help! We cannot emphasize enough how much we desire to hear from each of you. Otherwise we will never know those parts of our parents’ history and they will be lost forever. PLEASE tell us your stories!