A passage from "Memory Traces"
by Irving Luban, published 2001
Lifelong friends
Gilbert Hall Flint and I met on the campus of Cornell University more than a half century ago. We have remained lifelong friends since then and although miles apart, correspondence and the telephone had kept us in close touch with one another. Hall, as he was known to friends, was the product of 200-year ancestral annals. Whether fact, fancy, or fib, he claimed that a family relation, one Captain Flint, was the pilot of one of the caravels that hit the shores of the New World.
“My sister Catherine died on 8/11/90. The funeral was in our Smithfield church, not far from what used to be Flint Hill. She was buried in the church cemetery along with my relations of the last 200 years” recently wrote my roommate of so many years ago.
The name “Hall” stuck and fate determined our link on the campus grounds of Cornell more than fifty years ago: he was a tall, spare taciturn farm boy from the bucolic hills of the country, and I came from the swarming paved streets of a crowded city.
Coupled for good, we never lost touch as years passed; our friendship was solid and durable throughout school, careers, war, births, and the remotest of distances. We exchanged two or three letters each year and made phone calls to each other. This kept the lifeblood of our friendship unbroken, flowing, and very much alive.
In those long college years, farm training was absolutely essential to remain in good standing in the Agricultural College of the University, especially for city-bred kids. We had to work on a farm for four consecutive summers in order to matriculate. The Flint family dairy farm, on Flint Hill, whose ancestors settled near the tiny hamlet of Amenia, Dutchess county, over 200 years ago, became my home for those wondrous summers of my youth.
His letter continued: “I drove up over Flint Hill last week. There is now a winery and a fancy restaurant on top of the mountain. At Amenia, Route 22, there are many signs directing you up Cascade Mountain Road, where Martha used to drive her horse-and-buggy carriage to high school.”
Probably the same gray mare on the same rocky road, but now mare and Flint Hill are no more; farmstead is gone, progeny scattered.
But then, both Hall and Martha knew, I’m sure, that the immortal souls from the nearby churchyard graves were still keeping a watchful eye on their beloved ancestral grounds.
Gilbert Hall Flint was born August 14, 1918 and raised on Flint Hill Farm in Amenia, New York. His formal education began in a one-room schoolhouse in Smithfield. He graduated from Amenia High School in 1936 and from the Cornell University College of Agriculture in 1940. He taught high school agriculture from 1940 to 1944, served in the U.S. Army from 1944 to 1946, taught high school agriculture from 1946 to 1963, and finished his career as a school principal from 1963 to 1975.
Gilbert Hall Flint passed away on December 16, 2009. The letters are published in his memory. To view the letters in chronological order, please click a timeline label from the side bar menu, scroll to the bottom, and read up.
Gilbert Hall Flint passed away on December 16, 2009. The letters are published in his memory. To view the letters in chronological order, please click a timeline label from the side bar menu, scroll to the bottom, and read up.