Bruce and Harriett's Place : October 2012

This page is a work in progress - feel free to comment and make suggestions. The basis comes from a wonderful essay Rick wrote in recollection of my Mom - I'm altering it a bit as I find details and photos to add. Jaye

Harriett Lorella Hobble Shore

Harriett & Libby

She was Harriet Laurella Hobble (she later added an additional "t" to her first name) when she was born in Wichita, Kansas on September 17, 1932. Her father had been the son of a prominent family in Dodge City, with a grand house "on Boot Hill". Her father had been married earlier and she had a half-sister Anna Mae, who was raised by her Grandparents. She had a younger sister, Libby (Grace Elizabeth).

Harriett & Libby in Colorado

The Depression sent Harriett's father Ted Hobble west, first to Colorado, then to California while Harriett was still a little girl. She recalled the dust storms, the time on the road, their making due in a summer cottage through a Colorado winter. Ted, through family connections, found work as a carman for the Santa Fe Failroad in the worst part of the depression, and settled the family in dry, remote Needles, California, right on Route 66. He stayed with that job and in that place for the rest of his life. Though Harriett grew up in Needles, she always seemed to be a real Midwesterner in her tastes and demeanor, a descendant of pioneers and homesteaders “old American families“ through both of her parents.

Upon becoming a young woman, she left Needles to move to San Diego with her girlfriends and in time met Bruce J. Shore, a young Marine officer stationed in San Diego. Though also from the middle of the country (he was born and bred in Iowa), Bruce had already seen a lot of the world and must have been the image of everything she wanted to move away from in Needles.

In Hawaii during Viet Nam R&R

They were married in 1953 and started on a military life of moving from one place to another for the next twelve years, from Rhode Island to South Carolina to North Carolina (where Jaye, the third of five kids born in five years, was born) and finally to Albany, New York ~ not that far from where some of Harriett's ancestors had settled in the 1600's.

Harriett 1962

Bruce retired as a Major after serving in Vietnam and the family's nomadic life gratefully came to an end, as Bruce settled into a job at Schenectady Trust Bank (now Trustco). Harriett, who had always been a voracious reader ~ often reading a book in one day and retaining a stunning amount of it ~ completed her college degree and then went on to obtain a Master's Degree from the University at Albany in Classics. As Jake can tell you, she was very proud of having learned Ancient Greek and Latin and of having read the great Greek and Roman philosophers in the original language.

One of the Weddings, 1980s

I've known her for 22 years and until very close to the end of her life she was a brilliantly mordant and exceedingly literate and erudite conversationalist. She always had fascinating observations on books, movies, nature, food, history, and more. I have to say ~ and I think she knew this ~ she really didn't belong in Albany. It was really too small and provincial for her. She loved recounting her trips with a friend to New York City to dine, shop and see a play. She would have liked seeing more of the world. If she had been born 20 years later, I bet she would have been a classical archeologist, somewhere in Italy or Turkey, brushing ancient Roman dust off her clothes at the end of the day. She was fully human ~ temperamental, sometimes barbed, sometimes more dark than light. I'm aware that being her son-in-law (and, as Jake can attest, being her grandson) was a warm, endearing experience that probably did not always match the experience of being one of her children. Unlike them, I was blessed to always see her finest side ~ and I believe it was her truest side. I will miss her ~ a lot. Knowing her was a real privilege.