In 1964 Dad took a job stationed in Hanover, New Hampshire at the Army Corps of Engineers' Cold Regions Research Engineering Laboratory, (CRREL), again working in personnel. The family moved to New England, which felt like home to Dad, and they looked for a home in the area. They rented a house in South Strafford from Howard and Bebe Kidder. Peter was born the first winter there, on February 23, 1965 Therese's birth followed the next year on August 17, 1966. In the spring of 1967 Mom and Dad bought the Avis Udall house from Milo Sleeper in the Strafford village. It was not a particularly big house, with only two bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs and a tiny kitchen, but there was a big woodroom and garage. Mom and Dad and Mike, Gabe, Mary, Raph, Joe, Peter, and baby Therese all moved in for a few short months.

At that time CRREL offered Dad the opportunity to either get a graduate degree at Dartmouth's Tuck School, or take a three year assignment in Germany. Mom and Dad chose the Germany trip because it seemed like it would benefit everyone, and so plans were made to move to Bremerhaven, on Germany's north coast in the summer of 1967. Hazel and Delwin Lewis agreed to look after the house and help get it rented. It was rented to a different family each of the three years, the third family being Richard and Francis Wilson who had just moved to Strafford after many years of summering there.

Kathleen was born the first winter the family lived in Bremerhaven on Valentines Day, 1968. The summers of 1968, '69, and '70 the family traveled all over Europe. They had a white Volkswagen microbus in which nine kids and two adults barely fit, but they saw Ireland, Holland, some of Scandinavia, Scotland, and England. Siobhan was born on April 6, 1970.

In the summer of 1971 they moved back to Strafford. For the first year they continued to live in this small house, but plans were in place to turn the woodroorn into a kitchen and to put two more bedrooms over the garage. The summer of 1972 Mom's brother Michael and his new wife Janet came to help with the construction. Bridget was born July 26, 1972. Jeremiah was born two years later, on July 31, 1974, and Benjamin's birth followed in the bicentennial year, on May 12, 1976.


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