The Salak/Allard connections
Dennis Allard
First - I do long emails, no problem.
Yes I remember meeting you and your brothers at Johnny's. I believe that was first and only time we met and it was around 1997. I remember two other family reunions. One was at Bills but I don't know the year but I do know all 10 were there so it was before Rose Marie died and 5 -10 years before the one at Johnnys. I think your mother came by herself but all of you came to the later one at Johnny's and thats where I met Martha's family. There was another sort of reunion around 1966 while grampa John was still alive and living at Andy's in Cowansville but I dont recall if Martha and/or Jesse were there -- I don't think so. I was born in Kittanning and we lived in Cowansville until I was almost 7 so I have memories of the second farm and Bill, Joe, Johnny,Andy, George, Rose Marie and Stella but after we moved to Virginia in 1955 contacts with the Pa core deteriorated. It was not until those later family reunions -- that I even knew about the two older sisters, Martha and Jesse. I have not kept in touch much with the cousins but my sister Carol went to school in Pittsburg for awhile back in the late 70's and worked there up into the 80's and established connections and knows numbers. Correction -- I first met you mother at my sisters wedding in Pittsburg around 1984, we had dinner together. I think that in this timeframe Carol and Stella may have travelled to LA and visited with your parents. Johnny is still alive as far as I know and I talked to him in the last 2 years -- he called me wanting to get Carols number. If he had died Mary Lou or Andrea would call Carol and I would know. I can probably get you Mary Lou's number if you want it.
Yes I knew about Aunt Stella. What I heard is that a neighbor found Stella on the floor of her apartment. I don't know if there was any more analysis about cause of death. My sister Carol might know more, she was the executor for Stella's will and went up there to work with Mary Lou and Andrea to settle Stella's affairs. So there is a recent contact link to the Pa cousins.
Stella was the last of the family that made an effort to keep up ties. But she would talk to my dad when he was alive on a regular basis and give us updates about you and your family out there. Its thru Stella that we knew about Erics work with Johnny 5 and Stuart Little. I last saw her when our son was 2-3 (he is 22 now) but we did Christmas cards up until she passed -- we went up there and visited with her when she was still in her house and took the big drive up around Cowansville and the two old farm locations. She was here in Washington on a church bus trip and we had her over to the house back in that timeframe.
And both Liz and I remember having dinner with Tony and Tulsa when they stopped here on the East Coast leg of their tour. That had to be 97 or 98.
Thanks for clearing up my data on your dads employment. I saw Allard and LA in the HP document and could not resist following up to see if it was some case of a few degrees of separation -- my work on the HP2216 and his possibly having designed hp's new core memory stack. I find such intersections of activity interesting, when they pan out. Some sort of intangible connection.
IF you want Mary Lou's number or any contact point up in PA let me know and I will ask my sister when she gets back to Florida. They are on a trip to Arkansas right now and have limited if any cell service.
On 6/15/2022 18:46, Dennis Allard wrote:
Hello David.
This is Dennis Allard, your cousin along with Eric (and our other brother Tony).
Please excuse the length of this email. I will address your question about Gerry Allard (my father) and his work on computers further below.
You contacted Eric through his Website (your message to him included below). I developed Eric's Website and get a copy of all data entered into his contact page, hence I saw your entry.
Ironically, you are one of my distant cousins I have been wanting to contact in recent times. Please read on.
Our dear Aunt Stella passed away (as you surely are aware) in 2020. At that time I received a phone call from Mary Lou (spelling? -- an I am 90% confident I have her name right and that she too is a cousin) informing me of dear Aunt Stella's passing and had intended to get back to Mary Lou but her phone number rolled off the end of my recent calls list so that by the time I tried to locate her I could not find her number. I even tried obtaining from my phone company the phone number used to make a call to me from Kittanning, a few months prior. I found it but when I tried to call the number it had been disconnected! I was going through a period of care-giving for my dear friend Linda at that time who herself passed away that fall, hence my lack of due diligence to follow up with Mary Lou in a timely manner.
I had been in fairly regular communication with Aunt Stella in recent years -- one phone call exchange every few weeks or months. And I even knew from a call she made to me that she had fallen and broken her leg. I did call her after that a couple time earlier in 2020 but had not been in touch in many weeks prior to her passing. When a call came in to my phone from Kittanning, I intuitively knew what it would be about. So, since then I have regretted not being able to locate Mary Lou to get some closure on Aunt Stella's demise.
Now, back to you. First, my father Gerry did not work for Ampex, to my knowledge. He DID work on omputers. He designed them. He switched from physics to being an electrical engineer and digital computer designer in the 1950s and worked on some important projects for General Electric in Phoenix Arizona. One of the projects was ERMA (https://www.smecc.org/sri_erma_history.htm , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Recording_Machine,_Accounting).
My father left GE in 1966 and moved the family to Los Angeles. Eric, Tony, and my lives evolved in Los Angeles and other places in the world since then.
I met you many years ago (I would have to do some research to remember what year, probably circa 1978, when we attended a Salak family reunion in PA. I also know that my brother Tony and his girl friend Tulsa met you and your wife 20 years or so (I think) later during a cross country trip they were taking that included passing through Washington D.C..
I hope to hear back from you David. Although we Allard brother's have been out West for all this time with minimal contact with our cousins, I would enjoy the opportunity to hear from you and learn more about our extended family history.
One question - is Uncle John with us? I tried to call the number I had for him and got a disconnected message.
Please feel free to write or call me any time.
regardsDennis
m: 310-399-4740
Eric's email to you (copied to me):
From: Eric Allard <eric....@allfx.com>
Date: June 15, 2022 at 11:43:15 PDT
To: Da...@salaks.net
Subject: Gerry Allard
Hey Cuz,
Who was your mom and dad? I don't think that Fred Allard was directly related to my dad but I don't know for sure.
Kind Regards,
Eric AllardAllfx, Inc.
Your message entered into allfx.com contact form:
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2022 at 9:24 AM
From: "Allfx Web Admin" <all...@oceanpark.com>
To: eric....@allfx.com
Subject: Allfx Contact: David SalakName: David Salak
Email: Da...@salaks.net
Comment: Eric -- I am one of your cousins and we met briefly once at uncle Johnny's. I was researching some work I had done years ago on an HP116B computer and they mentioned that a Fred Allard from Ampex had been hired by HP to develop a new memory subsystem for the HP116. I recall that your dad's name was Gerry and I thought was a physicist who worked with memory at Ampex. Is there a connection between him and the HP Fred Allard ? Just struck me as a coincidence with the Ampex and Allard names.
Dennis Allard
I like the idea of archiving this thread. I have thought several times about trying to record a highlighted history of the Salak side of the family. When we made our last visit to Stella 20 years ago my wife Liz and I talked about going back and recording an oral history but became consumed with the here and now of the young child and work and blah blah blah. I thought that Stella had a trove of family history stored someplace but not sure if that was true and if it existed what happened when Stella's house was sold. Carol, Mary Lou, Andrea and possibly uncle Johnny are the links to any such documents. The extant memories are of course Johnny and then the other cousins. I don't know if any of them might be interested in joining into this discussion or not. I do not have email for any of the cousins nor do I have phone numbers. Of the cousins the best source of early memories is Uncle Bill's children -- Mary Lou is the youngest and she is younger than me. Andrea is about a year or two older than me, Raymond is older and Catherine is the oldest. Raymond did a tour of the lower 48 in a camper a few years back and stopped by and I picked some pieces of early history.
Step one -- I will contact my sister and get the phone numbers.
As for getting the timeline right the more memories the better. Carol has no early knowledge of the Salak's as she was only two years old when we left Pa and we did not return for 10 years. But as I mentioned she reconnected with the Pa Salaks when she was getting her Nurse Practioner certification in Pittsburg and has kept up ties. I am interested in trying to sort out various details of the family history for posterity in general but also along the lines of adding it to the history effort that my son, Ben, has us doing.
I am 73 so you are 5 years younger. Are you the oldest? I think Tony is the youngest but thought maybe Eric was the oldest.
To your email: Carol and I are children of Frank.
I have an Instagram account but I never use it. I will see about reactivating it. Just need to get a new password I think.
I have been retired since December 2010 when I hit mandatory 62 retirement from The World Bank. I continued as a consultant for a year or so but stopped. I do various woodworking and metalworking activties related to our house and car related. We have a youngish son for our age, Ben, so I was able to fill a lot of the time with various activities as Ben was growing up. My wife, Liz, is a Francophile and to broaden his horizons we lived in Paris for his 6th grade then we came back here for 7th and 8th, and back to France, Bordeaux, for his 9th grade then back to Virginia. We had a major addition done to the house while we were in Bordeaux and there is still ongoing residual activity. I am "working" but not in the gamefully employed way.
I want to focus on the early "reunion" where you remember meeting John. It was probably 63 or 64. I think that I was driving and I got my license in Spring 64. I turned 15 in December of 63, passed my test in March or April of 64 -- it was warm spring day. The summers of 65,66,67 I worked at a swimming pool and do not recall taking any time off so I believe the PA trip was the summer of 64 but if my driving memory is wrong it could have been 63. The summer of 64 was a big summer for trips -- I did a Wisconsin canoe trip with Boy Scouts, and we did a visit to my mother's family in Chattanooga Tenn so I doubt that the Pa trip was also there so I am thinking my driving memory is wrong and the Pa trip was 63.
In my early days in Pa I never saw Andy that I remember. I saw Bill, Joe, Johnny, Stella and Rose Marie (she still lived at the farm in Sherrett) but not Andy. Andy lived next to the Cowansville school I attended but I never saw him. Some time prior to the 63-65 trip, grandpa John sold the Sherrett farm and moved in with Bill, who had a house very close to the Sherrett farm. There was trouble with Bill's wife and family not being able to put up with John's ways so he then moved to I believe Andy's but he may have moved to Johnny's -- He lived with Johnny but I don't know it that was before or after Andy. At any rate by 63-64 he was at Andy's house down below Cowansville in the "brickyard" subdivision area. If I was 15 that would put you around 10 for that event - does that seem right?
It's possible that Martha took you all to Pa at some other time when John was still at the Sherrett farm and several of the family gathered but we did not come up from Grundy. John left the Sherrett farm in the 59-61 timeframe, shortly after grandmama Katherine(?) died. I recall hearing of a visit by Martha and her children where Stella and her husband Carl took you around and showed you the original farm house down below Cowansville. I don't think that could have been coincident with the Johnny's reunion.
For the summer 1996 (I am sure it was summer of 1996) reunion at Johnny's I distinctly remember that you, Eric, and your dad were there. I am not sure about Tony. I remember because I had never seen any of you and recall that Eric is physically larger that you and your dad.
I also recall a conversation with Eric where I made some crack about the California beach culture -- East coast sour grapes trash talk. I suspect that Tony was there because that would have been the introduction for him and Tulsa visiting us when he came thru on his East Coast tour in 96 or 97 or 98 or 99. There are pictures, not sure I can quickly find them, of everyone at Johnny's. I will look.
I will try and pin down some key dates -- when did Grandmama Katherine die? When did Stella's husband Carl die?
I looked at the web sites of your dads work on the B of A first check sorting computer -- fascinating -- I did not know that GE was into banking machines in the early days. I worked for Burroughs and banking machinery and check sorting was a big part of their business in the 70s.
David
Do you want me to "Reply All" or "Reply List" going forward?
I will now focus on the 96 Johnny reunion and find that picture
of us all in the back yard. But Eric was long out of the Army by
96 -- I was 48, he must have been around 41 and he did Short
Circuit in 1986. But I remember a conversation with your mother
where she told me "....he got his green beret" as if it were a
recent event. I now suspect that was when we had dinner in
Pittsburg at my sister's wedding which would have been around 1983
or 84. That's another date I should probably know. I want to
remember to put into this thread my recollection of that
conversation with your mother as it gave me additional insights
into the early life of our parents growing up on the farm.
Yes! there was a horse shoe pit at Johny's and Frank was always good at horse shoes. He threw horse shoes in what I considered to be an odd fashion, he held them up sideways and aimed them then they sailed flat and rotated thru the air and would come down and catch the stake with the bottom hook of the shoe whereas most people's throws would sort of summersault once vertically in transit and slide onto the stake.
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Dennis Allard
Do you want me to "Reply All" or "Reply List" going forward?
I will now focus on the 96 Johnny reunion and find that picture of us all in the back yard. But Eric was long out of the Army by 96 -- I was 48, he must have been around 41 and he did Short Circuit in 1986. But I remember a conversation with your mother where she told me "....he got his green beret" as if it were a recent event. I now suspect that was when we had dinner in Pittsburg at my sister's wedding which would have been around 1983 or 84. That's another date I should probably know. I want to remember to put into this thread my recollection of that conversation with your mother as it gave me additional insights into the early life of our parents growing up on the farm.
Yes! there was a horse shoe pit at Johny's and Frank was always good at horse shoes. He threw horse shoes in what I considered to be an odd fashion, he held them up sideways and aimed them then they sailed flat and rotated thru the air and would come down and catch the stake with the bottom hook of the shoe whereas most people's throws would sort of summersault once vertically in transit and slide onto the stake.
David
This picture is the combined attendance at Johnny's. I am not
in any of the pictures, I think I left early on Sunday before the
picture was taken.
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David
There was something about the picture format maybe just the pg
suffix instead of the .jpg -- maybe you know. Anyway I sent the
3 pix to your cell.