Lois has loved Gene as far back as she can remember. She's happy to work at Antioch College to help pay Gene's tuition. Then Antioch gets a grant that allows a group of its students to tour several countries in Europe. Gene applies and gets to go. The students travel in a truck. They sleep in it at night and convert the beds to seats during the day. One of the countries Gene travels through is Germany, where he sees first hand early manifestations of intolerant Nazis. Soon after his return from Europe, Gene gets a co-op job at National City Bank in New York.

Lois and Gene move to New York City. They fall in love with the vibrant energy of the metropolis. Within a year Gene has completed his co-op work at National City Bank and also his Antioch College degree. He accepts an offer for a job at the bank. It is quite a blessing, as the Great Depression is getting underway.

Lois wants a baby, but is not yet pregnant. She is told about a physician with a new type of practice. She goes to see the fertility doctor.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected president in November of 1932. On the day he's inaugurated, FDR declares a bank holiday to last an unstated length of time.

Lois gives birth to twin baby girls, Joanne and Janet halfway through Franklin Roosevelt's first "100 Days" in office. She doesn't have a strong constitution to begin with and giving birth to twins weakens her further. But she's overjoyed.

Its a transition time for the United States and also for the career of Janet and Joanne's father. Because Gene hasn't really settled in yet on any organizational responsibilities at First National City bank he's available to "pick up" on the new administrative laws and square the banks procedures with them.

This process involves working with the bank's attorneys and visiting with new agencies created in Washington, such as the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and others.

Gene feels thrilled to be participating in such significant work. In 1933, FDR signs a new banking act. Its called the Glass-Steagall Act. It forces commercial banks out of the investment banking business by prohibiting financial institutions from both accepting deposits and underwriting corporate securities.

Gene's many trips to Washington while the new regulations are being "fine-tuned" causes Gene to miss out on much of the fine tuning of his twin baby girls. Lois misses him when he's traveling, but she loves hearing his story when he returns.

The FDR years continue. World War Two rages. Polio hits the President of the United States and thousands of people across the nation, among them some of the children who twins Joanne and Janet play with. But the twins are spared.

After World War Two, Gene installs the first mainframe computer in the bank that will eventually evolve its name to just four short, snappy letters, Citi.

Gene goes to Philadelphia to observe the manufacturing of the first generation vacuum tubes used by the fledgling computational device. The computer is installed on the second floor of a new building that will house the bank on Park Avenue. Refrigeration pipes and equipment is installed under the floor to cool the mammoth computer.

Lois and Gene rent an apartment in the six story Parklane Apartments of Mount Vernon, at the corner of Lincoln and Columbus Avenues, directly across from the First Presbyterian Church. Gene isn't much of churchgoer. He plays tennis every Sunday with his friend Jack from the bank. Jack takes Gene and the twins out on his boat moored at the Echo Bay Yacht Club.

As the girls grow up they often visit their father at the bank and then go for a lunch of sole almondine in the city.

Meanwhile, Lois is progressively getting weaker. Friends from the bank arrange for a woman named Betty Blue to come to NYC from Lima, Ohio to be Lois' private nurse. She moves into one of the Parklane Apartments.

Gene develops a friendship with Reverend Melvin Joacham, who the twins come to call "Uncle Mel." He starts taking the girls to the First Presbyterian Church across the street from the Parklane Apartments to listen to Uncle Mel preaching. Lois becomes best friends with Gayle, Uncle Mel's wife.

When the twins are in high school they are a singing duet that are in high demand for parties. They dream of becoming professional singers. They go out to Echo Bay Yacht Club with friends and play kissing games like spin-the-bottle.

When the twins turn 16, Gene suggests that they go out to "The Beehive" in Mount Vernon. Gene asks if they'd like to invite Dolores and Twyla, the daughters of Gail and Uncle Mel.

"Yes Daddy! Yes!"

They are joined at "The Beehive" by four additional girls and eight boys, to make a total of 16 teens, the magic number they are turning. Afterward, Gail and Uncle Mel throw a great party at their home.

Eight months later, in January 1949, Janet and Joanne have their friend Dory over to spend the night. That evening, their mother Lois dies.

Lois' life ends in New York, 45 years after her birth in Dayton, Ohio. Joanne suddenly feels abandoned, overwhelmingly alone, combined with a frightening sense that she's falling into a dark pit after being punched in the chest.

The next morning, Janet and Dory go to school, but Joanne isn't able to. She faints twice, the first time her head comes dangerously close to smacking hard on the bathroom tile. Fortunately, her mother's nurse Betty Blue is at home with her.

A memorial service for Lois is held in Mount Vernon. Janet and Joanne cry through the entire service. After the service, Gene and the twins take the train and Lois' body back to Dayton.

At one stop, someone tells Gene "They're taking the casket off the train." He leaves the twins and makes sure his wife's body makes the entire trip home.

Another service is held at Dayton's Memorial Park Cemetery. Joanne won't get out of the car. Janet tries repeatedly to get her sister to participate. Joanne can't do it.

At the wake, Joanne's unable to eat. Gene and one of his sisters flies back to New York with the twins. Its their first airplane ride. Joanne and Janet hate the flight. They develop a life-long loathing of air travel.

Back in NYC, Joanne and Janet gradually grieve their way through the intense pain from the loss of Lois and go on with their high school social lives  They think that Betty Blue has designs on Gene. A lot of women do.

Within months, when the twins are away visiting with relatives, a woman camps herself on the front doorsteps of the Parklane Apartments. Its Connie. She has left her job in Washington D.C. When Gene arrives home, she tells him she wants his help getting a job in NYC.

The twins come home and form an immediate dislike for Connie. They ask Gene not to marry her, giving him a list of reasons they consider valid and important.

"You'll learn to love her," Gene tells them. They never do. Connie doesn't like the twins much either. She engages in power plays, like forbidding Gene from going to high school football games to see the twins as cheerleaders.

Joanne and Janet graduate from high school in June of 1950 and get ready for college. Joanne is initially interested in attending Heidelberg College in Ohio, where her friend Dolores is going. Gene wants the twins to go to Antioch College. Their Uncle Mel and his wife Gayle deliver Janet and Joanne to the Antioch campus.

Janet studies Early Childhood Development. Joanne studies Early Childhood Development.

They will both become innovators in the field. But this would almost be inevitable, having landed at Antioch College, a school with a long reputation of being a decade ahead of the times.

Janet meets and weds an Antioch College student. Her husband has some of the Turner Construction Company fortune, but not much, because Janet's Quaker father-in-law has severed himself from the money.

Janet and her husband have a son they name Keith. When I'm born, he'll be my cousin. Neither of us will ever have the privilege of knowing, or being loved by, our departed grandmother Lois.

Out in Waterloo, Iowa, 18 years earlier, a baby boy is born. He grows up as an only child, but not a spoiled child. He rules the roost and his parents depend upon his developing honor to guide him. He has the freedom to pursue whatever course of interest excites him at any given time.

Early on, after the death of his grandfather, who is a clerk in the office of the master mechanic of the Illinois Central Railroad, Charles, or Chuck moves into the large home in which his grandfather had lived with his mother and father.

Chuck's grandmother still owns the large home, along with the equally large home next door to it. She rents the house next door to a family with many children who virtually adopt Chuck into their clan. Meanwhile, Chuck's house is so big that his mother, a substitute teacher and a PEO member, takes in teachers as borders. One of the persistent questions Chuck carries out of his childhood is what the acronym PEO means?

"People Eat Onions," his mother tells him. She's pledged never to reveal the true meaning. She never tells her grandson either, taking the secret to her grave.

During high school Chuck works various jobs, as a life guard, and for Waterloo's biggest employer Rath (hog meat) Packing Company. After high school, he heads for Antioch. He likes the school's co-op education policy. At Antioch, Chuck rides a motorcycle, teaches diving lessons, takes flying lessons, and works as the manager of the Antioch College Bookstore...where he catches Joanne's eye.

Joanne and Chuck begin spending all their free time together, until Joanne feels she can't imagine her life without Chuck in it. They marry and go together to Chicago and Detroit to work on co-op jobs. Chuck's drafted into the Navy. After boot camp at Great Lakes Naval on Lake Michigan, he's stationed in Washington D.C. as a photographer's mate first class. Joanne becomes pregnant.

Nine months later, on May 9, 1956, she gives birth to me at Bethesda Naval Hospital, a place commissioned by FDR, that also provides medical care to ailing presidents.

Next installment coming soon: Joanne and Chuck Enter the 60s