Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Conrad WILSON
Rutland Herald (VT) - March 22, 2005
Deceased Name: Conrad Wilson
WEST DUMMERSTON - Conrad Wilson, 84, of West Dummerston, died peacefully at his home on Saturday morning, March 19, 2005, in the care of his sons and other care-givers, after an eight-month struggle with lung cancer.
He was born in Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, the son of William West Wilson and Marie Carlotta (LaVake) Wilson. He lived the first 10 years of his life in Bridgeport then, in 1930, moved to the family farm in Valley Forge that his father and uncle inherited. During the Depression years at this farm, they lived a self-sufficient lifestyle and often fed the less fortunate who would help out on the farm in exchange for a few meals.
After attending local public schools in Pennsylvania, he enrolled at Middlebury College in Vermont in 1938. He attended Middlebury for two years then had to drop out for financial reasons. After working for a year, he enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania in 1941, which he attended for a year before World War II intervened.
He grew up a Quaker and became a Conscientious Objector when drafted by the military during World War II. His CO status was accepted and he did alternate service through Civilian Public Service, working for six months in Maryland as part of a work camp draining old-growth cypress swamps, then at a mental hospital in Middletown, Conn..
He gained release from the CPS by agreeing to volunteer for the American Field Service, an ambulance corps that was started during World War I. In 1944 and 1945, he drove an AFS ambulance as the Allied Forces pushed the retreating Germans north through Italy. He was serving with the British Army in 1945 when they liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In his unpublished 1999 memoir, he wrote that this experience "shook me to the very foundations of my thinking about war and the human condition. For many years I tried to erase what I saw there from my mind. But the sights and stench of Belsen are permanently etched in my memory." He remained a pacifist throughout his life.
Following the war, he returned to Pennsylvania but had trouble accepting the prejudice he saw in American society. He joined the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker relief agency involved with reconstruction efforts in Italy. He worked in Italy with AFSC for a little over a year. He recently reflected that this work in Italy provided one of the happiest periods of his life. After returning to the United States, he re-enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania and completed a degree in Art History in 1947, then began work on a doctorate in classical archaeology, which he never completed.
At the University of Pennsylvania Museum, he met Barbara Copp, whom he married in 1951. He worked during much of the 1950s for the Foote Mineral Company in Exton, Pennsylvania, while he and his wife raised two sons in a small, 1720 log home they bought and restored. Leaving his job at Foote Mineral and following his passion for history, he proposed to the local public high school in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, an innovative course on local history. The idea was accepted and he taught it for two years, during which time he and his students restored a 1700s log cabin on the school property, using the building as a focus for their studies. He then worked alternately at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the Chester County Historical Society in West Chester, Pennsylvania, holding two different positions at each during the 1960s and '70s. During much of this period he and his family lived in Villanova. He retired in 1977.
In 1985, he and his wife moved to Dummerston, Vermont, to be closer to their younger son and live out a long-held wish to return to Vermont, where he had first attended college nearly fifty years earlier. During his twenty years at Deer Run Farm in Dummerston, he continued to pursue his lifelong interest in genealogy, and he spent much of his time outdoors, tending his extensive woodland landscapes and trail networks.
He is remembered as a kind and generous man by all those who knew him. Throughout his life he was committed both to the betterment of humanity and the protection of the environment.
He was predeceased by his wife in 1995. He is survived by an older brother, William Wilson of West Chester, Pennsylvania; two sons, Christopher Wilson of West Newbury and Alexander Wilson of West Dummerston; and six grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 2:30 p.m. April 2, at the West Village Meeting House in West Brattleboro. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made either to the Putney Friends Meeting (P.O. Box 381, Putney, VT 05346) or Brattleboro Area Hospice (191 Canal Street, Brattleboro, VT 05301). ?
Copyright, 2005, Rutland Herald
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