Copyright 2010

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America

America
by Lauren Litwa Holden

Monday, July 11, 2011

The Redman



The Redman

He was a lot of things to a lot of people. A Scots Irishman from a poor family in New Castle, DE. To some he was a son and a brother in a family that moved between farms in Ogden, Twin Oaks and Sussex County DE… He was a farm man, picking what was in season, working at the cannery and selling watermelons with his uncle Wilson Dill… He was a watermelon man.

There for a time, his dad raised hogs and ran an icehouse in Twin Oaks. Redman rode the wagon with his dad… He was the iceman, delivering ice and stealing pies off of Mrs. Pryor’s windowsill. The story goes, Mrs. Pryor and others from Twin Oaks Village would get credit and borrow money from Redman’s father, and when they couldn’t pay him, pies would start appearing on the windowsills off Broadway Avenue.

He was a family man long before he had a family of his own… The Holdens, the Dills, the Voshells, the Morgans, and the Brattons were all his family. He told me once if it wasn’t for the generosity of the Dills and the Voshells, at times they wouldn’t have had a roof over their heads. He was a grateful man.

He got his first real job in the paint department at Sears in Camden, DE… He was a Sears man.He was a jitterbug man… On weekends the cousins would all pile into Roy’s Coupe, Roy, Reds, Harry, Wally, and Frank and go to Radio Park to hear Cousin Lee and dance with all the girls. He met a beautiful girl from Booth’s Corner named Sara Whitby. After that, he was Polly’s man.

Like many of his generation, when the Second World War escalated, he was drafted and he became General Patton’s man… 3rd Army. For Redman it wasn’t warfare in the trenches, it was baking bread and driving trucks following Patton from England to France to Belgium to Germany… He was an Army man.

He came home from the war, got a good job and before you knew it, he was a Sun Oil Man. He worked hard, he raised his family, he went to Phillies games with his buddy Jack Earner. He took Polly to the American Legion dances, and went to Clanks for Pizza. Then on Sundays Polly would put out this huge, delicious feast for Reds and whoever else stopped by… He was a well-fed man.

His kids and all his kids friends, his grandkids and all his grandkids friends, his great grand kids, neighbors, coworkers, cousins, nephews, nieces, casual acquaintances and strangers on the street… He was a well-loved man.

He was a generous man. He was a funny man. In 1943, just before he shipped out to Europe, he actually opened up a USO Show in Chicago starring the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, treating his fellow GIs to his own brand of comic mime… He was a showman.

He was Santa’s right-hand man. Reds played Santa Claus for 50 years. His last gig was at the age of 80. Thom asked him afterwards how it went, and he replied, “Man, those old people are a trip”. He was a young man at heart.

He loved Sara, his wife of 69 years… he was a loving man. Family man, Iceman, Showman, Army man, Sun Oil man… He was Polly’s man and to the rest of us he was simply… Redman. He was the finest man I knew.

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