Martha Vogeler
My twin sister Mary and I first met Doris and her two older sisters sometime in 1929, shortly after their parents had moved the family from New York to a three- bedroom house in a new development in Wood-Ridge, N.J. About the same time my family had made a similar move to the same street and probably for the same reason, the belief that suburbs were better suited for children than big cities. Their family lore has it that Doris and her sisters first met Mary and me when they found us in their front yard searching for nails left by the builders. In later weeks and years we would repeat the journey many times for her parent were most hospitable. Not long after our meeting, their father drove Mary and me to stay overnight with his children in their summer house in Edgewater--probably our earliest experience of being away from home overnight without our parents. Before breakfast the next day their mother gave each of us children half an orange to eat on their pier. How novel and exciting! I have another happy memory of Mary and me joining Doris and her sisters in a chorus of children in a stage production put on by their father's Masonic Club when Doris was not yet five. Later Mary and I went to the same school as she and her sisters, created for children in the new development, and the same Sunday School and church in the old part of town. But the difference in our ages meant that as we grew older we saw less of Doris. Therefore, except for a few gatherings, some which she organized at the Jersey Shore, our most emotionally charged memories of her are of her during her early years on Innes Road.
