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Note: Loya Josephine Lawrence March 12, 1908 - May 24, 2004
A Brief Biography
Loya Josephine Lawrence was the fifth child of William Artman Lawrence [1870-1960] and Viola Shaver [1877-1969]. Her father's journal entry March 12, 1908 states: "Went after Mrs. Kurtz [in the] eve[ning]. Called Dr. Prat about 8:30. Baby born about 10:30." She weighed 9-1/2 pounds at birth, 12-3/4 lbs at one month, 14-1/2 at two months and 15 lbs at three months. On April 15, 1909 her father writes, "Loya trying to walk." And June 5, 1910, "V[iola] was in bed yesterday sweating out measles. Eliza, Lyal and Loya have not entirely recovered." She was called "Loya" until that time, but always "Josephine" thereafter.
Her father kept work horses and was very fond of them. Occasionally Josephine would ride "Billy" (bareback). Billy was an old horse. Most of the horses, like "Billy" and "Bonnie" were gentle and well behaved, but "Cub" took a disliking to Josephine and would rear forward trying to catch her whenever she passed his stall. (Later Jo said, "Birdie reared and provoked Dad. He unhitched her and put another horse in her place. He then returned Birdie to Ted [Humphrey]."
Josephine mentioned that when she was a child she went to Grandpa [Lorenzo] Shaver's [1849-1927] house near the cemetery in East Wayland, north of Loon Lake. She also remembered visiting her aunt Eliza [Lawrence] Parshall [1836-1919] who had moved to a house in Dansville after the death of her farmer husband in Springwater. She fondly recalled the plums on the plum trees at her aunt's house. Jo also had a sister named Eliza [1904-1980], and particularly mentioned how her sister had been a "big sister" to her, helping her through many of life's exercises and challenges.
Her father's journal entry for April 27, 1923, when she was 15, contains a terse entry, "Josephine has a caller this eve. Huh!"
Josephine attended the one room school three quarters of a mile south of the farm house, walking to it every school day. When she attended the high school in Wayland she became friends with a fellow classmate, Charles May of Webster's Crossing, who rode her back from school each day. Charles had given her a pin but she accidentally dropped it down the heater register in the farm house, and it could never be recovered. She was the salutatorian of her high school class of 1924.
She received a college scholarship and her mother was not one to let such a thing be wasted, so at age 16 she left home to attend Albany State Teacher's College in Albany, NY. The first year she resided near the College and washed dishes in a local tea house to pay for her room and board. The second through fourth year she joined the Gamma Kappa Phi Sorority and for three years did baby sitting to earn spending money. She majored in math and in business, and received her AB degree in 1928. Her father paid a visit to the University on Feb. 2, 1926, saying, "Found Josephine's boarding place. Went through museum in Education building." Others who attended with her were Goldina, her close friend and sorority sister, as well as Marsha (McNeil) and Irene Swanson (Howell), both from the Long Island, NY area. She was offered opportunities to teach either in a school outside of Syracuse, or at Eastport High School, because the Eastport principal had gone on a recruiting mission to Albany. She chose the latter because the pay was better, coming to Eastport in the fall of 1928. She taught math to start with, but in the 1940's and 1950's she taught business subjects, although she much preferred teaching mathematics.
The teachers stayed at "Lakeside", an Eastport rooming house on the east bank of the west pond. A year or so later the teachers moved to the house directly across from the school, a house later owned by Bill Steigler.
She met Bart Brown [1911-1976] in Eastport and they were married December 28, 1929 at either the Evangelical United Brethren Church of Wayland, NY, or at the farm house in Springwater NY. According to the 1930 census he was 18 at the time and she was 22. The young couple started their lives together in a small house on West Side Avenue, East Quogue, which was rented for $25 a month from the owner of the duck ranch where Bart worked. At the time they did not have a radio. He worked as a "helper" on a duck farm, and she was wrongly listed as having no occupation, although she had, in fact, been continuously teaching at Eastport for well over a year.
Jo said they stayed in East Quogue for two years. During that time she indicated that she taught in the "Old School" in Eastport until Dick was born.
Richard Vail Brown was born Jan 3, 1931 in Southampton Hospital. About 1932 or 1933 they moved to Eastport and lived in the historic house built about 1775 by "Hunter" John Tuttle [1708-1805] for his son Daniel [1761-1845]. "Hunter" John was Bart's great-great-great-grandfather. Robert Louis Brown was born in that house on July 14, 1934. Jonathan Dan Brown was born March 5, 1941 in Mather Memorial Hospital, Port Jefferson, NY. She had no other children.
During the summer of 1942 the family lived in a rented beach house adjoining Jennings Beach on the Long Island Sound in Fairfield, Connecticut. The landlady, Mrs. Bennett, had a son who weighed in at 472 pounds.
On July 31, 1942 Jo took Dick and Bob to Hoboken, New Jersey and put them on the late night Lackawanna train bound for Wayland, NY. They began their six month stay on the farm in Springwater, NY run by their grandparents William Artman and Viola Shaver Lawrence. Will Lawrence's "Journal" reports that on August 18, 1942 the train brought Jo and Jon to join Dick and Bob at the farmhouse with Jo's parents. On October 1she returned to Eastport for a brief visit and returned "upstate" on October 8. October 25 she helped Ted Humphrey pick potatoes for three days. October 27 she started work at the Gunlock Chair Factory in Wayland, NY, while Bob and Dick attended school there. Bob was in the 4th grade and Dick was in the 7th grade.
While she worked Grandma Lawrence took care of 17 month old Jonathan. On February 1, 1943 Jo received an offer from Eastport High School to teach at a salary of $1375 per year under the principal, Mr. Hough (nickname "Heil Hough"). On February 3 she and the three boys returned to Eastport. She taught there until her retirement.
On November 9, 1945 Jo and Bart were divorced. Bart had previously moved to Hawthorn, Nevada to satisfy the six week Nevada residency requirements for the action which was finalized at Mineral County.
At Eastport High School she taught math, her favorite subject, but at one point she was required to also teach business courses such as business law, shorthand, and typing. One of her students was her son Bob who learned typing and elementary algebra from her. The typing class proved to be very important throughout Bob's life. The elementary algebra, in which he was getting a failing mid-term grade, was another matter. (His mother did not play favorites).
Because she was now on her own, and her teacher's salary was very small, she had to take summer jobs. One summer this was at the Swordfish Club on Westhampton Beach. Another summer she worked at the duck and produce packing plant in Eastport. She worked very hard to keep bread on the table.
On December 27, 1951 Jo married Paul Erwin [1902-1959] whom she had met in late spring 1950. Paul worked at the Riverhead unemployment office. Paul had a power boat the "Mullet," and he made frequent fishing trips passing through the Fire Island Inlet into the Atlantic Ocean. On one such expedition Paul and a friend Wells Tuttle (1906-1959) were involved in a fatal boating accident as they made an unsuccessful attempt to navigate the rough waters of the inlet directly across Great South Bay from the Eastport dock.
After retiring July 1, 1963, Jo lived briefly in an apartment in East Moriches, NY while she had a realtor search for a Florida house. She then moved to a small house in Orlando, FL. and worked part time for a local hospital there. A few years later she bought a newly constructed house in Tarpon Springs, FL for about $7,000. The section of Tarpon Springs where she lived was renamed Holiday, FL. Several years later she met Lou Cortnik [1905-1982] at a bowling outing and they quickly became good friends. His wife had died some years earlier. Jo and Lou were married July 6, 1974. Lou was a very pleasant man and was very good for Jo. He had a deep voice and spoke slowly and distinctly. Years later Lou had a stroke and eventually succumbed to terminal cancer.
About 1989, after "renters" began to degrade the Holiday housing development Jo Cortnik moved to a senior development in Kissimmee, FL. About 1990, she moved to Paintsville, Kentucky, to a house owned by her son Jon Brown and his wife Maxine. In July 1991 she moved to an apartment at 94J Redbud Drive, Dansville, NY, only a few miles from her childhood home in Springwater.
In the winter of 1996 she was leaving a supermarket in Dansville, NY and the strap of her pocketbook became caught in the railing outside the store. She fell, breaking her left hip, and in spite of surgery did not regain her former agility. This prevented her from going for the long walks which had been her healthy routine for many years.
On June 23, 1998 Dick and Vernon (Eel) Tuttle transported Jo in Dick's van from Dansville, NY to live in a house trailer adjoining Jon & Maxine's home in Volga, Kentucky, the same house she had lived in about 1990. This is the house Jon & Maxine had moved back to after they retired and sold their former place in Indiana. Jon constructed a nice walkway between the trailer and their house to make it convenient for her to have her meals there, visit, and do picture puzzles. Around the year 2001 her failing eyesight began to make it difficult to do puzzles.
For many years Jo had very bad hearing. She was completely deaf in her right ear and had lost much of her hearing in the left year. She used a hearing aid (sometimes), and Jon had made a megaphone to enable communications between them.
As time went on Jo's health steadily failed. She could still perfectly remember nursery rhymes from her childhood days, and could even recite long and complicated poems, such as the Highwayman, although time was taking its toll on her more recent memories. Also, a spot on her arm that had been with her since she lived in Dansville began to worsen, and surgery was performed on what she termed "my bunch." But the lesion had already spread and a second surgery took place in January 2004. Again the problem returned and a third surgery was about to be performed to relieve some of the pain she was experiencing. The day before the scheduled surgery, Loya Josephine Lawrence mercifully passed from this life to a better land.
She was buried next to her husband Louis Cortnik in New Port Richey, Florida. [Meadowlawn Memorial Gardens, Elfers, Lot 130D space 1 & 2]
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