THE PEOPLE I GREW UP SITTING BESIDE

THE PEOPLE I GREW UP SITTING BESIDE

The women and men of Kennett Friends — and some of the places they helped shape

By Lars Farmer

When I began sitting in Kennett Friends Meeting in the 1970s, I had no idea who I was sitting beside.

They were simply the adults.

Sally and Dick Lighty.

Jean and Howard Tennent.

Bob and Kay Way.

Dr. Bob McKinstry.

Tom Taylor.

Chuck and Jody Shoemaker.

I knew their faces. I knew where some of them sat. I knew the Meetinghouse on Sickle Street, Old Kennett, Friends Home, Longwood, Woodward Farm, and many of the roads, farms and old houses connected with their lives.

What I didn’t know was what these people had done — or were still doing.
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I didn’t know that women sitting near me had helped create child care when working mothers in southern Chester County had almost nowhere to take their children.

I didn’t know that two people from Meeting had helped bring Martin Luther King Jr. to Unionville High School.

I didn’t know how far Dick Lighty’s work had taken him from Kennett.

I didn’t know why Bob Way kept part of his income-tax money separate from the rest.

I didn’t think much about the fact that Dr. McKinstry could spend his day treating patients and then go home and repair fences on a farm.

And I certainly didn’t know that one of those older Friends would eventually be standing beside me at Old Kennett, in his 80s, digging cremation graves by hand.

Nearly fifty years later, I have been going back through the history.

The people and the places keep connecting.

BEFORE MY TIME — SAMUEL MARTIN

One of the names I knew around Kennett Friends belonged to a man who died long before any of us.

Samuel Martin lived from 1802 to 1880.

His bequest supported Martin Academy, a Quaker school adjoining the old Friends property in Kennett Square. After Martin’s death, Kennett Monthly Meeting assumed responsibility for the school and appointed trustees to manage the property and fund.

The school closed in 1910. Friends then decided that the Samuel Martin educational fund should continue by helping children of Friends and other families obtain an education. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, the old Academy building was even pressed into service as an emergency hospital. 

The fund outlived the school.

Much later, I served on the Education Committee that helped distribute Samuel Martin money for students attending Quaker schools.

There is something strange about sitting in a modern committee meeting and realizing you are helping administer the intentions of a man who died in 1880.

There is another Samuel Martin story in our own Meeting records that I have always remembered.

When the graves at the old State Street Friends burial ground were being relocated, there was discussion about Martin’s grave because of his prominence.

As I understand those records, Friends decided he would go with everybody else.

No special grave for the wealthy benefactor.

He moved with the rest.

FRIENDS HOME

Another familiar Kennett place began in 1898, when Western Quarterly Meeting established Friends Home in Kennett.

At the time, elderly people without family able to care for them could face very limited choices. Friends Home was created as a boarding home for aging Friends, and also for others in sympathy with Friends. Western Quarter owned and operated it for generations, with participation from the meetings within the Quarter. 

Kennett Meeting did not establish Friends Home by itself. It was a Western Quarter undertaking.

But Kennett Friends were part of it, and the connection continued.

I have passed Friends Home on State Street thousands of times.

When you grow up with a place, it is easy to assume it has simply always been there.

Usually somebody had to decide to create it first.

THE MEETINGHOUSE I KNEW

The present Kennett Friends Meetinghouse on West Sickle Street was built in 1958. 

By the time I started attending in the 1970s, many of the adults sitting around me had already been involved in things I wouldn’t learn about until much later.

The 1960s had changed the country.

Women were entering the workforce in greater numbers.

The civil-rights movement was underway.

The Vietnam War had forced many Quakers to decide how far they were prepared to carry their peace testimony.

Development was beginning to consume farms and open land around Kennett.

The people on those benches were responding to all of it.

FOUR WOMEN AND TICK TOCK

In 1964, four women — Sally Lighty, Jean Tennent, Connie Nichols and Jane Vincenti — founded what became Tick Tock Early Learning Center.

Tick Tock’s own history says they recognized the need for equitable, reliable and affordable child care for the children of working parents in southern Chester County.

It began with one classroom and seven children. 

The way I remember the story being understood around Kennett was more specific.

Women were entering the workforce, and there were almost no day-care options.

A woman could have a job available to her. She could want to work or need to work.

But somebody still had to take care of the children.

These women saw the problem and created something practical to deal with it.

More than sixty years later, Tick Tock is still operating.

And Sally Lighty and Jean Tennent are still with us.

When I was a boy, they were simply Sally and Jean from Meeting.

JEAN AND HOWARD TENNENT — UNIONVILLE, 1967

Jean’s story leads to another familiar place.

Unionville High School.

Jean and her husband, Howard Tennent, were deeply involved with Kennett Friends. Howard also served on the Kennett Consolidated School Board.

During the civil-rights movement, Jean and Howard helped arrange for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to speak at Unionville High School on May 2, 1967. Howard’s obituary specifically records their role in arranging the visit. 

That is one of those connections I never knew as a kid.

Jean from Meeting.

Dr. King at Unionville.

Howard was also active with the Red Clay Valley Association, the organization now known as the Brandywine Red Clay Alliance, working on open land and water quality. 

The same people kept turning up in different parts of community life.

SALLY AND DICK LIGHTY — LONGWOOD, AFRICA AND OLD KENNETT

Sally Lighty was one of those Friends who seemed always to be involved.

I remember her serving for years on Nominating Committee and doing the kind of work that keeps a Meeting functioning.

Her husband, Dr. Richard “Dick” Lighty, became known far beyond Kennett.

Dick worked at Longwood Gardens, later led the Longwood Graduate Program at the University of Delaware, and in 1983 became the first director of Mt. Cuba Center. Longwood describes him as a renowned horticulturist, and professional records document plant expeditions that took him to Korea, Japan, Central and South America and Nigeria. 

There is another part of his work that I remember people around here talking about.

Dick was known for helping people in Africa with the practical problems of growing crops and irrigation.

I have not yet found the specific irrigation project in the published material, so I am identifying that as my recollection. The written record does confirm his work in Nigeria and the extent of his international horticultural career.

Then there was Dick at home.

Around 2010, he developed a planting plan for the hedgerow along the north side of the Old Kennett Meetinghouse property.

He thought through what should be planted and how the hedge would develop into a natural screen through the seasons.

We are still working on it.

Some of the planting has matured. Some is still developing. We continue adding to it.

And Dick still gives us advice about the trees at Old Kennett.

His professional world included Longwood, the University of Delaware and Mt. Cuba.

He also kept an eye on the trees around an old stone meetinghouse beside Route 1.

BOB AND KAY WAY — ROSES, RACE RELATIONS AND PEACE

Bob and Kay Way were another couple I remember from Meeting.

I’ll never ever forget Kay Leading my group of young friends through some wooded trails to explain what Nature had to offer for us. She taught me how to recognize poison ivy. I still remember her on the trail when I pass a Jack in the Pulpit.

Robert Morris Way was a chemical engineer, but his obituary describes a much wider life.

He was active in interracial housing at Lincoln University and in the Kennett Square area and participated in KAJAC, an organization working for better race relations.

He was involved with the Boy Scouts, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Kennett Little Theatre and Friends General Conference.

And the family operated Way Roses, growing cut flowers for the florist trade. 

There is another part of Bob’s life that I remember clearly.

He took the Quaker peace testimony far enough to affect his taxes.

As I remember it, Bob withheld the portion of his income tax that he believed would be spent on war.

But he did not simply keep that money for himself.

My father had to explain it to me.  He put it into a separate account.

The distinction was obvious even to someone hearing about it secondhand: this wasn’t an attempt to save money. The money was set aside because he objected to its use for war.

War-tax resistance was being practiced and debated among American Quakers during exactly those decades, especially during the Vietnam and Cold War years. I have not yet found Bob’s personal tax records or a written account of his arrangement, so the specific separate-account story remains my recollection.

Kay was part of Meeting life in her own right.

I remember her as one of those steady presences at Kennett. Old Meeting correspondence even has her leading an intergenerational wildflower walk at Crosslands.

Sometimes the history is not a building with somebody’s name attached to it.

It is a person who kept showing up.

DR. BOB McKINSTRY — THE DOCTOR AND THE FARM

Then there was Dr. Robert Bruce McKinstry.

To generations of local families, he was Dr. Bob.

He graduated from Kennett High School in 1943, entered the Navy’s V-12 college program during World War II, served in the Navy, worked briefly for General Electric, and then changed direction and went into medicine.

After graduating from Hahnemann Medical College and completing his internship, he came home and joined his father’s Kennett Square medical practice as a general practitioner. 

He delivered babies.

He made house calls.

He gave me my sports physical for wrestling.

He served on the Kennett School Board and the Chester County Board of Health.

I also remember him as part of Kennett’s medical-center years, although I still haven’t found enough documentation to say exactly what his ownership or development connection was to the later Kennett Medical Center.

Then there was Romeade Farm.

Bob married Betsy Romig at Kennett Friends Meeting in 1950, and they built their home on her family’s farm.

His obituary remembers the doctor away from the office — mowing the fields, fixing fences, tending a large vegetable garden and raising sheep and goats. 

Then development arrived next door.

Walmart.

I remember Bob putting a restriction on his adjoining farm so Walmart could not simply spread farther onto his land.

I have not yet located the actual deed restriction, so I am keeping that as my recollection rather than stating that I have proved it from the land records.

The farm itself is still easy for me to identify.

It was Romeade Farm.

Today the sign says:

BARKING DOG FARM.

Different name.

Same piece of ground.

JODY SHOEMAKER — A SURPRISE I DIDN’T KNOW

One thing I wanted to avoid in writing this story was letting the women become simply “the wives of” the men.

So I went looking for more about Jody Shoemaker.

I found something I had never known.

Jody — Joann Brosius Shoemaker — was associated with Winterthur and became skilled in historical flower arranging.

In 1976, during the Ford administration, she and Jeanne Shanks of the Philadelphia Museum of Art volunteered to coordinate historically appropriate flower arrangements in the White House State Floor parlors for a state dinner honoring the Queen of Denmark.

The Ford Presidential Library record actually names Mrs. Jody Shoemaker of Winterthur Museum and describes her specialty as arranging flowers, containers and styles to match the historical period of a room. 

A few years later, The Magazine Antiques featured spring flowers at Winterthur arranged by Jody on its cover. 

I knew Jody from Kennett.

I had no idea about the White House flowers.

WOODWARD FARM — BEFORE IT BECAME FAIRVILLE FRIENDS SCHOOL

Another place I knew before I understood its history was Woodward Farm.

My personal connection to this one is not particularly scholarly.

When I was in high school, a girl I knew named Sarah Humphies lived in the farmhouse.

I remember going there at night with friends and tossing little stones against her window to get her attention so she would come outside and ride around with us.

At the time, Woodward Farm was simply Woodward Farm.

Years later, the property acquired another identity.

Fairville Friends School had been founded in 1973 by Quaker teacher Barbara DesJardins. After operating at several locations, the school moved to Woodward Farm in 1988. It remains there today, in the old farmhouse, and operates in a caring relationship with Kennett Monthly Meeting. 

So a farmhouse window where I once threw stones as a teenager later became a window in a Quaker school.

The building didn’t move.

My understanding of it did.

TOM TAYLOR — KNOWING THE OLD KENNETT STORY

Tom Taylor had a different role.

Tom knew the history.

He knew Old Kennett.

In 2000, members of the Harlan family came to Old Kennett during a family-history gathering. Their published account says Tom met the group there and explained Quaker worship, the structure of the Meetinghouse and the cemetery. 

That fits the Tom I remember.

Years later, when I was preparing material for Kennett Friends, I used Tom’s drawing of the Sickle Street Meetinghouse.

Old buildings don’t explain themselves.

Neither do graveyards.

Somebody has to know what people are looking at.

ELIZABETH GRAY VINING — ANOTHER CONNECTION I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND

Elizabeth Gray Vining was not one of the regular Kennett members in quite the same way, but she crossed the Quaker world I grew up in.

She wrote Adam of the Road, which won the Newbery Medal, and after World War II she became tutor to Crown Prince Akihito, the future emperor of Japan.

My encounter with her was considerably less impressive.

At Greenwood Elementary School, we had to read Adam of the Road.

I hated it.

Then Elizabeth Gray Vining came to our school.

Suddenly the woman who wrote that book had also lived in Japan and taught a future emperor.

For a kid in Kennett, that was a fairly direct introduction to the idea that the world extended a long way past Chester County.

Years later, I found Vining’s signature in the records at Old Kennett from one of the summer Meetings for Worship.

Another connection I had not noticed when it was happening.

CHUCK SHOEMAKER — DIGGING GRAVES IN HIS 80s

Then there was Chuck Shoemaker.

Chuck and I became friends working together in the cemetery at Old Kennett.

We had something in common beyond being Quakers.

We were both Navy veterans.

Chuck had trained as a Navy pilot during World War II.

I had been a Navy aircraft mechanic.

Chuck flew airplanes.

I fixed them.

Years later, the pilot and the mechanic were together in an eighteenth-century Quaker cemetery digging cremation graves by hand.

Chuck was already in his 80s.

And he was still digging.

We would locate the site, measure it and dig the cremation grave ourselves with shovels.

That is the Chuck I picture first.

His formal record was substantial too. He served Kennett Meeting as treasurer, auditor and clerk of trustees, worked on the committee restoring and maintaining Old Kennett, served twelve years as a Kennett Township supervisor, and served Scouting and Wilmington Friends School. 

But I remember him with a shovel.

Eventually, during the years when we were doing those burials together, Chuck handed me the cemetery records.

As I remember it, his explanation was simple.

“I’m too old for this.”

Considering that the man had been digging graves by hand in his 80s, I couldn’t argue with him.

There was no formal transfer.

He handed me the records.

I started taking over more of the work.

I still have that responsibility today.

LOOKING BACK AT THE BENCHES

When I think back to Kennett Meeting in the 1970s, I don’t see a room full of famous people.

I see people who used whatever they happened to know.

Four women saw working families who needed child care and started Tick Tock.

Jean and Howard Tennent helped bring Martin Luther King Jr. to Unionville High School.

Dick Lighty’s knowledge of plants carried him from Longwood and Mt. Cuba to work around the world, and eventually back to the hedgerow at Old Kennett.

Bob Way worked on interracial housing and carried his opposition to war into his personal finances.

Dr. McKinstry treated Kennett families and then went home to Romeade Farm, where development eventually came right up against the property.

Jody Shoemaker could sit in Meeting in Kennett and also arrange historically accurate flowers for rooms in the White House.

Kay Way was part of the everyday work of Meeting.

Tom Taylor knew the local Quaker history and told it to visitors.

The farmhouse I knew as part of Woodward Farm became Fairville Friends School.

Chuck Shoemaker was still digging graves at Old Kennett in his 80s.

I didn’t know most of this when I was young.

I just knew the people.

Now I can drive around Chester County and put the people back into the places.

Friends Home.

Sickle Street.

Unionville High School.

Longwood Gardens.

Old Kennett.

Woodward Farm.

Fairville Friends School.

Romeade Farm — now it appears to be called Barking Dog Farm.

And when I go to Old Kennett today, I am doing some of the work I once watched older Friends do.

I have served on the Samuel Martin Education Committee.

I serve on the Old Kennett Committee.

I deal with cemetery records and burials.

I mark graves.

I worry about the buildings and the grounds.

I still work around the hedge Dick Lighty planned.

And I have the cemetery responsibility that Chuck eventually handed over to me.

When I was a kid sitting in Meeting, none of this looked like history.

It was just the people around me.

I understand them differently now.

I grew up among people making local history before I knew enough to call it history.