John "Call Me Jack" House...Still Going Strong
Maybe the main key to his long, healthy, happy successful life is--ice. Ice? That's right--ice!!!
Jack, who was born November 9, 1908, in Gouveneur, N.Y., is the only surviving offspring of seven, all the rest were girls. He put on a pair of ice skates at the age of five and never hardly ever took them off until he was 85 years old. He'd still be skating --if he had the skates. Jack lost his treasured figure skates five years ago when he inadvertently took them out of his car before putting the car in the garage. He forget to go rescue the skates from the snow bank he laid them on, and he remembered the next morning, they were gone.
He would have bought a new pair, but "Good figure skates cost at least $700, and I didn't have that kind of money. Neve made much money, but I sure had a good life." Jack still has the car which he drives all over, but not the skates.
A very popular and wonderfully smooth and talented figure skater, Jack calls the Kennedy Arena his second home. He was greatly saddened and felt a deep personal loss when arena manager Rick Lafevre died suddenly three weeks ago at the age of 44. "Rick and I were like father and son. We saw a lot of each other. During the season I skated practically every day. We shared a lot of popcorn and soda. He was so good to me. We were friends. More like father and son. We talked a lot."
Jack was also a very popular figure at the Clinton Arena where he was a member of the Clinton Figure Skating Club for about 50 years. Jack, who was the first from Rome to join the Clinton club in 1955, was popular wherever he went, especially at the Clinton Arena, where he was very much in demand as a figure skating partner, and took part in many shows with well-known partners like Lois Desjardins, Sally Schintz and Alice Wesseldine.
"I played all the sports, except basketball, I was too short. I skated, I played baseball, one year I led the league in stolen bases. I was really fast. I played halfback on the football team, I taught roller skating and played roller polo, which is like hockey. I bowled anchor for the Rome VFW team and marched with the Color Guard for years. I've been an active member of Rome Post 2246 for 54 consecutive years." Back when he was playing baseball in the St. Lawrence County League as a catcher, he was featured on a Bill Stern network radio program as the catcher for the immortal Bull Priest, who once struck out 40 batters in two consecutive games.
Back in "the old days' when Jack was a public school student in Gouvernor, teachers were a little less likely to recognize kids who might have slightly different interests. Jack says he used to spend a great deal of time doodling, that is drawing pictures, which was okay, except that Jack Doodled in his textbooks. "I use to get yelled at ("caught hell" is what he actually said) for drawing cartoons in our textbooks." John admits that he eventually "dropped out, I'm sorry to say" of high school. For the next two or three years, Jack worked at various jobs and took two years of correspondence art lessons from the Washington School of Art and a year of lettering from Menenhitt of Toronto, Canada.
In 1930, Jack and a friend, Jummy King, decided to go south. They moved to Rome. "We wanted to see what life in the big city was like, Jack recalls, "So we came to Rome to live." Jack got a job at General Cable that only lasted about a year. He got laid off, and had to go back home. For the next few years, Jack did whatever it took to make a living. "I worked all kinds of jobs. I did everything."
In 1936 he came back to Rome, "to see if things had gotten any better." They had. He was rehired at General Cable. Then, in October of 1943, after seven years in Rome and his 1940 marriage to Betty Krum, whom"...I met on Dominick Street in 1936, right in front of Zimballs. "We were properly introduced." Jack got drafted and spent the next three years in the Army with the 254 Infantry, as a rifleman and a cook. My division was right near the Danube River when the war was over. My unit captured Herman Goering."
Jack, who was discharged a Staff Sergeant, was awarded the Bronze Star for his European service. The story of Jack's trek across Europe is contained in a book titled "The 245h" which he acquired while still in Germany and sent home, inscribed lovingly to his wife, "To the sweetest girl this side of heaven. Your loving husband, Jack, 1945."
Following his discharge at Fort Dix in New Jersey, Jack took the train to Utica, arriving at four in the morning. He got a cab back to Rome, and except for job related travel, and figure skating shows, John has been here ever since. Jack got his job back at General Cable after the war, and soon added a second job as a salesman of team uniforms, bowling shirts and work uniforms for an Indiana company. When General Cabele disapeared, so did one of Jack's jobs, but he got another, selling siding, doors and windows for Joe Pazdur. In 1960, Jack was hired by an Ohio company called RPM, to cover much of New York and Vermont. He sold "all kinds of protective coatings" and established such a great relationship with his customers that "I could do most of it by phone."
Jack never really did anything but get in trouble with his art work at school for doodling in the textbooks, but years and years later when he had forgotten all about it, a brother-in-law told him that after Jack's mother died, they found a huge trunk full of his art work in her attic. After his wife died and he stopped skating, he had a lot of time on his hands so he started looking at what he had done more than 60 years earlier, copied some of them and put them in a scrapbook. Once friends saw the results of his artistic talent, they encouraged him to show them. Hence, his one-man art shows at Trinity UCC, the RACC and Jervis.
Satchel Paige once asked a friend, "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?
Jack's answer would be, "Somewhere in my 40s, maybe 50s. I feel very good. I never smoked, not even once. I haven't had anything to drink since I was a GI. I stayed active with skating and dancing, I loved what I was doing and who I was doing it with. I've been very lucky."
Jack, you haven't made any mistakes.
By Carl Eilenberg
Rome, N.Y., Observer, June 10 - 16, 2000
Jack House who will be 93 later this year (2001), kept that dinner date last week, and later told me he "had a wonderful time."
What has kept him so young and active? He loved his work. He smiled all the time. He loved his late wife Betty, their daughter Betty, and Betty's children and grandchildren.
He got lucky and survived World War II. John was an infantryman and and fought his way across France, Belguim, Germany and Austria. He was nearby when his friend and fellow Roman, Tony Greco was shot and killed by enemy fire in January of 1945 during the Comer campaign in Alsace-Lorraine.
Some of John House's Early Art Work
