The von Trapp Family Singers arrived in New York City in October of 1938. Within a week, they started their American tour in a chartered...

One day, I asked Agathe if the von Trapp family had indeed fled over the mountains from Austria to escape the Nazis. “Vell,” Agathe said...

The 1920s and '30s brought dramatic changes to the von Trapp family. Agathe’s mother, Agathe Whitehead von Trapp, died of scarlet fever...

If you are a fan of the wildly popular movie, The Sound of Music, this is a spoiler alert. Years ago, I represented Agathe von Trapp, the...

What's your favorite quote from a famous person? Here's mine: If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me....

The Sears and Roebuck Company is founded in Chicago in 1888. It's first product sold is watches. The company becomes famous for its mail...

(Above) Shirley Pfoutz in about 1960. My mother enjoyed a brief flurry of attention from the publishing industry. During that time, some...

Since the pandemic began, my husband Perry and I have stayed close to home. Where we used to eat out several times a week, we only go out...

When it comes to our behavior, Sadie can be a harsh taskmistress. One day, I open a banana to find it rotten through and through. As I’m...

Sadie is a black woman who at one time was a hell raiser. Over the years it begins to take its toll, and she finds religion. She...

The family was gathered out at the Cabin John house. I was taking the opportunity to wash some clothes. I had my own place but it didn't...

Throughout her ups and downs, despite four children, a divorce, depression, and a job, mysteriously my mother finds time to write. She...

The Daniels place is a tidy two-story house with cramped rooms settled onto a large packet of land. The Daniels moved to Cabin John from...

There’s always something going on at Junior’s place. With five children, an absent mother, and the friends that come to drink and smoke,...

I said earlier that I’ve put my foot in my mouth a thousand times in my day, usually when I should have known better. My first job at the...

In the years before John arrives, we take a trip to Princeton, New Jersey, to visit one of my mother’s few remaining friends. She and her...

I was driving the Green Bomber, my first car, passed on to me by my parents. Despite the fact the green Plymouth Satellite was wide and...

Every Valentine’s Day, we wake up and come to the kitchen to find four identical red, heart-shaped boxes of chocolate on the round table....

There’s a little house at the bottom of Woodrow Place where my friends Mary and Kate once lived just at the border of the large field...

Home has never felt so far away. I am hiding in an outhouse with the door locked, behind and slightly uphill from the mean, low-slung...