By Steve Landwehr
Everyone's life has a story. In "Lives," we tell some of those stories about North Shore people who have died recently. "Lives" runs Mondays in The Salem News.
MARBLEHEAD — There was a time up until about 10 years ago when Longview Drive in Marblehead had a bucolic air during the fall. That's when a little farm stand would open on the street, stocked with apples and homemade cider.
There was never anyone minding the store. There was an honor box, and customers were trusted to be honorable.
It really didn't matter if some weren't, because those fruits were the harvest of one of John "Jack" Hamilton's passions. Over the course of more than a quarter-century, Hamilton filled his little acre with 90 apple trees, mostly dwarf species and many of them heritage varieties not native to Marblehead, or even New England.
Hamilton could have made more money on his hobby, if only he weren't so fussy.
"He didn't sell any that wasn't a perfect apple," Hamilton's wife of 65 years, Bettie Hamilton, said.
Hamilton died Sunday, Dec. 14, at the Lafayette Nursing Home in Marblehead. He was 87.
He was the oldest of four devilishly handsome brothers, one of whom was immortalized by Norman Rockwell for a Boy Scout calendar.
Born July 14, 1921, in New Brunswick, N.J., Hamilton earned a degree in horticulture at the New York Agricultural School in Albany, N.Y.
When war came, he tried to enlist in the Marines, but was disqualified by a scar on his eye, suffered while exchanging the baton in a relay race in high school. His father had a little pull, and Hamilton enlisted in the Coast Guard.
He was stationed at the Salem Willows Air Sea Rescue Station at Winter Island, where he would find the love of his life and would nurture his love of the sea.
Fellow Coast Guardsman Bob Howie and his girlfriend set Hamilton up on a blind date with Bettie, and like many wartime couples, their engagement was brief. Six months after meeting, they married.
"It could have been a disaster," Bettie said with a smile. "But I think we sort of grew up together."
When the couple wanted to build a home for themselves across Longview Drive from Bettie's parents, they turned to a Marblehead architect who was offering his services to veterans for $25.
They raised four kids, two boys who live locally and two daughters who live in Australia. The two girls, both teachers, begged Bettie to let them come to the funeral, but she was adamant.
"Dad wouldn't want that," she told them. The plane fares would have been a fortune on their salaries.
Despite his degree and lifelong devotion to gardening, Hamilton's career wound up being about as far removed from an apple orchard as you could get.
The big elevator companies like Otis manufacture the elevator mechanisms, but subcontract for the doors and the cab itself. The Hamilton Door and Cab Co. was a successful business in Everett for many years until Hamilton retired in 1986 and his son took over.
As Hamilton's orchard gradually expanded, people started asking him if he would grow varieties of apples they remembered from their childhoods. That came to include varieties such as Cox Orange Pippin, native to England; Gala, which was developed in New Zealand; and Fameuse, believed to have originated in Canada.
Forever memories
Despite his love for the ocean and sailing, Hamilton couldn't afford his own boat until he managed to find one for $50. There was one problem. A hurricane had deposited the Town Class boat on the rocks at Fort Sewall, and she had no bottom.
Despite an absolute lack of boat-building experience, Hamilton soaked some boards in the pond at his home and bent them onto the boat.
"It went on to win many races," Bettie said. Daughter Kristina won her first race at the helm when she was 14, and her folks rewarded her by letting her get her ears pierced and buy her first pair of high heels.
Hamilton was an avid outdoorsman with interests on and off the water. Besides fishing, he loved to go clamming at Devereux Beach with the family's golden Lab, Lucy.
"He used to hunt, too," Bettie said with a chuckle, "until we convinced him he shouldn't be killing things."
Ten years ago, Hamilton and his wife found their home too big and moved into a condo in the old Adams House, a familiar haunt of sorts. Hamilton had sold the first elevator doors and cab that were installed in the building.
When people ask her why she thinks her marriage lasted so long, Bettie tells them it's because she and Jack gave each other space. She didn't mind his long weekend fishing trips to the Cape with his buddies, and he didn't object when Bettie, a painter and writer, took off for a month to pursue her muse.
She started noticing odd behavior a couple of years ago. Like most his age, Hamilton was taught penmanship with the Palmer method. Now, his normally beautiful style had become cramped and tiny. And whereas he had always taken care of the family's finances, Bettie discovered he had not paid their property tax bill.
He was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia, a progressive brain disease and the second-leading cause of degenerative dementia in the elderly, according to the Lewy Body Dementia Association.
Bettie took care of him at home for a year, but eventually had to place him in a nursing home.
He remained feisty, she said, and friends told her he wouldn't die before the couple's 65th wedding anniversary on Dec. 12. Sure enough, he hung on until then and a couple of days more.
Bettie had a line from "Romeo and Juliet" printed on the cover of the memorial service program. It's the one Juliet has about Romeo: "When he shall die, take him and cut him in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun."
But she also included a couple of her own sonnets, and one line from "I Gave My Love An Apple" could give comfort to all grieving loved ones:
"Our joy forgotten never, a forever memory."
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Staff writer Steve Landwehr can be reached at 978-338-2660 or by e-mail at slandwehr@salemnews.com.
