The Youngs met at Cornell University where Jeannette graduated with a horticultural degree and Russell with a degree in agriculture. He spent seven years teaching agriculture at Randolph Central School before purchasing his father’s farm. He also started soil conservation and the Farm Bureau in Cattaraugus County.

“He would milk and then eat and then would change into a suit and go to soil conservation meetings,” Young said.

Her father continued like his father had with beekeeping until he was stung, causing a bad reaction. He was the only grower of Northern Spy apples in the area with an orchard that produced 1,500 bushels each year. The apples that fell on the ground were collected by Young and her sisters and were sold for one dollar per bushel.

She remembers as a young child riding with her dad to the milk plant and downtown. She also recalled playing Annie, Annie Over with the Archer Twins, Willis and Vern, who lived around the corner.

Pictures from left, Annette, Joyce and Celia in the late 1930s. Submitted photo

“I had a Scottie dog that was given to me at Christmas. If I pulled on a string on its back, it moved to the left or right,” she said. “My parents ordered a Shirley Temple doll with a white and red dotted dress from the Sears and Roebuck catalog when I had my kidney removed when I was six years old.”

Dr. Hayward performed the surgery in one of the Jamestown hospitals.

“They had no children. Mrs. Hayward sent in a lot of jewelry for me. I still have a single strand of graduated clear crystals.”

The surgeon preserved the kidney in formaldehyde which Dr. Snover acquired and displayed on a shelf in his Randolph office “for a long time.”

She started kindergarten at Randolph Central School and remained in the same building on the hill until she graduated in 1948. She took violin lessons in fourth or fifth grade and said she regrets not continuing. When she was a high school student, she played bells and xylophone in the band. She was on the yearbook committee in her senior year. During the years spent in junior high school, she started attending Dairyman’s League meetings with her father, where she first saw brothers Dean and Vern Waite.

The Youngs with five of their six daughters as they appeared in New York Holstein-Fresian News in February 1947. Submitted photo

With plans to be an elementary teacher, she attended Houghton College for one year after her high school graduation.

“Dean would come to see me.”

Waite’s mother was ill and didn’t want her son to join the armed forces. She passed away a few years after her son graduated high school. He married Young on Aug. 26, 1949.

At the time of their marriage, Waite was farming with his father on Farm to Market Road in Napoli. The newlyweds lived in a duplex apartment in his parents’ house.

“We had to make a workable kitchen, because Dean’s dad used to churn butter in that room.”

Eventually, the couple purchased the farm from Waite’s father, who had remarried after the death of his wife. The younger couple remained in the apartment for 13 years with three children and a hired man, until Waite’s step-mother was ready to move to the smaller side, several years after the death of her husband. She soon learned to love her new home.

Young took a nurse’s aide position at Salamanca Hospital in 1959, when her youngest child was four years old.

“I had to work half daytime and half nighttime, so I only worked there for six months.”

From there she took a job in the Title Search office in the County Office Building in Little Valley, where she did title searching until her boss learned she could type. She moved to the Civil Service Department where she typed letters to the individuals who were taking tests and was present at the time of testing to hand out pencils and individualized tests. After a year, in 1967, the interim principal at Cattaraugus Central School approached her with an offer to become secretary to the elementary principal.

“I had one day to decide and Dean was in the cellar thawing frozen pipes.”

She made a decision and remained at the school for 21 years. Her husband continued to work on the farm, but was away from home for six weeks every summer when he drove coach for Bluebird Bus Company. He drove Trails West Tours all over the United States, which he continued for 20 years. The hired man filled in at the farm in the bus driver’s absence.

“When we baled, I would drive the tractor,” Young said.

She spent seven to 10 days traveling with her husband on some of the trips after flying to meet him. She was allowed to travel free because the company furnished cigarettes for the other drivers, but Waite was a non-smoker.

They produced maple syrup for 20 years, from the 1950s into the 70s and sold and delivered for five dollars per gallon.

In the early 1970s, resort developers approached the couple with an interest in buying 200 acres of their property. In all, 17 parcels were purchased totaling 1,200 acres with the intent to use the acreage for the development of Enchanted Lake. Also, 1,800 subdivision lots, a 360-acre lake, beaches, parks, playgrounds, a clubhouse and a restaurant and were planned with a marina to be built on the Waite’s remaining few acres.

“We were going to have a marina. Our barn was going to be the focal point and it was redone.”

The couple rented rooms to the men who worked on the project. After the sale of several lots and the construction of the clubhouse, dam and part of the lake, numerous problems arose and the project was abandoned. The Waites used the barn for receptions, summer plays and for 13 years Maurice Brown’s Mountain Railroad performed on the Friday nights of summer.

Their middle daughter, Louise Freeman and her husband Bill, bought the couple’s home, after the parents built a log home across the road. Later the older couple moved outside of East Randolph to Elm Creek Road.

In 1984 the active couple answered a call put out by Cattaraugus County Visitors Association for homes that would be suitable for bed and breakfast use. They ran a bed and breakfast with Amish tours for twenty years between the farmhouse, the log home and the house on Elm Creek Road.

“We had nice clientele, even the guy who put Pella Windows in the White House.”

They were members of Grange and the Napoli United Methodist Church where Young was a Sunday School teacher and Sunday School superintendent, before transferring the membership to East Randolph UMC. She served as a Cornerstone District UMW devotional person, historian for the Town of Napoli and was a thirty member of Randolph Garden Club until it disbanded.

“I was an avid perennial gardener and delighted in giving away plants.”

She is a trustee and presenter of the Randolph Historical Society and speaks monthly at Randolph Manor. She has taken painting lessons for 50 years and currently attends Vicky Redding’s painting group, a knitting class in Warren and a monthly all-day sew in her town.

“I couldn’t even guess how many quilts I’ve made.”

Waite passed away on Dec. 31, 2006, after he had celebrated 56 years of marriage to his bride. They had three daughters: Dianne, Louise and Amy; a foster son, Michael McKenna; twelve grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren. She recently lost her sister, Celia.