She said: "You may or may not remember but we (the Thompson family) got to Aruba by way of the New York Times. Dad would drive us all to Ogdensburg after Sunday church and he'd pick up the Sunday paper at the corner newsstand. Ogdensburg was seven miles from Heuvelton. He saw an ad in the paper for a job with Standard Oil of New Jersey (which became Esso Oil; now Exxon-Mobil) and we all went down to New York City for the interview. John and I were bound to secrecy. The rest is history."
Yes, I remember hearing this. I wasn't around until several years later, Mom and Dad's "Aruba baby". For my Dad, although ready for a career move and the excitement of travel to a foreign land, he insisted to everyone, especially his family that they'd be going "just for a year". Somehow that year morphed into two plus decades, some 26 years to be exact. I never knew any different; Aruba was and always will be home.
I ponder this isolated decision to step outside the box and the effect on the trajectory of our family history forever. What and who would we have been had we lived stateside? I know my life would have been very different. No regrets.
I didn't know your father found his job in Aruba through an ad as well! My father found his job as an engineer for Lago through an ad- I don't know if it was the New York Times as well. I was a wee thing when we moved, but at first I was actually "homesick" and longed for winter. Only when I became a young adult did I realize what a privileged life I had had and how very fortunate I had been, and all because my dad answered an ad in the paper. (Tina)
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