To the Editor:

I was so very glad to see your story of “The Enterprise and its history over the years. I have been involved since the 1960s in one way or another.

It all started when for some reason I wrote a story about one of our pets and sent it to the paper. I had a call from Howard Ogsbury asking me to write more — it had made him cry!

That was exciting and got me going. (I had studied at a professional writer’s course at New York University while I was in college in New York).

All my years growing up I knew Arthur and Alice Gregg, buddies of my father and mother.  By this time Arthur’s eyes were failing on him so I would go to his home and read him his research.

We sat next to each other, his hand patting my knee. “Thank you, dearie,” he’d say as I read and then wrote his columns on history for the paper.

I got to be quite knowledgeable on the subject and went on to write (and teach) under my own name.

I also had become friends with Lansing Christman through the paper and when his brother (author of “Tin Horns and Calico” about the Anti-Rent Wars) died, he sent me his brother’s notes on those battles concerning our Hilltowns. and I wrote the story for him. (Published by the paper for their historical associations).

By this time Lansing was retired in Inman, South Carolina and writing for that local paper and “Ideals” magazine and I was doing a column “Nobody Asked Me, But...” for the paper, which he occasionally quoted in his columns.

We saw eye to eye on nature, home life and community, and we corresponded until he passed away. During this time, I also acted as a reporter, or did children’s Christmas and Easter stories, which I also illustrated, for the paper.

I became friends with Jim and Wanda Gardner with all this activity and still enjoy that relationship with them. It’s been a wonderful, fulfilling relationship with “The Enterprise” and I am so grateful for that.

I never could spell and gave up typing because of painful arthritis so the various editors have had a time trying to interpret. My spelling is such that often I’m so far off I can’t even find the words in the dictionary, and as I am 87, my writing is getting worse with age.

P.S.  While in New York City after graduating from The Fashion Institute of Technology and Design, I worked as an assistant to the advertising manager for the world’s third largest pattern company doing their advertising and radio presentations. When my girls were teenagers, I had the same job with Whitneys Department Store; both Advance Patterns and Whitneys long gone.

Carol DuBrin

Altamont