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Dr. Mary E. Money of Hagerstown with her favorite childhood toy her blue Schwinn bicycle. At right is a trike that was a hand me down from her older brother. (By Joe Crocetta/Staff Photographer / December 22, 2012) |
Today, they chair a banking institution with billions in assets, provide medical care for hundreds of families, recruit big-name economic development prospects, head a public library system, lead the YMCA, own a restaurant and steer Washington County governments.
But ask them a simple question — Growing up, what was your favorite toy? — and the decades fade away, taking them back to a time when they were kids at play.
For this Christmastime story, The Herald-Mail contacted 10 Tri-State-area grown-ups whose names will be familiar to many.
Because they responded in the same spirit that the question was asked, we share the stories of a time past.
Dr. Robert Weiss, pediatrician
Hagerstown
When he was all of age 4, 5 or maybe even 6, Robert Weiss remembers being gifted with a huge stockpile of Tinker Toys.
“We had a huge canister. Huge! I made, like, buildings and boats that I could sit in!” the 61-year-old Weiss said, his voice still expressing all of the fun that those early playtimes clearly must have been.
With their bare pine rods and round connector pieces, the massive Tinker Toy projects took over the living room of the family’s Oak Hill Avenue home in Hagerstown, he said.
Or they were out on the back porch.
“It was a screened-in porch. I have this memory of maybe building them back there,” he said.
Weiss, who grew up to become a pediatrician and went into practice in 1980, still incorporates the “kid” in all of his office appointments.
For decades, he’s gone about his work with this or that furry little stuffed animal clipped to his stethoscope.
“I still have Alf,” he said, recalling the furry miniature of the furry TV character from the late 1980s. “He’s in the drawer now. I have a bunch. I have lions. I have bears ...”
Donna Brightman, elected member
Washington County Board of Education
“Growing up in upstate New York in a very rural area, I didn’t have a lot of friends to play with,” Washington County School Board member Donna Brightman recalled.
So at the age of 5, 6 or 7, Brightman’s favorite toy in the mid-1950s became the colorful little ball-shaped plastic pieces that were known as Pop Beads. The name came from the popping sound the beads would make when you pushed or pulled their little arm-like extenders into or out of holes in others to make long or short chains.
“I used to play with my chickens and my dog,” dressing them up with Pop Bead necklaces, said Brightman, who is 61 now.
But ask them a simple question — Growing up, what was your favorite toy? — and the decades fade away, taking them back to a time when they were kids at play.
For this Christmastime story, The Herald-Mail contacted 10 Tri-State-area grown-ups whose names will be familiar to many.
Because they responded in the same spirit that the question was asked, we share the stories of a time past.
Dr. Robert Weiss, pediatrician
Hagerstown
When he was all of age 4, 5 or maybe even 6, Robert Weiss remembers being gifted with a huge stockpile of Tinker Toys.
“We had a huge canister. Huge! I made, like, buildings and boats that I could sit in!” the 61-year-old Weiss said, his voice still expressing all of the fun that those early playtimes clearly must have been.
With their bare pine rods and round connector pieces, the massive Tinker Toy projects took over the living room of the family’s Oak Hill Avenue home in Hagerstown, he said.
Or they were out on the back porch.
“It was a screened-in porch. I have this memory of maybe building them back there,” he said.
Weiss, who grew up to become a pediatrician and went into practice in 1980, still incorporates the “kid” in all of his office appointments.
For decades, he’s gone about his work with this or that furry little stuffed animal clipped to his stethoscope.
“I still have Alf,” he said, recalling the furry miniature of the furry TV character from the late 1980s. “He’s in the drawer now. I have a bunch. I have lions. I have bears ...”
Donna Brightman, elected member
Washington County Board of Education
“Growing up in upstate New York in a very rural area, I didn’t have a lot of friends to play with,” Washington County School Board member Donna Brightman recalled.
So at the age of 5, 6 or 7, Brightman’s favorite toy in the mid-1950s became the colorful little ball-shaped plastic pieces that were known as Pop Beads. The name came from the popping sound the beads would make when you pushed or pulled their little arm-like extenders into or out of holes in others to make long or short chains.
“I used to play with my chickens and my dog,” dressing them up with Pop Bead necklaces, said Brightman, who is 61 now.
