SPECIAL CONNECTION: Could a Jackson Avenue house be a connection
between generations?

Consider this from Jim Scanlan, who tells us he came to know D.
Harvey Phillips and his wife, Louise, in 1982 when his family
bought the house on Jackson Avenue which had been built as a
wedding present for Harvey’s mother.

Harvey was born in the house and his mother actually lived there
until 1967, and “Harvey remained emotionally attached to the house
and would befriend each new owner of the house to maintain a
connection.”

“When we knew our daughter was coming, we started working on a
room for her, after picking out her name, Katelyn.” When they told
the Phillipses of the pregnancy, Harvey asked if they had picked
out a room as a nursery. Turns out, it was the room where Harvey
was born.

“Now that my daughter has been accepted at Princeton University,
I have to wonder if Harvey didn’t lend some help with him being a
Princeton class of 1925 graduate. I doubt if any other members of
the entering freshman class (or any recent classes) can say that
they lived (their entire life at home) in a room where a Princeton
graduate was born.”

There’s some other coincidences, Jim tells us.

Katelyn was due Sept. 9 but Mrs. Scanlan developed
pre-eclampsia, and was rushed to Buffalo Children’s Hospital for a
C-section.

“As we waited for the staff to take my wife to the operating
room, we were startled to hear them tell us that we would have to
wait since there was an ’emergency.’ By then, the staff had padded
my wife’s bed rails ‘in case she goes into convulsions.’

“As a result of the delay, my daughter was born 2 1/2 months
premature on June 13. As Katelyn was very small, the preschool
teachers recommended that we keep her in preschool another year so
her classmates would not see her as the ‘baby.’

“An oddity of having her birthday on the 13th is that she turned
13 on Friday the 13th,” Jim says, adding that holding her back in
school resulted in her having won the University of Pittsburgh at
Bradford Woman of Promise award in its 13th year and is expected to
graduate in the year 2013.

Jim was too modest to note that Katelyn was Bradford High’s 2009
class valedictorian.