This is series of posts taken from the final version of Stephen Zdepski’s memoir completed in 1998, and edited just after his death. Stories will appear here on a regular basis, so check back often.
Preface
On the 19th of April, 1998, Stephen Zdepski suffered a cerebral aneurysm while cleaning up the result of a water leak that had drained onto his power tools in his basement wood-shop. On the 20th he passed away with his family gathered at the Hunterdon Medical Center. He was 80 years old, and a month and a half from his 50th wedding anniversary. While preparing for the funeral arrangements, several drafts of the following memoir where found among Steve’s many papers. He had been writing this history for several months and appeared to be working on his final edit. Steve’s funeral was held at the Old Locktown Old School Baptist Church.
In editing this work, I have tried to keep it all in Steve’s voice, limiting my input to grammatical changes. One exception is the occasional substitution of “Mom” and “Pop” where the original text was “mother” and “father”. In addition, my father wrote this in complete isolation. Whenever anyone asked what he was doing or if they could see it, he put the manuscript away. Consequently, he did not include some of the better known stories in my family’s oral tradition. Where appropriate, I have added them as footnotes to Steve’s text. Steve spoke often about the fact that he was undertaking this project, and asked many family members to write down their own remembrances and experiences which he wanted to include at the end in a separate section. The footnoted material is the Editor’s attempt to fill in the record, however, we would all honor Stephen’s wishes by adding our own memories as appendices and mold this work into a “Life & Times of the Zdepski’s”. For this I am committed to the timely inclusion of material that is forwarded to me. I have enjoyed to exercise of preparing this document, and hope that the reader finds many a cause to smile, reminisce and re-read favorite stories herein.
It is my sincere hope you can hear my father’s voice in what follows, your humble editor, Joel Zdepski, 3rd son of Stephen.
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