Tinker Baggaley
By Bill Moyer
Hi, Dan.  I recently sent a letter to Joan Baggaley enclosing memories of Tinker.  If possible, I'll attach a copy to this note if you'd care to read it or include it on your website.  I will also try to send you a note about Boy Ecury, passing along Clyde Harm's email which gives the name of Boy's mother.    Best regards,  Bill

The insert above taken from the 1951 Pan-O-Ram Annual
March 19, 2007
Memories of Tinker
Dear Joan,
I was dismayed to read on Larry Riggs’ Lago Colony Internet Letter about Tinker’s death. You have never met me, and I never met Tinker’s first wife, Vivian, either, so his married years in California were almost completely unknown to me. I’ve never met any of his children, but I thought perhaps you and they might enjoy reading a few things about Tinker’s childhood from some one who grew up with him in Aruba. The last time I saw him was in New York in the 1960’s when he visited there and spent one evening with my wife, Sue, and me. He was an attorney with AAA as I recall, and seemed to be living a happy life. I think he came by train to our Levittown house on Long Island, for dinner, and then visited the bank where I was working the next day. My mother had joked, years before, that she supposed Tinker would be a good lawyer because he liked to argue, seemingly able to take either side of an argument just to keep things interesting. I passed the comment along to him and I think it hurt his feelings. He said “I’m not sure I like that implication!” or something like that, and I was sorry I had said it. (In truth, I don’t remember that he was any more argumentive than any of the kids we went to school with.) We had very little communication in the years afterward, though I heard either from him or perhaps Penney Richey that he had somehow lost his memory and been unable to continue the regular practice of law.
I don’t remember where he went to law school, though I would suppose it was Texas A&M, since that’s where his older brother Bob went to college and perhaps Tinker’s dad, too. Mr. Baggaley was a rather serious, intelligent man. I never wondered about his education, but would guess now that he was an A&M graduate too because both the Baggaleys seemed so proud that Bobby went there. There was a big picture of Bobby on a table in their living room, in full uniform, with lots of decorations. Bob Senior and Gladys were older than my parents, and they had had Bobby many years before Tinker came along. My Mother and Gladys became best friends for many years, though, in the 1930’s and 1940’s, when Tinker and I were growing up.
There was a small hospital/clinic outside the east gate of Lago Refinery, sited mostly to deal with emergencies in the refinery such as acid burns or steam sprayings on workers among the high pressure stills and steam pipes. The place wasn’t designed to take care of women, but of course it was the best the Colony had to offer in those days. Both Gladys Baggaley and my mother, Margaret Moyer, delivered babies there. I was born November 24, 1933, with Dr. Sandvos, a German doctor, providing good but rather stern treatment. I imagine he was the same doctor Mrs. Baggaley had when James Harry Baggaley was born in early January (the 12th I think) of 1934. The Moyers lived at Bungalow #268, on the north side of the first street running along the cliff above the Little Lagoon and tennis court areas about a mile east of the refinery. The house immediately across the street from us was occupied by a family named Walker, and the next one to the west of that one was where the Baggaleys lived. It might have been Bungalow #265. It had a big lattice on the windward side, protecting the house from the full force of the trade wind. Across the street from the Baggaleys was the family of Coy Cross, and next to the Baggaley house immediately west of it was the house of the O’Brien family. John O’Brien was perhaps six months older than Tinker and me, and the three of us were close friends in our earliest years. Our mothers would sit in the Baggaley patio on the leeward side of the house (the south, or cliff, side) and visit while we boys played. At least once, I remember that we got into a terrible scrap over something, and I ended up on the losing end when Tinker and Johnny joined forces.
The worst fight I ever had with Tinker, though, was at the house of Dr. and Mrs. Carroll, who lived about five houses east of the Baggaleys. The Carrols had twin girls, Nancy and Ruth, a bit younger than Tinker and I, but we were at their house that day, playing in a big sand box in their side yard. We got into a fight and ended up rolling around in the sand, punching each other. Eventually we both went home crying, and my mother was startled to see me come in, covered with sand, even in my eyes and ears. Mrs. Baggaley must have been confronted with a similar vision! Perhaps it’s pardonable that, about 65 years later, I haven’t the faintest recollection of what the scrap was about--just the memory of the terrible state both of us were in by the time it was over!
The Baggaleys had a goldfish pond in the south yard, and Mr. Baggaley was thorough about growing a good lawn of Bermuda grass on both sides of the pond. He handled it differently from my Dad, and burned off the old grass every now and then, saying it would produce a better crop of new grass afterward. He was the only one I knew in the Colony who did that. Mr. B. also had a pigeon coop in the back yard, further out on the cliff. That was unique, too. I don’t know what he did with the pigeons, but there were quite a few of them. There was always a howling wind in Aruba, from the northeast, and Tinker, Johnny, and I enjoyed flying kites from the coral beyond the pigeon coop, between the Baggaley yard and the cliff (which was about 20 feet high and not a precipitous drop--you could scramble up and down it, if you were careful, to retrieve a downed kite, but there was lots of cactus and “seven-year itch” to deal with.)
My Dad liked to take 8mm movies, and I still have pictures of my 4th birthday party. Tinker and Johnny were there, Tinker sporting a cast on his arm which he had recently broken. (The next year, I broke mine, too, by falling off a road grader that had been left parked in front of Bungalow #268 overnight.) Others in the pictures are Kenneth and Keith Work, Patsy Lykens, Wardy Goodwin, and Jean Henderson, probably also Xenia Schwartz and Kathleen Spitz. Tinker was all dressed up, with his dark hair slicked back. The Work boys, and Patsy, were tow-heads. Patsy lived a door or two further west on the same side of the street as the Baggaleys.
Mr. and Mrs. Baggaley were athletic. Both were good golfers, and Mrs. Baggaley in particular became an extremely avid golfer in her later years on Aruba-- so much so that her skin dried out and wrinkled prematurely. I remember Mr. Baggaley throwing balls to Tinker, out in the street in front of their house, in the evenings. He threw to me, too, but many times it was just a game of catch between Tinker and his Dad. Tinker became good at athletics, and in high school participated in softball, baseball, basketball,and track. I think he used mostly a first-base mitt, and played first base in both softball and baseball. My mother loved bowling, and I think she bowled with Gladys Baggaley and Peggy Miller, another close friend. My Dad became an avid golfer, too, though I don’t recall his playing with Mr. Baggaley in particular. Mr. Baggaley had a rather good job in the refinery, I think, and was probably working straight days when my Dad, at a lower level on the stills, was working shift work. Their working hours would have been quite different. Also, my parents became rather heavy drinkers and partiers, while I think the Baggaleys were a bit more straightlaced (their being a little older might have made a difference.)
Mr. Baggaley was an avid stamp collector, and formed the Aruba Stamp Company sometime around 1939. I spent hours with him on the little porch (enclosed) on the leeward side of their house, going over stamps and spending whatever small amounts my allowance permitted on blocks of four that could be fitted into specially designed little plasticine booklets with paper covers. These were the stamps with pictures of President Roosevelt, the flag raising at Iwo Jima, and others of that type during the WWII years. Additionally, I had stamps from remote places like Cyrenaica and Morocco, all courtesy of the Aruba Stamp Company. So Mr. Baggaley was, in a very real sense, my geography teacher. My Dad was a stamp collector, too, specializing in Aruba/Curacao/Surinam issues. I don’t know whether he bought them from Bob Baggaley or not. When new sets of Curacao stamps came out, both Mr. Baggaley and my dad would buy sets of them and put them on envelopes to mail to friends, getting a special “first day of use” cancellation from the post office. These First Day Covers had more value than the set of stamps all by themselves.
In grammar school, groups of us boys sometimes played marbles during recess. I also remember playing jacks, with both boys and girls, hopscotch, and mumblety-peg (sticking a knife into the ground in a way that required precision.) Tinker was good at skipping rope, too.
During World War II, a U.S. Coastal Artillery unit was sent to defend Aruba. They placed a large 155 mm howitzer on the highest point on our end of the island, to fight off Uboats or whatever else the Germans might send against us. To help the big gun aim, artillery “spotters” were positioned on the cliff near the Baggaley house. Tinker and I loved visiting the soldiers there, only two or three of them on duty at a time, as I recall, and protected from the sun by a small tent. They seemed to enjoy having hero-worshipping kids hanging around. They gave us their caps sometimes, which had colorful piping along the rim to designate the unit they were in. They also sometimes gave us badges or other insignia. The men had triangulation instruments, looking like double telescopes, through which they sighted to determine range. They must have had field telephones, too, in those days, or perhaps Walky-Talky radios, to talk to the gunners up on Colorado Point.
Jimmy Saunders was one of the soldiers. As luck would have it, he was one of only two soldiers I remember who were killed during their service on Aruba. The other, whom we didn’t know, was shot by accident while on guard duty at a refinery gate. Jimmy and another soldier were walking on the cliffs of Colorado Point one day when an Aruban fisherman fell off a big rock into the sea. The surf was very rough at that location, and very dangerous, but Jimmy Saunders and the other soldier jumped into the water to try to save the fisherman. Jimmy then tried to climb back up on the rocky cliff, but was dashed by the heavy surf and drowned. The fisherman, and the other soldier, treaded water offshore until a launch could be sent from the refinery to rescue them. Jimmy’s death was a big blow to all of us, and was probably our first exposure to death of some one we knew.
In perhaps 1946, when we were about 12 years old, Tinker and I begged our mothers to let us borrow their oldest wash tubs. Laundry in Lago Colony was done by hand in those days. Our mothers each had a maid, but shared in doing the laundry with their maids. They used galvanized tin tubs and washboards, and had several tubs in use at one time, one for washing and one for rinsing. The tubs were poor quality and developed leaks as they aged and were banged around. We begged to borrow the leaky ones that weren’t much good anymore for washing clothes. They were big enough, or we were small enough, that we carried them by inverting them and putting them over our heads and shoulders, holding the handles on both sides and leaning slightly forward so the weight of the tub fell mostly on our shoulders and backs. We trudged all the way from our houses, down steep stairs and across an old calitche baseball and cricket field, to the dunes at the edge of the Little Lagoon. Then we could put the tubs in the water and float them upwind to the easternmost part of the lagoon, a shallow area and beach called Pink Island. We would launch our tubs, climbing into them with our legs hanging over the downwind sides, and let the wind carry us as far as we could go before the leaky tubs filled with water and sank! It was an exciting game, enhanced by the fact that there were black patches of seaweed to be crossed on the way to clearer water, and we always hoped we could keep afloat past the seaweed patches.
Tinker got a set of darts for Christmas one year. He also had some model boats to play with. I remember playing a game, with several other boys, probably John O’Brien, Bob Drew, and Gleb Aulow, in the Baggaley living room whereby one boy would scoot boats along the floor while the others tried to bomb them with darts. Occasionally, you got a dart in the back of your hand if you didn’t take diversionary action quickly enough. Another game was to rearrange all the chairs in the rather large room, to make tunnels we pretended were airplanes or forts. Once or twice, the Baggaleys received shipments from the U.S. in large wooden and cardboard crates. We used these to build “tanks” in the driveway of the house and climb around in them. I think we built gun turrets and gun ports to make things look more realistic.
Tinker was quite a ladies’ man in junior high and high school. The girls always liked him best among all the boys in our class. (When he visited Sue and me on Long Island, many years later, Sue said she could understand why he had been popular with girls, because he asked questions that showed he was interested in what she had to say, and looked her in the eye as she responded. She was impressed, she said.)
I think Tinker developed a darker tan than most of the rest of us, though everybody in Aruba was darkly tanned from being in the sun so much of the time. He was perhaps of a darker complexion than others (Johnny was a redhead and had to be more careful to avoid burns.) Only Murray Jennings tanned as darkly as Tinker did, and I think Tinker had unusually colored green eyes that made his coloring more dramatic.
The Baggaley garage became a workplace for fixing old bikes and eventually for redesigning bicycles! One afternoon we used a pot of lye (caustic soda, a dangerous chemical our dads had access to in the refinery) to scrub parts of an old bike with aged toothbrushes, to get off rust. We even cleaned up Bendix coaster brakes and rebuilt them, putting them back to get old bikes to work like new. I don’t know where he got the idea, but Jim decided to take a couple of old bike frames and create an inverted version, with the sprocket about three feet off the ground on an upside-down frame and the seat mounted on a steel tube that allowed him to sit several feet higher. His Dad got a welder in the refinery to weld the tube in place, so it was good and strong. Tink then took old broom sticks and cut them to size, so he could extend the handlebars far enough to reach from his new perch.
It was a big deal at school when Tinker showed up with his new bicycle. Everybody else tried to emulate his new technique, of course, and soon many boys were riding around in custom modified creations of their own. Next Tink built a unicycle, and trained himself to ride it very well, through hours of painstaking practice. I don’t recall any other boy matching him in unicycling skills.
After World War II was over, military surplus shops began to offer, via ads on the back of comic books, left over identification models of airplanes, in 1:72 scale. Tink persuaded his Dad to let him order some of them, and they were beauties--nicely detailed, and true to scale. They were made of black plastic, similar to that used in bowling balls. I wanted to get some too, but didn’t have any money at the time, and my Dad wasn’t willing to fill out an order form and send in a check as Mr. Baggaley had done. Not long after that, we also became interested in building model planes that would fly. I remember spending hours trying to start the little one cylinder engines designed to propel model planes perhaps two or three feet in length. Aruba, with its powerful wind, was tough on flying models, but I think Tink got his off the ground at the baseball field a few times. We all spent a lot more time cranking the little engines, trying to get them to go, than we did actually flying anything. The darned motors would snap around and catch the back of your finger if you didn’t flip it just right!
The Baggaleys had a little terrier dog that was always running away--a Scotty, I think, though I’ve forgotten his name. One day he ran away and never came back. I think Tinker said they later learned the dog had befriended some seamen returning to their ship, and they took him with them to sea.
In High School, though our class was small--only 22 kids--Tink and I more or less went our separate ways. We spent more time with different groups of friends than with each other. My parents moved into a new house several blocks further away from the Baggaleys, and we took different routes to school and back than we had before. We tended to date different girls. He had a special friendship with Bob Moore, a boy perhaps two years older than we were, who had a motorcycle. Tink and Bob liked to ride around together, and Tink may have had his own motorcycle, too, though I‘m not sure. He was a good student, and active in high school in a wide variety of activities. He starred in the senior play, playing an old man with grayed hair, and did it well. He was active in the social club that was established on the grounds of our church, for teenager activities. I think he served on the Student Council at least one year. He played first string on our basketball team, while I was only second string.
His parents must have retired from Aruba at about the time we graduated from High School in 1951. I have one picture of Tink, several other kids, and me, clad in choir robes, standing in front of the church at about that time. So we both sang in the choir, on at least one occasion where a junior choir was wanted. After graduation, though, we went off in separate directions to college, and whereas I came back every Christmas vacation and summer vacation all during the college years, I don’t think that Tinker did. His older brother, Bobby, and Bobby’s wife, Doris Rustad, were living near Elizabeth, New Jersey, because Bobby had a job with Esso in New York. The older Baggaleys may have settled near them for a while, which would have left Tinker to return “home” during school vacations to a new place, other than Lago Colony where he was born and raised. Then the older Baggaleys moved to Houston, and young Bob and Doris relocated there too. When Sue and I came to Dallas, I think we saw Gladys Baggaley at least once when my parents, then retired to Missouri, came here to visit. Later, after Mr. Baggaley died, Gladys spent her last years in a retirement home in Mineola, Texas, some 50 miles east of Dallas. I’m ashamed to say that I can only recall driving out there once to see her! Both she and Mr. Baggaley were always very nice to me, and I felt close to the Baggaley family.
I’m very sorry about your loss. I hope these memories may help a little in giving you some knowledge of Jim’s early years in Aruba. I don’t know how much of it he may have already told you. If you would like to ask me anything more about Jim’s early years, I’ll be happy to tell you whatever I can. There aren’t many of us left, now, from the old Lago High School Class of 1951, with Penney Richey, Bobbie Hellwig, Sherrell Fletcher, Jack Horigan, Katie Spitz, Emmet Jones, Bob Burbage, Patsy Lykens, and now Tinker gone. If you feel willing to share, I would of course love to learn what his life was like in California, and what sort of illness he suffered from. What sort of things did you and he most enjoy doing together?
Most sincerely yours,
Bill Moyer
Hi, Dan!  I haven't looked at your website for a while and am enjoying familiarizing myself with it again. I got an email from Clyde Harms, who graduated from Juliana School in 1947 in the same class as Boy Ecury's sister, "Poppy."  I was sorry not to include Boy's mother's name in the article sent earlier.  Clyde says she was Anie Paulina Wilhelmina Ernst, from Curacao, and that she was called "Shon Anie di Dundun", which I think means "Dundun's Sweet Annie."     Bill