Family Trip to Japan with Warren Houghteling, 1978

First stop: Hakone:

Mom with her high school classmate in Ginza:

With Warren Houghteling in Hawaii (yes, Warren at age 11 is taller than Mom):

USSR, Nepal, India, Lebanon, Egypt, Rome, 1966

At the Hotel St. George, Beirut, Lebanon:

And on to Egypt:

I'm guessing that the woman on the left, above, took the picture below. What do you think?

Breakfast on the terrace of the New Winter Palace in Luxor.

"Autumn Loneliness": Tokutomi letters translated by Tei Matsushita and Patricia J. Machmiller

Tei and I worked for six years together translating the letters of Kiyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi, pioneers in the English haiku movement. Since she lived on the East coast and I on the West, we communicated by e-mail. Tei told me she rose every morning around six and she would work each day before breakfast with her little dog on her lap. This book would not have been possible without the dedicated work of Tei.

Christmas 1957 with JoAnn

Roomies Forever

Memories of Tei Matsushita Scott from JoAnn Magill Overholt

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Memories of Tei Matsushita Scott by JoAnn Magill Overholt

Roomies

When I was ready to go to college, I chose Lake Erie College, partially because we had friends who lived in the town.

I was 16 years old and the roommate the college assigned me was Tei Matsushita from Tokyo, Japan.  Tei gave her age as 32 (she was actually 34!).  She was the oldest and I the youngest student on campus.  Tei had studied at the college level but sought to study art at an American college. The room assignment  team did not know that Tei would be a junior – a problem since freshmen could only room with other freshmen.

Tei and I became good friends very quickly and I felt so lucky to know this lovely, intelligent woman from a country of which I knew so little. She shared her experience of being in Tokyo during the war and surviving the bombing of that city.  I learned that she was an accomplished artist, a fine seamstress and had training as a masseuse.  After a week or so, the room assignment folks announced that we would have to be re-assigned to different rooms.  I was devastated but Tei just got MAD!  She insisted that now that we were already such good friends it would be unspeakable to separate us and refused to consider rooming with anyone but me.  And, they left us alone!

Tei requested assistance when writing papers for her classes.  She had studied English and had worked for the Occupation Forces Command in Tokyo after the war so had no trouble expressing herself.  She did, however, ask me to go over her written assignments to be sure she used correct grammar. I read all her writings and helped her correct these and was happy to do so.  Tei, on the other hand, was helpful to me in another way.  I had decided to major in theater and spent many evenings working in the scene shop building scenery and in the theater climbing around on ladders hanging lighting instruments, etc., and came back to our room dirty and exhausted.  I would take a hot shower, put on my PJs and Tei would climb up on my bed and massage my back.  Those small but strong hands always put me to sleep immediately!

Tei and I were “roomies” for her two years at LEC.  Since she had no family in the USA, she was “adopted” by the Magill family and spent most breaks and holidays at our house in Little Neck, L.I. N.Y. (just a few miles from where she later lived with her son and his family)   That first Christmas she got a job at a florist in Little Neck and she helped us decorate our house and shared the Christmas and New Year’s holidays with us.  We helped her get a waitress job at a lake resort in upstate New York in the summer of 1958 and drove her there and went to visit her several times during the summer.

At LEC Tei and I were often invited to visit and eat with the Magill family friends in Painesville, and, as I got to know the professors and their families. we were frequently the guests of the Technical Director Clyde Blakeley and his wife Marti and Irving Brown, the Director of the Theater Department, and his wife Eleanor.   Tei reciprocated by preparing Japanese meals for these families in their homes. She was quite popular and made friends very easily, both in the town and on campus.

The In-Between Years   1959-1964

When Tei graduated from LEC in 1959. I was sure I could not live without her, but she went on to get a Masters Degree at the New York University at Buffalo, and I visited her there at least once, purchasing my first Tei painting from her Master’s Show which hangs in our bedroom.  And we were determined to keep in touch.

Warren Scott, through a business connection with Tei’s father, had been Tei’s sponsor when she applied to come to the USA as a student in 1957.  Tei and Warren became a couple and lived together in a house near D.C. (in Arlington VA) with room for Tei to paint. The house was full of her paintings!  I visited them there several times when I was studying for my Masters’ Degree at NYU.  Tei had a “pack” of  Pomeranian dogs – she has had at least one of this breed from that time to the present.  (and always one named “Maya”)  During one of my visits to see Tei, she took me to the theater at Arena Stage in D.C. which intrigued and interested me. I applied there after my graduate work at NYU and was hired as a “staff secretary” in 1964 and worked there 36 years, the last 20 or so of these as the CFO of what remains today a major American professional theater.

                                                Mostly in the same city – 1964-1988

 Tei was planning a trip around the world to show her paintings and was pleased that I could stay in their house in Arlington when I started my work at Arena Stage.  Warren traveled frequently and Tei needed the dogs taken care of, etc., etc..  My friend from college, Mary Lee Lane (later Mara Cary), had been my roommate in NYC and had an internship as an actress and seamstress at Arena Stage, so we both stayed in the house on Woodrow Street, moving to an apartment near the theater when Tei returned. I met my

husband Martin Overholt, who was working part time in the box office, at Arena Stage. We dated for several years and were married in 1967.  Early in our dating phase, Martin accompanied me to Black Walnut Point (a property that Warren had bought on the Chesapeake Bay near St. Michaels) for a weekend when we were snowed in with Tei and Warren and their other guests.  It was quite an adventure!

Tei and Warren had a child, Geoffrey, in 1967. Tei gave us Geoff’s crib and other baby equipment for our first child born in 1971. Our first, Hope, was born on March 1, Tei’s birthday, and our second child, James, was born in 1973, on December 14^th, Warren’s birthday. Tei and I had several ongoing “psychic events”. One of us would be in need of support or advice and the other would call.  This happened frequently enough that we actually took it for granted!  And, another strange coincidence was that the phone number in their house in Arlington was the same number as the one in the house in Little Neck where I grew up.

First Geoff, in 1985, and then Tei, in 1988, moved to California when Geoff was ready to begin his university studies.

Across the Continent from Each Other 1988-2000

While Tei was in California we visited frequently (thanks to Martin’s  benefits as a United Airlines employee).  We went to Carmel Valley for a time and later Santa Cruz..  Tei would make her homemade sushi and our children both became sushi fans, thanks to  Tei.  It amazed us that our children (moderately picky eaters) would actually eat raw fish!  During this time period Tei began to accompany each of her paintings with a Haiku poem.

                                    Geoff and Tei  return to the East Coast  2000 – 2007

Tei and Geoff both returned to the East Coast in 2000, Geoff to marry Lauren and Tei to resume her life of painting and living in the DC area where she had many friends.

I retired in 2000 so we saw each other frequently, had lunch together almost every week, shared Holidays and other celebrations.  Tei and Hope and Hope’s best friend Shanan, all born March 1, would celebrate with lunch and birthday cake, etc., at our house in Springfield, VA.  Tei was living in Reston and we often went there to eat or visit.  We were re-decorating our house and splurged on one of Tei’s paintings for our living room.

Tei and Martin and I made a once-in-a-lifetime (at least for Martin and me) trip to Tokyo together in 2002. Tei’s brother Mitch and his wife put us up in their home for a few days, we stayed in a “backpackers delight!” inn in downtown Tokyo for a week and then took a train north where old family friend Kubo put us up and drove us all over that part of the country.  We stayed one night in an Onsen where we had wonderful meals and could use the hot springs to bathe as much as we wanted.. It was a grand trip and we have spoken of it many times.  Tei and I had promised each other since we were “roomies” that someday we would go to Japan  together and finally we did!

                                       Tei moves to Long Island, N.Y. – 2007

Geoff and Lauren and their son Avery were living in a house on Long Island in Williston Park and  Tei went to live with them in July 2007..  We helped Tei pack up her belongings and, sure that we would keep in touch, wished her well in her new abode.

 That same year we made our own move from the D.C. area to Richmond, VA.   We moved in December.  Tei visited us here one summer so knew our home.  Tei’s paintings and collages, as well as a collection of  oragami “happy birds” continually remind us of her and all the years we have had together.

We visited Tei on Long Island many times (often combining visits with her with visits to my brother who lives in New Canaan CT.) and spoke by phone every Monday   When we visited she liked to go to where our house used to be in Little Neck because she said it reminded her of “my first home in the USA”.

We miss her and consider ourselves so fortunate to have had her in our lives.  Tei, you will always be in my heart and I am sure that now, if not before, there is Haiku in heaven.

Paris Show, 1965