Other Voices

Jean Lee Hungerford Krull moved with her family to Altamont when she was 5 years old. She is 96 now and says she is glad current residents are fighting to retain the village’s historic Victorian buildings. Krull went through all 12 grades in the single building that was Altamont High School, since demolished. She recalls on this week’s podcast at AltamontEnterprise.com/podcasts when the village was a bustling center of local commerce with three grocery stores and two newsrooms. Her family lived in half of a farmhouse on Western Avenue that is now a group home. During the Great Depression, while her father, Isaac Hungerford, was out of town, working, the couple who lived in the other half of the farmhouse would look after the Hungerford siblings — Jean was the oldest — while their mother, Alma, tended to business like walking into the village for groceries. The Hungerford children, like others in the village, enjoyed the freedom of playing on their own — perhaps as cowboys and Indians, mimicking the films they saw at the Masonic Hall, when the price wasn’t too dear. During World War II, Krull served in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, the U.S. Naval Reserve). She remembers being awakened with other members of the Navy choir on the night of April 12, 1945, the night President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died. They marched to a national radio studio to sing his favorite songs, including the “Navy Hymn” — “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” which Krull hummed during the podcast. Krull has outlived most of her friends but finds solace in her still-living children. She keeps house and still loves to read and knit — she wore to the podcast interview a striking blue sweater she had knit herself.