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Chapter 11. Settled in Kentucky
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11 Settled in Kentucky Domestic Life: Family and Farm While the world war cast its sullen shadow over Europe, the great golden Indian Summer had taken up residence in the heart of Kentucky’s bluegrass . With the core of the house construction at Boot Hill Farm complete , Rena and John Jacob settled into the serene routine of a domestic life, interrupted only by the customary fall and spring concert tours.1 As though in celebration of this new period of domesticity, Rena gave birth to their firstborn son, Thomas Michael Tolliver Niles, at about two o’clock in the afternoon of September 22, 1939. Rena recalled that “the arrival of Tom was a great event for Johnnie Niles, and he loved him devotedly and spent endless time with him. He would hold him in his lap and sing to him when he was just a tiny baby so that Tom really grew up on the sound of his father’s voice singing the old ballads.”2 Eleven years later, this musical nurturing flowered as Tom Niles joined his father on stage at several concerts, demonstrating “the process by which the ballad and the carol has been passed on for centuries of time, passed on from father to son.”3 This precocious beginning also marked the early conclusion of Tom’s “professional” musical career, however. Although he retained a lifelong reverence for music, Tom developed more along the lines of his mother’s family: he became a highly successful career diplomat with a range of important ambassadorial and attaché postings.4 John Jacob’s concertizing frequently called him away from home, but he still managed to be a doting and devoted father who loved “the Beezer,” 218 I Wonder as I Wander as Tom was nicknamed.5 Observing Niles’s affectionate bond with his son, Rena intuited that the relationship revealed the essence of her husband’s sensitive nature: “He (Niles) was a natural-born father. He loved children, little babies, toddlers, older children. He loved them as long as they were willing to love him in return: that was his only request. He was a man who needed to live in a continual bath of approval and affection in order to survive. He withered under criticism, and his love of children may have had something to do with his own personal need for approbation.”6 While Tom Niles and his father shared a warm relationship, Tom also enjoyed the benefits of a companion who was almost like a second father to him. Robert Hicks, who worked for the Niles family, served as a mentor and companion to Tom while his father was on the road, and he generously guided Tom to a compassionate understanding of the natural world at Boone Creek. The expertise, affection, and hard work that “Uncle Robert ” and “Aunt Kate” lavished on the family supplied the strong glue that kept Boot Hill humming harmoniously. Five and a half years after the birth of Tom, Rena bore a second son. After a strenuous concert itinerary that took John Jacob from Michigan to New York to Minnesota to Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona, he arrived home just before John Edward Niles’s entry into the world on May 21, 1945. John Ed followed in his father’s steps as a musician. Rena explained that “though Tom had the advantage of being first-born and remaining the only child until he was five-and-a-half, John Ed was clearly the musician of the two and there was no question of his father’s devotion to him on that score alone. John Ed’s love of music was very obvious from the beginning. John Ed learned piano, clarinet, and cello, in that order, but his great love from the beginning was opera.”7 The father’s passion and involvement in opera was consummated at last in the accomplishments of this son, who later became artistic director and conductor of the Opera Theatre of Northern Virginia.8 Although John Ed was engrossed in his youthful musical world, he also participated actively in both the chores and the delights of farm life. He was particularly attracted to the Iroquois Fox Hunt, which engraved the hills and rills of the bluegrass upon his heart. Unfortunately, Robert Hicks passed away when the boy was only five years old, but John Ed had the good fortune to grow up in the company of John Simmons, an Afri- [3.230.1.23] Project MUSE (2024-03...