Chapter 38: Epilogue

I left home days before my eighteenth birthday. Eleven years later, I married. It took two years of weekends and vacations to catch a baby, but I was lucky; I caught two. I was thirty-one when identical twins Frieda and Hannah were born. A year later I had Rolf.

Cloudrest began as a vision, then a project, finally a home. Between donations, fees and grants, I raised about four hundred thousand dollars. Various programs and sponsors contributed thousands of man-hours of expert workmanship and many thousands of dollars in furnishings and decorations. In all, my out of pocket was about seven hundred thousand dollars. I spent an additional hundred thousand buying adjacent lots. Hillsborough County values the whole property at a million and a quarter. Fair market value was estimated at close to five million dollars. The land value alone doubled from the attention.

Cloudrest Industries runs the place. Through the company, Lars and I own a maple syrup brand, an apple and cherry orchard, a canning company, a lumber company and a furniture and cabinet company. Tours are five dollars, children under twelve are three dollars, infants and toddlers are free. After years of complaints, the county finally agreed to upgrade the road enough that school buses are safe. For now, the kids are home-schooled.

Trip Lusk runs Cloudrest Industries. Elspeth runs the house and the nursery. Between my four and her five, patience is required. It has been a good place to teach our Amish girls the ropes. Cloudrest is a favored place to spend a portion of Rumspringa. In addition, we have two permanent Amish families. One is the blacksmith. The other tends the berry garden, apple orchard, and maintains the grounds. Their wives home-school their children and do part time in the main house.

Lars is still in New York City. He made Vice President after three years in Manhattan. We celebrated by taking a working trip to Europe. Lars had two weeks of meetings with senior management. Elspeth and I were able to show the kids a bit of the outside world. By the time we returned, Rolf’s German was better than mine. Meeting Lars’ family was interesting. Lars embarrassed me by showing the lederhosen picture. He protested that his thumb was covering my breasts, at least until I punched his arm. That night we conceived Gretchen.

During my third year, HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development started looking into Sean and Sheila’s work in my hometown. Sean came to the Capital to testify. At the news conference, Sean introduced me as his little sister. We were both standing. In my heels, I was about 10 cm (4”) taller. Everyone laughed. When he mentioned I had a Sociology PhD from Yale and was attending as an expert, they got quiet fast. I was able to glean a good deal of information from their whispered conversations.

Sean described what K&T Properties had done for my hometown. A property group, of which K&T was a founding member, had done similar things in other northern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania communities. Sean was looking further afield. He had his eye on a distressed neighborhood south of the Baltimore docks. By the end of the Congressional term, K&T had permits and waivers from HUD, the State of Maryland and City of Baltimore.