View of Life

 I am a twenty-one year old college student studying civil engineering. I am just so fascinated and enthralled by the beauty and intricacy of bridges. That is where my passion lie. Ideally I would like to someday design a bridge as famous as the Golden Gate bridge. So that is my dream that I am working towards, but since that is pretty far fetched, I will gladly take anything that crosses my path that may help me get there one day. My family is not small but not large either. I am one of four children—me and my twin being the youngest. I have lived in the same house my whole life until moving away until college. Since starting colleges, I have transferred 4 times and attended 5 different schools. I like to say that since I never moved as a child, I was getting my fix of moving around the country by switching schools. While I was attending the second college, I made a rather drastic life change. I started investigating and later was baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Since then, I have made my way out to Brigham Young University (Provo and Idaho) and have settled down at the Idaho campus for the remainder of my college career. I am still the only member of my family that is a member of the church. While it is hard at times, I know I made the right decision to become a member. I love the church and I am forever learning more which is great. Other than my wild ride from college to college and eventually getting out to Idaho, I am a laid-back kind of person. My friends all say I am a true Jersey girl and not to get on my bad side, but I like to believe I have a warm and fuzzy side to me as well. I am pretty quiet when first meeting people, but once I feel comfortable it is hard to get me to shut up. Being from New Jersey, it is almost a given that I am really opinionated and I am not afraid to share it. Growing up my dad was in New Jersey state politics, but I tend not to be too involved in political discussions. I definitely have my viewpoints and I'm proud to say that I am a conservative, but I don't think politics has a place in everyday discussion. Throughout my childhood, I read a lot of books, but now since I have to read way too much for school I like to fill my spare time with trashy television shows. Other than my dream of designing a famous bridge, I also have a crazy dream to be on the reality show Big Brother. Other than all that, I enjoy board games, card games, sports (mostly watching since I'm not very athletic), and just having a good time with good friends. I really find myself enjoying life these days and I think it is because I have found a love and appreciation for my Savior Jesus Christ. Being the imperfect human that we all are, I can never express enough gratitude for all that He has done for us, but I like to try by leading the life that I know he would want me to live.

Personal History Timeline

Here is a timeline I complied for my life. A lot of it is really basic and I am continuing to add to it as I remember more memories and stories.

1991

August

            14^th- Charlene and Gary Stuhltrager gave birth to twin, one girl at 5:10 p.m. (EST) and one boy at 5:29 p.m. (EST). I was named Kelsey Marie and my twin brother was named Evan Paul

            18^th- Due to our premature birth and our hearts stopping once for me and twice for Evan, we weren’t able to be released until our parents underwent an infant CPR class. The first class available was on Sunday the 18^th and Evan and I were released on monitors to go home.

1992

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our first birthday.

1993

Summer time

            I had my hand in the hinge of our door leading out to our backyard and swing set. My sister was holding open the door for me but I refused to walk out. Just like my mother she told me she was going to count to three. 1….2….3.. The door falls and smashed my fingers. Before this incident I used to favor my left hand. Now I use my right hand for everything

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our second birthday.

1994

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our third birthday

September

            Started preschool.

1995

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our fourth birthday

September

            Started second year of preschool

1996

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our fifth birthday

September

            Started kindergarten at St. Patrick’s in Woodbury, NJ.

1997

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our sixth birthday

September

            I start beginners at Jeffrey Clarke Elementary School in East Greenwich, New Jersey. My teacher was Ms. Sweeten.

1998

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our seventh birthday

September

            I start first grade at Jeffrey Clarke Elementary School in East Greenwich, New Jersey. My teacher was Mrs. Icavone.

1999

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our eighth birthday. We are visiting Canada and we happen to eat in a restaurant by Niagara Falls called “Kelsey’s”. Evan is not happy that we are eating in a restaurant with my name since it is both of our birthdays. It was a good time.

September

            I start second grade at Jeffrey Clarke Elementary School in East Greenwich, New Jersey. My teacher was Mrs. Burlingame.

2000

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our ninth birthday. We have a pool party at our house with our relatives. My grandmom (Stuhltrager) made Nascar cakes for us. My was Mark Martin’s number 6 car and Evan’s was Jeff Gordon’s number 24 car. They were really awesome cakes!

September

I start third grade at Samuel Mickle Elementary School in East Greenwich, New Jersey. My teacher was Mrs. Cram.

2001

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our tenth birthday

September

            I start fourth grade at Samuel Mickle Elementary School in East Greenwich, New Jersey. My teacher was Mrs. Rossett.

2002

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our eleventh birthday

September

I start fifth grade at Samuel Mickle Elementary School in East Greenwich, New Jersey. My teacher was Mr. Campisi.

Unknown Date

            Ronald Pallacovitch, my Pop-Pop, passed away

2003

March

            12^th- At the first softball practice of the season, we are having relay races. This entails two teams with 5 people each. One person on each team starts with the ball and throws it to a teammate. The teammates continue to throw the ball to each other down the line to the last person. The last person but them return the ball back to the person who threw it to them and all the way back to the first person in line. The first team to throw it all the way down and back wins. I was the second to last person in the line. I threw it to the last person and they threw it back. When I went to catch the ball it tipped off my glove and split open my lip and gum. I got 9 stitches total only later to have it recut open and stitched up because it didn’t heal right. The only reason I remember exactly when this happened is because this is the day Elizabeth Smart was found alive.

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our twelfth birthday

September

            I start sixth grade at Samuel Mickle Elementary School in East Greenwich, New Jersey. My teacher was Mrs. Heritage.

2004

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our thirteenth birthday

September

            I start seventh grade at Kingsway Regional Middle School in Woolwich, New Jersey.

2005

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our fourteenth birthday

September

            I start eighth grade at Kingsway Regional Middle School in Woolwich, New Jersey.

2006

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our fifteenth birthday

            End of the month- I start three-a-day rehearsals for marching band

September

            I start ninth grade at Kingsway Regional High School in Woolwich, New Jersey.

November

            We come in third at band championships in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Unknown Date

            My cousin Doug passed away

2007

April

            20^th- My best friend Nate passed away.

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our sixteenth birthday

September

            I start tenth grade at Kingsway Regional High School in Woolwich, New Jersey.

2008

March

            I start my first job at Dippy’s Ice Cream in Mantua, New Jersey. Dippy’s is the favorite local ice cream shop around my house and makes all their ice cream on site.

May

            Went to senior prom as a junior with Joe Crinite

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our seventeenth birthday

September

            I start eleventh grade at Kingsway Regional High School in Woolwich, New Jersey.

2009

May

            Went to senior prom with Bobby Ferrell.

August

            6^th- I complete my senior English class online to graduate from high school a year early

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our eighteenth birthday.  I spend the night with Jordan up in Florence visiting some friends. It is an extremely eventful night—very forgettable and unforgettable at the same time.

September

            I travel to Costa Rica with the Gesundheit Institute on a humanitarian trip. We dressed up as clowns and visited children in hospitals, orphanages, and mental institutions. I had the privilege of meeting the real Patch Adams that the movie is about.

2010

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our nineteenth birthday

            End of the month- I start school at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania where Jordan attends. I go a week early to be part of Early Edition, a program for freshmen to get involved with the school newspaper. I was a photographer for the paper my whole first (and only) semester there.

December

Middle of the month- Sabrina, Melanie, and Steph all throw me a surprise going away party at Chris Miller’s. They got everyone to sign a book for me and it was really really sweet. It was a good time.

2011

January

            4^th- I came out to Rexburg Idaho for the first time to visit my best friend, Lysa Rackham since her winter break was only a week and mine was a month.

            Mid-month- I started school at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. My roommate’s name was Jhanna.

            End of month- I started going to the East Brunswick ward of the LDS church.

February

            Beginning of the month- I started meeting with the sister missionaries (Sister Baird and Sister Tupa).

March

            Sister Tupa was transferred and Sister Baird went home. I started meeting with Elder Wilson and Elder Christensen. I also set my date to be baptized.

April

            9^th- I was baptized by Mr. Rackham (now Brother Rackham I suppose) at the East Brunswick building. My parents, Evan, and Adam came. Jordan missed her train and wound up missing it. Lysa was home from school and her whole family came to watch. Sister Nelson gave the talk on baptism and Mrs. Rackham gave the talk on the Holy Ghost.

            10^th- I was confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Brother Rackham.

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our twentieth birthday

September

            3^rd (ish)- My mom and I start our road trip out to Idaho for me to go to school at Brigham Young University-Idaho.

2012

January

            I transfer to Brigham Young University in Provo because Idaho does not have a civil engineering program.

March

            My parents are vacationing in Florida and decide to put a down payment on a vacation home down there. So exciting!

June

            I visit Jamie Comer (my roommate from my first semester at BYU-Idaho) in her home country of Alaska. It was an awesome 10 days! We went around Anchorage before driving to Valdez, which is her hometown. While in Valdez we went hiking and halibut fishing and just enjoyed each other’s company before she was to leave on her mission.

August

            14^th- Evan and I celebrate our twenty first birthday in Atlantic City with Adam, Jordan and Chris Houston. We went to Mixx nightclub and had a great time. Evan had a drink count on his arm and had a goal of getting to 21. Since I don’t drink I had a kiss count on my arm and the goal was to get 21 kisses on the lips by the end of the night.

            21^st (about)- My mom and I start making the road trip down to our new house in Florida. We stop in North Carolina at my Uncle Walt (my mom’s brother) and Aunt Jen’s house. After we leave North Carolina we wind up meeting up with my Uncle Joe (my dad’s brother), Aunt Lillian, cousin Steven, and his fiancé for dinner in Jacksonville. Then we stop in Orlando for my last Wawa before heading back to school. I can’t believe Wawa has made it all the way to central Florida!

            We make it to our place by 10 at night only to discover that one of the air conditioners is broken and the other one has low batteries so we can’t set it. The house is 93 degrees. We wind up spending the night in a hotel, which was a terrible end to a long drive (that the last 3 hours were in pouring rain). Everything worked out and I got to enjoy out new house for about a week before coming back to school

September

            6^th- I transfer back to BYU-Idaho because I did not enjoy my time at BYU and Idaho just started a Civil engineering program.

2013

January

            1^st- I spent New Year’s at Steve Whitaker’s with Evan, Julia D’Orazio, and Steve’s girlfriend Kelsey Richards. After leaving Steve’s at 2 in the morning, I made it home and hung out for a short while before driving Evan and my parents to the Atlantic City airport for them to fly to our home in Florida. I didn’t get to bed until 6 in the morning!

            4^th- I start my second semester in a row at the first college since starting school.

February

            28^th- We have the first ASCE meeting at BYU-Idaho. I am elected secretary, which is the third

 highest executive officer. I’m so excited to not only be one of the founding member of the student 

chapter here but also I’m excited to be one of the founding executive officers.

Random Pictures from childhood (unsure of dates at this moment)

Ancestral History- Valentine Jon Stuhltrager

Valentine Jon Stuhltrager

He was born three weeks before the stock market crash that signaled the start of the Great Depression. They named him Valentine Jon Stuhltrager after his father and his father’s father and perhaps several other extending back. His parents, Valentine and Mariam brought him home to their row house in West Philadelphia. His father was of German descent while Mariam was of Swedish stock. They lived in what was then a middle class section of the city and though they were catholic the neighborhood was primarily Jewish. In fact, one of Val’s, as he would be called, jobs would be to turn off the lights at the synagogue after sundown on Friday as the Jewish faith did not permit them to handle such matters during their Sabbath. The rabbi, who also could not handle money after sundown, would leave the nickel on a ledge near the lights for Val to retrieve.

Two years after Val was born a brother Billy arrived. Their home was comfortable and they did not experience the worst ravages of the Depression. The household was stable and consistent though outward displays of affection or emotion were rare. Whether or was genetic, ethnic or something else, it was a trait that Val held throughout his life.

He was a studious and industrious boy who earned good grades and never caused any problems.

When he was a young teen the family moved across the Delaware River to Gloucester City, New Jersey. The opening of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in 1930 which spanned the Delaware River from Philadelphia to Camden began what would become a flood of people moving from the city. Their new home was a single-family structure with both a front and back yard. By todays standards it was of modest size but for the time it was comfortable.

Val’s boyhood years were uneventful and filled with the normal neighborhood activities for the time. Val recalls the neighborhood boys shooting pool in one of their basements and Val would remain a pretty good pool player later in life. He attended Camden Catholic High School where he was an excellent student particularly excelling in math. His high school yearbook has a quote of him saying, “that ain’t right”, apparently noting his penchant for recognizing when an answer was incorrect. Clearly his math abilities exceeded his grammar skills. In more current times he would certainly have gone on to college but times were different then.

Val had grown into a young man of slightly above average height with dark wavy hair worn in a small pompadour. His extremely thin build earned him the nickname, ‘Blade’, a moniker that did not survive high school.

After high school he worked at several different jobs eventually working as a mechanic at Ace Motors. Val was always good with his hands in addition to being book smart and throughout his life, until the advent of circuits and transistors, he was capable of fixing just about anything. He did all the repair work on his cars, lawn mowers, washers, toasters televisions and just about anything else. My dad particularly remembers Val having the black and white TV apart and making repeated trips to the hardware with tubes to be tested in the tube tester. Calling a repairman or buying a new item was an absolutely last resort.

But I am getting a little ahead of the story. Sometime around 1949 Val was introduced through a mutual friend to Harriet (Lynn) Agin. It was an event that would be life changing for both of them. Val was a shy young man and though the subject has never been discussed it is probably safe to assume that his experience with the opposite sex was limited. But when it came to Harriet he overcame any hesitancy and made his interest known.

Harriet had been orphaned at the age of twelve and and after living with several relatives had been on her own six the age of sixteen. She prided herself on her morality and independence and perhaps Val’s respectful demeanor and conduct attracted her to him. Certainly Val was no fast talker looking for a short-term relationship. After dating for about a year they were engaged to be married. They set a wedding date for June, 1951 and then circumstances intervened. Val was drafted into the Army and ordered to report in May. A wedding dress had been ordered and plans made. Val’s deployment was to be for two years so the couple was faced with a decision whether to postpone the wedding or move it to an earlier date—knowing that if they moved it up they would be separated for most of the first two years of their marriage. They decided to move the wedding to May 12, 1951 and rearrange other plans. They took the train to New York City for their honeymoon and two days later Val went to military basic training.

Val served for two years in the Army sailing on a ship to Europe where he was stationed in Germany and The Netherlands. After his discharge Val and Harriet began their married life in a small apartment in Camden, New Jersey. Several years later they welcomed their first (and favorite) child—my dad Gary. In 1957 when they were expecting their second child the moved to the home that they would occupy for the next sixty years. Oak Valley was a Levittown style community of tract homes. Along with millions of others they were part of the post war exodus to the suburbs. The three bedroom, one bath house would eventually be home for themselves and their three children. Val and his father built the detached garage themselves. It turned out to be an excellent place to raise a family.

After working at Ace Motors Val was successful in getting a job with the railroad, which would later, be named Conrail. He was a clerk who worked in many of the depots which dotted the small town along the the tracks in South Jersey. His job generally consisted of scheduling and directing railcars to and from the various industries in the area. Val says that he liked his job though he never spoke much about it. He rarely talked about any problems or successes related to the job, nor discussed or complained about anyone he worked with. Yet at times there had to have been some severe work related stress. For the entire thirty five years until his retirement that Val worked for Conrail the railroad was in a constant state of contraction and consolidation. Depots were being closed, staff was being reduced, computers were dramatically changing the way work was done and Val was in a race to stay one step ahead of the layoffs, sometimes resulting in lengthy commutes. He successfully made it to retirement but not before having to work the last couple of years in the city, do his job on a computer. and commute on the high speed line. The railroad may have been more of a job than a career, and it certainly did not define who he was, but he approached it with diligence and derived some measure of satisfaction from it. Val absolutely never missed work other than the few times he was hospitalized. No doubt it was partly due to the necessity of a paycheck but mostly it was just a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility and dependability.

When it came to finances you could not find a more responsible person than Val. He always handled the family finances and once a month he would sit at the kitchen table with his bill drawer and pay the bills. His temper could be triggered by an unexpectedly high telephone bill, Harriet making along distance call, or some other bill. His railroad job was relatively secure by was not high paying. He had a budget and lived within it. No second mortgages, credit line or something other than a J.C. Penney’s credit card. He did not even have a major credit card for an airline ticket until well after he retired. It never mattered to him if the neighbors had a new car, pool and something else. If he couldn’t afford it he did not buy it.

Val’s responsibility and dependability were all reflections of his love for his wife and family. Like his own parents he was not demonstrative or one to verbalize feelings. However, one would have to be blind not to see how deeply he cared as reflected in his actions. Nothing was too much trouble and if it was within his power he would make it happen.

At the same time Val was not one to offer advise. Everyone was given the space to make their own decisions and, yes, their own mistakes. He was always there for support but without ever saying “I told you so” - partly because he rarely told you so before the fact. But if you watched what he did rather than wait for him to say it you would get a pretty good idea how you should proceed.

Val was certainly not an adventurer but he was also not afraid of trying new things. He joined the local volunteer fire company and served as President for several years. At one point he was in charge of the rental hall where weddings and other affairs were held. When there was an event the hall would have to be prepared - tables and chairs set, floor swept and mopped, decorations, et cetera - and then cleaned up after the event. The affair would also require bartenders who were compensated for their time. As a boy my father would sometimes help with the hall preparations. He recounts how many, many times no one showed up for the preparation, and left before the clean up, but they never had any trouble getting bartenders. Val never mentioned or complained about this all too common human tendency. He did what he agreed to do without complaint or desire for credit. In every aspect of his life if he said he would do something you would never have to ask if it was done - you could be guaranteed it was complete.

Val, with the encouragement of Harriet, blossomed as he aged. They took up dancing and for many years would enjoy an evening out to dance and socialize. For the shy, introvert this activity had to out of his comfort zone.

Val was quiet by nature and was not one to initiate conversation. He was a listener more than he was a talker. Harriet did the talking for both of them. Val did not force his opinions on anyone, family, friends or strangers. Whether it was about politics, religion or lifestyle Val was about as tolerant as one can get. Though he born into a world with very different values and practices, both good and bad, he was flexible enough to accept without too much anxiety the many changes in society that have occurred over the years.

After he retired Val really stepped outside of himself when he ran for, and was elected, to the Township Council. A private person has assumed a very public position. He enjoyed his duties as Councilman even if the political environment was not who he really was. In his world ideas succeed on their merits and a difference of opinion between members of the same party was not tantamount to disloyalty. His world and the world of politics were not entirely compatible.

Val has lived to enjoy a lengthy retirement; to see his children grown and successful; and his grandchildren become young adults. Together with his wife they made a life for themselves that through good decisions and good fortune has been filled with love and happiness.

I love my grandfather so much and I am so blessed to still have him in my life! :)