Greenways move from England in 1974 for new life in Stockbridge

by Suzi Greenway

Dick Greenway and I bought the little house on Cooper Road on Nov. 2, 1974. We were married that January in Reigate, Surrey, England, and came over to the U.S. for a holiday to see my family in June.

On the airplane back to the U.K., we looked at each other and decided to move here. In one month, we sold or gave away everything we did not need to bring and flew here with trunks of our belongings on the plane to start a new life.

I found the house for sale in a small ad in the Lansing State Journal and came to look at it alone the next day. I pulled into the driveway, never got out of the car, and knew it was my home. It took Dick a little longer than a walk-through  with the agent.

We brought a rollaway bed with us in that big Chrysler Newport and after signing the papers in Fowlerville, drove to Stockbridge to open an account with Stockbridge State Bank. At that time, I had not taken Dick’s last name, so sitting in the bank with me at 21 and Dick, 23, we looked like co-habitating hippies. We thought, how are we going to be perceived in this new area? I took his name that day in the bank.

We lay on the rollaway bed in sleeping bags in what to us was a wilderness. Noises outside the house terrified us. Was someone in our driveway? Were hunters sitting outside waiting for dawn? The raucous culprit turned out to be the electric meter, noisy in contrast to everything else so quiet.

The corn in the back field was being harvested when we moved in the next Saturday, and my friends who came to help thought the move was madness. But to us, it was liberty, freedom and space from England, a country that had stifled our dreams of more self-sufficiency.

In 1976, we built a pole barn and took down the one-car garage, which had actually served as a migrant home and was moved here from down the road. We used the wood from the garage to frame in a back porch and turn it into a family room. Barn siding from a barn that was being taken down made a fine lining for the back wall.

Forty-seven years later, people who see my home often say they see my heart, and they are correct.

According to author Suzi Greenway, “The one to the left is the back porch as it was when we bought the place with my Dad, Dick Greenway on the porch, and me in my please note “Jenny coat” from Forrest Gump when she met him at the Washington monument. Yes, I had that same kind of coat. It is YAK from Afghanistan!”
The person on the right is Dick saying, “This is all mine.” The little garage the couple took down can be seen in the background.

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