The Road Home: The Legacy that was, is, and is to Come
Judy Watters
Life lessons are universal. The Road Home shows that life lessons learned in a Jewish orphanage are the same life lessons learned on a small farm in Pennsylvania. Some can be painful; some can be hilarious. However, they all must eventually be learned.

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book excerpt

My earliest memories of my daddy involved sweating in unison. With my nose dug deep into Daddy’s neck and his arms firmly hugging my short round body, we rocked in his red vinyl rocker to the rhythm of the music on the Lawrence Welk show. When the orchestra struck up a waltz tune, Daddy would say, “Let’s hit it” and he gently held my little hand out in his own stubby fingers as he carried me around the living room. Daddy knew all the words of every song, and his off-key voice joined in with singers Jimmy Roberts and Alice Lon (Welk’s Champagne Lady) and the Lennon Sisters when they came on as guest appearances. Daddy didn’t polka, but when Myron Floren struck the first chord on his accordion, Daddy’s waltz went into high speed. 1954—I was five years old, and yet, even more than fifty years later, I can still smell the mingling scents of the cafeteria where he worked and the coal dust from the furnace in our cellar. Daddy didn’t need a glamorous ballroom to enjoy a waltz. No, Daddy and I waltzed on our flowered linoleum in the living room of our big rundown farmhouse on the hundred-acre farm that he lovingly called home. To Daddy, home meant more than walls and siding. It meant more than a roof over his head and money in the bank. To him, home meant people—a family that looked out for each other. Home meant security, protection, and peace from the outside world. For my daddy, a kid who only knew the Jewish orphanage system for the first ten years of his life, home held such a profound and rich meaning. And because Daddy felt that way about our small farm in the Allegheny Mountains in north central Pennsylvania, the entire family agreed.