52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 11 (Lucky)

Had to think what to write on this subject: no one in the family ever, to my knowledge, had the nickname Lucky.  Nor has anyone been lucky enough to win a major lottery prize.  My mother, brothers and myself have made frequent trips to Las Vegas over the years but the largest jackpot any of us have ever won would have been a few hundred dollars.  Nice at the time but would not have covered the cost of the trip.

Lucky in love?  My family tree, on both sides, is comprised of many long term marriages.  Were the individuals lucky to have found their true love?  Or just a sign of their time that once married, one stayed married regardless of the state of the relationship.  I guess another way to look at the longevity of those marriages: were the individuals lucky in those days to live into their 70s and 80s when life expenancy was much shorter.  Especially given the number of births the women (farmer's wives) survived.  Lucky in the high percentage of said babies reaching adulthood during a time when the mortality rate was high for infants. 

Lucky that most of the males were exempted from wars in order to stay working the family farm?  Lucky that the few that did experience war on the front lines, most of them did return home to carry on a normal life?

From a personal view, I think the 'Lucky' would be my father, Jack Allen, deciding that farm life was not for him and his family.  Although the country and the family farm remained in his blood for the rest of his life, he chose to not take over the family farm from his father.  The Allen farm was near Camp Borden and even though it was post World War II, the military base continued to expand as it was still used for training (and still is to this day).  Although he had no plumbing experience, he was hired by a mechanical contractor company, E.S. Fox, for some plumbing jobs they had on the base.  His work ethic soon had him learning various trade skills and as the company expanded with jobs in other locales, he was sent to various locations to oversee jobs. 

By the mid-1950's he was sent to Kingston Ontario to oversee a variety of jobs around the military base there.  The company continued to get contracts in that area and within a couple of years, they established an office in Kingston and had my father relocate his wife and son to Kingston.  Myself and my younger brother were born in Kingston. 

Under my father's leadership, the Kingston office flourished and expanded.  It eventually expanded to the point that an administrator was assigned to head up the Kingston office while my father concentrated on doing the estimating for submissions of job contracts.  He was not forced to retire when he turned 65 and he planned to continue working until the age of 70.  But fate did intervene and he died at the age of 67.  Though his hard work and strong work ethic over the years, he had invested money and my mother has never had any financial worries.

At the time of his sudden death of pancreatitis in August 1990, his wake and funeral was well attended - not just by members of our large extended family and friends, but by the tradespeople that had worked for or with my father over the years - including the owner and other officials of E.S. Fox.  Although Jack was not the official head of the Kingston in his later years, the person in the Manager's position rarely made decisions without consulting him. 

If my Father hadn't been lucky to have been hired by E.S. Fox all those years ago, the lives of my immediate family would have been drastically different.  It was by chance that he was initially hired and even if his future success was due to his strong work ethic, he was lucky to have been in the right place at the right time all those years ago.