By James V. Horrigan
Staff Writer
“My grandfather was on a clipper ship long ago; my father worked for 30 years at the Portsmouth Naval Yard. I joined the Navy at 17, right after high school,” says Richard Ingraham, 84, who grew up in an old house in the Strawbery Banke section of Portsmouth.
“I’ve always been attracted to the sea,” says Ingraham, a resident since January of the Maine Veterans Home in Scarborough. It’s easy to see why; maritime service is in his blood.
Ingraham’s active duty service began on Dec. 16, 1940, almost a year before Pearl Harbor and continued until Nov. 20, 1946, more than a year after the post-war conference at Yalta.
Ingraham’s first assignment out of boot camp was a three-month stint as a deckhand aboard the U.S.S. Constitution, the oldest commissioned vessel in the U.S. Navy. He served aboard an amphibious craft during the invasion of Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
During most of his time in uniform Ingraham was a cook, a duty he sought and in no way found onerous.
“I’ve always loved to cook. I was in junior high when I told a counselor I wanted to become a cook; but I couldn’t. There was no course [for boys] to take, just a home economics course. But my guidance counselor fought for mae and got me in. I was the only boy. I had it made,” he says.
He met Mary, his wife of more than 60 years, at Portsmouth High School, where he graduated in 1941, as she did two years later, in 1943. They have one child, Kennebunk resident Edward Ingraham, three granddaughters and one great-grandchild.
Ingraham lived in Florida prior to taking up residence at MVH-Scarborough. After their son grew up and married, Ingraham and his wife lived for many years in Center Ossipee, NH.
But Ingraham insists they did not live alone.
“This might sound crazy, but there were things that went on in that house that my wife and I could never explain. Our house was at the Indian Mound Golf Club, which was built over an old Indian graveyard and there was this girl, we called her Sarah; she was a playful little thing. You never knew what she was going to do next, open doors, open cabinets, move things around,” he says.
Ingraham and his wife however were never very frightened by the presence.
“It was a poltergeist. I’ve always been sensitive to things like that,” he says.
Indeed, when Ingraham was in junior high school, he discovered a talent that shaped the professional direction he followed after the war. It began one day in English class, when his teacher caught him daydreaming and ordered him to stay after school.
“It’s a funny story; she asked me what I was dreaming about and I said I dreamt I was on a beach, walking in the beautiful moonlight, the gentle, warm waves washing over my feet. The monotone of my voice made her so tired that she had to sit down. The next thing I know she’s passed out on her desk.”
Ingraham had no idea what had happened; he ran to the principal’s office for help.
“I said ‘Something’s the matter with Miss Powers; she’s passed out on the desk.’”
An ambulance and doctor were called; the next thing he knows a finger is pointed at him.
“The doctor said ‘What did you do? She’s in some sort of a trance. What did you do to her?’ I said I didn’t do anything. Don’t blame me.’ He said ‘You hypnotized her. Now tell her you’re going to count to three and snap your fingers and she’s going to wake up and be fine,’” Ingraham says.
The next part, Ingraham laughs, was the funniest.
“She woke up, saw all these people around her and then she fainted. For real,” he says.
Ingraham didn’t know it then, but he had found his calling.
“I didn’t mess with [hypnotism] too much in junior high, but after the service I started studying it and reading up on it and practicing it and it got so I could put people under like that,” he says.
He snaps his fingers and shakes his head in wonder.
“I couldn’t believe it.”
Before long Ingraham was performing on stage in nightclubs up and down the East Coast. Occasionally he’d do his act in Europe, or on the West Coast. The part he enjoyed most was putting people through hypnotic regression.
“You send them back in stages. ‘You’re now in your childhood. Now you’re in your mother’s womb. You’re going back before pregnancy to another life. What do you see and where are you?’” he says.
That’s right. He’s talking about reincarnation.
“Some folks see nothing. Others do. I’ve had them come back in two or three different lives. One girl came back as a Cherokee Indian squaw. And she spoke Cherokee.”
Ingraham insists that he is serious.
“I’ve had soldiers come back; one was in the Polish army and of course he spoke Polish. But he couldn’t speak Polish when he was awake.”
He also had a sideline helping doctors and dentists.
“A dentist friend of mine says, ‘Dick, I’ve got a patient here, a girl, and Novocain doesn’t seem to have any affect on her. Can you help me?’ So he brought her to my house and I hypnotized her and put her into a deep sleep. And the next morning he brought her back; I re-hypnotized her and he brought her to the dentist’s office, put her in the chair and [he] pulled out 14 of her teeth. Without any anesthesia at all.”
Then there was the time Ingraham had arthroscopic surgery on his knee and put his talent to work on himself.
“I didn’t have any anesthesia at all. Just hypnosis. Self-hypnosis.”
Since he’s been at MVH-Scarborough Ingraham hasn’t performed hypnotism on himself or his fellow residents. But there is another talent that he’s put to good use. He plays the organ.
“I don’t read music. I play by ear, taught myself. Never took a lesson in my life,” he says.
This year, at the home’s annual Memorial Day service honoring residents who passed away in the previous year, Ingraham played several hymns, including The Lord’s Prayer and Nearer My God to Thee.
But he’d rather be playing at home with wife Mary his only audience. She lives at Huntington Common Retirement Facility in Kennebunk, where Ingraham plans to visit on Thanksgiving.
“I’d like to stay through Saturday, if they’ll let me, but I don’t have good balance and the doctor’s afraid I might fall. I tell him I can fall just as easily up here as down there. I’d rather be home; my wife wants me to go home and I want to be home with her, but I’m here because I have to, because I can’t take care of myself,” he says.
It’s an honest remark from an earnest octogenarian, but Ingraham seems to sense that he’s got a good long while to live yet. Without a bit of prompting, and with no prior warning, he launches into a passionate rendition of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening.”
He’s lived a long and colorful life but it seems like the World War II Navy veteran does indeed have miles to go before he sleeps.