OHIO: It Isn't Easy

When he first read the letter from England last January, James N. Gape, 46, a valve company salesman and father of two children, let out a whoop of joy. His cousin's widow, Mrs. Sibyl Marion Geraldine Gape, had named him heir to an English estate that had been in the family for 500 years; it was worth, even at current rates, a tidy $270,000. There were two fine ancestral houses—Caxton Manor, with 16 rooms, 1,000 acres and three farms in Cambridgeshire; St. Michael's Manor, a 14-room, spacious-lawned house in Hertfordshire that was built by Sir John Gape in 1568. Both were nicely fixed up with central heating, modern plumbing and old family retainers to look after them. The will gave him six months to make up his mind.

But then Gape got to thinking. By the terms of the will, he would have to live in England. It would be tough to leave Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio; he might even lose his U.S. citizenship. There were some other jokers too. The death tax in England and other debts would take more than half the estate, leaving him but $112,000 and an income of around $5,000 a year. Income tax would chop off perhaps half of that. Upkeep would be expensive and the four servants hardly seemed enough. The biggest problem, thought Gape, was England itself: he was worried about rationed food and Socialist government.

Last week, just a month before the deadline, James Gape was still trying to make up his mind. "We're very much on the fence," said he. "It's the children. Life is different in England. The system is different. The schools are different. It isn't easy to make that kind of decision."

But if James Gape was having trouble making up his mind, his younger brother Kenneth, who would be offered the estate if James passed it up, had no trouble. "There's nothing in England now," said he. "The Socialists have ruined the country—one egg a week, a couple ounces of meat and all that business. I don't want to be an English gentleman and sit around and have tea and crumpets."*

It looked as if the estate might yet go to the third heir, a distant English cousin named David Bennett, who could have it if the others rejected it, and provided that he agreed to change his name to Gape.