Quiet Endurance: The Story of a Very Determined Woman named Anna

I cannot tell you about our mother without saying that if Daddy was fun, she was mainly all business. If he was sometimes a little rough around the edges, she was grace and dignity. Both of them were unafraid of work, and I was an adult before I knew what unrelenting challenges they faced. They were typical of that Greatest Generation who survived the Great Depression and then threw themselves into a national machine that helped win WWII.

Both sets of our grandparents were born in the last two decades of the 1800's and witnessed the advent of electricity, the telephone, radio, and automobile. Our maternal grandmother nearly blew off the head of her future husband when he chose the wrong direction to approach the house as she took a shot at a fox that had invaded the chicken yard. Children growing up on the Texas prairie were likely to encounter rattle snakes and carried pistols as a matter or course when crossing the ranches. Yet our Great Grandfather and his boys ranched and farmed in suits, his a 3-piece, and they had fine furniture and china until unfortunate times overtook them--but that's another story. The perspective of these hard-working, church-going people was rather fixed, but they were far from being isolated or bogged in the 19th Century.

Even on the farm, our mother was a Fashionista, and a talented seamstress. Somehow in her youth, the railroads had brought enough catalogs and magazines for her to get a taste for great clothing and coiffures. She was 13 when she got her first flapper dress, while living in Spur, Texas. (Her mother's youngest sister, who bought the dress for Mother was, during the same time period, writing notes to her girlfriends about certain young men who were "Some Sheiks!" and asking who had a car at his disposal so they could go Kodaking.) The movies brought far-away places close, and you could take a snapshot and have it developed into a post card to circulate to friends and family.

Our Mother, Anna, was a modern woman, the first Southern Baptist woman on record, as far as her new mother-in-law was concerned, to get a divorce. Mother's divorce was coincidental with the tragic death of Daddy's first wife, Modena. Each of them was alone with two children and working at Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico when they met during WWII. They were married within two years of becoming single.

They bought land where the Holiday Inn was later built, and built a little house of mainly salvaged materials. And they brought all four of their children together: Son, whose first name was really James, and Jack, from Daddy's first marriage, Nina and Doyle from mother's.

Jack once told me that when he first met our Mother that he thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. A more quiet version of Doris Day, she was tall and Teutonic, with blond hair that carried a slight hint of strawberry, a shade some people referred to as "Champagne Blond" I have seen only on one other person. Our father, who worked with Boeing before coming to Roswell, was a handsome man who would remind you of Humphrey Bogart both in mannerism and looks.

Their first baby was born with Hyaline Membrane Disease. The baby, whose name was Alma Jean, never came home from the hospital. I was a young mother with children of my own when I asked Mother about this time. She said she was inconsolable, unable to stop crying for days at a time. Finally, she dreamed of her own grandmother, who said, "Why are you crying? She is here, with me!" Mother said her grandmother was holding the small baby, but beside her was another baby, just a little older. She was comforted, but she also knew that she would have this experience again.

There was no time to even ponder that, because The War was winding down, and no job awaited. Since they were both civilians, they would have to wait to be hired behind a veteran for any job. Perhaps it was one of the other mechanics who told Daddy about the farm in the Ozarks of Missouri, but somehow life began again not only for the older children, but for Daddy's parents and his sister and her family, who followed us to their own farms, our grandparents just across the pasture from us. As though they had always belonged there, a clan of Walkers now lived near Exeter, Missouri.

As the second born and first daughter in a family of nine children, Mother would not have considered four children a handful at all. But Son, as James Frank, the eldest was still troubled after his mother's long illness and death. There were several years between him and Jack, and now he had two additional siblings with Mother expecting another baby.

And our eldest sister hotly reported that our grandmother took pot-shots about divorced women repeatedly within our mother's hearing. I would not have known though, because Mother had long since won her over by the time I was old enough to remember. There was peace and mutual respect between them as I grew up, but I was separated in years, nearly a decade, from these situations.

Betty Ann was born in 1947, a blue baby. Her struggle to survive of course took in the whole family. Mother told me that Papaw, our grandfather, often drove her with Betty Ann to see the doctor. They hoped that someday, when she was strong enough, he could do surgery to correct the hole in her heart. But after eight months Betty Ann was in heart failure and had to be held on a pillow. Mother said she could not stand to see her suffer any longer. She said that every breath seemed to hurt,so she silently prayed that the Lord would take her, and He did. She said that Daddy came and sat beside her while they held her, surrendering her at last to God. It was Son who ran across the pasture to tell our grandparents. No wonder it was hard for him to get close to us!

The day following Betty Ann's funeral, the older children were sent back to school. Clouds were gathering, rain forecast, and hay was in the field. Daddy had to help his father bring in the hay. Mother was alone.

For some reason, Joyce Lacy, who taught at the one-room school house, asked one of the older kids if anyone was with their mother. When Mrs. Lacy learned that Mother was by herself, she left the class, drove to the farm, and took Mother the short distance to our grandparents home. Our grandmother had gone into town (Cassville) with one of the family who had come for the funeral for something she needed. When I asked what she did, since she was still very much alone, Mother simply said, "I just sat in the kitchen and waited until the men came in from haying."

When Mary Beth was born a few months later she lived, but did not tolerate milk of any kind. So desperate was her condition that our aunt sent a dress for Mother to bury her in. Thankfully, someone thought to try goat milk, and it saved her life. When I was born about 2 years later, and didn't give anyone reason to dread and fear for my life, they must have joyfully fed me and fed me. I look quite plump at about a year and a half.

Once I was an adult, I looked with a heavy heart at the fracture that had taken place between the older and younger offspring of our parents. Tentatively I would ask when the moments seemed right, and gradually the story came from mother, one of our brothers, and from our sister. Daddy was unable to speak at all about it.

Around the time of my birth, the drought in Missouri had taken a serious economic toll. Daddy was selling Watkins products in addition to farming. It was inevitable that the farm would fail when a herd of pigs that was sold to Daddy all died of hog cholera. He and his brother-in-law decided they would try to sell televisions in Kansas City.

About the same time, Mother's family came to take Doyle and Nina to "visit" with their father in Ft. Worth, whom they had neither seen nor spoken with during the 6 year interval in Missouri. It seemed as though he had a good job with General Dynamics, and could provide comfortably for them. Mother told me she had felt defeated and as though there was no other choice. Son completed high school and joined the military. We lived briefly in Kansas City--maybe 5 or 6 months, before going on to Denver to pursue the hope of better work as an airplane mechanic at Stapleton Airport. Jack went with us to Denver for a brief time, and then on to New Mexico to join some of the extended family there, where he finished school.

After 6 years together, this big Missouri farm family had in a matter of months shrunken to a family of four with two small children and a baby on the way, who lived in Denver. I was so small the memory of the older kids faded right away, and I was only conscious of the here and now. Both of our parents were undoubtedly filled with worry about the unseen future and anxious about the separation from their children, but we did not know it for many years.

The Airport job didn't work out since so many veterans were well-qualified, but, undaunted, Daddy began his life as a salesman of Filter Queen vacuum cleaners and ultimately, life insurance. Mother was used to working, so she balanced work and three young children somehow without me ever remembering day care of any kind.

Mother seemed ever looking for an opportunity to make life better. Denver was so rich in culture it really did not matter what you didn't have. All around were museums and the library, zoo, and parks to take us to. The Little Mermaid and Wynken, Blinken, & Nodd were our playmates at Washington Park's fountains, bringing our adventures in books to life.

She became involved with "The Opportunity Club" which provided entrepreneurs with support for their own micro business. Of course sewing was Mother's forte. Mother worked at May D & F demonstrating sewing machines and producing glorious dresses for us that began as model garments for the store. For herself, some spider-web silk was the expression of loveliness in two different dresses--one of wine and the other royal blue.

During the Depression, mother had learned to shop ready made clothes stores to see what she liked, buy different material, and cut a similar pattern from newspaper. She sniffed, "Who would want to wear a dress just like everyone else had on?" Mother's hands were never still, constantly crocheting borders around towels or washcloths. She kept a light bulb to darn my father's socks, and a basket of mending for the evening hours when we gathered either around the radio or, later, the television.

Our hair was carefully curled around soft plastic spools that inverted to become what looked like little turtle shells. The end result was a head full of tamed curls to top the beautiful garments she produced for us. We made our television debut representing her sewing club with bright lights blinding us as she hissed from the curtain on the side, "Turn around! Turn around!" We turned around.

Mother was the stalwart who made sure we went to church and to Sunday School each week, and to Bible School each summer. She usually always went with us, but Daddy held out for the rare Easter or Christmas service, protesting, "But I haven't been bad enough!" She took it in good humor and plodded on. In the pew beside us we could hear her clear soprano voice singing not too loud.

Around the house Mother hummed to the music on our radio. She taught us to enjoy keeping a home, standing in a chair at the sink to do the dishes, scrubbing the woodwork clean from our own little hand prints, feeding the starched white shirts as she cranked them through the roller atop the old Maytag washer out in the yard.

Whenever we moved Mother found a church home for us to belong to and insured we learned our Bible verses. We attended Brownies and Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts for our brothers. As we got older she made sure we went to youth activities at church. She was not a cuddly Mother--and neither she nor Daddy learned to express their love for us until we taught them to from our own adulthood. But Mother spent her whole life making do, going forward, and anticipating and providing for most of our needs and many of our wants, usually under less-than-ideal circumstances.

What were her gifts to us? To seize the opportunity to find something good. To get all you can from your education, whether it be spiritual or secular. To get over it, whatever it is, and move forward optimistically. To bite your tongue and bide your time while you wait for your adversaries to become allies. To have good manners, and grace in the face of crudity. To trust in the Lord, and expect His plan for you to work out well. In so many ways she was the quietly working heart of our home. I would like to think I could manage that well, but it would be hard follow an act like that. Instead, for me, it is something to strive for.