Friday, December 14, 2007

1919?/1961




Today's Flashback is in honor of my Memo's birthday. Memo was born in 1918 and will be 89 years old on Monday! I'm not sure when the top picture was taken, but she can't be much older than one. She is sitting in a basin on the porch...getting a bath, maybe? The bottom picture is from 1961 when she was working as a bookkeeper. (Check out that old adding machine!)

My Memo has lived and seen so much! She remembers riding in a horse and buggy as a child (and the horse running away while my great-grandmother was driving!) and has flown in an airplane and watched as man landed on the moon. When she was eighteen, she left Mississippi where she grew up and went to Detroit to Business School. After school, she moved to Memphis and took a job at Sears Roebucks in the Credit Department, where she met my grandfather. (My grandfather was smitten with her and had her transferred to his department so he could get to know her!) They were married before Sunday School one Sunday, and then drove after church to tell their parents. My grandfather left to go war when my mom was only four days old leaving my Memo to take care of three little girls under the age of four. My grandfather died in 1974, leaving her a widow at 56. Yet she is so strong and I've never heard her complain!

I love to have her tell me about her life, but like most people of her generation, she doesn't feel that anything she has done was of great importance or "historical". She just did what she had to do to get by.

I love you, Memo! I wish we could celebrate with you today!

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