Three Little Girls

 Three little girls,

Full of laughter and light,

Three pairs of eyes,

Sparkling blue and bright,

Three gentle voices,

Soaring in song,

Filled with harmony,

 All the day long.

Three budding maidens,

Growing in grace,

Reaching for love,

And finding their place.

Three loving families,

Growing each day,

From which came our children,

Bringing joy to our way.

Our children grew up,

Our grandchildren came,

Our hearts filled with love,

Our delight we proclaimed

The day’s come to soon,

When we must part ways,

Our Susie’s in heaven,

But on Earth we must stay.

We’ll see her again,

When the Lord calls us home,

But our hearts ache with longing,

Since our Susie is gone.

 Rose, Susie and Bo...May 2000, before our Susie got so ill.

When the Clock Chimes

By Ann Ingalls
Kansas City, Missouri

It was a good thing Grandma Vanderwerp didn’t live very far away, only about 3 blocks, since my brother Tom and I needed to get away from the noisy confusion we called “home.”

Both of us were kind of quiet and born right in the middle of a large and busy family. We had six other sisters and brothers, a mom, a dad, two hamsters, two birds, a dog and, depending on the time of year, a washtub full of tadpoles waiting to become frogs.

Grandma understood about kids and frogs. She knew about tree-climbing and dress-up clothes and just about anything we had to tell, and she had an old, squatty, just-right-for-climbing cherry tree in her backyard.

Tom and I had dreams about the pies Grandma could bake from the cherries we’d pick. The trouble was, as Grandma said, “The birds have plans for those cherries, too.”

Sitting on her back porch, surrounded by Shasta daisies, we shooed those pesky birds away while we sipped ginger ale from anodized-aluminum cups Grandma reserved for our visits.

Sometimes, a little talking could persuade Grandma to let us spend the night. Sleepovers at Grandma’s were a special affair.

First, there would be a bubble bath with sweet-smelling suds, the result of the magic powders stored in apothecary jars high on a shelf in Grandma’s white-tiled bathroom.

After a soak and a scrub and a warm rub-a-dub, we crawled into the flannel PJs that Grandma kept “just in case.” We parked ourselves by Grandma’s knee sharing the needlepoint footstool that doubled as a doll bed when upturned.

Grandma read short stories from her large-type copies of Reader’s Digest. Sometimes, she would cry if the stories were sad, but mainly she would read humorous anecdotes and would throw back her lovely white hair and laugh. Soon, we’d be laughing, too.

Then we’d talk for awhile, each of us hanging onto one of her prominently veined and wrinkled hands. We’d ask questions like, “Why do your veins stick out, Grandma?”, “Were you sad when Grandpa died?” and “Just what kind of a little boy was Daddy?”

All the while, Grandma’s clock ticked away the time and Westminster chimes reminded us of each quarter hour.

Grandma often asked, “What does the clock say to you, little Ann?” Depending on my frame of mind, its message would vary. Once, when I had stayed a week and was an especially homesick 5-year-old, the clock said, “I’m sad because I miss Mama.” Grandma responded, “Well, climb on my lap, and we’ll think about her together.”

A brass fire screen with a fierce dragon, its tail arched and swirled to show its authority, stood before Grandma’s black, marble-faced hearth. It was rumored within our family to have been gold-plated at one time and to have belonged to Marie Antoinette, a famous French queen. Grandpa had acquired it from an antique shop in New Orleans for 50¢ in the early 1920s, shortly after he and Grandma were married.

At some point, the dealer realized what he had sold and tried to buy it back for a lot of money, but Grandma would have none of that. By that time, the dragon had become the backdrop for so many family pictures.

Eventually, Tom and I would start to yawn, signaling that bedtime had arrived. Up the double flight of stairs we’d tread to a room filled with contradictions—disconcerting in some ways, yet cozy and comforting in others.

A large mahogany bed heaped with lavender satin quilts and eyelet-trimmed pillows awaited. Lingering on hand-crocheted, lace-edged, linen sheets was the scent of lily-of-the-valley. On the walls, glaring ominously, were the framed faces of medieval Dutch ancestors—I hoped not ours. Severe hairstyles and stark dress betrayed their dispositions.

On a spoon-footed vanity, where Grandma kept hair ribbons, were displayed the loveliest porcelain boxes with painted flowers. Each box held a secret—a shiny button, a hairpin or a spiral shell. Accompanying these were perfume atomizers of every shape and description.

China dolls, which once belonged to Grandma’s sisters Cora and Nell, rested in a black-painted child’s rocker with a braided cloth seat.

Grandma tucked us in and reminded each of us with a kiss and a smile that she would be downstairs if we needed her.
 
Many years have passed since then. I’m grown now and still remember all of this as I write it down with Grandma’s tortoise-shell fountain pen filled with ink from Grandma’s crystal ink well.

Sitting at her roll-top desk with burled walnut trim, I remember the woman who painstakingly taught me to sew doll clothes, who read Winnie the Pooh stories a hundred times, who spit watermelon seeds and who stitched Halloween costumes and homecoming dresses with a flourish and fantasy in mind.

After a while, I intend to sit in her wingback chair, read short stories and humorous anecdotes and wait for the clock to chime. It will say, “I miss Grandma.”

From: Reminisce Newsletter

This is my niece's little girl on her first day of school this year. My poor pretty baby. She was not to thrilled!

We are sad. But he is rejoicing in Glory.

Rose

Isn't she sweet?  Runs like a top. I am in love!

Guess she could use a little sprucing up?  A bit of paint maybe?

First Father's Day Service

Martinsburg Journal
June 15, 2003

The first Father's Day

Fairmont celebrated holiday in summer of 1908

By Vicki Smith
Associated Press Writer

Fairmont - In the summer of 1908, the story goes, sadness ran so deep it just had to be shared.

As the birthday of her own late father neared, 41-year-old Grace Golden Clayton was thinking about loss - her own at first, then those of the children around her.

More than 1,000 were newly fatherless, their lives blown apart a few months earlier in nearby Monongah by the worst coal mining disaster in American history. Of the 361 men killed in the Dec. 6, 1907, blast, some 250 were fathers.

Fathers who should be remembered and honored with their own special day, Clayton decided.

So she made it happen.

"This holiday was one etched in sadness as well as thankfulness," says the Rev. Donald Meighen, pastor of Central United Methodist Church, which now stands where Father's Day was celebrated for the first time.

People in this small north-central West Virginia city don't take credit for making Father's Day a national tradition. They acknowledge that 95 years ago, residents didn't even try to spread the word beyond the town line.

Now, they want people to know that the holiday started here.

Since 1985, when the state erected a black and white historical marker declaring Fairmont the birthplace of Father's Day, "we rested on our laurels," Meighen says. "We had not taken it to the next level.."

The congregation of Central United Methodist took a special offering earlier this year and commissioned "Curse Not the Darkness," a play about Clayton and the Monongah mine disaster.

In May, the church opened a room with a small collection of artifacts that could become the foundation of a Father's Day museum. And Meighen is planning programs to help men become better fathers.

Thomas Koon, president of the Marion County Historical Society, is happy to see it. He set out years ago to get Clayton the recognition she deserves and right what he says is a long-standing wrong.

The woman often credited with starting Father's Day is Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Wash. In 1909, she sought a special day to honor her father, who became a single parent when his wife died giving birth to their sixth child.

That service was held in Spokane on the third Sunday in June 1910, and by the following year, there was a similar celebration in Portland, Ore. Chicago followed in 1915, Miami four years after that.

By 1924, President Coolidge supported the idea of a national holiday, and in 1956, Congress passed a joint resolution recognizing Father's Day.

President Johnson signed a Father's Day proclamation in 1966, and President Nixon made it permanent in 1972.

Yet Koon says it all started with Clayton and that first service - which wasn't even in June. Hers fell on July 5, 1908, the Sunday nearest the birthday of her father, Methodist minister Fletcher Golden.

Though unique, the service was overshadowed by events that competed for the community's attention.

An Independence Day festival drew 12,000 people to town with a hot-air balloon show, circus-style performers and politicians giving impassioned speeches to launch their campaigns.

The congregation also was coping with the death of a teenage girl from typhoid fever, Meighen says. Her father, a prominent businessman, arranged a funeral procession with 20-horse drawn carriages, and the mourning lasted four days.

Shortly afterward, the church was damaged by mine subsidence and shut down for several months.

"They had other things on their mind," Koon says. "The original sermon was lost... It just seems as though no one thought it was a great deal at the time.

"No one jumped on the bandwagon and went to the City Council for a proclamation. No one got on the governor. No one went to Congress," he says. "Mrs. Clayton apparently thought it was not lady- like for someone to go out and toot their own horn."

That's true, says 80-year-old Josephine Cottrill of Clarksburg, Clayton's great-niece. Cottrill attends the church's Father's Day service every year in Clayton's honor.

"She was a tall, stately woman, with gray hair piled on her head," Cottrill recalled. "She was very quiet."

Some speculate Clayton may have been partly inspired by fellow West Virginian Anna Jarvis, whose own crusade created Mother's Day.

Jarvis lobbied businessmen, politicians and clergy after he mother died in 1905, eventually holding the first Mother's Day service in Grafton in May 1908.

Koon figures Sonora Dodd must have been like Jarvis.

"Instead of doing what Fairmont did and dropping the ball, she went out ... and beat on doors and kicked up enough of a fuss to get people to say, 'This is a good idea.' Or, 'We need to shut this woman up,'" he says with a laugh. "Take your pick."

Fairmont is happy to credit Dodd with her efforts, Koon says. He just wants people to know she wasn't the first.

"It did not become a national holiday until a number of other people chewed on it like a pit bull," he says. "It took a lot of people a lot of work over the years."

Original Mothers Day Proclamation,
Julia Ward Howe: 1870:

Arise then, women of this day!

Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:

'We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies.

'Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause.

'Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.

'We women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

'From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own, it says "Disarm! Disarm!"

'The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.

'Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.'

As men have forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his time the sacred impress not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe of Boston, Massachusetts, the famous lyricist of 'Battle Hymn of the Republic", appalled at that time by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, wrote the above proclamation, had it translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish, and disseminated it internationally.

In Julia's own words, "The question forced itself on me, 'Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of human life, which they alone bear and know the cost? I had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibility now appeared to me in a new aspect."

Julia went to London in 1872 to try to organize her conference, and when an established peace organization there would not let her speak to them because of her gender, she hired a hall and conducted her own meetings. However, this work did not come to any quick fruition, and Julia returned to Boston.

But Julia Ward Howe did not give up. She began to promote a festival to be known as Mothers' Day, to be devoted to the advocacy of peace, and to be celebrated on June 2 each year, which in Boston is a good time for outdoor meetings and in the midst of the flower season.

This initiative was successful, and Mothers Day was celebrated for many years in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Edinburgh, London, Geneva, and even in Constantinople (Istanbul). However, a later effort organized by Anna Jarvis to commemorate her mother's death eventually also became popular, and since it did not include the same controversial call for peace and conflict resolution, it eventually gained the political 'upper hand'. Motherhood itself, not the more controversial idea of women coming together in activism for peace, prevailed.

However, what Julia wrote in 1870 is generally considered to be the original Mothers' Day proclamation. The 'Festival of Peace' she called for and worked so hard for did not take place until 1904. However, it was decided there to set aside one day in the year to prompt women to work toward resolving conflict peacefully.

In 1914, by popular demand and without reference to its actual pacifist origins, US President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday of May as Mothers' Day in the United States of America.

Happy Mothers' Day!

http://www.quaker.org/chestnuthill/motherdy.htm

Mom always wore big hats to church on Easter Sunday. Back in the 50's she wore pretty white gloves and always had a hankie in her bag. Mom was a beautiful lady. She  made all her own clothes. Most times she did not use a pattern. She also made clothes for my sister and I. 

My dad's Uncle Nonie Thompson used to fuss and say if he sat behind momma in church he couldn't see over her hat!   This Sunday I decided to start a tradition in her honor. From now on I will wear big hats to church on Easter morning!

Grandma Rosie on Easter Morning 2007.

I am in the plaid on the left.  My pretty costume is period correct, even the under garments.

Texas declares independence

March 2, 1836 :

During the Texas Revolution, a convention of American Texans meets at Washington-on-the-Brazos and declares the independence of Texas from Mexico. The delegates chose David Burnet as provisional president and confirmed Sam Houston as the commander in chief of all Texan forces. The Texans also adopted a constitution that protected the free practice of slavery, which had been prohibited by Mexican law. Meanwhile, in San Antonio, Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's siege of the Alamo continued, and the fort's 185 or so American defenders waited for the final Mexican assault.

In 1820, Moses Austin, a U.S. citizen, asked the Spanish government in Mexico for permission to settle in sparsely populated Texas. Land was granted, but Austin died soon thereafter, so his son, Stephen F. Austin, took over the project. In 1821, Mexico gained independence from Spain, and Austin negotiated a contract with the new Mexican government that allowed him to lead some 300 families to the Brazos River. Under the terms of the agreement, the settlers were to be Catholics, but Austin mainly brought Protestants from the southern United States. Other U.S. settlers arrived in succeeding years, and the Americans soon outnumbered the resident Mexicans. In 1826, a conflict between Mexican and American settlers led to the Freedonia Rebellion, and in 1830 the Mexican government took measures to stop the influx of Americans. In 1833, Austin, who sought statehood for Texas in the Mexican federation, was imprisoned after calling on settlers to declare it without the consent of the Mexican congress. He was released in 1835.

In 1834, Santa Anna, a soldier and politician, became dictator of Mexico and sought to crush rebellions in Texas and other areas. In October 1835, Anglo residents of Gonzales, 50 miles east of San Antonio, responded to Santa Anna's demand that they return a cannon loaned for defense against Indian attack by discharging it against the Mexican troops sent to reclaim it. The Mexicans were routed in what is regarded as the first battle of the Texas Revolution. The American settlers set up a provisional state government, and a Texan army under Sam Houston won a series of minor battles in the fall of 1835.

In December, Texas volunteers commanded by Ben Milam drove Mexican troops out of San Antonio and settled in around the Alamo, a mission compound adapted to military purposes around 1800. In January 1836, Santa Anna concentrated a force of several thousand men south of the Rio Grande, and Sam Houston ordered the Alamo abandoned. Colonel James Bowie, who arrived at the Alamo on January 19, realized that the fort's captured cannons could not be removed before Santa Anna's arrival, so he remained entrenched with his men. By delaying Santa Anna's forces, he also reasoned, Houston would have more time to raise an army large enough to repulse the Mexicans. On February 2, Bowie and his 30 or so men were joined by a small cavalry company under Colonel William Travis, bringing the total number of Alamo defenders to about 140. One week later, the frontiersman Davy Crockett arrived in command of 14 Tennessee Mounted Volunteers.

On February 23, Santa Anna and some 3,000 Mexican troops besieged the Alamo, and the former mission was bombarded with cannon and rifle fire for 12 days. On February 24, in the chaos of the siege, Colonel Travis smuggled out a letter that read: "To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World.... I shall never surrender or retreat.... Victory or Death!" On March 1, the last Texan reinforcements from nearby Gonzales broke through the enemy's lines and into the Alamo, bringing the total defenders to approximately 185. On March 2, Texas' revolutionary government formally declared its independence from Mexico.

In the early morning of March 6, Santa Anna ordered his troops to storm the Alamo. Travis' artillery decimated the first and then the second Mexican charge, but in just over an hour the Texans were overwhelmed, and the Alamo was taken. Santa Anna had ordered that no prisoners be taken, and all the Texan and American defenders were killed in brutal hand-to-hand fighting. The only survivors of the Alamo were a handful of civilians, mostly women and children. Several hundred of Santa Anna's men died during the siege and storming of the Alamo.

Six weeks later, a large Texan army under Sam Houston surprised Santa Anna's army at San Jacinto. Shouting "Remember the Alamo!" the Texans defeated the Mexicans and captured Santa Anna. The Mexican dictator was forced to recognize Texas' independence and withdrew his forces south of the Rýo Grande.

Texas sought annexation by the United States, but both Mexico and antislavery forces in the United States opposed its admission into the Union. For nearly a decade, Texas existed as an independent republic, and Houston was Texas' first elected president. In 1845, Texas joined the Union as the 28th state, leading to the outbreak of the Mexican-American War.

Texas declares independence. (2007). The History Channel website. Retrieved 05:25, Mar 2, 2007, from http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=6824.

This is a picture of myself, my Aunt Susie and my sister Bo.  It was taken in 2000.  We were so happy that day, laughing and cutting up for the camera.  We call ourselves the "Old Babes".

Susie is my mothers youngest sister. Susie and I are the same age.  We grew up as sisters do, the three of us, planning our lives, dreaming our dreams, sharing our hopes and our faith.  We decided to have three kids a piece. Each of us would have a son first and then two pretty daughters.  God had other plans!  Susie and I both have three girls while Bo had three boys!

When this picture was made Susie had decided she was overweight and her DR put her on a drug to help her lose the pounds.  With in a year or so it was determined the drug caused Heart and Lung problems.  It was to late for Susie, she already had Pulmonary Hypertension and an over worked heart.  She is currently awaiting a double lung and heart transplant.  She is so thin she looks like she is from a third world nation, she suffers terribly everyday.  As I write this she is in the hospital once again .  I will not tell you all the horrible symptoms she lives with, just believe me when I say God is keeping her alive.  I love her so very much.  please prayer for the blessed Saint of God.  My dear and beloved Susie.

As my grand sons have gotten older, some of them anyway, it seemed a good idea to put up a tree with some cars on it.  All little boys love cars!  My grandsons , I have four, are Bryan mitten, 13, Ryan Roberts, 11,  Devon Roberts, 8 and our newest addition, Patrick Austin, two weeks.

This tree has cars, glass balls and lots of tinsel on it.