Last update 24 July, 2005
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My mother was a smart young thing. She graduated from high school at the age of 15. She took a year off then, since she was already feeling alienated from her schoolmates, who were 18, and far more involved in romances and so on. She decided that being much younger than peers was not a good thing. That had an impact on me, since it meant she would not let me be put forward in school when it was suggested.  Mum thought this was Hazel and her. 1936 In historical context, Mum was born in 1924, in the prohibition period, which started in 1922, and ended in 1933. The great depression started in 29 Oct 1929 with the "Great Crash" of Wall St. Caroline had been born in 1927. At the time of the "Crash", Mum was 6 and Caroline 2 (see census). Caroline died in 1934, the year after Prohibition was repealed, a few months before her 7th Birthday. Mum was 10. Mum remembers her parents making their own beer, dandelion wine, and other wines.  Cousins: Caroline McAnsh, Hazel Summerville, Cecil; sitting: Mink McAnsh, Jessie Summerville. 1936 The picture above is of the girls in 1936. Hazel was 18, Mum was 12, about to enter high school. Caroline and Mink (Mindabelle) are their cousins from Georgia. Mink, sitting arm and arm with mum, were virtually the same age. Hazel actually got married later that same year, and mum found herself the only child at home. Mum and her family lived on a hill, "Coal Hill", overlooking Steubenville. I visited that house in 1959, when I was 8, and my memory recalls a large weatherboard home, with verandahs. Gran was alive, and busy in the kitchen, Grandad bustling along, talking and doing grown-up things. I remember the house as dark, and cool, smelling of wood and cooking, a welcome retreat in summer. |
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I'm not certain what mum did the year she had off. I have a photo of her with her parents, a slim woman in trousers. I think it was taken a few years later, while she was at uni. I'll have to try and get her to date it. Around 1940 she entered University, doing a 5 year course that gave her a Bachelor of Science, followed by a practical internship in nursing. This mixture of academic and practical was unusual at a time when nursing was seen as a purely practical job, and nurses training was generally done as more or less an apprenticeship in a hospital. |
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The University she went to was Mt Union College in Alliance, Ohio (Ohio map). Mt Union is linked to the Methodist Church, though at the time it may have been less strongly linked, and linked to the "methodist episcopal" church as a funding body. Religiously, she was raised as a member of the Episcopal church (the US version of the Church of England). I don't think the sectarian commitment was strong though. Her parents were both Masons, and Anna had been raised in the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian faith. Carl had also been essentially Presbyterian, though his family seemed to have links with the Seceder sect of that church. In any case, Mum said that her parents went to the Episcopal church in Steubenville because it was "friendlier" and more social than other churches in town, rather than for doctrinal reasons.
After graduation she worked in a hospital in Cleveland, where she was in charge of the afternoon shift. She was flatting with other nurses, and it sounds like she was having a good time. I think she previously told me that she worked on the obstetrics ward. It was at the hospital that she met my father who was visiting his parents. It was also where I was born.
I was one and a half when we moved to the Canada/New York border. In Niagra Falls. Jean, Pat, George, and Barbara were born. Mum said she thought we lived on 92nd st. That would put us in the vicinity of Love Canal. My siblings were all born there. I think I went to the 93rd St School.
At the time Dad's sister Eugenia and her husband George lived in Buffalo. My father had completed an MBA, and gone to work with Bell Aircraft
Shortly before my youngest sister (Pam) was born, my father left Bell and got work with Lockheed Missile and Space, and we moved to California. Mum and Dad drove, and we went by plane. It was an old four-engine prop plane, and I remember flying low enough we could see the ground. I think that created a lasting expression that plane travel was very exciting, even though later planes flew so high you could never really see anything.
Mum's mum died shortly afterwards. My grandfather Carl came out to California and stayed for a while. My memory of him is that he was very sad, and drown some of that in beer. I think he pined for Annie. He died about 10 years later.
Mum was Rh-, my father Rh+. This meant that each of the children had a progressively greater chance of being rejected as anti-bodies bult up. Fortunately, we seemed to come progressively more and more prematurely. After the 6th however, enough was enough, and Mum made Dad get a vasectomy. Six children in eight years is enough to keep anyone busy.
I remember as a child, my mother was the woman many in the neighbourhood turned to, for problems both medical and emotional. I think that was initially because she was a nurse, having worked in ob/gyn, and a mother of 6, and so was a natural resource for women having any kind of problem (health or behavioural), and her empathy and openness led women to talk about their other issues. I can remember sitting listening to long discussions of relationships and child-rearing problems, along with all sorts of stuff on medical diseases.
Mum read a lot. I started reading early, and was at home ill often (I had athsma), and so I turned to her bookshelves. No Mills and Boons, but lots of Sci-Fi, fantasy, historical fiction. Not only that, it was generally good SF. I was introduced to the works of AA Merritt, Huxley, Orwell, Asimov, Norton, Zimmer-Bradley through Mum's bookshelves. That's where I struck Heinlien's "Stranger in a Strange Land", well before it was a hippy classic. The bookselves also carried titles like "The Power Elite" and books by Marcuse, Nietzsche, Twain; Shakespeare, Conan-Doyle,& CS Lewis, and other things that indicated a broad interest in ideas.
Mum went through a period of depression in the late 60s. I think it may have been clinical depression. I've also had clinical depression, and it may run in the family. In my mother's case, it basically went untreated. As the kids grew up, she went back to work, first in retirement homes, then working in private practices.
She has always had a small frame, and was very slim until she hit about 45. She gained some, but not a lot, and has recently lost that weight. Her hair is still mainly black, though she is now in her 80s. My hair also shows little signs of graying, though in the last couple of years, I've started to have white hairs in my eyebrows!
Mum always suffered from the cold. I think she has Reynaud's Syndrome, where women find their extremeties can become very cold. I certainly have that, and my feet and hands will go blue and white for 20 or more minutes. Other than that, I think my mother has been reasonably healthy. She's currently in the process of moving to Jeanne's. She is in good humour, but her memory is progessively being lost.
| Anna McAnsh | Census | Photo Gallery | Siblings | Carl Summerville |
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