Vol. III
MY LIFE STORY
(Continued)Louisville - Old Neighborhood (1945 - 1953)
Even though we were happy to be together as a family in Louisville, there were a lot of adjustments to be made to make our household run smoothly - Even though we had been married nearly seven years, we had never really kept a house going or had the responsibility of looking after children, but one "learned to do by doing." We were fortunate to have a house, thanks to Wendell's parents' generosity, but we did not have a lot of the conveniences we take for granted these days. Neither did we have the money to buy them at first. I remember washing our clothes in the bathtub and hanging them in the basement or outside, on pretty days, to dry. Elizabeth came to my rescue when she returned to Africa (1946) after a furlough in Pass Christian, Mississippi, and sent us her washing machine to keep while her family went back to Nigeria. What a luxury that was. In addition, she sent her ironer for doing shirts and linens. I was never good at mastering that however, and so Wendell began taking his shirts to a Chinese laundry near the Courier-Journal, where they did them very reasonably.
Another convenience I didn't have for a long time was a vacuum cleaner. Usually I swept the house and rugs with a broom and then mopped afterward to get rid of the dust. I remember on one occasion borrowing a vacuum from Mrs. Horrar across the street. We finally purchased one "on the installment plan", and I felt like a queen.
When we moved to Louisville we didn't have a car. We had sold ours in Nashville when Wendell joined the army, as I had a ride to work with the people who lived in the boarding house where I lived. Too, because of gasoline rationing, no one could use a car for unnecessary driving anyway. After the war, there were no cars for people to buy for quite awhile. Wendell put his order in to Howard Camnitz at Broadway Chevrolet, but I don't believe we were able to get a car delivered for a year or so. Wendell was able to ride the bus to work, and we all went on the bus to church or to town to see the doctor. The grocery store [Roppels] and drug store [Meisburg's] were just across the railroad tracks, which made shopping easy without a car.
One modern convenience which we would have enjoyed having was a gas or stoker coal furnace. However, the furnace which Wendell had to get up early every morning to fire up was an old coal furnace which took huge chunks of coal. In the winter time for the nine years we lived at 104 N. Crestmoor he did this faithfully. At night he made an effort to "bank" the fire in the furnace so that he wouldn't have to start it from scratch, but that sometimes didn't work. He'd have to start over with wadded up newspapers set on fire after he had shaken down the ashes, hoping the coal would soon catch on fire. I would keep the fire going all day [meaning shoveling coal into the furnace during the day] while Wendell was at work. Then he'd take over keeping the fire going and removing the ashes that accumulated. These had to be carried out from time to time. I believe the garbage man then carried them away. One of the nicest things about moving to 127 Hillcrest was the gas furnace, controlled by a thermostat. No more coal, coal dust, and ashes!
Mary Louise is born - 1946
It wasn't long after we moved to Louisville that we realized that another baby was on the way. I knew only one person in Louisville, Marie (Estes) Stopher, with whom I had worked at the Baptist Sunday School Board in Nashville before she moved back to Louisville where she had grown up. Her father was pastor of West Broadway Baptist Church, and she had married Joe Stopher whom she had known most of her life. I asked her if she knew of a doctor I could see, and she referred me to a friend of theirs who lived near them in the West End...Dr. Elbert Dennis. His office was in the Heyburn Building but he delivered babies and took patients to the old St. Mary and Elizabeth Hospital in the West End [ ]. That is how Mary Louise (now called Mary Lou!) came to be born [August, 1946] there in stead of at the Old Baptist Hospital where we went for Lainie's delivery and other operations performed later.
Wendell's mother said she would keep John Wendell in Salyersville when the new baby came. Wendell therefore took him up there just before I delivered, as I remember, and Johnny stayed in Salyersville until about two weeks after she was born, I believe. I remember that Wendell and I rode the bus (or was it a streetcar in those days?) out to the hospital, where they induced labor. I entered the hospital the afternoon before I gave birth. However, they told Wendell to go on home, that nothing would happen until the next day. When he called the hospital early the next morning, though, they told him the baby girl had just been born! He hated to miss being there, especially since he was not present for the birth of his first child either, but it was probably just as well. In those days fathers were not permitted in the delivery room anyway. He soon came to the hospital and found that everything was fine with both mother and baby. On about the sixth day, I believe, we went home from the hospital. For about a week we had a "practical nurse" stay with us to help me with the baby until I could get my strength back. During her stay with us, Wendell rode up to Salyersville and brought John Wendell back home. We felt happy indeed to have our happy, healthy family of four all together.
First Years in Louisville (1945-47)
One of the things I remember about the first year in Louisville, though, is not a pleasant memory but a sad one. I remember feeling very lonely and also very inadequate to handle all the responsibilities. We did not have any family or friends here, and for a long time I did not even know my neighbors across the street. Vacant lots were on each side of us and next to one vacant lot was a little-used street and a railroad track, making me feel even more isolated. Wendell was gone all day and no one else ever came. I don't think I ever told Wendell of my feeling of loneliness, but I feel he must have known. I think two things helped me cope with this problem. One was gratitude for my kind and wonderful husband and the other was the presence of our wonderful little boy that year, soon followed by our two equally precious little girls. I felt that indeed "my cup runneth over."
When my first lonely winter in Louisville ended with the coming of spring, we were blessed by the fellowship of many friends we were able to make at Crescent Hill Baptist Church. They became like an extended family for us for whom I will always be grateful.
In addition to the coal furnace we had at the house of 104 N. Crestmoor, we had a gas stove in the fireplace in the living room which gave additional warmth to the living room, which was the farthest room from the furnace. In the early morning, the living room could always be made warm quickly by turning on the gas stove. On many days when the house had not warmed up completely, our children would take their clothes into that room and dress in front of the fire. It was always a cozy place to read or sew, too. I spent quite a bit of time there reading to the children when they were young. It was not until 1952 that we bought our first television set. Therefore, we had more time for other activities in those days. One of the first sets of books I bought was a set of Childcraft books which I had enjoyed reading at Lucile's home in Corpus Christi. There were many stories, poems, and activities in those books which all my children enjoyed. There were many good articles to help in the rearing of children, also. These were beneficial to me, as I had not had much experience in the area of child development. I also found Dr. Spock's book on baby and child care of great help. In fact, I consulted Dr. Spock many times and even diagnosed Johnny's appendicitis by consulting Dr. Spock! We were fortunate to have the Crescent Hill library close by, and we went there frequently to check out books which the children selected.
In the spring of 1946 my life in Louisville became less lonely when a family built a house next door to us. The house, which was called "prefabricated" was put up very quickly and the Zimlich family became our next-door neighbors. They had a daughter, Carol, who was a year older than Johnny. Their second child, Michael, was born about the same time that Mary Louise was. Since they were Catholic, their children did not go to the same school our children attended. They were always good friends of ours, though, and the children enjoyed playing together. I also enjoyed having a friend nearby.
Even though our house on North Crestmoor was quite small, we did have company come to stay with us from time to time. We would always let them stay in our room and the rest of us would sleep on the sofa or pallets we'd make on the floor. I remember having done that as a child, myself, and didn't mind. Wendell had grown up in a larger house, though and didn't think much of these sleeping arrangements. One time Gerry, Mack and Katie came to see us and their visit almost resulted in a tragedy. I was in the kitchen making a picnic lunch and thought that Mack and Wendell were looking after Katie and Mary Louise, who were not much more than toddlers. They got distracted, however, and Mary Louise got away without their knowing it or my knowing it. Soon a lady came down the little hill from the railroad track carrying her and asking if this was our child. She said she was on the other side of the track waiting for a bus when she saw this little girl come crawling across the tracks! I was horrified and still cringe when I think about what a close call she had and how fortunate we were that a train did not come along at that time. I think what really happened was that Wendell came into the house to help me, leaving the girls in Mack's care, and he just watched Katie not knowing that Mary Louise had strayed away. It was a dreadful experience and one I felt guilty about for a long time. My father used to quote a verse which said, "The Lord preserveth the simple," and I felt that he was really looking over me at that time and protecting our child from the neglect of simple, ignorant parents! I will be eternally grateful for the person who found her and brought her back to us.
Another family who came to see us every three years en route to Nigeria was the Pool family. One time when the Southern Baptist Convention was being held during their furlough, they came by Louisville and left Jim to stay with us while they went to the 1947 Convention. I remember that Jim was such a good eater that when he finished the food on his plate he'd go over and eat what Johnny (who was a poor eater) had left on his plate! They used to eat at a little child's table I had in the kitchen and Johnny would have left the table already, but Jim was finishing everything up from both plates. We used to laugh about that a lot. Another memorable event I recall about that visit was that Jim had just recovered from chicken pox. After he left, our children all broke out with chicken pox too!
One thing I always think about in connection with that house on Crestmoor is the bunk beds that Johnny and Mary Lou slept in. Sometimes we put them down and used them as twin beds, but for a long time we stacked one on top of the other and all the children enjoyed climbing up and down. Julia Harlow used to come over to our house to stay after school when Ruth was working downtown at Sutcliffe's, and all the children enjoyed climbing the ladder and playing with our cats, of which we had many over the years.
It was about this time, when Mary Louise was around a year old [c.1947], that I began to type term papers for seminary students. That was one way I could earn a little extra money without leaving home and paying a sitter. We bought a used Underwood typewriter on the installment plan and I was in business! A friend of mine at church, Thelma Morton, whose husband had gotten his Ph.D. at the seminary suggested that I put my name on the seminary bulletin boards for typing Masters thesis and Doctoral dissertations. She had a friend, Henlee Barnette, who was teaching at Stetson and had written his dissertation. He was needing to have it typed (in 1948) and therefore called me. It was a very interesting dissertation about Walter Rauschenbusch who was the father of modern social work (called the "social gospel" by some). I really enjoyed reading the papers that I typed, and the money I earned was helpful in meeting expenses. It really was very low pay that I received for the number of hours I put in, but every little bit helped in those days. It was like the camel that put his head in the tent, though, and typing came to dominate my time. Sometimes I had several dissertations going at the same time, and I was frequently working under pressure to meet somebody's deadline. I remember one night a woman from U of L for whom I was typing and trying to meet her deadline, told me she would just stay and sleep on the couch while I typed a good bit of the night to finish up her thesis! It was crazy of me to let typing take over my life the way it did, and I have so many regrets about all the activities I missed with our children because I felt I had to stay at the typewriter. It did help pay our bills, though, and so in a way I didn't really have much choice. When the children got older, I realized I could make more money by substitute teaching part time and not be away from home when I needed to be there. Finally I was able to get a full-time job teaching and things began to improve financially on the home front. But, again, I'm getting ahead of my story.
[Johnny recalls Leila kissing him and Mary Lou at bedtime and saying what he thought was "Sleep, Type" because of drifting off to sleep with the sound of the typewriter going. Years later, he realized she had been saying, "Sleep tight!"]
One nice thing about our "old neighborhood" on North Crestmoor was the fact that there were some large wooded areas where our children could roam and play. It was almost like living out in the country. There were many children in our block who were near our children's ages, and I always felt that they all had a good time growing up there. After we finally got a car, I used to take the children to see different places like a dairy farm, the parks, and even to Cave Hill Cemetery many times to feed the ducks. We never heard of seat belts in those days but would just pile as many kids into the car as we could. I was fortunate never to have had a wreck.
The house on North Crestmoor was not air-conditioned and was pretty warm inside in the summer time, and the kitchen was just plain hot. Therefore, most evenings we ate our dinner outside the back door on a big picnic table we had. We also enjoyed the swing and coolness of our screened-in front porch at our North Crestmoor house. There were many children in the neighborhood the age of our children. There was not much traffic, either, which made it a better place for children to play outside. The children have not kept up with the ones they played with there, but I am sure we will always remember our next door neighbors, the Zimlichs; across the street neighbors, the Martins and Horrars; and down the-street neighbors, the Amicks, Germans, and Romans.
[Johnny recalls that there were the "little woods" -- actually just a wooded lot -- between the house and the road by the railroad tracks; a "momma woods" which was located behind the Martin's house across the road and contained several large vines which some of the older children used to swing from; and the "large woods" which still exists and is the area between the end of Crestmoor and Finley and the Crescent Hill Golf Course. Sue Martin was a geat story teller and would gather all the children of the neighborhood around her in the Martin's side yard and tell stories. She and others would occasionally lead the children into the "large woods" and at one particular spot deep into the woods and to the right of the overgrown rutted dirt road, she pointed out a rock formation about a foot off the ground with an overhanging ledge under which she said an ELF lived. We all believed. There were also games of hide-and-seek, and rolling down the small hill in front of the Horrars. Johnny would occasionally sneak out of the house at night and smoked his first cigarette standing under the street light in front of the the Rohmans house. He didn't do that too often so fearful he was of being caught. On one occasion he recalls the "game" where kids would take turn hyperventillating, then breath holding while someone squeezed around the waist causing each of in turn to pass out and experience strange dreams. Johnny recalls a vision of seeing a diesel engine coming down the tracks. And there were the usual childhood anatomy experiments usually in the Martin's garage where the kids would take off their clothes and experience showing off their nakedness. Of course, we never told the parents of these childhood experiences.]
[One of the destinations the boys of the neighborhood enjoyed particularly was the pond on the Masonic Home property -- where the Mockingbird Valley Garden estate section is now built. One got to this pond by traveling through the "large woods" along the fence and climbing over to the pond. We built rafts to float on the pond and also enjoyed going frog gigging there. I don't recall doing much fishing, but tadpoles and frogs were fun to watch.]
[Johnny: There was a house further north on Crestmoor across from the Rhomans where the lady who lived there had an elaborate clock set up in her dining room. When it stuck the hour on special days various figurines would move out of doors in the clock and travel around a track encircling her dining room. She would only invite the neighbors and children in on rare occasions, and Johnny recalls seeing the performance only once.]
[One of the notable events which occured during the stay in the "old neighborhood" was the burning of the Finley Sisters' House one evening. This was located on the east side of Finley Ave and may now be the property of the Masonic Home. The Victorian two story home had been occupied by the Finley sisters and caught fire and burned to the ground. The fire trucks couldn't get water to it, and it was completely gutted. All the neighborhood turned out to watch and spent the next few days sorting through the rubble looking for any treasures that might have remained. The only thing I found thought was a rotten egg.]
A not-so-pleasant memory I have of our old neighborhood was that an old man, Mr. Hirsch, who lived three vacant lots away from us (where houses were later built) had a bunch of dogs which he kept penned up; he was constantly burning old rags which he used to clean out their dog houses, apparently. The city would not permit that today, but in those days that area was just considered "country" and nothing was done about the air pollution.
I did have one other unpleasant experience with a neighbor, the Martin family. Mr. Martin had a concrete business and he used the lot and side street beside his house as a sort of "staging area" for all the people who worked for him everyday. I felt that since there were so many people gathering there (some of them not too desirable-looking) that is was not a safe practice, especially since it was not zoned for commercial purposes, and I complained to the "powers that be." Anyway, they must have found out that I was the one who complained and were not very friendly with us after the city made his company move their operation to another area. Since there were so many children in the neighborhood, I still feel that his operation there was an unsafe activity to be carried on in a residential area and that I was justified in objecting. The Martins must have finally gotten over their feelings, as we ended up as friends.
[Johnny recalls episodes where one side of the street would fight against the other side. The side the Arnetts and Zimlichs lived on vs the side the Martins and Horrars lived on. He remembers that the kids on opposite sides of the street wouldn't talk or play together for days or weeks and would even engage in rock throwing episodes across the street. It could be that some of these "wars" were brought on by Leila's "reporting" the Martins, but Johnny doesn't remember having been given a reason for the "taking of sides." For the most part, though, the children of the old neighborhood enjoyed playing together.]
A good memory I have of our old neighborhood was of Meisberg's drugstore, just across Frankfort Avenue from our house. He was always so helpful to everyone and so kind to the children. He would often put in a candy bar order and would offer to walk the children across the street and tracks, in an emergency, when they went by his store on their way home from school.
[Leila, Johnny recalls, would often ask Mr. Meisburg to put an egg in her son's milkshake in order to give him more nourishment. Johnny still doesn't like eggs.]
Life with a car - after 1947
I mentioned earlier about how hard it was to get a car after the war was over. Wendell repeatedly called Howard Camnitz and Universal Car Company, to no avail. Finally, he decided to write a letter to the president of General Motors and tell him about our long wait. It had been a year or two since his original order, if I remember correctly. At any rate, he soon had a reply to his letter and before long, the car was finally received at Universal Car Company at 2500 W. Broadway and delivered to us. It wasn't exactly the model we would have chosen, but we were glad to get anything. [The car they got was a "loaded" green 1947 Chevrolet which they kept until getting the used 1955 Chevrolet.] It was a dark green four-door model, but it was sort of bullet-sloped, making the back seat area not quite roomy enough for all our children who grew to be quite tall before we were able to trade it in. I need to look up the records to be sure but it seems to me that we had that first car about fourteen years.
Wendell rode the bus to work because it was so convenient and cheaper than driving to town. This was a good arrangement for me, too, since I always had the car available to go to the store or take the children places. Since we did not have any family here to leave the children with, I always took them with me when I went anywhere. I remember the first time I went out driving the car myself. I had made some friends at Sunday School and Training Union at Crescent Hill Baptist Church and decided to show off our car to one of them - Louise Sandidge, on North Galt. Imagine my embarrassment when I got to her house and the motor died! Nothing I did could make it start again. Finally some mechanic from a nearby filling station came and adjusted something to get it going again. In those days we didn't know about AAA and we therefore could not call them to come to help us.
One of the greatest benefits and pleasures we derived from owning a car was the fact that we could drive to Salyersville on occasion to visit Wendell's family there. They always fed us bountifully while we were there and loaded our car down with food when we started home. She always packed us a dinner of friend chicken, fruit, and cake which we ate on the way home. Usually, we ate dinner near the fence around the airport at Lexington and watched the planes land. It was just across from Calumet Farm, near Versailles, a pretty and interesting place to stop and relax awhile.
Since we had a car, we decided to make a trip out to Texas when Wendell's vacation time came the next August. I believe Johnny was five years old and Mary Lou was about three. We visited Aunt Katie and Uncle Ryland who lived on Uncle Henry's farm near Frankston. I remember Johnny riding an old horse they had named Monk. They also had a cow at that time which the children enjoyed seeing. From there we visited my father and stepmother in Lockhart and drove on down to visit Lucile and Clinton at Corpus Christi. They took us down to the famous King's Ranch where we saw a famous race horse there who had won the Kentucky Derby earlier. On our way back we spent a night at the Shamrock Hotel which had just been built in Houston. They gave us a special rate of $9.00, but we felt we were splurging to pay that big amount! The next day we drove on to New Orleans where we visited with Cope, Rhette and their young son, Cope Jr. It seems to me that he was less than a year old. That was the only time I ever saw Rhette. It was not too long after this that they went from New Orleans to Midland, Texas. I did not see Copass again until many years later when he came to someone's funeral, perhaps my stepmother's at Lockhart in 1959, or Uncle Ryland's at Winchester in 1969, or Aunt Katie's funeral at Winchester in 1973. I know I saw him briefly at Daddy's funeral in Dallas in 1966. He was not at all well but I did not know until later that he was suffering from alcoholism. It was not until after Cope, Jr. Married Mary in 1970 that she convinced Copass to have himself admitted to the hospital at Big Springs, Texas, where he underwent treatment for about two years for his alcoholism. When he left the hospital he determined never to drink again. He won that battle and spent the last fifteen years of his life working with Alcoholics Anonymous. He became director of the Texas Alcohol Commission headquartered in Austin and traveled extensively, anytime anywhere, to help anyone trying to overcome addiction. At his funeral in Odessa hundreds of people came and testified about how much he had helped them overcome in their fight against the disease which had also afflicted him for about twenty-five years before he received treatment. They say that no one really recovers completely, and he spent many of his nights just walking and walking as he fought the urge to take a drink. For this reason he never spent the night with Ross and Fay or Lucile and Clinton when he would be in their community and drop by for a visit. Now would he ever spend the night with Elizabeth and Christie. In fact, when he came to see us in Louisville, finally, in about 1985 (the only time he ever visited us), he told us that it was the first time in about thirty - some years that he had spent the night under the roof of any family member. We felt flattered that he stayed with us several days and nights before starting back to Texas. He had traveled here in a round about way from Texas, going by way of places in the Southeast (North Carolina, for example) he had never seen before. He constantly expressed amazement at our beautiful trees and grass. In West Texas, where he spent much of his life, there were very few trees and not much grass!
1948-49
I remember my parents coming by to see us when they moved from Richmond, Virginia, to Lockhart Texas to retire. Daddy had been editor of the Commission, a magazine at the Foreign Mission Board, for five years after he retired from being editor of the Baptist Messenger in Oklahoma. They moved to Lockhart in 1948 where they lived together until my stepmother's death in 1959. Daddy continued to live there, off and on, until 1963 when he moved to Mary Trew Home in Dallas. During the years following my stepmother's death, he traveled quite a bit visiting all six of his children most of the time. The last year he was in Lockhart, Elizabeth and Christie lived with him during their furlough. Before they returned to Africa he had decided he wanted to move to Dallas to the Mary Trew Home which had been established there by the Baptists. He loved living there and remained there for three years until his death in 1966 at the age of 92.
I have gotten far ahead of myself and therefore need to go back to our early years in Louisville. I mentioned the fact that Carol Zimlich next door, was a year older than Johnny, so she was the first one on our side of the street to go to school. She delighted in sharing with him, Mary Louise and her brother Michael things that she was taught in school. Both we and the Zimlichs had big picnic tables in our back yards. Our kids frequently gathered around these tables to talk and play games. One day I heard the children discussing something about which they disagreed and I heard Carol say to Johnny in a very sarcastic way, "Oh you don't know everything, You haven't been to kindergarten." She had been and apparently thought she knew it all! The next year he did get to go and seemed to enjoy it. Mrs. Logsdon was his kindergarten teacher and also Mary Louise's, two years later. Several years after that the Louisville Public School discontinued kindergarten for several years. For this reason when it came time for Elaine to go to kindergarten, there was no public-school kindergarten for her to attend. Many children her age went to private kindergarten at Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church, but we could not afford private school in those days. Therefore, she played at home and did not begin school until she was six years old and entered the first grade at Emmet Field.
1950
Another thing I remember about our house on North Crestmoor was the tiny little house at the back of our lot which Wendell made into a sort of studio. Before he moved out there, we each had a work area in the dining room for his drawing and my typing. After the children went to bed at night we worked on our "second careers" of free-lancing with drawing and typing. The only trouble about his being out in his "studio", though, was that we didn't see each other very much. When we moved to our house on Hillcrest, he made his studio in the basement. We could communicate better although that was not a perfect arrangement either. We were blessed, though, to have room in our house for even this arrangement.
Recently I drove back to the old neighborhood and discovered that the little house at the back of our lot is no longer there. A privacy fence had been built around the back yard, which now includes the area which was a small vacant lot next to us. While I was trying to see how things had changed a young lady drove up who now lives in our old house. She was just a bride and had lived there just a year. She invited me to look around the back yard and I discovered that the concrete slab that had been poured in front of Wendell's little studio was still there. As I examined the piece of concrete I discovered one footprint and part of another which I believe our children must have left there when the concrete was poured. I made a crude "rubbing" of the prints but hope to go back soon with some chalk and better paper to make a better copy for our children to see when they come home this summer. The old garage is still standing but I believe the tree where the tree-house had been built is gone.
[In 2001 John and David brought part of the slap to the 612 back yard. The inscription on the slab was: "J.W.A" "9/16/50" with accompanying hand and foot prints.]
[Johnny remembers visiting WW in the little studio where he had a small coal stove to warm it and a radio for entertainment while he drew his cartoons and sketches. Johnny recalls listening to such programs as "Suspense," "Gang Busters," "The Lone Ranger," "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" and others. Occasionally WW would smoke cigars in the little studio. Leila eventually persuaded him to stop.]
In 1950 several memorable events occurred. Wendell's father, who had been in declining health for several years, died July 28 at the age of 77. We all went to his funeral in Salyersville. I remember the church bells tolling as they carried his casket from the house, where he had been lying in state, to the church. Wendell always said that the bells tolled the number of years a man had lived. Another event of 1950 was John Wendell began the first grade at Emmet Field. We had a car pool in our neighborhood and took turn-about taking our children to school and picking them up, as there was no bussing in the Louisville Public Schools. That fall was memorable for another reason: I became pregnant again, and Dr. Solomon said we would have our new baby in June. In December of that year Ross was transferred from Fort Dix, New Jersey, to Camp Atterbury near Indianapolis, and they decided to spend Christmas with us while they were house-hunting. That was a very busy and crowded Christmas at our house, as they had just had their fourth son, Jon, born during that year. We made beds all over the house, though, and managed just fine until they could find another place to live. It so happened that John Sandidge had been called back into the army, to be sent to Korea, and Louise had gone to Texas to stay with her mother there. Since their furnished house was not occupied, I called Louise in Lufkin, Texas, and asked her if she would be willing to rent her house to Ross and Fay. After discussing it with her family, she called back that they would rent it until they could find another place. Because housing was scarce here and also in Indianapolis, it was hard to find a place. In about a month though, they located an available place on Esplanade Ave. Near Kenwood Hill in Iroquois Park. They stayed there until 1952, July or August, when Ross, too, was sent to Korea. Fay and their four boys then moved back to Oklahoma City "for the duration" of that war. John Sandidge used to laugh and tell a funny story about their reunion in Korea. John was a captain, I believe, and Ross was a Colonel. When they met in the Officers' quarters, John said, "Hello, Ross." Someone admonished him that he shouldn't call the Colonel by his first name, but John replied, "Why? He's just an old tenant of mine" and doubled up laughing again.
[Cats at the old neighborhood included Chessie who ironically got run over by a train. When someone told Leila that her favorite cat had had been killed this way, she went up to the tracks and gathered up Chessie's remains and spread them out on newspapers on the kitchen floor and cried over them. A few years later another cat was found drowned in a gutter in the back yard. We never had a dog nor really wanted one.]
Elaine is born - 1951
I believe that it was in the spring of 1951 that Aunt Katie came up for a visit. I remember driving her down to Mammoth Cave and she enjoyed seeing the Cave a lot. However, she was scared to death when we got in the little boat and took a ride on the underground river. I remember taking Johnny out of school that day to go with us. His teacher (was it Mrs. Steubling) was not too happy about my doing that, but I thought he would learn more at Mammoth Cave than at Emmet Field. She asked us to practice his "number stories" on the way down there and back. I never had heard that term used before, but I soon realized she was talking about what we used to call addition and subtraction.
Sometime in the spring of 1951, Wendell had an opportunity to go on a towboat ride as a guest of the Ashland Oil Company. He boarded the boat at Louisville and rode all the way to New Orleans, and then returned home by bus. At that time he was working on a cartoon strip named "Marty Lynn." Even though it was not really the best time in our family for him to be away from home (since it was just a few weeks before our baby was due), it did seem like a wonderful opportunity for him to learn first hand about life on a towboat, so I agreed and urged him to go. I could have reached him anytime, in case of emergency, but fortunately, none occurred and I went full term without any physical problem.
As we had done when we were expecting our second child, we planned for Wendell to take our two older children to Salyersville when the baby came for his mother to keep until about a week or two after birth. Wendell took me over to Baptist Hospital in June, 1951, and Dr. Solomon induced labor and Elaine was born in just a few hours. Methods for delivery and recovery had changed so much since the earlier experiences I had had, and instead of lying in bed a long time, I was up and walking to the bathroom before the day was over. Wendell took the children up to his mother's home the next day, and all went well. Unlike my previous unsuccessful experience in trying to nurse, I had good luck with our third child and was able to get along without ever having to use formula. When I went home from the hospital, Mrs. King came and stayed with us a week to help out. I don't know how she was referred to us, but Fay and I both used her as a baby sitter. She really looked forward to days at Fay's house with Alan and Jon, and she didn't mind at all taking the bus out to Kenwood Hill. After Fay and her family moved away, Mrs. King continued to help us out, on occasion, for a long time (as all of our children remember). She was a "character", and Wendell used to keep us in stitches imitating her telling some of her rather crude stories. One story he used to tell about her was one time when they were eating supper and she was telling about some baby being sick, she said to him, "Mr. Arnett, that little baby's manure was as white as your shirt." Ugh! She was also a regular "Mrs. Malaprop", sometimes, as she frequently used the wrong word. She was dependable, though and I used to feel sorry for her, as she had no family and she always seemed to like Wendell, especially, and gave him the platform rocker in our bedroom. She said it was a hundred years old. She also gave us the wrought-iron floor lamp in our TV room. One time when she was moving from place to place she had us keep a cedar chest for her. When she finally got settled, however, she asked us to take it to her apartment. When she died we thought maybe she had some valuables in the cedar chest or a big bank account somewhere, but some distant relative later told us that they never could find any money. She was always very frugal but I thought she was just thrifty. In addition to the chair and floor lamp, she also gave Wendell the bookcase on the basement landing, which she said her husband had built, and the drop-leaf table in the basement. So many magazines are loaded on top of it, I'm not sure what condition it is in. It is painted white, but it might be that if the paint were removed, some pretty wood would be there.
In the fall of 1951, Mary Louise began kindergarten [Ms. Logsdon] and John Wendell went to the second grade [multiple teachers]. We continued to be in a riding group, taking it turn-about transporting the children to and from school. The next summer, Ross and Fay moved away as he had orders to go to Korea. Fay and the children went back to Oklahoma City to stay until the Korean war was over. Poor Fay had to rear her first two boys as a single parent because Ross was away in North Africa and Europe so long during World War II. Now it appeared she would have to bring up Alan and Jon without Ross, as he was again out of the country. To help her with this task, they enrolled Rob and Donald in Oklahoma Military Academy, not far from Oklahoma City.
1952
In August of 1952 Johnny fell to the ground when he was climbing a rope ladder leading to the tree house Wendell had built. He ran, crying, to the house holding his side, and I thought maybe he had broken a rib. Someone helped me get him to the hospital, and Dr. Anderson called Dr. E.S. Allen, suspecting a ruptured spleen. Dr. Allen confirmed his diagnosis and operated immediately. Friends from church helped take care of our two children at home so that we could stay with Johnny at the hospital. He was very ill, but he soon began to improve and recover from his traumatic experience.
About the time they began to talk about taking him home, we had a phone call saying that Uncle Mack had been in a terrible accident in Bryson City, N.C. en route home from Ridgecrest. He had fallen out of his car, when the door accidentally came open and, the car had run over him. Aunt Leila was able to stop the car and someone had taken them in an ambulance to Bryson City. He lingered for about a week before he died [Sept. 7, 1952]. I wanted to go to be with Aunt Leila, but of course I wanted and needed to stay with Johnny. By the time of Uncle Mack's funeral Johnny was sufficiently recovered to be home, and Wendell's mother came to stay with the children while Wendell and I went to Nashville and back to attend Uncle Mack's funeral.
In the midst of all this devastating experience, school started in Louisville and Mary Lou entered the first grade [Sept. 1952]. She must have been so upset by it all that it is no wonder her teacher [Ms. Sillings] sent me a note and wondered "if anything had happened at home" to upset her. Furthermore, the next day when I went over to school to pick her up, her car door accidentally came open and she nearly fell out. Fortunately the car was not yet moving, but we were both scared to death! When it rains it pours, they say, and one other thing had happened in Nashville which upset me. While I was there, I had my first hemorrhage from my lungs and had no idea what caused that. Fortunately, nothing else happened that day to cause alarm, and I decided to ask a doctor about it after I got home. It was a matter of concern to me, though, and I worried about what might develop "down the road." There wasn't much time to worry much, however, because when Johnny's health improved I needed to return to my typewriter and finish typing a dissertation I had begun when his accident happened. The person for whom I had been working, had been very kind and said he did not have a deadline to meet, removing any feeling of pressure to get it completed soon. However, it did need to be done some time and I was relieved when I finally turned it all over to him.
In October 1952 Wendell went to South Charleston, W. Va. For Gene Paul Arnett's funeral. Gene Paul was Paul's son and died when he was about eight years old of nephritis, a kidney disease. All his little scout friends were pallbearers and Wendell said is was such a sad occasion.
In November of 1952 things seemed to be back to normal so we planned to go up to Salyersville for a visit. It might have been for Thanksgiving but I can't remember the exact date. On our trip home about the time we left Frankfort Johnny began having an intense pain in his abdomen. We drove home as fast as we could and called Dr. Allen immediately. He couldn't think of any relationship his pain might have to his recent spleenectomy and suggested I call our family doctor, Sam Anderson, which I did. While I was waiting for him to come to the house, I read Dr. Spock's book and decided Johnny must have appendicitis. When Same came he agreed with me and called Dr. Allen back. Since it was late at night when we got to the hospital (Sam drove us there), Dr. Allen suggested that they give Johnny something to "hold it off until morning", which made Sam furious. He thought he should have surgery at once. By morning, Johnny's appendix had ruptured and he was in a very critical condition. Fortunately, he did survive and finally recovered completely, but Sam said that was the last time he'd ever call Dr. Allen. He had been the foremost children's surgeon in Louisville, but he was getting up in years and should have retired earlier. John Wendell recovered from his second operation finally and he was able to return to Emmet Field and complete the third grade, even though he missed 50+ days of school that year.
The Zimlichs, next door, were the first people we knew to own a television set. That was because he worked at GE and all the children in the neighborhood used to gather in their living room every afternoon to watch "T-Bar V," and they even went down to the TV station on their birthdays to appear on TV. After Johnny's accident Mr. Zimlich was able to get a TV set for us at a discount. Watching that during his convalescence was fun for him and helpful to us all. The box that it had come in was quite large, and the children enjoyed playing in it almost as much as they did watching TV!
[Among the popular TV shows in addition to "T-Bar V" were "Howdy Doody," "Flash Gordon," "Roy Rodgers," "Sky King," and "Hop-a-long Cassidy." Leila and Wendell purchased a linoleum tile "Hop-a-long Cassidy" "rug" for Johnny and Mary Lou's room. The lineolum is still in place in the basement at 127 Hillcrest. Johnny recalls Leila taking him to see Gene Autry perform at the Armory one day, and after the show she took him back stage where he was able to meet Mr. Autry and pet his horse Champion.]
[In June of 1952 Wendell finished most of the Marty Lynn strips. In fall of 1952 he took a trip to Chicago to try to sell his "Adventures of Capt. Marty Lynn" comic strip to some of the newspapers and syndicates there. He was rejected.]
[One summer, possibly 1953, Mary Lou had been visiting a construction site in the old neighborhood and was fascinated with finding many shinny 10 penny nails. She gathered these up and was running home when she stumbled and jammed them point first into the center of her forhead. Had she been a few inches right or left she might have put out an eye. As it turned out she was left with a small scar in her forehead for years.]
1953 - 127 Hillcrest Ave
By 1952 when our third child [Elaine] began to outgrow her baby bed, it was imperative that we look around for a larger house. We were limited in what we could afford to pay for a larger house because we were still operating on a single income. In the summer the price was cut considerably on a house we had been looking at on Hillcrest, and we decided that we could finance the loan adequately. We used the money we received from the sale of our house on North Crestmoor as the down payment and closed the deal just before school started in 1953. We hired the movers to move us on Labor Day week-end and said good-bye to our little house on North Crestmoor where we had lived nine years. We had so many memories associated with that little house that leaving it was a very emotional experience for me, especially. It was a very traumatic experience and I really grieved a lot. I don't believe Wendell felt so sad about moving as I did, and he was really happier about coming to this particular house than I was because he had always lived in a two-story house growing up, and had always wanted us to have that kind of house. To me this house was less than ideal because of the small bedrooms, impractical windows and many steps and other undesirable features. However, the price was right, and 127 Hillcrest has proven itself to be a good place to live these forty-six years, I think.
When we moved to our house on Hillcrest the children were ages two, seven and nine. We joined a different riding group, but we lived close enough to Emmet Field that the older children sometimes walked to school. We kept the same riding group when the older children went to Barret Junior High which made getting to school less of a problem.
We had thought that when we moved to Hillcrest Lainie and Mary Lou would use one room with the bunk-beds stacked and Johnny could occupy the other little bedroom. The back bedroom, though, proved to be too small to unstack the beds. Also, the temperature on the top bunk was very uncomfortable. Having a window fan to pull in the cool night air helped some, but not much. Finally we decided to move our own bed into the back corner-bedroom and give the girls the larger room. We kept this arrangement until Johnny went away to OBU and Elaine moved into his room. I had always thought that it would have been nice if each child could have had a room alone, but we just had to "make do". I guess families have always had to do that! I remember having to share a room with Copass for awhile in Oklahoma City, and then later I shared not only a room but a three-quarter bed my senior year in high school with Elizabeth. Wendell and Paul had to share the sleeping-porch room in Salyersville when they were growing up.
When we began house-hunting, one of the things we looked for was a house big enough to accommodate not only our family but an additional "child" for awhile -- Carolyn Pool. My sister Lucile had kept Frances when it became necessary for her to stay in America to attend high school, and I had always hoped that when it came time for Carolyn to remain in America that we would be able to keep her, as Lucile had kept Frances. It did seem that the house on Hillcrest could be expanded by making the little TV room into another bedroom for her, which is what we did. Unfortunately because of my health we kept her only one year rather than the three years of high school; and she moved from our house to her sister Frances' house in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, for the two remaining years of high school.
The first day we moved into our house the weather was extremely hot and the house very uncomfortable. Along about bedtime Johnny began to experience a very bad earache. We hadn't yet had our phone connected and therefore could not call Dr. Anderson. Finally, I went next door and asked our next door neighbors, the Pages, if I could use their phone to call the doctor. They were nice enough to let me do that but I was a little embarrassed later when I found out that they were Christian Scientists! Dr. Anderson did come and gave us some medicine which helped his earache clear up.
Early Years on Hillcrest - 1953-55
School usually began the day after Labor Day, therefore Johnny and Mary Louise went back to Emmet Field right away. Elaine and I stayed home and tried to get things organized in our new home. She became acquainted with some little girls in our block, Cissy and Virgie Shuck and Austin Cooper, with whom she played, quarreled and then made up many times over the years. In addition to school friends, Johnny and Mary Lou had several friends in the neighborhood with whom they played for many years: the Wolfords, the Isaacs, the Jordans, the Howards and others. The seven Wolford children -- Beth, Steve, Linda, Richard, John, Mary Alice and Roger - were the envy of our children because every week when their grandfather came out from the Puritan Apartments where he lived to see them, he brought them each a present! Sandy and Carol Jordan were friends of our children, but Tim was too young to play with them. Since Mrs. Jordan was gone quite a bit, Sandy spent quite a bit of time at our house with Mary Lou. Tom, Candy and Don Isaacs were about the age of our children. On summer evenings, especially, you could hear all of them out on English Street by the side of our house playing "kick the can." [Also we played "Capture the Flag," "Dinky Toys," softball, basketball, football at the water company and went swimming at the "old" Crescent Hill pool and the new pool.] There were not many cars on that street in those days, and it was almost like a neighborhood playground.
1954
Sometime in 1954 I had a more severe hemorrhage than my first one a couple of years earlier [first at Mack's funeral in Nashville in 1952], and Wendell took me to the old Baptist Hospital for tests. I believe I had a couple of bronchoscopies that year and they determined that I had bronchiectasis.
1955
Because of scar tissue the bronchial tube to my right middle lobe had been eroded, and they decided I should have surgery to remove that lobe in June [1955]. It was not a very convenient time for me to have surgery because Elizabeth and Christie were returning to Africa that summer [1955] and were planning to bring Carolyn to our house en route to New York, their port of embarkation. Frances had just married Bob Blinn in Harlingen, Texas where Clinton was superintendent of schools. She had been living with them and had met Bob there where he was in pilot training. She had gone to Waco for a year as her parents were on furlough there, and she attended Baylor University that year. She decided to drop out of school, though and marry Bob Blinn who was being transferred to Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Since the doctor thought I would recover completely from surgery, everyone decided to go on with their plans to leave Carolyn here with us for her high school education. Wendell's mother agreed to come stay with Lainie while I was in the hospital. Johnny and Carolyn were to help her here. Ruth and Paul had invited Mary Louise (as she was called then) as their daughter was about her age. Since Elizabeth and Christie, with Jim, were driving right through South Charleston, W. Va., en route to New York, she rode with them to Ruth and Paul's house. After my surgery [June 1955] and recovery in the hospital and at home for awhile, Wendell's mother returned to Salyersville and a good friend of ours, Margaret Pergrem, in Ashland, said she would bring Mary Lou back to Louisville and stay with us a few days to help out. Her husband, Buck, worked for the railroad and had recently been transferred from Louisville back to their original home in Ashland. We had become friends when they went to Crescent Hill Baptist Church, and their daughters, Peggy and Pat, were friends of our children. I will always be grateful for Margaret's help. She was able to leave her children with family members in Ashland when she came to help me out.
After Margaret went back, Aunt Leila and Aunt Katie came to help us out awhile. They were a big help with the children and getting meals on the table. My Sunday School class members took turn about preparing dinner for us. I can never thank them enough for all the help and food they brought to us. I finally felt well enough to keep things going, but I seemed to tire so easily and be in so much pain in my rib cage that I didn't really feel adequate to do everything. Wendell was helpful in so many ways and was so understanding of my limitations. All the kids, too, pitched in and did their chores. I'm sure they tired of doing the tasks listed on a chart. I tried to check off tasks completed and also the ones not completed and had hoped to have a system of rewards worked out but never did satisfactorily solve that problem.
[Carolyn Pool lived in the first floor "music room" at 127 Hillcrest while attending 10th grade at Atherton High School.]
At Christmastime [1955] I felt overwhelmed at the many responsibilities which were piling up. Imagine my surprise one day just before Christmas when I answered the front door bell and there stood my sister Lucile! She had left Clinton and Gene to celebrate Christmas without her and had hitched a ride with some airmen in Harlingen who were driving to Louisville for Christmas to visit their families here. Lucile was always full of energy and ideas and she was a wonderful gift to us all that year as she carried out all her plans for us to have a really good Christmas celebration. I know she must have been tired when she got back home after all the work she did at our house! She even worked many hours in the night, putting hem in a dress for me. Then it turned out that the boys with whom she was riding were so tired themselves, that they asked her to do a lot of the driving on their trip back to Harlingen. That was a long, long trip since Harlingen is way down in the Rio Grande Valley, almost as far south as you can get an still be in Texas.
Carolyn Pool had come to live with us in the summer of 1955 when her parents returned to Nigeria. She was in the tenth grade, I believe, and attended Atherton High School that year. When school was out she went to Cedarmore. She seemed to enjoy school and activities at the church. One of her best friends was Carol Lipphard, who took Carolyn with her and her mother to musical concerts here. Carolyn did not play an instrument but did take piano lessons that year from Mildred Raplee, our neighbor, who also taught Mary Lou and Elaine. Johnny had taken piano lessons when he was younger from Mrs. Hoffman (Charlie Hoffman's mother), but he decided that he would rather play the trombone than the piano. The reason he had taken from Mrs. Hoffman was that the Burhans boys all took from her, since she had been a pianist at Crescent Hill for many years. She was quite elderly and didn't appeal to the children very much. Mrs. Raplee's main asset was that she lived just two doors away. Her main job was teaching elementary school but she taught piano and tutored in her home after school.
1956
Even though we managed all right the year Carolyn was here [1955-56], with everyone pitching in, I felt that the responsibility of having four children to take care of was more than I could handle another year. Porter suggested that a boarding school in East Tennessee named Harrison Chilhowee might be a good place for her to attend high school. However before plans for her to go there were finalized, Elizabeth and Christie along with Frances and Bob Blinn decided that it might be better for Carolyn to live with them the following two years until she finished high school. Since Frances had a baby that spring, it was also felt that Carolyn could be of help to Frances in taking care of little Bobby. Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where Frances and Bob lived had a good high school, and Carolyn did well there. They also had a junior college in Murfreesboro, and Frances planned to continue her college work there. She had gone to Baylor only one year, but I am not sure how many classes she took at Murfreesboro because Bob had to go overseas awhile and Frances came to Louisville awhile to live, as her parents were back from Nigeria and were spending a furlough year here. Carolyn, too, lived with them some and attended U. of L.; but when they went back to Nigeria she went to Baylor University for her other college years and also to work on her Masters. She did not finish her Masters at that time, however, because she decided to marry Harry Porter whom she had met when she was visiting us in Louisville. When she was at Baylor, she used to come stay with us during Christmas holidays and vacations.
We all [except Johnny in college or Navy Boot Camp] went to Waco for Carolyn's wedding [June 13, 1964], and I was the surrogate "mother of the bride", since Elizabeth and Christie were back in Nigeria. Carolyn and Harry lived in Dallas awhile; but they soon moved to Louisville where he had gotten a job (or was finishing his engineering degree) at Speed, and she was employed by Kentucky Southern College to teach English. They were married several years; but they finally got a divorce, as Harry was very strange and abusive. He must have inherited his strangeness from his mother, who was a very peculiar person. His father was a well known physician here and his brother, Dick, was a lawyer and was married to one of Carolyn's best friends. Carolyn had been in their wedding, in fact, and that might have been how she met Harry. One evidence of Mrs. Porter's peculiarity was the fact that she named their three boys: Tom, Dick and Harry!
After Carolyn and Harry divorced, she continued to teach at Kentucky Southern College for several years until the school closed for financial reasons. Since Frances and Bob lived in Washington, she decided to go to Washington and get a job there. I believe it was in the field of publishing, and that is where she met Dick Bullington. Eventually they married [Dec 3, 1971] and had Richard and Margaret. They also adopted two children, Susan and Brenda. Somewhere along the line, she and Dick also got a divorce. She had possession of the four children, but he helped out some with their expenses. This is all getting ahead of my story, though.
1957
I plan to pick up our own story about the time Elaine began school [fall 1957, 1st grade, Ms. Tietze] and give some of the highlights of the years our children attended public schools in Louisville. I do not plan to give a detailed account, however, because I feel that everyone already knows most of the things that happened during those years. Most families experience good times and bad times, and I am grateful that with God's help, and effort on everyone's part, our children as well as their parents made it through those years. So, as Forrest Gump would say, "That's all I'm going to say about that!"
All of our children attended Emmet Field Elementary School, Barret Junior High School, and graduated from Atherton High School. I was thankful that they had a stability and continuity in their public school education as I had never had that in my experience because of my family moving around every year to a different place. I always thought that our children did, indeed, get a good education in Louisville Public Schools. My one regret was that public school kindergarten was eliminated for several years, just at the time Lainie was at the age to attend. Therefore, she never had the "kindergarten experience", as we were unable to afford private kindergarten on Wendell's salary at that time. She managed to survive without it, however, and had many neighborhood children to play with at home that year. When she was six, she began the first grade at Emmet Field where Mary Louise was a sixth grader. The next year Mary Louise went to Barret where Johnny was a ninth grader. When he went to Atherton in the tenth grade, Mary Louise was an eighth grader at Barret and Elaine was a third-grader at Emmet Field. For two years we had children in three public schools in Louisville, meaning memberships and participation in three P.T.A.'s. Those were busy times in everyone's life, mine especially, I felt!
The Children's Work Experiences
While I am writing about my work and Wendell's work, I
do not want to fail to mention the work that our children did to earn money and
help themselves reach their goals and fulfill their wishes (and ours, too). When
Johnny was in Barret, he was able to get a job delivering the Courier-Journal
in the mornings and The Louisville Times
in the afternoon. It was very demanding and took up most of his time and energy
that year. When the papers were delivered, he had to spend a lot of time
collecting from his subscribers. On Sundays (all night Saturday night, in fact)
he and Wendell worked together assembling and delivering the paper. When the
weather was bad, too Wendell or I would drive him to his route (Birchwood from
Frankfort Avenue to Grinstead) and then Grinstead Drive from Birchwood to Hite.
He saved quite a bit of the money he earned and it helped pay his expenses at
OBU.
Another job he had, after he gave up the paper route, was working as a "bag boy" at Winn Dixie on Shelbyville Road. One additional bonus of that job was the fact that they gave him a lot of the bread left over on Saturday night, and he took it to the "MK House" for the use of the Nigerian missionaries kids. Another, even less glamorous job that he had was running the dishwashing machine at the seminary cafeteria and also at the Christian Church Home on Fourth Street. He made so little money in those jobs, however, that he didn't work there very long.
Mary Louise also had jobs like babysitting and driving Mrs. Menefee to her office and back every day. One week-end she even drove her to Beaumont Inn and enjoyed her stay there, as there was a swimming pool which she was able to use. When she was at Peabody she had a job waiting tables, which helped out with her expenses there.
When Lainie was a teenager she spent endless hours babysitting. One year she also got a job working in a boutique at the Mall and doing Volunteer work at one of the hospitals. I am sure that there were many other jobs all the children did. They were all industrious and have been amazing to me in all the ways they continue to work such long hours, today. If Dr. Oates hadn't already coined the work "workaholic", someone in our family could surely have done so! Wendell himself seemed to enjoy working on his painting without tiring or taking time off for other things. He also enjoyed working in the yard and helping me with the vacuum, even. I, too, must have enjoyed the work I did typing, or I wouldn't have worked so many hours overtime to help someone meet a deadline, for so many years.
Typing
One reason that I was so busy during those years was the fact that I had two jobs. My main job, I always felt, was to take care of our family as best I could with the resources we had available. My second job was to help provide more resources by typing theses and dissertations for students at the Seminary and also at Bellarmine College and the University of Louisville. I was thankful that I had this opportunity to earn extra money without having to go away from home, but the pay was far from adequate for the number of hours I had to type. I regret that the hours I could, and should, have spent doing things with our children had to be spent at the typewriter. I was unable to think of any other way to work things out, though. In those days there were no child-care facilities, and we did not have anyone in our family to help, and so I typed for about eighteen years [c1946-c1959]. I never thought I was capable or trained enough to do any other work.
Leila the Seamstress
In addition to typing, a good bit of my time was spent on sewing as well as cooking and cleaning. I was fortunate that Wendell's mother gave me a sewing machine, which was really a necessity. I had made baby clothes for all my children by hand, but the sewing machine made it possible for me to make curtains, bedspreads, and clothes for the children and myself. I remember making corduroy overalls for Johnny and countless dresses for the girls. Nicken's Dry Goods Store was a Crescent Hill institution, and she carried beautiful material, patterns and "notions" (thread, buttons, pins and needles) which we needed for our wardrobe. My stepmother had been a wonderful seamstress. She had always made my clothes, when I was growing up; and I was fortunate that she taught me to sew. "Ready made clothes" were very expensive and so my knowing how to sew was a way we could have pretty clothes for a lot less money. I enjoyed sewing but was not as skilled a seamstress as my stepmother. She made many "sister dresses" for the girls which were beautiful (both the dresses and the girls were beautiful!).
One reason my sewing was not as good as it could have been was that my sewing machine was not a standard brand. At one time, later on, I traded it in for a Singer, which performed much better. It had some attachments, like a hemmer and a buttonhole-maker, which I used when I made pretty curtains for our whole house on North Crestmoor out of a bolt of "brown domestic", we called it. It was an unbleached muslin and made up into beautiful curtains. I re-made them into "cafe curtains" for our upstairs windows when we moved into our present house. I really got my money's worth when I bought that material.
I continued to make clothes for the girls as long as they would wear what I made. There came a time, however, when I could not compete with "Mr. And Mrs. Konikov" or "McMullen collars" and Tweed and Tartan - so I quit designing and sewing clothes, and everyone was happier. Too, knits, jeans, and different styles seemed to call for getting "ready-made" rather than "home-mades." Some day I would like to get out my machine again, though, and make some "designer clothes" for myself. Maybe I can do that in my old age. That time is nearly here, so I may start that as my next project (if I can stay home long enough!).
Family Vacations
Wendell was given two weeks of paid vacation every year, which usually fell in August, the hottest month. Since most of my family lived in Texas, we used that time to go visit them. I am afraid those hot trips to Texas did not provide many happy memories, but we were able to keep in touch with most of my family that way. Another reason we visited family all along the way was the fact that lodging and meals were usually free when we were visiting. Our income was not very big and therefore we could not afford fancy motels or fine restaurants. We always went by way of Aunt Katie's in East Texas and then spent a few days with my folks in Lockhart. Once we drove down to Lucile and Clinton's in Corpus Christi, and they drove us down to King's Ranch for a visit. In later years, Ross and Fay lived in Austin, and we were able to visit with them and their family there. On our way back to Louisville, we visited Porter and Ruth in Nashville as well as Aunt Leila. One year we went by way of New Orleans and visited Copass.
On some vacations we visited Wendell's parents in Salyersville and Paul's family in West Virginia. One summer we went to St. Louis to visit Helen and Don as well as Gene. We enjoyed taking the children to the wonderful St. Louis zoo, and one year we went to the Cincinnati Zoo. One summer we drove up to Illinois to meet Wendell's aunt Allene and Aunt Lillian. On our way back from visiting them we drove to Springfield, Illinois, where we saw Lincoln's home. Johnny was at band camp that week and did not get to go with us.
The only vacation we took which was not family-related was in the summer of 1962, I believe, when we went to Myrtle Beach for a few days after letting Johnny off at Ridgecrest, where he was to work on the staff that summer. It was an adventure to see the ocean, but our cottage was not very desirable because of the many, many huge roaches which had their residence established there before we arrived. I don't think any of us minded leaving that place!
1960 - Leila the Teacher
Someone told me that there was a need for substitute teachers. Since our children were now older, and one was even away in college, I decided to apply at both the Jefferson County Public Schools and also at the Louisville Board of Education. (At that time there were two school systems, which later merged into one.) To my surprise, I was accepted by both systems to do substitute-teaching, and I went to whichever one called first each day. It was an enjoyable experience, I discovered, and I began to explore the possibility of becoming a regular teacher, something I had never dreamed I would be able to do.
At that time there was a shortage of regular teachers, and the school boards had modified their requirements so that if a person agreed to fulfill certain commitments, she could get a "Professional Commitment Certificate" and be a certified teacher. I already qualified in some ways, as I had an AB degree, but I lacked several Education courses, one or two others, and needed to get my Masters within a given time.
1962
[Myrtle Beach vacation mentioned previously.]
1964-84
I went to summer school at Spalding University (the same summer that Mary Louise went there) and met the requirements by fall, enabling me to begin teaching regularly in 1964. Since we had two children in college that fall, my extra pay check really came in handy. For awhile I tried to type, as well as teach, but I finally decided that I should not try to type any more for other students. I did use my typing skills, however, in summer jobs as a "Kelly Girl" for several years, where I would be a "substitute secretary". One summer I tried selling encyclopedias instead of being a secretary, but I soon realized that I was not a salesman! Some years I would get jobs working on Federal grants or teaching GED in night school two nights a week for several years, to enhance our income. Since Wendell retired seven years before I did, the extra money came in handy and enabled us to travel some and also save for our "old age." We were very fortunate to have blend blessed with good health most of the time, too.
1967
King's speech
prompted nearly 140 open-housing advocates to march to city police headquarters
from the church at 21st and Oak streets. Marchers lined Broadway, made their way
to
In response to questions about a possible white ‘backlash’ because of his speech and the march, King said blacks ‘don't make any strides in civil rights without insistent and persistent pressure.’” -- Courier-Journal, 1967.
King’s
“Dream Speech’ was given on the occasion of the March on
1977
In 1977 Wendell retired and the children gave him a ticket to fly to Hawaii as a retirement gift. On our way to Hawaii, we went to Chicago and visited the Field Museum where the "King Tut" exhibit from Egypt was on display. That was a wonderful trip. It was Wendell's first plane ride. After he got over the fear of flying, it made many other trips possible. In the next chapter I will tell more about those and about other evens in our family after Wendell's retirement. We were fortunate that he lived twenty-one more years after that retirement trip to Hawaii to visit Mary Lou, Regan, Hunter and Darren, and to see all the beautiful places on Oahu and the other islands - - Maui and Hawaii (the "big island"). What a wonderful trip!
After Wendell retired [1977], he was able to continue
painting portraits, which he was commissioned to paint. He had begun doing
"leather" portraits at first, but I finally convinced him that it was
his gift of painting people's faces so realistically which was so remarkable,
not the use of leather! He had many, many requests for people's portraits and
really enjoyed this time in his career, as well as the money he earned this way.
His "first love" had been cartooning, I believe, but since his comic
strips never did get accepted, he felt that he was fulfilled, I believe, in his
portrait painting. Like me, he really had several jobs at once and I am sure
regretted the many, many hours he spent at the drawing board at home when he
would have enjoyed spending more time with the children. It makes me sad for our
children when I think about all the years that he and I were both so distracted
by our other jobs and failed to give our children the best gift we could have
given them -- our time and undivided attention. Maybe they were just as well
off, though, in the long run as they have all turned out wonderfully in spite of
their parents' shortcomings! I hope that none of them ever doubted our love for
them and desire to do all we could to make their lives happy and good in every
way we could.
1984
Leila taught 8th grade English at Southern Middle
School for nearly twenty years and retired in 1984. She and Wendell
subsequently took a trip to England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland with Ruth
Schoppe and others. When they returned Wendell continued his painting and
Leila remained busy with volunteer work with the church, Friendship
International, The Crescent Hill Womens Club, retired teacher luncheons, and the
DAR. For many years she was also the Kentucky correspondent for the alumni
of Classen High School in Oklahoma City. During this later phase of her
life she attended the funerals of most of her siblings and visited many of them
for extended periods of time.
2003 - 2011
On Monday, February 10, 2003, Leila suffered a stroke which affected her left side and resulted in a lengthy stay in the hospital and various nursing homes and rehab facilities. She was eventually able to return home and continued for many more years to get around and stay active with the use of a cane and later a walker. She was unable to drive after that event but continued to live at home for the next seven years. In July 2010 she developed congestive heart failure and problems related to aortic stenosis. She was hospitalized and then took up residence at Jefferson Place where she remained until her death on Monday morning November 21, 2011. Her funeral was held the Friday after Thanksgiving in the chapel of Crescent Hill Baptist Church, and she was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery next to Wendell.