Mom
By James Donahue
Velma Louise Andrews probably spent most of her life under the shadow of my father. She chose to be a stay-at-home mother of her three children and a dutiful wife who I believe loved us all very deeply.
I have fond memories of becoming aware of myself in that house on South Huron Avenue in Harbor Beach, Michigan. I remember the big dark brown stuffed couch and matching chair, of being held in my mother’s arms and rocked in the family rocker when I was sick, and sitting with the family at our dining room table for dinner each evening after Dad got home. I have memories of talking to Mom in the kitchen of that house while she prepared meals, canned fruits and vegetables from our garden or ironed clothes. It seemed that she never stopped working.
She used to wash our hair in the kitchen sink. She heated water on the stove, making sure it never got too hot, before using it to wash the soap from our hair. I don’t know why she did that. I am sure we had hot running water because we used it to take baths.
Mom lived a life of service, always believing that there was something good to be found in everyone, no matter how badly they behaved, and always attempting to make the best of every day that she lived. This was the philosophy she taught us as children. From my perspective now, looking back on her life, it seems as if she was almost naïve in the way she preceded through her daily walk. I must wonder if she really believed what she said or if she was covering up for how she really felt down deep.
I don’t remember talking to Dad about things of the heart until late in his life. But there were some close-heart conversations with Mom in that kitchen. I remember her telling me about some ghostly encounters she and her sister Bernice had during their younger days living in Lansing. She also told about going to a fortune teller with Bernice, and how the woman refused to tell Bernice’s fortune. She strongly implied there were things that should not be known. These were stories Mom could never tell in Dad’s presence. His scientific and analytical mind dismissed such things as foolishness and he refused to discuss them. He would have mocked Mom for telling such stories.
Our mother was not a simple person. But it appeared that she was so dedicated to our father that her opinions never mattered. He and the children were her life. Nearly everything she did, and every place she went was dictated by Dad or the needs of her family. Yet from the few things known about her younger years, we must think that her options were broad from the start. Perhaps it was the era in which she lived . . . a Christian oriented, male dominated culture when women were still fighting for the right to vote. . . that snuffed out her flame.
She was born in 1913, one of four children of Lowe and Alice Andrews, somewhere in the heart of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. I never knew exactly where she grew up although she told stories about living in Lansing when she was young. She had two brothers, Jack and Ralph, and a sister, Bernice. She and Bernice were close.
After the war, Dad began reading material about investments and made the decision that real estate was a good choice at that time. He made an offer to buy the rental house we were in, but the owner, who lived in Detroit, was not interested in selling. So Dad set out on a quest to buy a farm. I remember riding with him all over the countryside, looking at numerous farms that were up for sale. He finally decided on the property he and Mom bought on Filion Road near Port Hope.
That move broke Mom away from all of her social contacts in Harbor Beach. It was some time before we had a telephone installed because there was no telephone cable running past our house. Then when we got a phone, the calls to Harbor Beach were costly long distance ones, so only important calls were ever made. The gabby calls to her old friends were ended forever.
Mom continued to drive to Harbor Beach each Sunday to attend services at the Methodist Church, however, and brought me and my siblings with her. Dad was now too busy on the farm to waste time going to church. For a while this was the only social contact Mom had outside of the home. Eventually she joined the hospital Grey Ladies and got involved in some social groups in the Port Hope area, but it took a few years before this happened. Looking back on those years, I believe Mom was a very lonely person during that period.
I remember on stormy winter nights, after we got home on the school bus, watching Mom pace the floor and constantly look out of the window for the headlights of Dad’s car. She always worried that something happened to him if he was more than a few minutes late getting home. She seemed to fret over a lot of things in those days that I never thought were worth worrying about.
One day Mom collapsed in great pain and we rushed her to the hospital. It was her gall bladder. She was in the hospital for at least a week after having her gall bladder removed. That was the week that I took over the kitchen and learned how to cook a few things.
Mom had two interesting hobbies that I can recall. One involved a national competition that I think involved utilizing words something like Scrabble, with certain letters awarding players more points than others. Players were in competition to get the most points. Mom got so involved in the game Dad bought her a giant unabridged dictionary to use as a resource tool. She kept winning and was among the national finalists. I don’t know if there was any money to be won or if she ever won anything. She spent hours at it, however.
Mom’s other hobby was genealogy. She began researching the family history on both the Donahue and Andrews trees and really got into it. She did this before there was such a thing as home computers and the Internet. Later, after they were free to travel, she and Dad made trips to Salt Lake City, Utah, to search through the Mormon library of family history. She came up with some interesting information. Mom traced the Donahue family through Dad’s mother, Grace Boicourt, all the way back to the American Revolution. One of our ancestors came over with the French army to help win the war for independence. She found another interesting link on her side of the family to the famed American Indian scout Kit Carson.
Grandma had her big stroke that left her almost totally paralyzed and requiring total nursing care. Mom and Bernice would not consider placing their mother in a nursing home. Instead they traded off periods when they cared for Grandma. We would have her at our house for about two months then Aunt Bernice took her in. Grandpa was still working at the Reo plant in Lansing in those years, but he would drive to the farm as often as he could and try to be of help. He was coughing and hacking a lot, but still able bodied in those years. Grandma died shortly after Grandpa Andrews retired.
I remember the first season that Grandpa came he got the Ford Ferguson tractor out and plowed up the field west of the house. He spent the summer pulling up a lot of young trees that were starting to grow on the field. After that, he was too ill to do any more. Mom and Bernice again began taking turns caring for Grandpa as his diseased lungs slowly killed him. He died in Harbor Beach Hospital shortly after Doris and I were married.
When Dad retired from the plant and wanted to join the Peace Corps. Mom signed up with him to go, but they were not called right away. They signed up for a stint with Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). They lived in Iowa for three years setting up meals on wheels programs and congregate meals for senior citizens. After returning to Michigan, the Peace Corps called on them and they went off to Fiji for another two years and taught school for the children of missionary families. On their way home, Mom and Dad traveled around the world.
While it had all been instituted by Dad, I believe Mom enjoyed the experience. She was tanned and the picture of health when they arrived home from Fiji. It was the last time I saw her looking that healthy.
After they returned the decision was made to sell the farm and move to Kentucky. Mom wanted to move to Florida and live near Bernice, who had relocated in a senior citizen complex there. Dad refused to live with “a bunch of old people” and chose, instead, to buy a rural house near Scottsville, Kentucky. It was a modular house that needed a lot of work. They were close to where Dad’s niece and her husband lived, so they were not totally separated from family. But they were far from the rest of us. Doris and I made a couple of trips to see them, and Jennifer and I stopped once on a trip we made to Arizona. Every time we saw her, it was obvious that Mom’s health was declining. It was something you couldn’t put your finger on, you just sensed it.
The last time I was in Scottsville was after I was retired from the Port Huron newspaper. We were at a family reunion in Lansing and I drove Mom and Dad back to Scottsville in Dad’s car rather than let them drive on their own. From there I flew on to Georgia to visit our daughter, Ayn. It was a memorable visit to Scottsville. For some odd reason Mom and I were both awakened at about the same time in the middle of the night and met in the kitchen. Mom made chamomile tea and we sat, drinking our tea and talking until we decided we were sleepy enough to return to our beds. It was one of those rare times that I had to have a personal and heart-felt talk with my mother. It was the last one I ever had.
Mom and Dad drove me to the airport in Nashville the next day where I jumped a flight into Savannah. I remember my plane was delayed and we had to wait a while. When at last it came time for passengers to board I looked back to see Mom still standing there, watching me with a sad look on her face.
It was after that when Mom collapsed from an apparent stroke. They found that she also was suffering from an enlarged heart and emphysema. Steve and his wife, Paula, who were living in Albuquerque, found a vacancy in a senior citizen facility there that offered nursing assistance. Andrea’s second husband, Scott, flew to Kentucky to help them move, put them on a flight to Albuquerque, and drove Dad’s car to New Mexico. Somehow in the course of all of that they got the Kentucky house sold.
Mom’s health kept sliding after the move and she did not live long. Doris and I managed to drive there to see her one last time before she died. She was in a wheelchair and in need to almost total nursing care. She made a gallant effort to get dressed and Dad took us all down to the cafeteria for dinner. It was obvious that she was dying and she was afraid. Doris took her aside and talked to her about death, and I am sure gave her some comfort. She went into a coma about a week later, was admitted to the hospital, and died within a few hours.
Mom passed on March 12, 1998 at the age of 85.
By James Donahue
Velma Louise Andrews probably spent most of her life under the shadow of my father. She chose to be a stay-at-home mother of her three children and a dutiful wife who I believe loved us all very deeply.
I have fond memories of becoming aware of myself in that house on South Huron Avenue in Harbor Beach, Michigan. I remember the big dark brown stuffed couch and matching chair, of being held in my mother’s arms and rocked in the family rocker when I was sick, and sitting with the family at our dining room table for dinner each evening after Dad got home. I have memories of talking to Mom in the kitchen of that house while she prepared meals, canned fruits and vegetables from our garden or ironed clothes. It seemed that she never stopped working.
She used to wash our hair in the kitchen sink. She heated water on the stove, making sure it never got too hot, before using it to wash the soap from our hair. I don’t know why she did that. I am sure we had hot running water because we used it to take baths.
Mom lived a life of service, always believing that there was something good to be found in everyone, no matter how badly they behaved, and always attempting to make the best of every day that she lived. This was the philosophy she taught us as children. From my perspective now, looking back on her life, it seems as if she was almost naïve in the way she preceded through her daily walk. I must wonder if she really believed what she said or if she was covering up for how she really felt down deep.
I don’t remember talking to Dad about things of the heart until late in his life. But there were some close-heart conversations with Mom in that kitchen. I remember her telling me about some ghostly encounters she and her sister Bernice had during their younger days living in Lansing. She also told about going to a fortune teller with Bernice, and how the woman refused to tell Bernice’s fortune. She strongly implied there were things that should not be known. These were stories Mom could never tell in Dad’s presence. His scientific and analytical mind dismissed such things as foolishness and he refused to discuss them. He would have mocked Mom for telling such stories.
Our mother was not a simple person. But it appeared that she was so dedicated to our father that her opinions never mattered. He and the children were her life. Nearly everything she did, and every place she went was dictated by Dad or the needs of her family. Yet from the few things known about her younger years, we must think that her options were broad from the start. Perhaps it was the era in which she lived . . . a Christian oriented, male dominated culture when women were still fighting for the right to vote. . . that snuffed out her flame.
She was born in 1913, one of four children of Lowe and Alice Andrews, somewhere in the heart of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. I never knew exactly where she grew up although she told stories about living in Lansing when she was young. She had two brothers, Jack and Ralph, and a sister, Bernice. She and Bernice were close.
After the war, Dad began reading material about investments and made the decision that real estate was a good choice at that time. He made an offer to buy the rental house we were in, but the owner, who lived in Detroit, was not interested in selling. So Dad set out on a quest to buy a farm. I remember riding with him all over the countryside, looking at numerous farms that were up for sale. He finally decided on the property he and Mom bought on Filion Road near Port Hope.
That move broke Mom away from all of her social contacts in Harbor Beach. It was some time before we had a telephone installed because there was no telephone cable running past our house. Then when we got a phone, the calls to Harbor Beach were costly long distance ones, so only important calls were ever made. The gabby calls to her old friends were ended forever.
Mom continued to drive to Harbor Beach each Sunday to attend services at the Methodist Church, however, and brought me and my siblings with her. Dad was now too busy on the farm to waste time going to church. For a while this was the only social contact Mom had outside of the home. Eventually she joined the hospital Grey Ladies and got involved in some social groups in the Port Hope area, but it took a few years before this happened. Looking back on those years, I believe Mom was a very lonely person during that period.
I remember on stormy winter nights, after we got home on the school bus, watching Mom pace the floor and constantly look out of the window for the headlights of Dad’s car. She always worried that something happened to him if he was more than a few minutes late getting home. She seemed to fret over a lot of things in those days that I never thought were worth worrying about.
One day Mom collapsed in great pain and we rushed her to the hospital. It was her gall bladder. She was in the hospital for at least a week after having her gall bladder removed. That was the week that I took over the kitchen and learned how to cook a few things.
Mom had two interesting hobbies that I can recall. One involved a national competition that I think involved utilizing words something like Scrabble, with certain letters awarding players more points than others. Players were in competition to get the most points. Mom got so involved in the game Dad bought her a giant unabridged dictionary to use as a resource tool. She kept winning and was among the national finalists. I don’t know if there was any money to be won or if she ever won anything. She spent hours at it, however.
Mom’s other hobby was genealogy. She began researching the family history on both the Donahue and Andrews trees and really got into it. She did this before there was such a thing as home computers and the Internet. Later, after they were free to travel, she and Dad made trips to Salt Lake City, Utah, to search through the Mormon library of family history. She came up with some interesting information. Mom traced the Donahue family through Dad’s mother, Grace Boicourt, all the way back to the American Revolution. One of our ancestors came over with the French army to help win the war for independence. She found another interesting link on her side of the family to the famed American Indian scout Kit Carson.
Grandma had her big stroke that left her almost totally paralyzed and requiring total nursing care. Mom and Bernice would not consider placing their mother in a nursing home. Instead they traded off periods when they cared for Grandma. We would have her at our house for about two months then Aunt Bernice took her in. Grandpa was still working at the Reo plant in Lansing in those years, but he would drive to the farm as often as he could and try to be of help. He was coughing and hacking a lot, but still able bodied in those years. Grandma died shortly after Grandpa Andrews retired.
I remember the first season that Grandpa came he got the Ford Ferguson tractor out and plowed up the field west of the house. He spent the summer pulling up a lot of young trees that were starting to grow on the field. After that, he was too ill to do any more. Mom and Bernice again began taking turns caring for Grandpa as his diseased lungs slowly killed him. He died in Harbor Beach Hospital shortly after Doris and I were married.
When Dad retired from the plant and wanted to join the Peace Corps. Mom signed up with him to go, but they were not called right away. They signed up for a stint with Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). They lived in Iowa for three years setting up meals on wheels programs and congregate meals for senior citizens. After returning to Michigan, the Peace Corps called on them and they went off to Fiji for another two years and taught school for the children of missionary families. On their way home, Mom and Dad traveled around the world.
While it had all been instituted by Dad, I believe Mom enjoyed the experience. She was tanned and the picture of health when they arrived home from Fiji. It was the last time I saw her looking that healthy.
After they returned the decision was made to sell the farm and move to Kentucky. Mom wanted to move to Florida and live near Bernice, who had relocated in a senior citizen complex there. Dad refused to live with “a bunch of old people” and chose, instead, to buy a rural house near Scottsville, Kentucky. It was a modular house that needed a lot of work. They were close to where Dad’s niece and her husband lived, so they were not totally separated from family. But they were far from the rest of us. Doris and I made a couple of trips to see them, and Jennifer and I stopped once on a trip we made to Arizona. Every time we saw her, it was obvious that Mom’s health was declining. It was something you couldn’t put your finger on, you just sensed it.
The last time I was in Scottsville was after I was retired from the Port Huron newspaper. We were at a family reunion in Lansing and I drove Mom and Dad back to Scottsville in Dad’s car rather than let them drive on their own. From there I flew on to Georgia to visit our daughter, Ayn. It was a memorable visit to Scottsville. For some odd reason Mom and I were both awakened at about the same time in the middle of the night and met in the kitchen. Mom made chamomile tea and we sat, drinking our tea and talking until we decided we were sleepy enough to return to our beds. It was one of those rare times that I had to have a personal and heart-felt talk with my mother. It was the last one I ever had.
Mom and Dad drove me to the airport in Nashville the next day where I jumped a flight into Savannah. I remember my plane was delayed and we had to wait a while. When at last it came time for passengers to board I looked back to see Mom still standing there, watching me with a sad look on her face.
It was after that when Mom collapsed from an apparent stroke. They found that she also was suffering from an enlarged heart and emphysema. Steve and his wife, Paula, who were living in Albuquerque, found a vacancy in a senior citizen facility there that offered nursing assistance. Andrea’s second husband, Scott, flew to Kentucky to help them move, put them on a flight to Albuquerque, and drove Dad’s car to New Mexico. Somehow in the course of all of that they got the Kentucky house sold.
Mom’s health kept sliding after the move and she did not live long. Doris and I managed to drive there to see her one last time before she died. She was in a wheelchair and in need to almost total nursing care. She made a gallant effort to get dressed and Dad took us all down to the cafeteria for dinner. It was obvious that she was dying and she was afraid. Doris took her aside and talked to her about death, and I am sure gave her some comfort. She went into a coma about a week later, was admitted to the hospital, and died within a few hours.
Mom passed on March 12, 1998 at the age of 85.