The Importance of a Mother

Since Mother’s Day is nearly upon us, I thought I would write a column honoring my mother.

Mother was born in Downingtown, Pennsylvania in 1908. I suppose the reason why she was an only child was because her parents were married for 20 years before she entered the world.

She was given the name of Margaret Winifred Jones. Margaret was the name of her maternal grandmother and Winifred (the name by which she went or Winnie) was the doctor’s wife’s name who was a good friend of the family. Her mother died when my mother was 4 years old.

Shortly thereafter, Mother and her Daddy (as she called him) moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Before they moved, the story of Mother’s antique rocker, which was just the size for her, was sold by her father. Mother cried so much that her Daddy hunted down the farmer who bought it and paid him more than he got in the sale of it to the farmer.

Mother was a lot more adventuresome than I was. Unfortunately, the story goes that her Daddy remarried and his second wife and my Mother did not get along too well.

At the age of 18, when Mother graduated from high school, she left Florida with her girlfriend, Arlene, on a boat to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I don’t know much about the ensuing years other than she worked as a secretary. One of the company’s she worked for was Paine Webber, an American investment bank and stock brokerage firm that was acquired by the Swiss bank UBS in 2000.

It was there that she met my Dad, but because it was during the Depression and they both worked at the same company, being afraid that one of them would lose their job, they eloped and told no one at work.

Both Mom and Dad were 25 years old when they married. They started a family on odd years starting with my two sisters in 1941 and 1943, followed by me in 1945. I guess they got tired of the odd years because in 1950, when mother was nearly 42, my brother was added to the family.

I often wondered if because my mother lost her mother at such a young age and was on the outs with her stepmother that Mother was taught how important it was to be loving and giving.

When my wife, Barb, and I cleared out the attic of the house she lived in for 44 years (Dad died in 1968 and Mom died in 2000), there was a treasure trove of writings. Mother wrote short stories, poetry (even when in grammar school) and many letters to her Daddy, who lived to be 82. Many letters she wrote to him included a $5 bill that she either saved from work, or on those occasions where she didn’t have the money, she kept a log of whom she borrowed it from.

Mother was so important to me that I remember when I was 3 or 4, I came out of my bedroom in the morning and went into my parent’s bedroom. Not seeing her there or anywhere in the house, I took off in my yellow Dr. Denton’s on the glistening dew covered grass to walk about 100 yards to a neighbor’s to look for her. She had taken my two sisters to school. The joke was on me though because I never noticed my quite large Dad still sleeping in the bed.

Mother worked in the Admissions Office at Swarthmore College for many years after all of us kids were in school. She loved to meet the students and many times invited them to dinner or for various reasons had them stay overnight. In 1963 she had a brilliant senior student from Germany stay with us the entire school year because the student got a scholarship to Swarthmore College but it did not include room and board.

Many of you may be familiar with the 1911 song: “I Want a Girl Just Like…” the chorus of which is shown below. I did ask Barb if it was okay to use the song and she was “pleased as punch” (one of my mother’s sayings) to be compared to mother. Chorus

“I want a girl, just like the girl that married dear old Dad.

She was a pearl and the only girl that Daddy ever had,

A good old fashioned girl with heart so true,

One who loves nobody else but you.

I want a girl, just like the girl that married dear old Dad.”

Barb and I have a saying we have repeated many times during our 53 years of married life, which also applies to my Mother. “I love thee more today than yesterday but less today than tomorrow.”

To each of the mothers reading this, Happy Mother’s Day! Thanking you for your value to each of your families!