My Mom

Today is my Mom's birthday.  She was born on March 6, 1925.  Her mom was Daisy Belle Robertson McAfee, my grandmother, that we called Ma.  I was the first grandchild so I got to spend a lot of time with Ma when I was growing up.  She was a wonderful grandmother.  But that is a story for another time though.  This is the story of my Mom.  She was the oldest child and had a younger brother named Tommy.  My grandmother and grandfather divorced when my mom was young, around 5 or 6 I think.  That was during the Great Depression and my grandmother had to support them because my grandfather didn't have any money to help support them.  My mom grew up not having much, she didn't have a "store bought" dress until she was in high school.  They all slept in the same bed growing up because that is all they had.  They didn't have much money but they had a lot of love and had fun.  Mom played the clarinet in the school band at Henry Clay High School; it was on Main Street then,  where the Board of Education building is now.  She went to all of the football games and marched with the band.  Ma drove to the games and Mom had lots of friends that would ride with them.  They would come back to Ma's and rolll up the rugs in the living room and dance the night away.  My mom loved people and enjoyed doing things like that.  She graduated from high school in 1942, which was the beginning of WWII.  My grandma worked as a typist and switchboard operator and my mom started working in a office, I forget the name right now, but I remember it was on Limestone street in a building called the Dunn building.  She would show me the building sometimes.  Her best friend was Charlotte Gordon.  They were friends all through high school.  Charlotte wanted to go to nursing school.  With the war, they were needing more nurses and Charlotte talked Mom into applying to the St. Joseph School of Nursing.  It was on Second Street then and when you were in nursing school then, you stayed in a dorm. That dorm is now the Jefferson Center.  The old hospital, which is where I was later born, is the retirement home across the street.  Mom said she almost gave up when she was trying to learn the anatomy but Charlotte kept quizzing her and she wouldn't let her quit.  Nursing was very different then than it is today.  My Mom used to say she was a 'BC' nurse, before computers! She was the nurse that actually spent time with patients, gave them baths and rubbed lotion on their dry skin and listen to their concerns.  She was also a great IV starter.  After she graduated from nursing school she worked at Eastern State and then started working at the VA hospital, the one on Leestown Rd.  That is where she met my Dad.  He was older than she was by 8 years.  When he met her, he told his friend who worked with him, Earl, that he would marry her some day.  From the first date they went on, they were together every day Mom told me.  She said when Daddy called on day and wanted to come over to see her, she was ironing and it was hot and she was sweating, but she said if he didn't mind that he could come over.  He came over to ask her to marry him and she said if he could love her when she was looking like that he must really love her.  They got married on October 1, 1949 at the church on the corner of Rand Avenue and Martin Luther King Blvd.  I don't remember the name of the church but I know it was a Baptist church.  They had their honeymoon in the Smokie Mountains.  I remember when we would drive to Florida, we would drive by a little restaurant in London, KY that she told me that was where she and daddy had their first meal as a married couple.  She also showed me where they stayed on their honeymoon in the Smokies one time when we stopped there on our way to Florida.  I was born in January 25, 1951, then Judy (JuJu) came along in October 27, 1954, then Chuck in February 12, 1957, then Paul in July 11, 1960.  We lived in a lot of different places growing up.  Mom always worked and in those days, it was not as common for women to work outside the home.  And there were not as many conveniences as there are today.  Clothes had to be ironed, there were no microwaves, most food was made from scratch and Mom had to do everything.  I don't remember my Dad ever cleaning the house.  He did all of the outside work, mowing and painting and working on cars, etc.  It was a different time in those days.  But I know how much work my Mom had to do with four kids and working full time.  When we lived in Florida, Mom worked second shift and stayed home with Judy and Chuck during the day and Daddy worked days and the next door neighbor watched us from when Mom left for work until Dad got home.  I only saw her in the morning for breakfast and she was already gone to work by the time I got home from school.  She worked private duty then and worked every day, she never had a day off.  I remember crying to daddy to let me stay up til Mom got home because I missed her so much.  I don't know how she did it.  When we moved back to Kentucky, she started working the night shift and worked that for years.  She rearly go more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep