Vol. I, Issue 3

Aunt Helena died two weeks ago at age 93. Talk about an unusual and full life. After thirty-five years as a housewife, her career really began at age 55 and continued until age 88 just before she entered a nursing home. Prior to that, she was a childless stay-at-home housewife with a variety of interests and hobbies. She played den mother to cub scouts year after year though. And, she babysat for one family whose children adopted her as their mother because their birth mother didn’t know how to act as one.

She had never held a regular job and even when her career began, it wasn’t what one would call regular. Her income, after she became a widow, consisted of a small Veteran’s pension, an even smaller Woodman’s Circle insurance benefit, and in later years, a Social Security payment. I thought she was unusually creative in making extra money. She took her hobbies and parlayed them into income-producing activities. She taught classes born out of her hobbies in cake decorating, papier mache, crocheting, needlepoint, and other crafts. Never owning a car, she transported herself everywhere by bus. Vacation traveling involved trains to all parts of the country managed by staying with relatives wherever possible. Collecting one commemorative plate from each state, she visited all 48 (at the time) – a matter of particular pride with her. Oddly enough, she also never owned a TV set which reveals where her values lay. She was a participator not a spectator in life’s events.

She never asked anyone for a dime and even had $24.00 left when she died after four years in the retirement facility, other than a $500 insurance policy she left my father. Ironically, he figured up that she had paid $3000 for that $500 policy because she paid payments until death instead of asking for a paid-up policy. Nevertheless, she did leave something and thus satisfied her desire to honor commitments. She asked a couple to help her occasionally while in the nursing home and left them her house worth about $10,000 to pay them back for their kindness, so all in all, she ended up pretty well financially for a poor person.

By contrast, the family she grew up in gave her a sense of prosperity and high self-esteem. They had been well off when Helena was a young girl. One of my great grandfathers was connected with founding the Packard Car Company. The DuPonts were also part of the family tree, and my grandmother received dividends from both until her death. They went to charity after that. Helena was raised in a sort of aristocratic manner, but later, my adventure-seeking, speculative grandfather caused the immediate family to fall down the rungs of the social ladder. She used to speak proudly of those early days in Michigan as she was growing up, describing how they lived: Visitors using calling cards, the girls wearing white lawn dresses all summer, both the young men and women exchanging messages in autograph books, letter writing, dance soirees. These customs stand out in my mind as reminders of that era, so different from my own. I relished hearing about them.

Her husband, Otis, had been a sailor in World War I. He looked fetching in his sailor suit in their marriage portrait. They moved to Texas from Michigan where he worked in the shipyard. She loved him and he her. She regarded him with great respect and treated him royally despite their ordinary but respectable circumstances, satisfied and happy with what they had. No references were ever made to previous life circumstances versus present ones except as family history. I still picture her bringing him his evening coffee. And when he died, she took up new roles and never attempted to remarry.

All of this information I knew about her. What I didn’t know, I learned at her funeral. She had conceived the idea for Meals on Wheels here in Houston for shut-in senior citizens and saw to it that it was organized and continued to help with it for many years. She helped found the first Senior Citizens Center as well. I knew she volunteered at these but didn’t realize the significance of her role. Besides serving in multiple offices with women’s groups, she presided as president of the Houston Senior Citizens organization for a time and taught all sorts of classes there, paying for all the materials out of her own pocket. I discovered among her possessions two large cardboard boxes full of plaques, awards, certificates, and a gavel. Two honors worth noting were those for which two mayors had designated special days in her name for her outstanding contributions. Councilmen, sheriffs’ deputies, and other city officials attended the funeral, which was not even announced in the newspaper. It seems she had encouraged and nurtured them as children in the lower socio-economic neighborhood she resided in, many her former scouts.

She had asked that she be buried with dignity. Those wishes were more than fulfilled. Though she had resided in the nursing home for four years, more than a hundred people attended, only a handful of whom were family. I had visited her fairly often and never learned of some of these facts about her accomplishments until that day.

Another amazing part of her life was how tirelessly she had worked with the parishioners of her local Catholic church. Almost a hundred Hispanic people came to her funeral, because at one time or another, she had assisted each of them or someone in their family with some problem. They each had a story to tell us of her aid and their gratitude. I was so surprised and filled with admiration at these discoveries.

Although she never had children herself, her home was constantly filled with them – neighbors’ children, her cub scouts in the current troop she was den mother to, and a boy, John, whom she cared for while his mother worked and treated as her own son. At the same time, he thought of her as closer than his own mother. She took him with her on some of her trips. He currently handles the CrimeStoppers TV program.

I wouldn’t be fair to give you only the positive side of her nature and behavior. My mother’s favorite expression to me as I was growing up was and still is, “You’re just like your Aunt Helena.” She meant it in a negative sense when she became exasperated with me, since in my mother’s mind, Helena had substituted for the mother-in-law my mother never experienced. My grandmother died when my dad was twelve. I suppose some built-in rivalry and jealousy naturally exists between mothers-in-law and their daughters-in-law, in this case, sisters-in-law. Since Helena was fifteen years older than my father, she was already married long before my folks met. What my mother didn’t like about her was that she wasn’t always on time, her house was messy and disorganized, and she enjoyed life a little too much. Little episodes had occurred between them when my parents were newlyweds that had hurt Mom’s feelings. My mother feels life should be taken seriously, and that this world is “a vale of tears,” and “Everything should be in its place”. Mom does have fun, but work must be done first. She felt I should be “taken down a peg or two” since my mother meant the remark to remind me to be humble if she felt I was acting “uppity”. I felt hurt when my mother said that cutting remark. However, later I decided, “You’re correct, I am like her in some ways, and I’m glad. Look at what she’s done with her life with so little.” This little saying only reflects one aspect of my mom who served as my greatest inspiration, but that’s another tale.

I love stories, especially true ones, and particularly history, a continuing series of stories. I acquired this interest from Helena’s wonderful sense of history and thus majored in it for my undergraduate work. During her travels she collected the family genealogy and related the anecdotes that accompanied each entry. The little nursery rhyme describing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” refers to the factual tale of Mary Elizabeth Sawyer who was given a sick lamb to nurse back to health, and one day in 1812, it did indeed follow her to school. A witness wrote the poem about the incident. A statue of Mary Sawyer stands in Sterling, Massachusetts, erected to commemorate the event. The school Mary attended was established by one of my great grandfathers in 1798.

She also described early ancestors who landed here in 1636 as part of the Springfield colony. I later found them in London Registers as I did my graduate work in English for they were in the publishing business. From about the age of eight, I lusted to hear about each and every one.

I found among her belongings an unfinished application to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), which surely would have accepted her for lineage to a number of outstanding early ancestors. I suspect she was too busy to complete it and too unassuming to worry about any prestige that might accompany membership.

Helena’s sense of humor came out in her witty, positive, but wry or ironic remarks and responses, which she kept entertaining us with right to the very end. I wish I could remember a particular one. When she was 92, I asked her what she wanted more than anything. She answered, “a pint of strawberry ice cream.” I was surprised but immediately went out and bought it for her, and she devoured the whole pint with enormous delight.

She loved dancing as well. I remember her arriving using a walker to my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary party. Later in the evening, I looked up to find her dancing and laughing with unabashed glee to three or four numbers.

The ultimate memory that made me smile happened at age 75 when she had to have a cancerous breast removed. She decided she needed to leave the hospital two days early to attend a party. Naturally, she never experienced a recurrence.

As stubborn as a Taurus is purported to be, she held a strong desire to live to her next birthday. Sure enough, she made it to 93 and died two days afterwards.

Yes, I admire her greatly. And here I am at a crossroads in my own life. Almost to the age where she lost her husband, already single twelve years, and I’m thinking about a new career. It entails going to graduate school for the next three years, a two- year internship, and finally taking a state test for a professional license. Do I have the energy and the stamina and the will to go through with it all, I ask myself? I took the initial test to enter grad school today. We shall see. But with Aunt Helena as my role model who accomplished so much beginning at age 55, living life to the brim, how could I not choose to follow in her footsteps. My high achieving mother provided the inspiration for my habits of persistence, determination, willingness to take risks, and a sense for business. Aunt Helena provided me a good part of the motivation, love of travel, and pursuit of worthwhile outside endeavors I enjoy.

Ruth Fowler, M.Ed., LPC, MCC

P.S. I did achieve all of those goals evidenced by the initials after my name and have been a counselor in private practice for nine years after twenty-five years as a high school English teacher. Once a week I facilitate a free substance abuse group. Having traveled to Alaska, Hawaii, most of the U.S., the Baltic countries, Europe, the British Isles, Costa Rica, Mexico, Egypt, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Japan, my next venture will be to Peru.

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