Lucy Parsons - "More Dangerous Than A Thousand Rioters" In the 1920s, the Chicago Police Department described Lucy Parsons as “More dangerous than a thousand rioters.” I hope even now to live to see the day when the first dawn of the new era of labor will have arisen, when capitalism will be a thing of the past, and the new industrial republic, the commonwealth of labor, shall be in operation.” — Lucy Parsons Placed in a larger historical context, Lucy Parsons is an example of a controversial radical woman who appears infrequently if at all in the historical record although she helped to write it. In the context of her late Nineteenth, early Twentieth Century life time, she grappled with the obstacles of being a woman, a labor movement radical, and being married to an equally controversial man. Leaving Albert Parsons out of an account of Lucy Parson’s life and adventures is to skew her life and its contribution to women’s history. Husbands and wives impact each other and their marriage imprints history for better or worse, and in the case of the Parsons partnership, Lucy and Albert Parsons mutually benefitted each other. They also conducted their individual lives and deaths in keeping with their ideals. Albert Parsons died at the end of a hangman’s noose for his supposed part in the Haymarket Riot and for nearly 70 years Lucy Parsons fought for the rights of poor and disenfranchised people against what she believed to be an oppressive industrial economic system. Her struggle required immense courage during a time of racist and sexist sentiment and in a time when even radical Americans believed that a woman should be confined in her home and her kitchen. Albert Parsons, Before He Met Lucy Ella Gonzales Waller Born in Montgomery, Alabama, on June 24, 1848, Albert Richard Parsons was one of ten children of the owner of a shoe and leather factory. Both of his parents died when he was just five years old and Albert’s older brother William and Esther, a slave, helped raise him in Texas. After he attended school for about a year, Albert went to work as an apprentice at the Galveston Daily News. While still a teenager, Albert served in the Confederate Army including a stint in Parson’s Mounted Volunteers. After the Civil War, Albert settled in Texas, attending college at what is now Baylor University and working on several other newspapers. He became an activist for former slaves and a Republican overseer of Reconstruction which earned him the admiration and respect of the former slaves he championed and the hatred of his fellow southerners and the Ku Klux Klan. In what seemed to him a natural crossover, he also became interested in the rights of workers. In 1869, Albert worked as a traveling correspondent and business agent for the Houston Daily Telegraph and during this time he met Lucy Ella Gonzales Waller. They were married in 1872, and Lucy Parsons, a political force in her own right joined her destiny with her political mentor and partner. Their marriage not only produced an interesting combination of political ideas, it also committed what southerners, especially Ku Klux Klan members, called miscegenation. The South enforced both legal and social laws against miscegenation or racial mixing through marriage or cohabitation. That Lucy Ella Gonzales Waller, the daughter of a Creek Indian and a Mexican woman, married Albert Parsons, still a white man despite his unorthodox ideas, did not set well with the Klan and their ideological sympathizers. Shortly after their marriage, the Parsons prudently moved to Chicago. Lucy Ella Gonzales Waller Matures and Marries Albert Parsons Although the early years of Lucy Ella Gonzales Waller are shrouded in mystery, the historical record revealed that she came from African America, Native American, and Mexican ancestry. Since she was born in Texas around 1853, her parents were probably slaves. Lucy quickly learned to function in her prejudiced society by using different names. Often giving Lucy Gonzales as her name, she used her Mexican ancestry to explain her dark skin tone instead of acknowledging her African American roots. While Lucy was living with Oliver Gathings, a former slave, she met Albert Parsons and soon she and Albert were married, although their marriage probably wasn’t legal because of the miscegenation laws of the time. In 1872, shortly after their marriage, the Parsons left Texas because of their political involvement and their interracial marriage. Four years before the formal ending of Reconstruction in 1876 when all federal troops left, the South methodically instituted restrictive Jim Crow segregation laws. Albert worked tirelessly to register Black voters and his enemies shot him in the leg and threatened to lynch him. In 1873, Albert and Lucy Parsons moved north to Chicago to what they hoped would be a better life. Albert began work as a printer for the Chicago Times. The Parsons Become Labor Activists Life in Chicago didn’t provide a safe haven for the Parsons. They arrived in Chicago during the Panic of 1873, a financial collapse and depression that lingered on for years. Causes of the Panic of 1873 include post Civil War inflation, over speculation especially in railroads, a large trade deficit, declining bank reserves, and European economic problems stemming from the Franco-Prussian War. Chicago and Boston also suffered the financial losses from devastating fires, Chicago in 1871 and Boston in 1872. As Albert’s tenure as a printer continued, so did the labor troubles of the United States. A law called the Contract Labor law of 1864 permitted American businesses to contract and bring immigrant laborers into the country which created a surplus of unskilled workers in cities like Chicago and lowered wages. Socialist and anarchist ideology also gained a toe hold in the United States and began to radicalize its labor force. Albert and Lucy Parsons became labor activists. In 1877, the Baltimore Ohio Railroad cut worker’s wages igniting a nationwide strike and motivating railroad workers all over the country to join picket lines. Reaction to the railroad strike rippled through Chicago in the summer of 1877 when Chicago railroad workers took up the cause with a vengeance, derailing an engine and baggage cars fighting sporadic battles with the police. Motivated by the plight of striking workers, Albert embraced an activist role, taking time from his work and family life to advocate peaceful ways for workers to negotiate. Soon the small number of workers he initially addressed grew to crowds of more than 25,000 people and Albert stood at center of the Chicago anarchist movement. Lucy stood by his side both literally and figuratively. Albert and Lucy Parsons joined the Socialist Labor Party in 1876, and they were active members of the International Working People’s Association or the First International which supported racial and gender equality. Albert Parsons also became the editor of the Alarm, the anarchist weekly journal that the International Working People’s Association published. As Albert’s labor activities and speech making increased so did his fame and eventually the Chicago Times fired him for supporting striking workers and the printers’ unions in Chicago black listed him. Lucy Parsons opened a dress shop to support Albert and their two children, Albert Jr. and Lulu Eda. Like Twentieth Century women, Lucy found herself jugging her family responsibilities and her career. She chaired meetings for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union with her friend Lizzie Swank, and she began to write for several radical publications. Both her friends and enemies considered Lucy Parsons a more dangerous radical than Albert, because of her outspoken speeches and writing defending the rights of poor people. She also challenged the the establishment because she refused to be confined to the role of a homemaker but expanded her resume to include militant and radical woman.
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Katherine Davis wrote the Little Drummer Boy in 1941, and since then he has drummed his timeless message into the hearts of people everywhere. There are different versions of the story of Katherine Kennicott Davis’s creation of the Little Drummer Boy. One version of the story says that Katherine freely translated a Czech carol called The Carol of the Drum, in 1941. Another version of the story has it that she arranged the Little Drummer Boy with Harry Simone, Jack Halloran, and Henry Onorati and another version of the story says that she wrote the song herself while "trying to take a nap." The bibliography of her musical career indicates that Katherine K. Davis wrote and arranged The Little Drummer Boy in 1941, but she produced a lifetime of music before she wrote the Little Drummer Boy. Katherine Kennicott Davis Composed Her First Musical Composition at Age 15Come, they told me/pa rum pum pum pum/A new born King to see/pa rum pum pum pum/ Our finest gifts we bring/pa rum pum pum pum/To lay before the King/pa rum pum pum pum/rum pum pum pum/rum pum pum pum/So to honor Him/pa rum pum pum pum/When we come. Katherine Kennicott Davis was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on June 25, 1892, and she graduated from St. Joseph High School in 1910. When she was just 15, Katherine wrote her first musical composition called “Shadow March.” She studied music at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and she won the Billings Prize for composition there in 1914. After she graduated, Katherine stayed on at Wellesley and taught music theory and piano as an assistant in the Music Department. She also studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and traveled to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. After she returned from Paris, Katherine Kennicott Davis taught music at the Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, and at the Shady Hill School for Girls in Philadelphia. She wrote many of her more than 600 compositions for the choirs at her school. She was a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Stetson University in DeLand, Florida awarded her an honorary doctorate. Katherine Kennicott Writes “Let All Things Now Living” Katherine told colleagues that in the 1920 she had found the traditional Welsh folk tune, the Ash Grove in the Book of National Songs. She wrote the harmonization and a descant for the tune and published them in 1939, with her text under the name of John Cowley, one of her pseudonyms. She called her new song Let All Things Now Living, and it became a favorite Thanksgiving hymn of many church choirs and congregations. Katherine Kennicott Davis Writes The Little Drummer Boy Little Baby pa rum pump pum pum/ I am a poor boy too pa rum pump pum pum/ I have no gift to bring pa rum pump pum pum/That’s fit to give our King pa rum pump pump pum, pa rum rum pump pum pum pum pum pum/Shall I play for you pa rum pump pump pum/On my drum. The Little Drummer Boy is the story of a poor boy who couldn’t afford a gift for the newborn Christ Child, so he played his drum at the manger with Mary’s approval. The baby smiled, delighted with the Little Drummer Boy’s skillful playing. The story of the Little Drummer Boy resembles a twelfth century legend that Anatole France retold as Le Jongleur de Notre Dame or Our Lady’s Juggler. The French legend said that a juggler juggled in front of a statue of Mary and the statue, depending on the version of the story, either smiled at him or threw him a rose. In 1902, Jules Massenet adapted the story into an opera and in 1984, the television film The Juggler of Notre Dame the statue both smiled at the juggler and threw him a rose. In 1955, shortly before they retired, the Trapp Family singers recorded the Carol of the Drum. This song resembles the Little Drummer Boy both in music and lyrics. The only difference is the line “The ox and lamb kept time.” In The Carol of the Drum, the line is the “The ox and ass kept time.” Henry Onorati Arranges His Version of The Carol of the Drum Mary nodded/pa rum pum pum pum/The ox and lamb kept time/pa rum pum pum pum/I played my drum for Him/pa rum pum pum pum/ In 1957, Henry Onorati re-arranged The Carol of the Drum for the Jack Halloran Singers to record on Dot Records, but Dot didn’t release the record in time for Christmas. In 1958, Henry Onorati introduced his friend Harry Simeone to the Carol of the Drum. Harry Simeone was a conductor and arranger from Newark, New Jersey, who had worked on several Bing Crosby movies and worked as conductor for a television show called The Firestone Hour from 1952-1959. Harry Simeone re-arranged the song and re-titled it The Little Drummer Boy. He recorded it with the Harry Simeone Chorale on the album Sing We Now of Christmas. Harry Simeone and Henry Onorati were given joint credit with Katherine K. Davis for the song even though they had only arranged it. This was Harry Simeone’s first album with a chorus and it was released at Christmas time every year from 1958-1962. It became a holiday classic. The Little Drummer Boy Becomes a Beloved Holiday Carol I played my best for Him/pa rum pum pum pum/rum pum pum/ pum/rum pum pum pum Since the 1950s, The Little Drummer Boy has appeared in over 200 versions in seven languages in all kinds of music genres. In 1964 Marlene Dietrich recorded a German version of the Little Drummer Boy. The Beverly Sisters and Michael Flanders recorded hit versions of The Little Drummer Boy in 1959, and in 1972, the Pipes and Drums and Military Band of the Royal Scots Guards had a hit version of the carol. Bing Crosby and David Bowie recorded the most popular version of the Little Drummer Boy as a duet with Peace On Earth for Bing Crosby's Television Christmas special in 1977. The duet version was written after David Bowie admitted he hated the song that he was scheduled to sing. Bing Crosby performed The Little Drummer Boy while David Bowie sang the new song Peace on Earth. The duet eventually became a classic. In 2008, BBC disc jockey Terry Wogan and singer Aled Jones recorded a new version of the Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy duet for a charity album released to help Children In Need. Issued as a single, it climbed to a UK Top hit for them. Katherine Kennicott Davis Writes a Lifetime of Music Then he smiled at me pa rum pum pum pum/Me and my drum. Katherine Kennicott Davis continued writing music until she fell ill in the winter of 1979-1980. On April 20, 1980, she died at the age of 87 in Littleton, Massachusetts. Her musical legacy included operas, choruses, children’s operettas, cantatas, piano and organ pieces and songs like Let All Things Now Living, and The Little Drummer Boy. She left all of the royalties and proceeds from her musical compositions to Wellesley College’s Music Program. Katherine K. Davis once quipped that The Little Drummer Boy "had been done to death on radio and TV," but musicians all over the world continue to sing and record her song. References
“All of us concerned with the environment must weigh the evils produced by industrial projects against economic and other factors, but when progress can be achieved by more acceptable alternatives, then those who neglect our environment are guilty of criminal conduct.” Julia K. Tibbitts Environmentalists are as individual as the trees they are sarcastically accused of hugging. Some very carefully pick specific battles instead of total warfare. Some are seasoned veterans while others like Julia K. Tibbitts of Marquette, Michigan are thrust headlong into the fray from snug cocooned lives. Julia K. Tibbitts described herself as living”the most insulated life of anyone I’ve ever met. The arms of marriage, the arms of children/parent relations, the arms of the secure housewife in a secure small town in a secure known world which I loved with all my heart, certainly precluded any change. Grow I did not. Sleepwalking is a bit more like it…” Julia awoke with a jolt when she struggled unsuccessfully against Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company, the Upper Michigan Power Company, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and her hometown and some of its citizens in an effort to save Presque Isle Park and Presque Isle Peninsula from environmental damage. The small Upper Michigan Power Company provided electrical power for Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company, a corporate landlord in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and a major employer in Marquette. The power company looms at the mouth of the Dead River, less than one quarter of a mile from the entrance to Marquette’s historic Presque Isle Park. The Ojibwe Indians named the river the Dead River because they considered it a scared stream which the spirits of their chiefs and sachems navigated on their final journey to Lake Superior, the ‘great water.” The “great water”, Dead River, and iron ore were naturally occurring assets that combined to create a corporation and a symbolic final journey for Julia K. Tibbitts. Iron ore pellets from the mines west of Marquette were loaded onto ore carries from the ore dock, visible just behind the power plant. A huge coal pile built up from coal delivered by ships to the harbor and carried in on the coal unloader directly in front of the ore dock dominated the landscape and leaked pollutants into the atmosphere and Lake Superior. Julia believed that the negative effects of the expansion far outweighed any positive effects for the community and environment. She helped found Superior Public Rights to rally Marquette citizens to legally stop power company expansion. She no longer sleepwalked and she grew in directions she had never imagined during her battle years of 1973-1977. Growing up in Marquette Michigan, Julia loved the natural beauty of the area and the vistas of Lake Superior and Presque Island, a 323 acre forested, oval headland jutting into Lake Superior from the northern tip of Marquette. A small park that generations of people enjoyed was an integral part of Presque Isle. “The history of “The Island,” as Marquette citizens called Presque Isle, stretches back to at least 3,000 years from prehistoric inhabitants to 19th century businessman and acting director of Cleveland Iron Company Peter White. He successfully petitioned Congress to pass a bill deeding Presque Isle to the City of Marquette which it did on July 12, 1886. One of his first projects was building a road from Marquette to Presque Isle Park and planting tall Lombardy poplar trees along Lakeshore Boulevard. In her book, Let’s Go Around the Island, Julia K. Tibbitts reminisced about the central part that Presque Isle played in her life and in the lives of other Marquette citizens. She remembered walking the beaches for hours exploring and collecting colorful Lake Superior washed rocks. She and her future husband Munro Tibbitts belonged to a club on the western shore of the Island that met every week. She recalled the one way drive all around Presque Isle, and walking, biking,, skiing or snowshoeing around it. She loved the breakwater and reminisced about how she and her friends walked its full length.. Some people called the breakwater the break wall, but no long time Marquette natives did. Long time native Julia Koch called it the break water. Born on October 1, 1917 to Otto and Nota Schaffer Koch, Julia Koch was raised in Marquette. She graduated from Principia Upper School in St. Louis, Missouri in 1936 and from Ogontz School for Young Ladies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1938. In 1965, she earned a degree from Northern Michigan University. Although she and her husband had a second home in Arizona, she lived in Marquette in body and spirit until her death in 2008 at age 90. Julia’s early life and education helped develop the necessary stiffness of spine enough to fight her future legal battles. Principia Upper School, a Christian Science School, then as now was dedicated to teaching students to consider events and their lives from the basis of principle, as Mrs. Mary Kimball Morgan intended when she founded it in 1897. At the Ogontz School for Young Ladies in Philadelphia, Julia learned the importance of physical activity, especially military drills and ramrod straight posture. Principal Miss Abby Sutherland believed that as well as pouring tea and walking gracefully, marching as an all absorbing and democratic form of exercise would teach her students self-discipline, self-direction, and self-reliance. Her students learned to march, to think, to be ladies, and to continue marching far into their futures. Marching into her own future, Julia Koch married Munro Longyear Tibbitts, and during their 33 years of marriage they raised two sons, Richard and Frederick. Munro served as president of the Longyear Realty Company of Marquette, a corporation created to carry out the legal provisions of the will of his uncle John Munro Longyear who owned timberlands and iron mines throughout Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Munro Tibbitts also was the president of several smaller corporations, served as executor of lands and mines that others had owned jointly with John Munro Longyear, and managed millions of dollars worth of holdings through his office. One of the business deals that Munro Tibbitts brokered turned out to be hauntingly ironic for him and his wife Julia. Representatives of Cleveland Cliffs Corporation convinced Munro to sell them several acres of land on Big Bay Road, claiming that Longyear Realty and Cleveland Cliffs had negotiated to the benefit of Longyear in the past. After much agonizing, Munro sold them the land for an ash dumping site for their power plant, Upper Peninsula Generating Company. Julia described the dump as “an environmental disaster” and she wrote that Munro never stopped feeling responsible for selling Cleveland Cliffs the land for their dump. In 1973, two important events in Julia’s life converged. In 1973, Cleveland Cliffs decided to expand the generating power of its small utility, Upper Peninsula Generating Company. The power company which provided electric power for Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company eventually expanded to four times its original size. All of the units were eventually built between 1973-1978, during its battle with Superior Public Rights. On April 17, 1973, Munro Longyear Tibbitts died. Returning to Marquette after his funeral services, Julia took a welcome home drive around the island and discovered bulldozers, barges, and large pipes on the Presque Isle beach. She learned to her dismay that the Presque Isle Power Plant planned to further develop the Island, changes that she felt would drastically alter the park. As a countermove against Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company, Julia wrote a letter to the Mining Journal, Marquette’s daily newspaper. Published under the title “Shoreline Desecration”, Julia’s letter challenged her fellow Marquette citizens to oppose Cleveland Cliff’s plans to expand its power company, stressing that they as citizens had the right of preservation, beautification, conservation, and non-pollution of their environment. She raised doubts about the motives of Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company when she wrote, “I heard someone say the other day that the power company never wanted to build a plant on land at Little Presque Isle at all, but threatened it so that the thoughts of the conservationists would be diverted to saving that piece of land while the company proceeded with plans to do wholesale mayhem at the mouth of Dead River, on our scenic drive. “True or not true, it is food for thought.” Encouraged by the support she received from some of her fellow citizens, Julia and her friends composed an “Open Letter to Marquette and Cleveland Cliffs” protesting the further development of Presque Isle. She personally delivered the letter to the top executives and board of directors of Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company. Soon Julia found herself writing more letters, including a series of letters and alerts that she published in Marquette’s Action Shopper, because she said that local newspapers and other media outlets either refused to cover their fight or covered it insufficiently. In one of the alerts, Julia pointed out the dangers of mill scale, solid iron particles that cling like fish scales to the sides of a steel mill after the melted iron has been emptied out. Because of its polluting properties, environmentalists fought to contain it around large steel mills instead of dumping it in the country, creating huge piles of mill scale around Detroit, Chicago, Gary, Cleveland and anywhere else steel was manufactured. Julia wrote that Cleveland Cliffs had secretly brought mill scale into Marquette for the past three years and intended to bring in boatloads of it as soon as the company had completed what it falsely called a new coal unloading dock. She also charged that Cleveland Cliff was converting mill scale into solid iron ore pellets, a process that released iron oxides and particulate into the air. In one of her concluding arguments she said that Cleveland Cliffs Iron lied by insisting that the unloading facility was for coal when it was really for mill scale and that state and local politicians backed them for economic reasons. As her crusade to preserve Presque Isle progressed, Julia Tibbitts experienced the perils of taking a stand and acting decisively on controversial issues while living in a small town. People she believed were her friends for years no longer were her friends. Other friends had to restrict their friendship and remain silent or anonymous for fear of economic repercussions from Cleveland Cliffs and other businesses and government bodies. According to Julia, Superior Public Rights Incorporated members-numbering about 45- were never publicly identified to prevent economic retaliation from Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company, its affiliates, and friends. She also experienced a smorgasbord of lawyers, the four Superior Public Rights Incorporated lawyers and opposition lawyers from Cleveland Cliffs and its allies. She hired lawyers and she and a few fellow Marquette citizens created a corporation that they called Superior Public Rights with a mission to enhance, protect, preserve the shoreline of the city of Marquette and the surrounding region and to defend the public trust. Superior Public Rights interpreted the public trust as the land, shoreline of every ocean, lake, river, or stream being owned by the United States Government with each state as trustee. Superior Public Rights brought a class action suit and incorporated to sue the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the Upper Peninsula Power Generating Company, and the Lake Superior and Ishpeming Railroad for giving corporations permits which it deemed invalid because they were illegally given and illegally received. Superior Public Rights stated that it would prove in court that devices like intake pipes, coal unloaders, discharge pipes, hot water discharges and the inevitable runoffs cause significant environmental damage to communities. Cleveland Cliffs and its subsidiaries owned percentages of the capital stock of each company. Superior Public Rights sued for 100 million dollars, charging that the corporations had taken/given public Trust shorelines illegally. Many Marquette citizens, both civic and corporate, cast their vote for Cleveland Cliffs Iron Corporation which launched its own campaign in letters and hearings, contending that it was doing no harm to the Presque Isle environment. Superior Public Rights remained steadfast in its stance against the power company expansion even when the city of Marquette threatened to sue the organization. The city later dropped the suit, but the gully between the opposing factions of its citizens became a Grand Canyon. Julia K. Tibbitts believed that Superior Public Rights Incorporated established four important principles in the state of Michigan that still stand today. She wrote that the four principles apply whenever environmentally concerned citizens are involved with the law. She believed that Superior Public Rights: •Clarified the fact that the “burden of proof” is on the party who wants to use bottom lands or the public trust to prove that they will not harm them or that there are valid reasons for changing them. •Contended that the judge must make independent findings in environmental cases from the material presented and the judge must read the material himself. •Proved that citizens in class action suits like the one that Superior Public Rights Incorporated brought against Cleveland Cliffs to preserve the environment are entitled to have their attorney’s fees paid. This set the precedent for environmental lawsuits because most ordinary citizens cannot afford huge legal fees that corporations pay in such suits. •Established the precedent that the Department of Natural Resources and the Natural Resources Commission when leasing the bottom lands and the Public Trust for a company’s exclusive use must give back something to the public for that use. Julia summarized the position of Superior Public Rights and the outcome of its legal suit at a hearing in Lansing: “We carried this kind of thinking all through the night of attack, innuendo, ridicule, secretiveness, lying, cheating, stealing, scorn, and environmental ignorance like a powerful little torch, until we lit up the whole sea of proceedings with these four principles as the decision of the Judge of the Circuit Court of Ingham County dropped the whole mess down on our heads. Eight points brought forward. Eight counts lost. His requirement to make a public park at the unloader site became our one small victory. There it sits. We rest our laurels firmly on these principles for anyone who cares to see what we really did, behind the action and reaction on the legal-local legislative show out front.” In 1991, Julia updated the story of her unsuccessful battle with Cleveland Cliffs Iron Corporation and her hometown of Marquette. She said that smelt no longer ran at the Dead River mouth as they had for decades because they could no longer navigate up the river to spawn because of the power plant operations and that the power company had been known to reverse the flow of the Dead River to obtain cooling water. She questioned the legality of the reversal. Julia reported that the Power Company had added more buildings to the site and that the city of Marquette added three power units of its own and later installed power poles and strung up lines all across the city to connect them. The coal pile was still unprotected and tons of fly ash continued falling in the Island woods, Lake Superior, and the air. Mill scale with its toxic substances including tons of finely pulverized lime extremely dangerous when breathed into the lungs was still received at Presque Isle site, although it is banned in other states. She said that the” long yellow plume of sulphurous smoke sometimes extends for 20 miles across our horizon. It contains tons of particulate every day which falls over our island into our water intake pipes so we drink it. It falls on our city, on our clothes, our cars, our children and we breathe it. Remember, it contains radionuclides, sulfate ions, and trace metals, such as mercury and copper. ..” According to Julia, in 1991 Cleveland Cliffs sold nearly 300,000 acres of land in the Upper Peninsula to the Japanese and shortly afterward sold the Presque Isle power plant to Wisconsin, agonizing that the power plant continued to pollute. Julia ended her book with a metaphor after watching a friend washing windows in her house near Lake Superior. She said that washing each small pane revealed the increasing clarity of the trees and Lake Superior that she had fought so hard to protect. She felt that the members of Superior Public Rights, Inc. had helped clarify everyone’s vision and understanding of the environmental issues in the court case. She wrote that “anyone could now see that when a company or an individual could put aside greed and its sorry associates – secrecy, distrust, misinformation and manipulation-greed would become beautifully less. It would be no longer tolerated in a world that was beginning to see a better way of doing things…” Julia felt that everyone would reach the ultimate to be wished for – progress, and she was willing to risk her own money, community standing, and time to put her beliefs into action. Bibliography Primary Sources Northern Michigan University Archives Kathy Warnes 5149 Summit Lane Allendale, Michigan 49401 616-307-5750 Julia K. Tibbitts Collection – MSS-145 Correspondence – 1971-1977 Research Notes Legal Documents Books Bryant, Bunyan. Michigan: A State of Environmental Justice? Morgan James Publishing, 2011Dempsey, Dave. Ruin and Recovery: Michigan's Rise as a Conservation Leader , University of Michigan Regional, 2001. Spring, Barbara. The Dynamic Great Lakes. Independence Books, 2002. Tibbitts, Julia K. Let’s Go Around the Island. Lake Superior Press, 1992. Documents, Newspapers, Periodicals Mining Journal, Marquette, Michigan Cleveland Plain Dealer Public Act No. 314 – House Bill No. 3515 The Action Shopper, Marquette, Michigan Michigan AFL-CIO News The Detroit Free Press The Northwest Call Wall Street Journal Minneapolis Tribune Born February 9, 1900, Isabella was the oldest child of wealthy Detroit attorney James Swan and Emma Groh Swan, a descendant of one of Grosse Ile, Michigans early settlers. She and her brother Donald and sister Helen spent their winters in Detroit and their summers on Grosse Ile roaming the 555 acre Groh farm which included the entire southern part of Grosse Ile except for Hickory Island, Elba Island, and the quarry. The family also owned Snake Island which lay alongside Grosse Ile which they renamed Swan Island, purchasing the old Belle Isle Bridge which they used to connect Grosse Ile to Swan Island. The Swans developed their island with the goal of selling home lots there and accumulated a construction bill amounting to over seven million dollars in 21st century currency. Most of the lot buyers defaulted on their purchases after the Stock Market crash of 1929, and the Swans couldn’t pay their construction bill. They lost all but 3.5 acres of their island, and plunged into hard times with millions of their fellow Americans. Isabella, 29, resolved to help her family. She had attended Detroit public schools, learning French at Central High School. She went to the University of Michigan, majoring in physics and mathematics, graduating in 1922. In 1923, after recovering from a bout of appendicitis, she accepted a job at the Detroit Public Library, the first in her library career. In a 1989 Heritage Newspaper Interview, Isabella said that after her family sold their Grosse Ile farm in 1926, they thought they were financially stable, so she resigned from her Detroit Public Library position. Then came the Depression, the Swan Island construction bill, and the farm falling back in their hands with taxes due on it. [1] In 1933, the Swan family decided to live on Grosse Ile year around, and Isabella took a job with the Wayne County Library System, managing the small Grosse Ile Library, now known as the 1911 Building owned by the Grosse Ile School District. She recalled that she made 33 cents an hour and “I was mighty glad to get that job. It fed my mother, father, sister, brother, niece and myself. It took some managing.” In 1937, Isabella transferred to the Trenton Library, then in the city’s municipal building and in 1940, when she was 40 years old, Isabelle enrolled at Columbia University working on a degree in library science. Although she had reservations about going back to school at age 40, her lifelong love of learning motivated her to finish her degree. During World War II, she worked at the Lincoln Park Library which made gasoline rationing a little easier for her. The Lincoln Park Library had been named the official outlet for wartime and civil defense information and the people in charge of the rationing considered Isabella an essential person. Isabella had a plentiful supply of gasoline. Isabella’s family took in fliers training at the Grosse Ile Naval Air Base and their families during the World War II and frequently entertained British Royal Air Force pilots training at the base, now the site of the Grosse Ile Airport. Besides working at the Lincoln Park Library, she managed advertising for the Grosse Ile Camera, which her friends Henry and Dorothy Hoch published. After working at the Lincoln Park Library during the War years, Isabella transferred to the Wayne County Library System’s administrative headquarters in Detroit, serving as assistant county librarian until her retirement in 1961. During her tenure as assistant county librarian, Isabella researched and wrote articles about Grosse Ile and Great Lakes maritime history. For the first six months after her retirement, Isabella traveled, but then she decided to start researching the first of the books she wrote about Grosse Ile history. Her first book, Lisette, is a biography of Elizabeth Denison Forth, one time slave who prospered enough to invest in steamboats and real estate and left an endowment for building St. James Episcopal Church Chapel in 1867. She published Lisette in 1965. Continuing in the St. James tradition, Isabella wrote, The Ark of God, published in 1968, for the church’s 100th anniversary. She wrote The Deep Roots, a study of the first 100 years of Grosse Ile history, which took Isabella 14 years to write. According to Isabella, she spent three days a week researching in the Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library and another three days a week transcribing her notes. She explored museums, libraries, and churches in Windsor and Amherstburg, Ontario and corresponded with researchers in the U.S. and Canadian national archives, the U.S. Library of Congress, and other public and private archives for more information. The Deep Roots was published in 1976, in time for the bicentennial of the United States and counting from July 6, 1776 when William and Alexander Macomb bought Grosse Ile from the Pottawatomie Indians, the bicentennial of Grosse Ile as well. In a 1989 interview, Isabella talked about The Deep Roots. “I’ll never regret writing it. I have no regrets for the time I spent on that book. My, I had fun writing that book. A lot of people said I’d never finish it. They were wrong. I guess the ultimate accolade that my book received is that seven copies were stolen from the Trenton Library.”[1] Isabella Swan died on Friday, November 19, 1993, at her home in her beloved Grosse Ile. In addition to her career as a historian, her accomplishments included founder and life member of the Grosse Ile Historical Society, life member of the Historical Society of Michigan, and member of the National Historical Society and the American Association for State and Local History. And, documenting the lives of Grosse Ile slaves who would have otherwise been lost to Downriver history. [1] Paula Evans Neuman.“Grande Dame” Downriver Historian Isabella Swan is Dead at 93. Heritage Newspapers. News Herald. November 24, 1993. P. 14A The Proven Navigator (A strictly fictional account of what it might have been like to have been a Suffragette with a magic weapon) Julia Wallingford didn’t flinch when the first rotten egg struck the podium. Instead, she took a perfumed lace handkerchief from her reticule, picked up the jagged pieces of egg shell, stored them in her reticule, and continued to speak. Behind her she heard a gasp and a whirr as Sebastian, her robot servant moved in to protect her. She waved him away with a flick of her wrist and moved on to paragraph two of the speech she was making at the women’s suffrage rally in Brooklyn on this balmy fall evening in 1890. A gentleman wearing a bowler hat and carrying a lion’s head cane tapped the edge of the platform. “Tottering”! he yelled, pointing at Julia’s white hair. “Tottering!” Julia unpinned the stop watch that she had fastened to waistband of the skirt that reached just below her knees. She felt the gentle swish of her bloomers that extended from her knees to her ankles as she walked to the edge of the platform and positioned herself directly in front of the gentleman in the bowler hat. Julia dangled her watch in front of the gentleman’s nose and pointed at it.. “Ticking! Ticking! Your rule is ticking away!” she shouted. Then she turned and quickly walked back to the podium. “You will note that I did not totter, hobble, stumble, or creep to the podium and back,” she said. “My bloomers allow me the same freedom of movement that I practice with my intellect and my thoughts. I would remind you that the clock is ticking for those who would chain women to their kitchen stoves, their maids, their afternoon teas, and to antiquated laws made by men in favor of men.” “Barking! Barking!” This time the shout came from her left, but a tomato didn’t accompany the shout. “Go back to tending your fireside.” She felt the waves of hatred and scorn in the voice crashing over her, but she wouldn’t let them drown her. She projected her voice in the direction of the shout. “I helped form the bricks and mortar of my fireside and since I am now the only one who tends it, I have the right to tend it the way I see fit. I have the right to freedom of mind, dress, equality under the law, and the right to vote. I claim no superiority to men, but I do claim equality!” This time the roar from hundreds of masculine throats enveloped her, although Julia noticed that there were some ladies in the audience who drew back in fastidious disgust when she looked their way. One society matron in a gray polonaise and carrying a brown parasol swept out on the arm of a gentleman in a black tail coat, a white shirt with a wing tip collar, and white gloves. “Enjoy your dinner party and remember the people working the land at the poorhouse next door. Most of them are women. Can you imagine what they would do if they had the vote?” Julia mocked the crowd. “Can you imagine how you would appear properly dressed for a woman of your age?” The haughty society matron had come up to the edge of the platform. “I am properly dressed for a woman of my beliefs. Julia twirled around and snapped the ankles of her bloomers at the matron, who puffed up like one of the new fangled hot air balloons. “This is my American dress,” Julia said. “There is nothing American about a woman wearing trousers.” The gentleman fixed his bowler hat more firmly on his head and bowed to the society matron. “Come along my dear.” “Reform your custom to match my Reform Costume,” Julia shouted after the society matron, but the roar of the crowd drowned out her voice. The disapproving crowd continued to roar and press close to the platform. A young man with a brown, bushy beard shoved his way up to the platform and helped a pretty young woman with dark hair and wearing a polonaise trimmed in fox fur up the stairs. “I am an anti-Suffragette and I will give you the reasons women should not be given the vote,” she said. “Without my gentleman companion I could not have pushed my way through this crowd of men to speak to you. Pushing my way through a crowd of men to vote would be worse. We women are fragile and weak and if we have the vote, unscrupulous men will take advantage of us.” The crowd cheered loudly and the young woman stepped back. The young man with the brown bushy beard stepped forward. “If women voted, the United States would fall into foreign aggression and war. Winning the vote would reinforce women in their willful behavior. Eve got what she wanted when she wanted and we’ve had trouble since!” The crowd clapped and cheered and the young man with the bushy brown beard spoke again.”Women would vote more than once!” He gently took hold of the young woman’s arm and held it up so that everyone could see her large sleeves. “A woman could hide a number of ballots in her sleeve!” The crowd cheered and cheered until the young woman and the young man climbed down from the platform and disappeared into the crowd. People continued to press up against Julia and a low, murmuring undercurrent like a dog growling a threat surrounded her. Julia wasn’t afraid, but she wished she had her Kybernetes, her steam powered bicycle, closer. Kybernetes, according to the Greeks, a navigator, had been her touchstone and she had proven she was a navigator. She intended to use her Kybernetes for more exploration and adventure In answer to her wish, Sebastian appeared, wheeling in Julia’s Kybernetes with the miniature steam engine attached to the high seat. He lifted the Kybernetes onto the platform and elbowed several young banner carrying anti-Suffragettes out of the way. He eased the Kybernetes behind Julia’s short skirts and she sat down with a thump, her bloomers flapping. “It’s time to go, Madame.” Sebastian didn’t raise his metallic voice, but Julia well knew his impersonal, implacable will. Now was not the time to enter a stubborn contest of wills with Sebastian! “I’m ready to go home now, “Julia said, pressing the button on the side of the steam engine just as a tomato hit her and splattered on her Kybernetes and her bloomers! The Kybernetes quickly transported them to the mansion on Bascomb Street. In truth, the mansion on Bascomb Street had at first belonged to Wilfred, but Julia had paid it off before his timely death. Wilfred’s death was timely, because if he hadn’t died when he died, he would have continued his propaganda. She could have been one of the white haired ladies dusting furniture in the poorhouse or grubbing radishes in its vegetable gardens. But despite her best intentions and her freedom, Julia missed Wilfred. As she swept through the empty parlor with Sebastian hurrying along behind her, she paused in front of Wilfred’s empty arm chair languishing in front of the fireplace and blew him a kiss. That was the least she could do after 39, almost forty years of marriage. Sebastian stopped so short behind her that she felt the coolness of his bronze knees against her bloomers. Wilfred had wanted to make Sebastian out of pure copper, but Julia had convinced him that a bronze robot would be less expensive and more practical around the house. By then she had read enough of Wilfred’s scientific journals to know that bronze was an alloy of tin and copper and that alloys often worked better than the pure metals used to create them. “I work better than the pure sexist society that created me,” she told Sebastian who she knew had been reading her thoughts like she read She by H. Ridder Haggard. “Wilfred thought that I, a society- nurtured dependent creature, needed him, but I combined my strength with his weaknesses and created an alloy, a hybrid person that will change the world order. I am a Suffragette alloy who will force the world to acknowledge the equality of women. Women are already born with her rights! I, the woman they call unsexed, will unsexist the sexist society! We are both alloys, Sebastian, but I will be the victorious alloy!” Julia moved quickly into the dining room, propelled by the surety of victory as strongly and swiftly as her miniature steam engine, the one that she had invented to propel her wooden Kybernetes. Clearing his throat with a metallic cough, Sebastian pulled out the dining room chair. “Yes, Madame,” he said, signaling for Luellabella to bring in the potato soup, the first dinner course. “You weren’t here this afternoon to give Luellabella the menu, so I took the liberty of doing so,” Sebastian said. Julia laughed at him. “Wilfred programmed you to keep me on the domestic woman track. It’s not going to work, Sebastian. I’m going to keep inventing things. Once I got into Wilfred’s laboratory and discovered all of his wonderful experiments, there was no stopping me. There IS no stopping me.” “Society will stop you. Custom and costume will stop you. Biology will stop you.” Sebastian removed the potato soup and set the second course, roasted turkey in front of Julia. She grabbed the plate out of his hands and jumped up from the table so quickly that she overturned her chair. “Sebastian, bring me my Kybernetes!” “Madam, you must finish your dinner. You must keep up your strength.” “Sebastian, I order you to bring me my Kybernetes. You are still my servant for all that Wilfred programmed you to program me.” Sebastian bowed. “Yes, Madam.” Julia sniffed. “You know full well that I would fetch my Kybernetes myself if need be. Now fetch it for me, please, and be quick about it.” Nibbling on a turkey leg, Julia visualized flying with her Kybernetes. She reserved a fond place for it in her heart because it was the only invention that she and Wilfred had worked on together. In a dusty corner of Wilfred’s laboratory curtained by cobwebs, she had found a tangle of metal parts fitted inside of a box that reminded her of a tortoise shell. Wilfred had brushed it aside as she brushed aside the cobwebs. “It is of little consequence, an idea I had that doesn’t work. Image a bicycle powered by a miniature steam engine!” Julia imaged such a bicycle!. She saw herself pedaling over the rooftops of Brooklyn, pedaling across the country, touching down at women’s suffrage meetings, speaking, and then pedaling home. She dusted off the cobwebs and convinced Wilfred that it could work. She studied charts of the inner workings of the steam engine until she understood them. Eventually she understood steam engines so well that despite Wilfred’s jeering, she modified the miniature steam engine and attached it to her bicycle. She expanded Wilfred’s single engine bicycle design into a twin cylinder steam engine similar to factory steam engines and she attached the engine to a velocipede frame made of iron and hickory. The bicycle ran on wooden wheels with iron coverings and despite Wilfred’s laughter, she expanded the wheelbase to 49 inches. “How are you going to attach a monstrosity like that engine to the bicycle?” he had challenged her. “It’s as simple as sewing a seam,” she told him. And she showed him how. She attached the engine to the frame behind the seat and connected the piston rods to the rear wheel axle. “The wheels are solid and the ride will feel like a washboard,” Wilfred said. “Mobility is worth sacrifice,” Julia said, continuing her work. From a frame under the wheels, she suspended a firebox and boiler on springs, piston valves and a feed water pump. She installed tubing to carry the exhaust steam to the base of the chimney which was projected up from behind the saddle. “But where will you get the steam?” Wilfred asked condescendingly, she thought. “By heating charcoal,” she said. “And I will get my water from a built in reservoir in the seat. There is a pump there to feed the water that is operated by the left cylinder crank.” She called her steam engine powered bicycle Kybernetes and since Wilfred had invented the magnesium lamp for Kybernetes she called the lamp the Wilfred Lamp. After she returned from her first trip around the house with Kybernetes, Wilfred helped her fine tune its features. With the correct application of charcoal and water control, they managed to achieve a speed of 40 miles an hour, but Kybernetes also had its drawbacks. Every horse in the neighborhood spooked and ran when they heard Kybernetes approaching and people tended to have the same reaction. But Julia thrilled to the speed and power of locomotion that Kybernetes afforded her and one night when they had taken Kybernetes to an isolated part of Prospect Park for a practice run, she heard Wilfred cheering the bicycle along as Julia pedaled furiously. She had tried to visit the capitalist moguls to sell their invention, the Kybernetes and the Wilfred Lamp, by herself. A few of the moguls admitted her to their offices because her white hair reminded them of their “venerable mothers.” Others laughed at her to reinforce their masculine superiority. None of them offered her any money or backing until Wilfred went with her. She had invested the money that they made with the magnesium lamp and on the plans for the Kybernetes and they lived comfortably. As time went on, Wilfred began to pedal Kybernetes himself and one day during another practice run in Prospect Park, Wilfred had fallen off Kybernetes and had not gotten to his feet again. At first Julia and the doctors thought that he had died because of something that Kybernetes had caused, but after the doctors examined him, they told Julia that a heart attack, possibly brought on from the exertion of pedaling Kybernetes, had caused Wilfred’s death. “That is fitting and would be the same for me,” Julia said and continuefvd her relationship with Kybernetes, despite Sebastian’s disapproval. Sebastian wheeled in the Kybernetes, holding it at arm’s length to signal his disapproval. “What is your destination, Madam?” he asked. Julia fancied that if Sebastian had eyebrows, they would be raised as high as Mt. Everest in disapproval. “I am going to a meeting in Wyoming. Wyoming has applied for statehood and the anti-suffrage Congress wants to take away women’s suffrage in Wyoming. It’s been in place since 1869, you know.” “I know,” Sebastian said. “I heard your Elizabeth Cady Stanton and your Susan B. Anthony advise you and your friends to make a mass migration west.” “New York will always be my home, but I’m going to leave for Wyoming tonight. Miss Cordelia Munson asked me to make a speech in favor of suffrage and I need to add my voice. The legacy that we leave women of future generations is important.” Sebastian firmly gripped the Kybernetes’s handle bars. “The future generations will make their own legacy. They might reject the one you leave them. And Madam, you must have your rest. The hour is late and your hair is still white.” “The hour is late, indeed.” Julia tugged the handle bars from Sebastian’s grasp. “Don’t wait up for me, Sebastian. I won’t be back until next month or perhaps the month after. I will return in April or May.” “I will draw Madam’s bath and turn down her bed covers just as Master instructed.” Sebastian turned and glided out of the room. Julia pulled on her wool cape and Sherlock Holmes hat with the warm earflaps and wheeled the Kybernetes through the French doors and out onto the balcony. She snapped on her transparent goggles, hopped onto the seat, and pushed the button on the engine. The Kybernetes immediately rose into the air and soon Julia soared above the clouds, peering at the earth far below through her goggles. Since all she could see was gas lit darkness below her, Julia concentrated on the starlight shining above and around her. She dreamed that someday she or other women like her would lead expeditions to the stars, each pedaling their individual Kybernetes. She dozed and thought about her upcoming speech. She stopped every evening to eat and sleep at inns and private rooms and met several interesting people. She argued suffrage all of the way to Wyoming and she didn’t look at the Roadometer attached to her handle bars until it had registered 1, 917.2 miles which told her that she had arrived in Wyoming Territory. She followed the map that Miss Munson had sent her and soon she stood behind a podium, facing another audience. To Julia’s surprise, the Wyoming audience proved to be more friendly than her last New York audience. There were just scattered boos, and only two rotten eggs. Julia picked up the shell of one of them that hit the podium and stored it in the burlap saddle bag on the back of Kybernetes. It nested snugly against the one from the crowd in New York. No one in Wyoming Territory ridiculed Julia’s gender or her white hair. They calmly accepted her assertions that women were hard working people with the inalienable right to life, liberty, wifehood and motherhood or not, and the right to vote. The people of Wyoming Territory told Congress they would stay a territory for one hundred years rather than give up women’s suffrage. Julia knew that Wyoming would shortly become a state. Miss Munson invited Julia to stay for a fortnight of celebration, but Julia declined. Despite the fact that she was a strong liberated women agitating for the vote, she wanted to get home and rest. Julia was satisfied that the next generations would carry on the fight without interruption, but she still felt uneasy. Instead of comforting darkness with rivers and fireflies of gaslight flowing through the night, Julia had visions all of the way home, visions that caused her to peddle her Kybernetes so slowly that it almost stalled twice over the choppy waters of Lake Erie and once over the Pennsylvania mountains. Women dominated Julia’s visions, but men populated them as well.. She saw a woman with white hair the same shade as hers standing in a doorway facing down a soldier while terrified children huddled behind her shirts. She saw a woman in a white laboratory coat conducting scientific experiments and she saw a woman stirring a pot of stew on a kitchen stove. She saw a woman’s smooth hand rocking a cradle and she saw a women’s rough hand operating a loom. She saw a male fist striking a woman and a male hand placing a wedding ring on a female finger. “It is an unwieldy legacy,” Julia said thoughtfully, a few months later as she neared the end ofher journey. The sun colored the sky with kaleidoscopic dawn fingers as she landed the Kybernetes on her balcony and parked it. She took off her cap and goggles and shivering and exhausted, she opened the door to her warm, safe, house. Sebastian stood directly inside the French doors, holding out a cup of tea with a dollop of milk and two teaspoons of sugar, just the way she liked it. A plate of cinnamon toast wedges and biscuits waited on the sideboard. “Did Madam have a comfortable trip?” Sebastian asked. Julia noted the sarcasm in his question. “I had a profitable trip, Sebastian, and I’ll always travel to safeguard my legacy.” “I know Wyoming will do the right thing,” Sebastian said, but what of the other politicians and states who won’t? “I’ll convince them. “You will forgo many of the comforts of home,” Sebastian prophesied. Julia hugged the warmth of her teacup and sank down onto the sofa. “I’ll appreciate them more.” “Your work will often be tedious and discouraging and unappreciated,” Sebastian predicted. “My next invention will be a steamer that can steam five eggs at a time,” Julia predicted.”I might even age them and throw them back at the people who persist in hurling them at me.” “You would still fare better if you worked at home and allowed Luellabella and me to take care of you,” Sebastian insisted. “I know, but I have my Kybernetes and I am a proven navigator,” Julia said, defiantly sipping her tea and throwing one of her souvenir rotten egg shells at Sebastian! Chapter Two Miss Arlyne Burr, A Ecorse School One Music Teacher Memory Miss Burr taught in Ecorse, Michigan, but she has sisters all over the country.... Along with Mr. Herbert Saylor and Alexander Campbell, Ecorse High School Band leaders, Miss Helen Garlington and Mr. Charles Sweet, music teachers, are probably the most well remembered music teachers and musicians from Ecorse. I would add one more person who definitely belongs on the list: Miss Arlyne T. Burr. I didn’t and don’t think about Miss Burr constantly. In fact, like most people when someone mentions music in Ecorse schools of old I think of Miss Garlington, Mr. Sweet, Mr. Campbell and Mr. Saylor. But then, snatches of songs run through my mind and I daily renew my love of music and there is Miss Arlyne T. Burr. During my time at Ecorse School One Miss Arlyne Burr taught me and my classmates music as well as School Two and School Three pupils. I seem to remember that we had music on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but I could be wrong about that. Even if the times were only on Tuesday and Thursday, Miss Burr’s class was magic for me. She would sit in front of our class seated alphabetically in rows of desks, accompany herself on the piano and teach us music, sometimes from music books, sometimes from song sheets, sometimes acapella. Decades later, snatches of songs that she taught us still run through my mind. Mr. Squirrel buries lots of nuts in a tree, If you care to, if you dare to, Get your nuts from me. Or: North wind, north wind, wither are you going? Great, strong, swift, bold, North wind, north wind blustering and blow, Wild, fierce, keen, cold. Every year Miss Burr and her assistants staged a concert and invited the entire community to attend. An Ecorse Advertiser story on Thursday, May 11, 1950, talked about the Spring Festival at School Three. The pupils of School Three were presenting their annual Spring Festival in the basement auditorium at 2:30 on May 17, 1950. The program was planned to include vocal numbers by the choruses, selections by the string choir, Irish specialty numbers, a western act based on popular tunes of the day, and a colorful spring promenade featuring a selected group of girls from the school. All pupils from the second through the sixth grades participated. The program was directed by Miss Arlyne Burr, grade school supervisor of music in the Ecorse Schools. I vividly remember an event from a yearly concert that I participated in as a School One pupil. Miss Burr taught us a song called Be Kind to Your Parents. The words went in part: Be kind to your parents, Though they DON’T deserve it, Remember they’re grownups, A difficult stage of life. They’re apt to be nervous, And over excited, Confused from their daily storm and strife. A few minutes before our concert started, Miss Burr made an important announcement. We had to remember an important word change. We had to remember to sing: Be kind to your parents, For they DO deserve it… At the time, being accepting kids, we took the change as a matter of course and most of us remembered to sing the correct words. Now I wonder what prompted Miss Burr to change the words at the last minute. A parent? Parents? Political correctness 1950’s style? The Ecorse Advertiser story continued, discussing the music program in the Ecorse schools. In the 1950s, Charles Sweet directed the music department of the Ecorse Public Schools and he expanded the program so that more children had the opportunity to develop instrumental or vocal talents. Miss Arlyne Burr and Miss Virginia Tyler supervised vocal music in the grade schools. Herbert Saylor directed the bands and supervised the wind instrument instruction in the Ecorse schools. Grade school pupils sang in choral groups supervised by Miss Virginia Tyler and Miss Burr and many of them continued their vocal education in the. high school by singing in the Junior High School Choir. Charles Sweet directed the Senior High Choir which gained fame as one of the best choirs in the southeastern part of Michigan or in Miss Garlington’s Glee Club and Songsters which were equally recognized. One of my favorite memories of Miss Burr involves my lack of self-confidence. At School One, I was always the shy, quiet child and I didn't have the confidence to speak up in class. I was convinced that I didn't have anything important to say or I didn't have the right answers to the teacher’s questions. One day Miss Burr helped me grow a little self-confidence. She gave our class an exercise in sight reading by introducing a new song and asking us to hum it back to her. The song stumped even Lisa( not her real name!), the best musician in the class. I studied each note of the song carefully, my nearsighted nose brushing my desk top. Then, I knew it! I couldn't believe it myself, but I knew it! The notes hammered in my head. Would I have the courage to actually raise my hand and sing the song to Miss Burr? Would my notes be correct?” I buried my nose in the music book and wiggled my hand like a timid bird. Miss Burr nodded at me. I opened my mouth and sang: Listen said the mandolin, Hear my tinkling tune, Hear me said the violin, With a gentle croon, Oboe, trombone, piccolo, I am best of all you know Boasts the big bassoon. Miss Burr smiled and I knew she was seeing the real, musical me and not the confidence deficient fellow student that my classmates saw. That day I left School One in a warm glow, Miss Burr’s words of approval rang in my ears and her pleased smile covered me like stainless steel armor against the dents and dings of life for many years after that. Now I wish I would have been more curious about Miss Burr, at least curious enough to talk to her as an adult as well as enshrining her in childhood memory. I wish I had thanked her while she was still alive instead of tracing the outlines of her life through documentary records. There are documentary records for Miss Burr. The Wyandotte, Michigan City Directory of 1950 lists Miss Arlyne T. Burr as living at 211 Burke in River Rouge and records her occupation as a music teacher. Another record, a Michigan Census, shows her living at 29905 Tamarack Drive, Flat Rock, Michigan, in 1993. The 1920 United State Census sheds some light about Miss Burr’s early life. She was born on May 3, 1914, and in 1920 she lived in Madison Ward 4, Lake, South Dakota with her parents Wallace C. and Theresa D. Burr and her older sister Evelyn W. Burr, age 11. The South Dakota census of 1935 shows that Arlyne T. Burr at age 21, still lived at Madison, Lake, South Dakota, and it listed her father’s birthplace as Wisconsin and her mother’s birthplace as South Dakota. The Topeka Capital Journal of Topeka, Kansas, printed an obituary for Arlyne Burr, age 87, on Friday, December 21, 2001. She died on Wednesday, December 19, 2001, at Highland Nursing Home in Troy, Kansas. Her obituary fills in some of the details of Miss Burr’s life that I didn't know. As the census records confirm, she was born on May 3, 1914, in Madison, South Dakota, the daughter of Wallace and Theresa Dahl Burr. After graduating from Central High School in Madison, she earned a bachelor’s degree in education at the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in music at the University of Michigan. She taught school in Leona, Kansas, from 1938 to 1941, and she moved to Michigan where she taught in Ecorse and Flat Rock for 40 years before she retired. She moved to Troy, Kansas from Flat Rock in 1997. Miss Burr was a member of the Methodist Church at Flat Rock where she was active in the church choir. She also was involved with the S.E. Michigan Symphony, Poetry Club, Bible Study Club, and the Michigan Retired Teachers organization. She also composed music, especially after she retired. Miss Burr is buried at Mt. Olive Cemetery in Troy, Kansas. I’m sitting at my keyboard and playing, “Thank you Miss Burr.” . Aunt Nancy Range doctored backwoods patients in Warren and Erie County, Pennsylvania, while medicine continued to develop into a profession. In Erie County, Aunt Tamar Thompson and Aunt Nancy Range nursed the sick through cholera, and other epidemics. They sweated colds and starved fevers and delivered Erie county babies. By 1830, male physicians had taken over obstetrics and midwifery, at least for middle class women, but their dominance did not extend to the backwoods of Northwestern Pennsylvania. Aunt Nancy Range Doctors Through Warren and Erie County Aunt Nancy Range, born Nancy Myers, was distantly related to Tamar Thompson and she followed the same profession. She was born June 4, 1784 in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, and was raised there. She married John Range Jr., on April 12, 1798, and they had 14 children. When Aunt Nancy wasn’t busy tending her own family, she was doctoring her neighbors and ailing citizens of Warren and Erie counties. In those days a doctor didn’t need a license to practice medicine. A man might at any time put up a shingle and proclaim himself as a doctor. These untutored doctors made all their own medicine, and sometimes even distilled their own whiskey for medicinal purposes . Aunt Nancy’s skills were as good as or better than her male counterparts and she was in more demand. Aunt Nancy Doctored from the Cradle to the Grave In her middle age when she doctored in Warren County, Aunt Nancy rode Warren county bridle paths on her roan mare Mollie. She stretched above medium height with large bones, strong hands, and a strong jaw line. She wore steel rimmed specks with black strings on their bows fastened behind her head to keep the glasses from falling off when Mollie trotted hard or rode at a gallop. Every pioneer household welcomed a frontier doctor like Aunt Nancy. The householders offered food, shelter and warm hospitality because it was an honor to shelter and entertain the doctor and in return, many householders eagerly awaited the news and gossip that Aunt Nancy carried from cabin to cabin. When a message came that Aunt Nancy was needed she quickly dropped her herb brewing, spinning or dyeing while one of her sons saddled and bridled Mollie and brought her to the door. She grabbed her saddlebags that always hung behind the door ready for an emergency and climbed on Mollie’s back. Through wind and rain and snow reaching to Mollie’s belly Aunt Nancy would ride on Mollie’s back to reach her patients. When Aunt Nancy arrived at her patient’s home and found a serious illness, she would stay right there until she nursed the sick person better. If the patient died, Aunt Nancy Range laid out the body, cooked a meal or two and tended matters in general. Aunt Nancy’s Herb Garden At her cabin home near the headwaters of the Little Brokenstraw Creek in Warren County, Aunt Nancy had a large herb garden, a hundred yards long and 50 yards wide. In it she grew the herbs essential to her practice, like foxglove, catnip, lobelia, peppermint, smartweed, golden seal, spearmint, spikenard. The forest was also Aunt Nancy’s herb garden and from the forest she gathered bloodroot, myrrh, mandrake or May apple, sassafras, tag alder, slipper elm and many other herbs. Aunt Nancy knew just where to find blossoms, leaves, bark, or roots that were good for cures in woods or clearings or swamps. Foxglove reduced dropsy, sassafras thinned the blood, yellow dock purified the blood, and golden seal and licorice root acted as a general tonic and cured stomach ailments. Boneset cured colds. Hemlock tea was a standard home remedy. Indians used Queen of the Meadow for colds and Aunt Nancy used the same remedy calling it “a reliable Indian remedy.” Aunt Nancy Preaches Her Own Funeral Sermon In the last years of her life Aunt Nancy ministered to souls as well as bodies. She preached on Sundays in a log school house and the good folks came from miles around on foot and horse back to hear her sermons. She preached the old fashioned hell fire and suffering for the damned and eternal bliss for the righteous. She loved that sort of preaching and went from the kindly character of nurse and doctor to the stern, vindictive pulpit personality in one sentence. When she had reached her seventies and lived in Erie County near the site of present day Union City, Aunt Nancy Range who now had white curls at her temples, had a premonition. She announced that she would preach her funeral sermon on the following Sabbath. A large congregation assembled and listened to her preach. They all agreed that it was a good sermon, preached with power and persuasion. Two weeks later on December 8, 1860, she died and went to her reward which had to be a good one because she relieved so much suffering on earth. References Bates, Samuel, History of Erie County Pennsylvania, Warner Beers & Company Chicago, 1884 Bristow, Arch, Old Time Tales of Warren County, iUniverse, 2010 Conevery, Bolton Valencius, The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land, Basic Books, 2002 Coulter, Harris, Divided Legacy: A History of the Schism in Medical Thought, Vol. 2, North American Books, 1994 Nelson, S.R., Biographical Dictionary and Historical Reference Book of Erie County, Pa., S.R. Nelson Publisher, Erie, Pa., 1896 Rosenberg, Charles, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s Hospital System, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987 Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, World Epidemics: A Cultural Chronology of Disease from Prehistory to the Present, McFarland & Company, 2003 Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1775-1812, Vintage Books, 1990 Walker, Captain Augustus, Early Days on the Lakes with an Account of the Cholera Visitation of 1832, The Cornell Library, New York State Historical Literature Wilson, David, History of the Settlement of Union Township Elizabeth Denison, or Lisette, born a slave in Macomb County, Michigan, won her freedom by escaping to Canada and then returned to Detroit to work for prominent families. Through shrewd investments and careful purchasing she became one of the first black landowners in America, bequeathing part of her fortune to help build the St. James Episcopal Church chapel on Grosse Ile where people of all colors could worship.[1] Lisette was born in the 1780s or 1790s, the second of the six children of Peter and Hannah Denison who were the slaves of William Tucker. Tucker owned land on the Huron (later renamed the Clinton River) River in Saint Clair in Macomb County. Lisette’s father Peter worked the land and floated produce up and down the river for William Tucker while her mother Hannah served Catherine Tucker in the house. [2] Lisette played with her brothers and sisters and with the white and Indian children who lived around her and although she never learned to read or write, she was keenly intelligent and quickly learned the Indian languages so well that whites and Indians often asked her to interpret for them. As she grew up, Lisette helped her mother with household chores, gardening, cooking, and caring for the silver and fine dishes. William Tucker, the Denison’s owner, died in March 1805, and the Denisons believed that all of them would be freed. Then they learned the provisions of Tucker’s will which stipulated that the Denison parents would gain their freedom only when Catherine Tucker died and their six children were bequeathed to his brother as slaves. The Denison parents stayed with Catherine Tucker and their children were forced to live and work for William Tucker’s brother. Catherine Tucker died in 1806, and Peter and Hannah Dennison were freed and went to work for Detroit lawyer Elijah Brush who had just been accepted to practice law in the Michigan Territorial Supreme Court. He helped them sue for their children’s freedom under the Northwest Ordinance which prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. Congress had already passed the Northwest Ordinance prohibiting slavery in its territory – modern Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin- but the ordinance only applied to new and not existing slaves. In 1807, the Michigan Supreme Court heard the case, and ruled that only the Denison children born after the Northwest Ordinance took effect could be freed. Over the next few months in another Michigan Territorial Supreme Court decision, Judge Augustus B. Woodward ruled that the Michigan Territory was not obligated to return slaves freed by establishing residence in Canada to slavery, setting a legal precedent that opened the doors to freedom for many fugitive slaves. Quickly, Lisette and her brother crossed the Detroit River into Windsor, Canada to establish residency and win their freedom. Some accounts say that Lisette and her brother returned to Detroit in 1812, while others say they didn’t arrive back in America until 1815. Whatever date they returned, they returned as free people and Lisette took a job as a free maid working in the household of Solomon Sibley in Detroit. By all accounts Lisette got along well with her employers, so well that they gave her advice about investing her money in stocks and real estate. Although she couldn’t read or write, Lisette had an aptitude for numbers and she kept careful records of all of her financial transactions. On April 21, 1825, Lisette bought 48.5 acres of land in Pontiac, Michigan, from Stephen Mack, Pontiac’s founder and head of the Pontiac Company. This single purchase earned her the title of first black property owner in the city and the country. She never lived in Pontiac; instead, she leased the property to her brother and in 1837, she sold it for $930 dollars. Her property is now part of Oak Hill Cemetery, and a State of Michigan historical marker celebrates her former ownership of the property. According to the records of St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church in Detroit, Lisette married Scipio Forth, the owner of a freight business, on September 25, 1827. The records are unclear as to exactly when, but it appears that Scipio Forth died around 1830. In 1831, Lisette began working full time for the John Biddle family. John Biddle was the mayor of Detroit and founder of Wyandotte, Michigan, and she spent much of her time at Biddle’s Wyandotte estate. She developed close ties with the Biddles, especially the mayor’s wife, Eliza Biddle, and stayed in their employ for the next 30 years. All of the time Lisette worked for the Biddle family, she continued to save and invest her money in things that appealed to her. She bought an interest in the steamboat Michigan, a popular cruise ship of the time and she acquired 20 shares in the Farmers and Mechanics Bank, a successful Detroit bank in the 1800s. Grosse Ile historian, Isabella Swan wrote about Lisette’s steamboat and bank investments. “Due to heavy passenger traffic during westward migration the Michigan earned enormous profits – as high as 80 percent in one year. The bank also prospered. Its stock soared to great heights in 1836 when a 30 percent dividend was paid.”[3] In 1837, Lisette decided to buy another piece of land, only this time in Detroit instead of Pontiac. On May 25, 1837, she bought a lot in Detroit, paying the mortgage off in installments. The historical record doesn’t reveal much about Lisette’s whereabouts between 1849 and 1854. She may have moved to Philadelphia with the Biddle family, but there is no definitive proof of this. The record does show that in 1854, Lisette was living at 14 Macomb Street at the edge of the business section in old Detroit. She had not been there long when the Biddle family contacted her asking her to join them in Paris to attend Mrs. Biddle who was ill and needed constant care. By now, Lisette and Eliza Biddle were close friends, sharing their Episcopalian faith and vowing to build a chapel. Arriving in Paris in the late fall of 1854, Lisette quickly became proficient in French and gained fame for her buckwheat cakes. Although she enjoyed her time in Paris exploring the city and savoring its glamour, she longed to move back home. Returning to Michigan in 1856, Lisette began working for John Biddle’s son, William S. Biddle, at his Grosse Ile estate. Over the years, Lisette devoted much time and thought to the fate of her assets, since she was a childless widow, and she updated her will several times. Her friends appreciated her kindness and generosity to them, but they noted that as Lisette grew older, she pinched pennies with miserly fingers and worried that she would outlive her money. Lisette Denison Forth died on August 7, 1866, shortly after Eliza Biddle and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery. When her family and friends learned the contents of Lisette’s will, many of them were surprised that she had so much instead of so little money and more surprised at what she did with most of it. Lisette willed part of her estate to her family, but the rest of it, about $3,000, she earmarked to be used to build the Episcopalian chapel that she and Eliza Biddle had planned together. Lisette had not specified where exactly the chapel would be built in her will, but William Biddle, her long-time employer decided that she would want it on Grosse Ile. Her money provided most of the funds for St. James Episcopal Church on Grosse Ile, but following his mother’s wishes, William Biddle combined some of his own and his mother’s money with Lisette’s contribution. His brother James Biddle donated land for the chapel and the brother hired architect Gordon W. Lloyd to design the church. James also built an altar cross, a kneeling bench, and a reading stand for the minister. The construction began in 1867 and was completed in 1868, with the first service conducted by Reverend Moses Hunter in the spring of 1868. In 1958, another building was built with a hallway connecting it to the older chapel and the red doors leading into it are dedicated to Elizabeth Denison Forth. [1] Historic Elmwood Cemetery Foundation [2] Notable Black American Women, Book II. Jessie Carney Smith, Editor. Detroit: Gale Books, 1996 [3] Isabella Swan, Lisette. Grosse Ile, Michigan, 1965 Army Nurse Florence Maliszewski Nursed in War and Peace by Kathy Warnes Army Nurse Florence Maliszewski - Florence Maliszewski The nurses of the Army Nursing Corps are highly deserving of thanks and recognition during the celebration of Armed Forces Day on Saturday May 16, 2015. Armed Forces Day which is being observed on Saturday, May 16, 2015, is a day to honor and appreciate the men and women who served in the United States military. Army Nurses Earn an Impressive Record of Service When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, fewer than 1,000 nurses served in the United States Army. By the end World War II, over 59,000 Army nurses had served in the Army Nursing Corps. Over 100 military nurses were captured on Bataan and Corregidor in 1942, and 66 Army nurses and 11 Navy Nurses were imprisoned in Japanese concentration camps for 37 months. Six Army nurses were killed by German bombing and strafing during the battle on Anzio. Altogether over 200 Army nurses died in World War II and many of them are buried in American cemeteries overseas. Sixteen hundred Army Nurses earned combat decorations including Distinguished Service Medals, Silver Stars, Bronze Stars, Air Medals, Legions of Merit , Commendation Medals and Purple Hearts. Army Nurses Nursed in Tents, Trains, Ships, and Airplanes During World War II, Army Nurses worked in field and evacuation hospitals, on hospital trains and hospital ships, and as flight nurses on medical transport trains. They worked under fire and under the same risk as combat soldiers and several were killed in action. These skilled and dedicated nurses helped create a high survival rate for wounded soldiers in every theater of the war. Less than four percent of American soldiers receiving medical care or being evacuated from the battle field died from wounds or disease. World War II Ignites a Demand for Nurses World War II ignited a social and economic revolution for American women as war and economic conditions created a voracious demand for their services. Serving in the Army Nurse Corps broadened the horizons and expectations of American women. They were transported from small towns and large cities in America to the world stage and they returned home with a different perspective of the world and their place in it. By 1944, the increasing demand for nurses motivated the Army to grant its nurses officer’s commissions, full retirement benefits, allowances for dependents and equal pay. Free education to nursing students between 1943 and 1948 was an important government benefit to many nurses. Florence Maliszewski Becomes an Army Nurse Florence Maliszewski especially appreciated the Army’s education benefits. Florence Maliszewski spent her early years in Winona, Minnesota, but the Army Nurses Corp took her to Illinois, Oregon, New Jersey, England, France, and Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After Florence received her BSN from the College of St. Theresa in Winona, Minnesota, she moved to Great Falls, Montana and taught in a school of nursing. She also taught first aid to civilians and remembers riding around the countryside with a bicycle basket full of supplies. In July 1943, she enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps, and received her basic military training at Camp White, Oregon, training which included classes, drilling, and infiltration. “Infiltration” included crawling up a hill wearing a full pack under live fire,” she says. Florence Works and Teaches in France When she completed basic training, Florence was assigned to the 170th General Hospital at Camp Groot, Illinois, and Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, in September, 1944. In October 1944, her unit arrived in Liverpool, England, after weathering Atlantic storms and zigzagging to avoid Nazi U-boats. Then the nurses were trucked to Southampton and loaded into boats to cross the English Channel. They eventually landed in Le Mans, France, in a cow pasture. Soldiers and wounded men were housed in pup tents, the weather was damp, causing serious foot fungus problems, and blankets wouldn’t dry. Other residents of the camp were German prisoners of war, who lived behind a barbed wire fence in pup tents. They did the cooking and laundry and helped to construct the camp buildings. A group of captured German women helped to care for the wounded, and supplies were so scarce and they had taken the clothes that they originally wore from dead German soldiers. Florence worked in the chief nurse’s office and one of her projects was creating a procedure book and convincing a G.I. to provide the artwork. She also taught non-commissioned officers about nursing care. A Heroic Countess Another of her vivid memories is of the French countess who lived near the camp in a 13th century castle complete with moat and drawbridge. Her husband, who was one of the first aviators in World War I, had been killed in action. During the War, the countess had acted several times as a French Paul Revere, warning the villagers when the Germans were approaching. She planted sunflower seeds to mark the spot where she had buried her valuables. Florence Becomes Chief Nurse As time passed, Florence became chief nurse .After spending 1943 and 1944 nursing in France, on December 8, 1945; she was assigned to the 91st General Hospital which was assigned to carry wounded men back to the United States by ship. She arrived in the United States in January, 1946, and was discharged from the Army at Camp Groot, Illinois. According to Florence American soldiers were fearless, noble, had great zest for life and were warm and friendly. They also had a sense of humor. “The G.I.’s were patient, uncomplaining and grateful,” she said. Using the G.I. Bill and Pioneering in Gerentology Using the G.I. Bill, Florence earned has masters degree in nursing science at the University of Chicago. After she graduated she taught administration and nursing at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and did pioneering work in gerentological nursing. Students came from all over the country to take her classes in health care of the aged. She was a 17 year member and chaplain of the Jane Delano Post for Army Nurses in Milwaukee. Florence feels that being in the Army brought her back to the United States “very service-orientated and with a number of firm friendships.” References Kuhn, Betsy, Angels of Mercy: The Army Nurses of World War II, Aladdin, 1999. Norman, Elizabeth M., We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese, Atria, 2000. Twelve Healing Ideas to Keep the Celebration of Moms Less Painful Mother’s Day can be a sad day for a child without a mother or a mother without a child, but it can also be filled with happy memories and reaching out to others. Sarah stares at her mother’s picture sitting on her bookcase and sobs. She doesn’t know how she will get through this first Mother’s Day without her. Janet has the opposite problem. Her son was killed in a tragic accident and this will be the first Mother’s Day she won’t have a living child. Both women feel isolated and sad and surrounded by Mother’s Day. And these experiences aren't isolated; many childless mothers and motherless children find Mother's Day to be a painful and emotionally difficult holiday. Mother's Day Can be Sad and Happy Mother’s Day can be a sad day for a child to be without a mother or for a mother to be without a child. Mothers talk excitedly about their plans with their children and show off mother’s day cards and gifts. Children make cards and gifts and make plans to take their mothers out to dinner. Television, radio, and magazine advertisements ceaselessly promote Mother’s Day. But Mother’s Day doesn’t have to be a traumatic day spent in solitary grieving. It can be filled with memories that bless and burn and heal. It can be filled with supportive family and friends. It can also be day of reaching out to others. Both Sarah and Janet have developed strategies to help them survive and even enjoy Mother's Day. Turn Memories into Mementos Working with photos, letters, and other memorabilia makes the absent person feel closer and eases the ache of missing them. Writing personal recollections of the person is therapeutic and a good legacy for family members. A memory book can be put on line, on a CD, or in a scrap book. Wearing something that belonged to that special person like a ring, a favorite sweater, earrings, a tie or scarf, can provide a sense of continuity and comfort. Sarah has decided to wear her mother's favorie sweater on Mother's Day. Enjoy Mother Earth and Mother Nature Doing something for the Earth as simple as picking up trash in the park or some other positive Mother’s Day activity that helps the earth is healing. Enjoying Mother Nature on Mother’s Day with physical exercise like biking, swimming, canoeing, or just taking a walk will help keep the day in proportion. Janet’s son liked to cycle, so taking a bicycle ride on Mother’s Day morning seemed a fitting tribute to Janet and eased her into the rest of the day. Nurture Yourself by Doing Activities You Enjoy Reading is one of Sarah’s favorite activities and reading in a warm tub sends her to stratospheric heights. She has decided to read her favorite novel for two hours in the tub on Mother’s Day evening. Doing a favorite activity on a Mother’s Day is a stress reliever. A long meditation walk or private time and then a time with family or friends can be good therapy, especially on the first Mother’s Day after a loss. Sarah plans to take a walk sometime on Mother’s Day morning before she goes out to brunch with friends. Plant a Living Memorial and Have a Memorial Celebration Sarah chose a corner of her garden and planted rows of her mother’s favorite Marigolds. She also inherited her mother’s house plants and carefully tends them. Janet planted a spruce tree in her backyard in her son’s memory. It had been their Christmas tree the Christmas before he was killed. Planting a tree, shrub, flowers, is a living memorial and the act of tending them is as therapeutic as writing about them. Take flowers, candy, or presents to someone your loved one knew and loved. Have a memorial conversation and lunch with them and celebrate your loved one’s life and the precious memories left behind. Laugh often about the humorous events. Janet had lunch with her son’s best friend and his mother. They laughed heartily about the time her son pitched six innings and as soon as the coach relieved him he had to race to the Port-a-Pottie for some relief of his own. It’s a memory that burns, but the laughter helps ease the pain. Visit Someone Who Needs You On Mother's Day, visit someone who needs a foster daughter or a son. Nursing homes always need volunteer visitors, especially on special days. Shut-ins from church welcome caring visitors. Sarah is going to visit an elderly lady from her synagogue on Mother’s Day afternoon. There are many children who need a caring adult in their lives..Volunteer at a local school or day care center. Janet signed up to conduct the story hour at the local library one day a month. She feels that is a loving memorial to her son who loved to read. Lean on and Use Faith in a Higher Power Sarah went to her synagogue the day before Mother’s Day and Janet is going to Church on Mother’s Day. They both say that spending totally on your own resources can be draining and depressing and they both stress that grief on Mother's Day or any other day doesn't completely fade, but actively managing Mother's Day Sarah and Janet suggest taking one day at a time, especially Mother's Day. It is perfectly normal to slip and slide emotionally on special days. Be kind to yourself when you lapse, pick yourself up and move ahead with hope in your heart. They both emphasize that there is no magic way to make Mother's Day the way it used to be, but taking charge of the day instead of it taking charge of you is a step toward healing. And, they both agree that eventually acceptance and even a glimmer of joy comes as surely as Mother's Day does every year. References: Sharon W. Betters, Treasures in Darkness: A Grieving Mother Shares her Heart, P & R Publishing, 2005. Susan Fuller, How to Survive Your Grief When Someone You Love Has Died, Create Space, 2008. |
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