HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY, DOROTHEA HOPE SMITH!
Our mom, Dorothea Hope Smith, died in 1998 just a month short of what would have been her 77th birthday.
She never got to meet her grandchildren Casey, Jamie, or Isabella and I don’t think Elizabeth was old enough to remember much about her Grandma Dorothea, but she is the only grandchild of Jackie’s that Mom was able to meet and hold before she passed away from a malignant brain tumor after a courageous two-year battle. She did get to meet and spend quality time with Laurel’s daughters, Anitra and Sirkka, and son Erik.
2021 is the 100th anniversary of her birth on Thanksgiving Day in 1921 (which fell on November 24th of the year she was born).
Mom told me her birth was traumatic for everyone in the room that day. She was delivered as a blue baby – barely breathing, if breathing at all – so the person who delivered her kept dunking her alternately in warm and then ice-cold water to try to get a squall and a decent breath out of her. She attained her middle name HOPE when she finally began to breathe because those attending her birth hoped she hadn’t been brain-damaged or in any other way injured by her rude entry into the world.
Our mom, Dorothea, as a child
Mom’s first name Dorothea was given to her in honor of one of her earlier ancestors, either the woman who gave birth to the Brothers Grimm in Germany more than a century before, or in honor of the woman one of the brothers married whose middle name was Dorothea. Mom told me once that although she was told she was related to the Brothers Grimm in some form or fashion, she took it with a grain of salt because, as she said, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body – I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler – until YOU came along, and there was our very own little storyteller who seemed to have arrived knowing how to spell and write engaging stories.” I think she would be equally surprised and pleased to know that there are at least three additional writers in her line of descent – Casey McNiven, Sirkka Smith, and Bob Branter, all of whom except Casey are published authors, and Casey should and will be at some future date. I am absolutely certain of that! She is an amazingly creative writer – has been ever since she first put pen to paper in grade school.
Mom was incredibly athletic in school. She won a put contest one year and her record still stands . She stayed in touch with her coach, Fay McEachern for the coach’s entire life. I remember meeting her once on our ranch in Cle Elum. She spoke fondly of her often.
The last child in her family of eight or nine children, she was 12 or 13 years younger than her next oldest sibling, so she found herself baby-sitting endlessly when she was about 12 or 13 as they all married and had kids. She said she was so sick of child-raising that, had there been birth control in the late 40’s and 50’s she would probably have elected to remain childless. “But when they’re your own,” she added, “you quickly find out that snotty noses can be cute, that dirty diapers are do-able, and that there’s no love like the love of a child.”
One of her earliest memories is of the Depression years, when she was living in Snohomish County with her mom. They were barely getting by, living on chickens, chicken eggs, and what little they could grow themselves (her mom worked as a midwife and was away a lot, as she had divorced her husband because of incestuous relations he’d had with Mom when she was very, very young).
Mom said, “I will never forget the day that George and Bill (two of her brothers) returned home with their wives and kids, coming in from Oklahoma in an old vehicle packed with everything they owned. She saw them coming down the hill and said, “Oh, mein Gott in Himmel (God in heaven). What am I going to do now?” She knew they had come home to mom because she always found a way out of no way to keep body and souls together.”
Part of the extended family moved into the chicken house. and they carried on through the Depression, poor as church mice but rich in spirit, because all of them were musical and played instruments that kept people from total despair. (I have four hours of recorded oral history on Mom, which my sisters and nephew and niece have copies of.)
Before WW II, Mom worked at the Seattle Times in the advertising department, taking and making ads for business owners and editing copy and content in other sections of the paper.
During WW II Mom worked in the Seattle shipyards. She recalled that the women were issued men’s overalls (most of the men were away at war, which is why women got into the work force in the defense industry at that time) and that the one pair she got was so big on her that she always pulled them up before sitting down. But one time after hitching her pants up, she inadvertently sat down on newly painted white bench “and for the rest of the war, my butt print appeared halfway down the back of my legs!”
Mom married Dad in 1949 or 1950. Mom had been married once before to an older gentleman and Mom welcomed Laurel, my oldest sister, in December 1948. I was born on March 5th, 1951, and Jackie came along on February 2, 1954. Mom joked to me once, “Dad wanted a boy, too, and we tried for one two times. I finally told him “Eeny, meeny, miney, and there ain’t gonna be no mo!” And that was the end of Mom’s child-bearing days!
So, now we leave Dorothea’s single days and get to the point where I remember details about my upbringing that stick with me to this day.
I was born premature and was sickly for the first part of my life. In fact, when I was born there was no assurance I’d survive very long; the doctor suggested that they not even name me; to save the name for a baby that would survive. So, there are very few images of me as a wee one. I don’t know if they ignored the doctor and named me right away or not. Dad said that, at first, they thought I had a birth defect. I could fit into a cigar box and my butt was no bigger than two of Dad’s fingertips pressed together.
Most of the anecdotes I recall from those early days are of Mom rubbing my back as I lay on the couch suffering with earaches and other maladies. She would sing me songs – one about Brer Fox (“Go to sleep my little pickaninny, Brer Fox will get you if you don’, Hush-a-bye, lullaby, Go to sleep, my sweetie pie…” ), another about a rain barrel (“Oh, little playmate, come out and play with me, and bring your dollies three, climb up my apple tree, shout down my rain barrel, climb up my cellar door, and we’ll be jolly friends forevermore”), and You Are My Sunshine.
I also remember one time falling forward flat onto my belly and looking up — scared and startled — at Mom to see if I should cry or not. She assessed the situation lightning fast, knew I wasn’t hurt, and responded, “Oh, my! Did you hurt the ground?” I looked down, found the ground quite well, thank you (no crying!), and answered, “No!” She said, “Oh, that’s good. Nobody got hurt! Get up and go play!” And I did!
Another memory pops into my brain occasionally. I had done something spanking-worthy (I have no memory of what it was), and Mom came out of the house with one of our red, rubber-covered wooden ping pong paddles to correct me. I saw her with that paddle and started running around the fishpond Dad had put into our front yard, trying my best to stay far away from her. She kept saying, “Stop running! Come here!” and I kept running, of course.
She finally caught up to me, so I put my hand behind me to protect my butt as best I could, and she gave me a whack and the paddle broke! We were both surprised as heck and started laughing. That was the end of our skirmish; she simply couldn’t continue. Her disciplinary directive had been derailed entirely.
On another occasion, we had a couple of big steers on our property in Spanaway, along with several horses. Dad and Mom were planning to have the steers butchered for our meals, so they had us name them T-Bone and Spare Ribs to remind us that these were not pets, but eventual food. But, of course, over the course of time, as they grew, they were treated like pets anyway.
One time Mom was out standing next to their fence in Zories (also calls thongs), open-toed, strapped on rubber soles and she decided to give one of the steers a back scratch. Well, that old steer liked it so much that he leaned over toward her, stepping with his splayed front hoof squarely on her left foot. OUCH! With tears streaming down her face, she had to reach waaaaayyyy over to the steer’s other side to scratch him so he’d lean that way so she could extract her foot.
There are other incidents from my earliest days – ten and under – that I recall vividly. One day I decided to go look for caterpillars on a disconnected dock out in Spanaway Lake. Being a dumb kid who never even considered the possibility, let alone the likelihood, of drowning, I climbed onto an inner tube and kicked out toward the dock. Mary Jane Cooper spotted me and called me back in with a stern warning to go right straight home, saying that she was going to call my mother and tell her I’d been found all by myself in Spanaway Lake, and would I ever be in trouble when I got home!
So, I headed home fearing the absolute worst. When I got home, Mom sent me to my bedroom, saying, “When your father gets home, you are going to get it!” This was terribly unusual, because Mom usually doled out punishments herself, so I knew I was in Big Trouble!
I sweated it out for however long it took Dad to get home and when he walked into my bedroom, I started crying. He explained why what I had done was beyond the pale, and then asked if I would ever do it again. Tears streaming, I promised him, “No, I never will!” Then he leaned over to me and said, “Well, then, I guess it’s time for your licking.” Then he leaned over and literally licked my face where my tears were. I was so relieved!!!
Another memory involves Mary Jane Cooper, too. Jackie was riding our horse Stormy on Enchanted Island in the middle of Spanaway Lake. Stormy got startled and jumped sideways, and Jackie fell off and started bawling. Mary Jane, who lived on the island, called Mom right away, worried, to let her know that Jackie had taken a tumble, and the first thing Mom asked her was, “Is she crying?” Mary Jane confirmed that indeed, she was, and Mom said, “Oh, good! Then she’s okay. I’ll be right over.” That was Mom. Immediate assessment about the seriousness of a situation followed by an appropriate response.
My funniest memory, in retrospect, is the time Mom decided it was time to tell me — or rather provide me with an unforgettable demonstration — about the birds and the bees. I’m going to share the story via an excerpt from my book Womb Man: How I Survived Growing Up in a Booby-Trapped World here:
When I was eight, Mom and Dad decided to have our mare Stormy bred. And they decided it would be a good idea to let me observe the process, since I wasn’t asking the usual “where do babies come from?” questions and they thought it was high time I did.
So, on the appointed day, Larry Kirkwood brought his stallion Sandy over to our place. Then he proceeded to put a cruel-looking twitch on Stormy’s upper lip to help control her and to hobble her back feet and tie them to a rail in front of her using a rope so she couldn’t object to the breeding by kicking the stud.
That completed, Larry donned a long glove and shoved his hand and arm up Stormy’s rectum to haul out any manure she was carrying.
Finally, he gave Sandy his head and allowed him to mount Stormy. Stormy’s alarming shrieks and Sandy’s huffing, snorting and farting had me completely spellbound.
Finally, I asked Mom, “What are they doing?”
“They’re making a baby.”
I pondered that then asked, “Does everybody have to do that to make a baby?”
Mom (probably blushing) said, “Yes.”
“Did you and Daddy do that to have me?”
She nodded.
Now, you have to remember: I was taking it all in—not just the act of procreation itself but the “foreplay”: the twitch on the nose, the hobbling, being tied to a rail so no protest could be allowed, and the whole nine yards. It didn’t look like a whole lot of fun to me from the mare’s perspective!
So, to say that I had a less-than-rosy attitude about this “making a baby” business is probably an understatement. Lucky for me, at the time I didn’t think I’d ever have to go through what Stormy did, ‘cause I was a guy, not a girl!
Oh, ho! And before we leave the topic of sex behind, one time I read an interesting thing and shared it with Mom. I told her, “I just read this: ‘Men get the same look on their faces when they’re hungry for food and when they’re hungry for sex.’”
Mom looked up and responded, as if perplexed (but not really), “Do you mean to tell me that all those times I only needed to FEED your father?” I totally cracked up! TMI, Mom. TMI!
Another time, I had taken lots of notes about animal behavior, but had mistyped a word. Mom was reading my notes and noted (pointing out my typo in a humorous way), “Gosh, I didn’t know this about snakes!”
“What?” I asked innocently.
“I didn’t know snakes went BLING when they shed!” (blind). I guffawed! And for the rest of the day, I imagined hearing bling, bling, bling in the woods and forests as snakes shed their skins!
Another memory is about the topic of trust. I don’t recall how the conversation started but I remember distinctly her response, “Kris, I trust you. I always have. Unless you do something to make me distrust you, I will always trust you.”
That comment, spoken when I was perhaps seven or eight, kept me on the straight and narrow throughout my childhood and teenage years. I knew I never wanted to do anything that would make my mother distrust me. I still don’t. And as far as I know, I haven’t.
But speaking of trust, here’s an incident that shows you just how MUCH my Mom trusted me. When polyester first came out —which was just about the same time my sense of humor was unloosed on an unsuspecting world — Mom decided to get a pair of polyester pants. She brought them into the bedroom, took off the tags, and handed them to me either to read them to her or to throw into the trash. Since I knew the fabric was new, as she put her legs into them and pulled them up, I said, “CAUTION! Not to be worn next to the skin.” She jumped out of those pants so fast it made my head spin. I cracked up totally, even tearing up. I said, “Mom! Seriously?! You believed that?!”
Oh, my mommy. These memories are resurrecting her!
My final early childhood memory of Mom is from the time I learned about being betrayed by a friend.
There was a young girl in our neighborhood. If I remember correctly, her name was Margaret. She had an eye condition – a red eye or a lazy eye or something like that, but I never let it bother me. We often played together at school and sat together on the bus on the way to school. I visited her home many times since it was just a few houses down from ours.
Well, one day I went to her house to see if she could play, and her irate mother came out onto the porch and told me that Margaret had told her I had poked her in the eye. I had NOT poked her in the eye, and began to protest, but her mom was ballistic over the false information and said that if Margaret needed surgery because of my “assault,” my parents would be sued so she could pay for it.
I ran home, crushed and bawling. When I got into the house, Mom asked me what was wrong, and I told her what had happened. She knew I was telling her the absolute truth about not having poked Margaret in the eye; I was simply not that kind of kid at all, and I was so distraught by the charge that she knew I was telling the truth. That’s when she sat me down and said, “Maybe you need to think about not being her friend anymore. She lied about you. You don’t want to be friends with people you can’t trust.”
I tried to figure out why Margaret would do such a thing. Maybe I hadn’t sat with her on the bus that day, and she was ticked off. I don’t know. I still don’t know, and never will. It broke my heart to find out that some people would make up stories about me that others would believe.
I believe that’s the last time I had anything to do with Margaret.
Up until I was a teenager, I had never encountered a subject in school that I couldn’t ace. I was a dedicated and enthusiastic student for the most part because learning simply floats my boat. But in junior high or high school, both science and math left me feeling flummoxed and in over my head. I managed to squeak by in science, with average grades, but advanced and new math could put me in tears. I simply could not get it, no matter how hard I tried. I’ll reprint a chapter from my book FLOATING AROUND HOLLYWOOD AND OTHER TOTALLY TRUE TALES OF TRIUMPH to take you into that part of my world
MATH-CHALLENGED, LIFE AFFIRMED
The analytical side of my brain is broken. It is a hereditary condition—my mom had it, too. But she was careful not to let me know until after I’d tried everything in the book to find a way to understand something—anything!—beyond general math. (She was afraid her confession would limit the effort I would expend in my dedicated quest for a passing grade.)
I would sit with my algebra teacher after school and re-examine and re-work the tests I had failed, trying to boost all-lousy grades that would eventually be inscribed on a report card, but to no avail. I ended up, invariably, in tears and Mrs. Plostins ended up frustrated to a point of nearly shaking. To her, it was all so easy, so simple, so “get-able.”
As final grades approached, she told me, “I have never seen anyone try so hard [and learn so little]. I am going to give you an A for effort. That will bring your D- up to a C.” It was probably the only time in her career she had bent the rules and boosted a kid’s grade out of sympathy—and perhaps to acknowledge the fact that I had truly given it my all.
I went home, still ashamed. It was then that Mom told me she had suffered the same fate in higher math. We both had fine grades in all subjects except science and math. It seems our brains were identical in that compartment.
We were “lame brains” mathematically and analytically! It was a sad, shared secret. To this day, I still sweat when faced with an Excel spreadsheet—even though I know the COMPUTER will work out the mathematical shenanigans involved!
High school was my first experience with a learning disability. Up to that time, I had always considered kids “otherwise occupied” mentally if they didn’t comprehend lessons as readily as I did. (I never considered them stupid—just inattentive or, at worst, lazy.) Learning, to that point, had always been a no-brainer for me, requiring negligible effort: I seemed to have been born knowing how to read books, spell, write sentences and meet all the other school requirements.
Feeling seriously crippled by this single issue, I began to lose any sense of “measuring up” that previously existed. I could write but I couldn’t calculate. Would this malady catastrophically restrict my ability to function in life?
Not a few kids have felt similarly—perhaps even worse if NONE of what they are taught comes easily. Noting my blue funk over being math-challenged, Mom asked me one day, “Do you plan to become a doctor, or send a rocket ship to the moon?”
The question tripped me up momentarily: she knew me better than that! She knew I had no such aspirations.
I answered, “No.”
“Or a nurse?”
“No.”
Then I think you have all the brainpower you need to function well in life. Math is important as a grown-up only when balancing a checkbook. You have that much ability. So don’t sweat the small stuff.”
“But, Mom, I would have FLUNKED if Mrs. Plostins hadn’t—”
“You would not have flunked. Your other grades are great.”
“But math is IMPORTANT!”
“If you’re calculating miles to Mars, or mixing potions or medications based on weight, it sure is. It’s critical. But nothing you plan to do with your life requires advanced mathematics. Do you think I’m crippled because I don’t understand the same things you don’t?”
I looked at her. My mom was the smartest person I knew—that MANY people knew. She was a voracious reader and an inveterate learner. Her idea of a good time was learning something new!
I responded, “Not in the least! You have a brain like Einstein’s!”
She said, “No, I have a brain the OPPOSITE of Einstein’s. So do you. Einstein’s math brain was unrepeatable. But mine works just as well in every other way. So does yours. You’re very bright—intuitive, thoughtful and decent.”
I started feeling better. “Then why do they insist on advanced math if no one needs it?”
“I didn’t say no one needs it. Some people need it, love it and use it the way you love and use writing. Should English and creative writing be eliminated from the curriculum just because most people won’t grow up to be writers?”
“No!” What a horrible thought!
“Math is a delight to a lot of people. They love numbers. They seek careers that use numbers and calculations.”
“Yuk!”
She smiled. “The analytical folks sometimes sweat bullets when they have to write a letter or a memo, or if they have to interact with people who are more right-brained.”
“Right-brained?” I could tell she had read a few more books than I had! I had some catching up to do!
“Analysis and logic originate in the left hemisphere of the brain. Creativity and intuition come from the right hemisphere.”
“Oh.”
“You’re nowhere near brain dead on the left side. You’re just seriously right-brained. You can do left-brain basics—your logic in life situations is adequate—but most people can’t access their right brain to the degree you can.”
I joked, “So, I’m the only person in my right mind, huh?!”
She did that crooked, half-smile, half-frown thing with her mouth. It was her way of indicating, “Don’t let this information make you a brat.” She was just helping me work through a dysfunctional self-concept about my brain, not trying to create a monster!
“You will be just fine. Cease to fret.”
Since that time, I have run across other students—the children of friends or relatives— who are sweating bullets over their inability to “get” higher math or another subject just as deadly to their sense of self-worth. The mother I had (bless her heart and extend her legacy of love!) becomes my guiding light and I let the newest “right-brainer” know what I learned: You don’t have to be Einstein to be awesome! (end of excerpt)
As a teenager, I recall going through several things that I thought were catastrophic at the time. Wise as ever, Mom listened, commiserated, and then told me, “Sweetie, if this is the worst thing that ever happens to you in your life, you’ll be lucky.”
And every time I face something unsavory or even dreadful, her response comes back to me, and it has saved my peace of mind more times than I can count. I am so grateful for her wise counsel.
When I was in high school, Mom fell into an open pit into live coals on our ranch. The people who had owned the property before us had razed a barn and burned it, then buried it under several feet of dirt, but the embers below continued to burn. We didn’t know this until one cold winter day when Mom noticed smoke rising from the area. Curious, she headed out to investigate. As she approached the smoky area, the ground beneath her gave way. She told the doctor (and us later), “Thanks to my gymnastics training, as soon as I felt the ground start to give, I threw my upper body backward and upward, so I only fell into the pit up to about mid-knee.”
But her legs were very badly burned. They blistered horribly and the blisters filled with fluids. The doctor debrided them the first time but then sent Mom and Dad home with instructions that Dad should continue with the debridement as needed as Mom’s legs slowly recovered and healed.
This was a painful, weeks’-long process, and Dad was often near tears because the procedure caused Mom so much suffering. But Mom just buckled down, gritted her teeth, and allowed him to do what he needed to do to help her heal. That felt heroic to me, in both cases.
Also, when I was in high school a few Star Trek fan friends and I decided we would ride bicycles to Los Angeles to meet the cast. We even got invitations; yeah, if you do, be sure to stop by! (It would have been great for publicity providing we all survived the 1800-mile journey from Washington State!) When I posed the idea to Mom, her nose was in a book and I guess she didn’t hear because she waved and said, “Yeah, sure.” So, I went into high gear and recruited Mr. Dobbs, my Drama and English teacher, to ride along and chaperone us.
Well, when Mom surmised that we were serious as a heart attack about riding bikes all the way to LA, she put the kibosh on that decisively, which put us on a collision course over her “betrayal.” I stewed over it for months. But in hindsight, yeah, it was nuts. And I ended up getting there anyway and getting to know the cast member I wanted to a heckuva lot better than I ever envisioned! And so did Mom and Dad. So, happiest of endings, at long last!
A traumatic memory I have is of the time I was doing handstands in the living room late one night. As I kicked up, Mom stood up from the couch and my heel connected with her nose, breaking it badly. I took one look at her and just about passed out. She had her hand over her nose and blood was pouring out. I almost fainted, I was so upset. Dad got her a towel and as they prepared to head to the hospital, I was pretty hysterical. Mom danced a kind of a jig for me and said, “I’m fine. Don’t worry!” and off they went. I still think about that and shudder. I could’ve killed her with a shot like that to her nose.
Another very distinct memory I have of Mom is when we got motorcycles in Cle Elum. Mom had spent four months in the hospital as a kid after riding her bicycle down a hill and being unable to stop it at the bottom when the brakes went out or something. So, needless to say, she wasn’t real gung ho on riding motorcycles, but she never said no to insistent kids, so she took a few turns around the hay fields to get accustomed with the controls and how to stop and go.
But she was no pro when we decided to all go up on the ridge and ride the trucking roads. Now, on these trucking roads which had been cut into hillsides by bulldozers, on the downhill side there were huge ravines with evergreen trees growing alongside them so that when you rode, you could often see the tops of trees right next to the road. Hold that thought in mind.
What I remember of the incident is that, at one point, we were all stopped for a moment to discuss something. When we started out again, Mom hit the throttle so hard that the front wheel came off the ground and she did an Evil Kneivel-type leap into the treetops alongside the road, then plummeted down on the bike until she connected with whatever was down there. We all freaked, panicked and shouted, “Mom!”
From waaaayyyyy down the ravine, we heard her say, “I’m all right.” Of course, she would have said that to reassure us if she’d had a treetop through her middle! So we needed to make sure.
Sure enough, she was fine. But she elected not to ride home. She elected to walk. And she never got on a bike again unless it was on flat ground in a desert somewhere, or on an ATV with someone else driving.
I’m grateful to Mom for more reasons than I could ever list here, but chief among them is that she let me have so many different pets. Mom and animals did not get along. As a child she was harassed by geese, goats, and dogs, and as an adult she was harassed by bats whenever she happened to be in their vicinity. I don’t know if it was her silver hair that caused that, but it was definitely a thing!
Despite her misgivings about animals, I had literally scores of different pets, from salamanders and frogs to skunks, birds, raccoons, fawns, and even a serval cat. In fact, my serval cat Deaken only bit one person, and it was MOM. And he bit her two times. She says both times were because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that’s true. But still! I’m so grateful she allowed me to pursue my passion for pets. My life is mostly about critters. Critters and writing. It always has been and always will be.
Mom’s most frequent mantra, if she had one, was “Live and let live.”
At the end of her life, when she was losing the battle against brain cancer, she became weak and dependent. After Jackie’s Family Leave ran out, I got one from Warner Bros. and flew up to spend the last 25 or so days with Mom.
During this time, she was trying to get out of bed many times a night to use the bathroom but not asking for help, so I ended up sleeping on the floor between her twin bed and Dad’s in Jackie’s guest room so I would feel when her feet went onto the floor –actually, onto my back or side — so I could help her. It seemed she was trying to get up every twenty minutes or so, so I thought a catheter might be a good solution, so we ordered one for her.
One morning while I was still in there acting like a rug, I sat up and leaned over to see how she was. She was looking peaceful and beautiful to me. I started to cry, knowing her time was short because she had refused food and drink for at least two days and the Hospice folks had said to allow her to do that, so I knew we were on a deathwatch at that point. I started to cry silently, a tear or two ran down my face, and she said to me, “Don’t cry. Don’t be sad.” I smiled through my tears and said, “Sad isn’t what I’m feeling right now. When I cry, it’s just my love leaking out. I love you, my mommy.”
About the memorial service we had for Mom at Jackie’s house after she died. Ida Mae Thomas, one of Mom’s dearest friends, attended and when we asked people for their favorite memories of Mom, Ida Mae recalled the time that she and Mom and Dad and Gerald (Ida Mae’s husband) had dressed to the nines to go to a fancy restaurant in Seattle.
At some point, Ida Mae and Mom headed into the bathroom to use it. When they got there, there was a long line of ladies waiting because there were only three or four stalls and at least one of them was plugged up with a rapidly scrawled OUT OF ORDER sign on the door. Mom looked around at the uncomfortable ladies in waiting and then spotted a plunger. She grabbed that plunger and went to work in her fox-fur-on-the-shoulder coat, fixing the fixture in no time so the other ladies didn’t have to wait so long.
When I heard that, I thought, “That’s Mom! She would have done fine in a prairie schooner crossing the continent during westward expansion. (This comment just triggered another memory. When I was in grade school, I learned about the pioneers and was told that my ancestors probably arrived in the Pacific NW by way of a wagon train, so I went right home and asked Mom what it was like to cross the continent on a Conestoga wagon!) She was a pioneer, a trailblazer. She did whatever had to be done. She never complained.
And the only heartache she ever caused was the day she left us.
WE LOVE YOU STILL AND WE ALWAYS WILL, Dorothea Hope Smith!
Dorothea in her mid-40’s
Dorothea and Jack (her husband/my dad) on a cruise in Ecuador, mid-1980’s
Mom and me at the Walton’s House (John Boy) at Warner Bros. about 1994
Mom and me playing cowboy on the Laramie Street set at Warner Bros, about 1994
Update: The gathering was WONDERFUL! Phil, Jackie’s son, audio recorded our reminiscences for absent grandkids and great grandkids and future generations, and for our own benefit. Thanks so much for that, Phil!
