Hazel Bessie Oiler married Joseph Marion Purcell and when he died, she married Henry Beeson Johnson. I discovered an old box of pictures that my parents left me and among them was a photograph taken of my grandmother when she was younger and I felt moved to write what little I know about her. In the photograph she looks to be about forty years old, standing in her apartment, with her arms across her waist and smiling. I wondered what kind of a mother she was. Now that I am 78 and a great-grandmother I am curious about what my heredity is! What genes did I inherit? Was she happy?
I did not know my grandmother well because my father was in the military and we moved a lot. However, I grew up in Blackwell, Oklahoma until WW II started. We lived in a tiny house on Florence Street, only a few blocks from where my grandmother "Nanny" and Doc lived, in an apartment house on McKinley Street.
My grandmother met and married Joseph Marion Purcell in Butler, Kansas, a very handsome young man who came from "moneyed" people. I feel sure that Nanny loved him very much. Although I think his family may have disapproved of the marriage because no mention of them was ever made except that they were "moneyed," an expression that seemed to be used in Nanny's generation. Nanny gave birth to three children: Margaret Aileen, my mother, and Charles Allen and Joseph Marion, Junior. At some point they moved to Oklahoma. Joseph, Sr. worked on oil rigs and was seldom home. My mother described her father showing up unannounced in the middle of the night and bringing ice cream and presents. Until one day when the radio announced his death and were attempting to locate the family. My mother had always been his favorite and he had a picture of my mother in his pocket. He had been standing next to a truck which was loaded with large pipes and one of the pipes was dislodged and struck him on the head. My mother was in High School when he was killed. So Nanny must have been about 36 years old.
She went to work as a nurse. I don't know when she received her training. My mother dropped out of high school and took care of the house and the two sons. My mother rarely talked about that time in her life. She met and married my father at age 19 and had me a year later.
My first memory about Nanny was hearing the story of my birth. She was working for Dr. Risser at Blackwell General Hospital and when it came time for me to be born my father was present throughout the birth! Giving birth has changed a great deal since them and now fathers are welcome in the delivery room but when I was born, it was unheard of! My mother became ill with some complication of childbirth and never had another child.
Nanny married Blackwell's only dentist (it was a very small town), Dr. Henry Beeson Johnson. They lived in a very small apartment which had a living room, a small dining area with a small kitchen, one bedroom and one bath and one closet! Tiny, tiny, tiny! But my grandmother was a meticulous house keeper and nothing was ever out of place. Nanny had the tastes of "moneyed" people and everything she had was very nice. She did not have a lot of furniture but what she did have was very good. She only had one closet and she didn't have a lot of clothes but what she had was in good taste. She always held her head up high!
I remember making telephone calls from Nanny's phone and talking to a real live operator who knew almost everyone in town and knew me! Sometimes I am very nostalgic for real live persons who are available to help us
This woman I am looking at in the picture was probably my greatest influence on going to church on a regular basis. I know because I have Certificates of Attendance from the Baptist Church, and Certificates of Attendance from the Methodist Church. Nanny was very active in Eastern Star and was the Grand Matron one year. I remember her all dressed up in an evening gown. For some reason the Baptist Church disappointed her and she changed churches. It only meant going across the street to the Methodist church. When my grandmother died my mother gave Nanny's bible to me. It is a copy of the New Testament and the Psalms and is well worn from reading. Nanny made several notations on the pages and there are copies of favorite prayers scotch taped in the front. It was published by the Universal Book and Bible House in Philadelphia. The New Testament, of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Authorized or King James Version, Translated out of the original Greek, and with the former Translations diligently Compared and Revised. Below she has written "Matthew - Jew - The King, Mark - Rome The Servant, Luke - Greek the Man and John - Son of God." At the top she wrote "The Holy Spirit in Missions, Go hence and tell Bertha Smith." The next page is almost blank and she has written much. The Bible begins with a short chapter called "Meditations on the Gospels" by Joseph Howard Gray, D.D. Followed by a Calendar for Daily Reading of the Scriptures. There are brief notes throughout the Bible. She signed it Mrs. H.B. Johnson. After the Psalms there is a section called "The Hour of Prayer." The names of the prayers are first listed. Again on the very last blank page, she has written much! I don't know how much Nanny read except for her Bible. There were no books in her apartment.
It is possible that she used the library. It was only three blocks from our apartment building.
Nearly all of the men in our family were in WWII. My father and his brother Don Beavers and Nanny's two sons, Charles Purcell and Jack Purcell. They were all part of the 189th Field Artillery. I have a picture of the entire unit, my father and uncle Don on the first row and my uncles Jack and Charles in the back row. My cousin Gary, the son of Dell, my father's youngest brother. They all returned home and my father was the only one wounded.
I am sure that Nanny worried about all of her children as most mother's do.
Jack was the black sheep of the family. He was a good looking man, a Military Policeman in the Army, but he began drinking very early and quickly became an alcoholic. He married a woman and then one day he left her and never came back. I don't think that he ever saw Nanny again. He married a second time and had a child without bothering to divorce his first wife. They came and visited my parents years later after Jack had died.
Charles stayed in the Army. He married a woman from Blackwell but she refused to move with him. They maintained a relationship of sorts and he visited her when he had leave. He had a string of girlfriends. One at a time. But he always had a woman in his life. Charles also drank too much but got sober when my mother took over and weaned him from the bottle.
Nanny nursed Doc until his death. She stayed in her apartment until her health was poor and my mother moved her to a nursing home in Norman, Oklahoma. Charles visited her once in a while. Mother visited her every day. Her health deteriorated and her hands and feet curled up from arthritis. She was 94 when she died.
I came across a meditation that I had written for Forward Day by Day 2007
and I had written "As a child I relished the stories my parents told about their childhood and was especially fascinated by my grandmother's stories."
I am still wondering "Was my grandmother happy?"
No comments:
Post a Comment