My life on Earth began during a severe ice storm in February 1926 in Texas. My parents were rushing to make it to the hospital in San Angelo, Texas, sixty-six miles from where they lived in Sonora. The Model-T Ford made it “with great difficulty”, as far as Christoval, a beautiful but tiny little town on the banks of the Concho River, just fifteen miles from San Angelo. My father found a telephone to use and called the doctor, a name I will never forget, Dr. McAnulty. I know the story well, for my mother happily responded any time I asked, “Please tell me the story again! I want to hear about the time I was nearly born in an ice storm!”
She had lost a baby before I came along several years later. It was a tragedy for them when they lost a little boy baby at birth, whom they named Lloyd. My mother was forty-one years old. I could still recognize the hurt and sadness in her eyes when she told me about it.
The doctor met our car halfway. My father had finally started the car again. Then Dr. McAnulty led the way to the Catholic Hospital, St. John’s, where already alerted, the nuns were waiting for our arrival. In short order I arrived, though a month early, screaming and healthy. Then it was my mother’s turn to receive help. She was suffering from a severe strep throat, considered to be very serious in those days. Throughout the rest of her life, she attributed her very survival to the nuns who nursed her back to health for the next two weeks. She was a Methodist, though it mattered not to her, nor the nuns, that they were of different faiths. They were all Christians.
I joined the human race as, in my mother’s words, “a beautiful tiny five-pound baby with black hair like a kitten’s.” Of course, all are beautiful to their mothers.
When we finally went home together, we were met by an ecstatic 13-year-old sister and a rather reluctant 7-year-old brother whose heart was set for a baby brother. Thus, began my life as “the baby of the family.” I admit I was spoiled but dearly loved. I think that’s a great way to start life.
From that day on it seems my life has always been on some great rush. Briefly it went by like this: I can remember hiding behind my mother’s skirts when visitors came. I remember nothing of our first home but remember making footprints in fresh cement at our new home, or perhaps only the actual footprints always visible for the rest of my years at home. Like many children today, I went to Kindergarten. It was the absolute joy of going that I most remember. I didn’t know it, but it was the first time Kindergarten had been offered in this small town. It is still the favorite memory of the seven years of grammar school. In the 1930’s Sonora had no junior high school or middle school, as is the case today. Kindergarten had to be paid for even in those depression days, but it was in the same huge limestone two-story grammar school building.
The school superintendent’s wife, Mrs. Britt, was our teacher. We learned to sit around a little table in tiny chairs and ate graham crackers with a glass of milk alongside my new friends at ten o’clock each morning. They were not all new friends, for I had been in Sunday school from Cradle Roll on to this age with many of them. But this was different. I was growing up.
I was away from home from 8 a.m. until noon. I didn’t even miss my mother. But I was very happy every day when she picked me up. I learned many things and heard new stories. I learned to draw on the black board like the big kids. I also learned not to eat chalk or paste which, for some reason, I remember liking. When a little boy, Bobo, kissed me on the cheek one day, Mrs. Britt said, “We don’t kiss the girls.” I still haven’t figured out why she said that. I didn’t care if he liked me. He was my friend. Bobo was the nicest boy there. He laughed and smiled. He also had lots of dark bruises and couldn’t play rough like the other kids when we were outside. He had something wrong with his skin. I learned later that he was missing a layer of skin and had to be very careful because he bled easily. He seemed to have a normal life all through school and everybody always liked Bobo. This was my first lesson on concern and gentleness to someone a little different from me.
When we went outside for recess, we especially loved to play under the beautiful live oak trees with soft grass underneath. On hot days this was a wonderful place to retreat from the sun. One day we were outside playing when we heard the fairy ship fly overhead. Of course, I was very excited as I believed in fairies! Soon we saw a shiny object in the sky getting larger and larger and, before we knew it, a silver fairy ship passed almost silently overhead. We pointed, shouted, jumped up and down, and then it was gone. Only later did we learn it was a Zeppelin we had seen. But it remained a ‘fairy ship’ in our young minds for a long time.
I thought Kindergarten was such fun. I liked other boys and girls, and especially our grandmotherly teacher, Mrs. Britt. Her soft gray hair seemed to make her even nicer. Every day we little girls wore dresses with bloomers to match. They were part of the outfit and always showed. Most of our mothers sewed and I can still remember how happy I always was when Mother made me a new dress. She carefully saved the scraps and used the pieces for making quilts. She even made me a quilt with little girls on it wearing dresses from scraps of my very own dresses. I have it yet today tucked away in a chest. It still has the permanent stains from much use in my youth. It is precious to me and full of happy memories. I was very fortunate to have had such a joyful beginning in my early school years. Most children in those days were sent off to school in September at age six, and suddenly thrust into a situation for which they were to be prepared. Bells and tardy bells rang, children filing into the classroom, new faces. Though eager, the classes were fairly large and impersonal. We sat at regular desks, no more little tables with milk and graham crackers.
I had Scarlet Fever as a child and remember experiencing a terrible sore throat only hours after my headache and fever began. It started as strep throat. I was diagnosed with Scarlet Fever from the color of my deep red tongue and sudden very high fever. After suffering from Scarlet Fever, many children often developed Rheumatic Fever and, if they survived, often had permanent heart damage. Years later, Penicillin was discovered and, if administered as treatment before it developed, children no longer necessarily died of Scarlet Fever. Penicillin was a miracle of science. Yet, by its overuse through the years since the 1940’s, the bacteria are fast becoming immune to the drug. With Penicillin becoming available during World War ll, many, many soldier’s lives were saved. It truly was the miracle drug of the century.
Fourth, fifth and sixth grades were more interesting. Miss Gardner was my 4th grade teacher. I loved Miss Gardner. It was there I learned that cheating did not pay. For some reason I decided I needed to write the answers on a sheet of paper before a test which I unwisely placed on my desk seat to look at as needed. I think it was a history test. I quickly became absorbed in answering the test questions and totally forgot I had a ‘cheat sheet’. I didn’t remember it until the resulting test papers were returned with the grades. I received 100 minus 10 points ‘for cheating’! I suddenly felt very ill. I had a perfect paper and by my own stupidity lost the ten points. Too late I remembered she usually walked around the room during tests. I never saw her pick up the cheat sheet. I dared not show the test results to my mother or anybody else. I felt such shame. I had never done anything like that before.
My teacher never said a word. Whether or not she told my mother I never knew. It was truly a lesson that taught me how futile it was to cheat when it was just as easy to study. I think I learned the right answers from writing them all down beforehand. It was the last time I ever was tempted to cheat.
Fifth and sixth grades were interesting, but we had to study harder. This was compensated by other activities such as singing in a choral group, being more independent in choosing friends, beginning hobbies, exploring the small world we lived in and the beginning of wanting to learn more about everything, including ourselves. Boys were not the main interest. In fact, most of us hated boys and boy games like football and baseball. Boys seemed to get dirty and rowdy. I was very glad to be a girl in those days.
By seventh grade life was changing. Some of the girls had already developed, and I heard whispers about things not familiar to me. I was tall and scared to death of getting breasts that might show through my blouses! I knew braziers were an inevitable part of growing up, and I wanted to grow up, but yet I didn’t. I still loved to play, ride bikes and swim. I didn’t want to give that up. Nevertheless, I noticed a lot of the girls didn’t like to do those things very much anymore.
As my life was changing so was the world. Little did I know how much it would change. Little did I know or suspect what was in store for my country and its young citizens in the early 1940’s. High school was great. I loved having my own locker. I hated showering in the gym showers where everything was open and there was no privacy. I had to get into bras, size double A, the smallest cup! I started wearing pale pink translucent Tangee lipstick occasionally. The important thing was to own it. Mother wouldn’t let me wear the bright red lipstick which was so popular. I was glad. I thought it looked ugly, and it smeared on everything from glasses to, yes, boys. I heard about kissing, and we soon knew who the so-called ‘fast’ girls were. Fortunately, I wasn’t the least bit interested in boys yet, and they certainly were not interested in me. I played in the high school band and loved it. First, I played the Bell Lyre.
The school owned one, and I taught myself and could read music. It was easy for me because I knew notes from studying piano and singing in the girls’ chorus. Then my brother gave me his old piccolo. That was fun. He showed me how to play it. Then Mother heard about a boy who was going off to military school and didn’t want his flute any longer. The band teacher didn’t know how to play the flute or piccolo but found a book, so I quickly learned from that. I had already learned to play the drums when I had been in the percussion section and filled in as a drummer for marching at football games when the regular drummer was sick. The band director got married and bought a house. We all knew where it was and heard it cost $4000. There are few secrets in a town that size. One morning when he was late to band, which was the first thing every morning, we decided to march to his house and play in the street in front of his house. Somehow, we knew he had overslept. He was chagrinned when he came out and told us in no uncertain words to get back to the high school, and fast! He met us there and we heard no more about it.
I had many good friends in high school. I eased into growing up, and eventually had a few dates for special events and even to the movies, or picture shows as we called it then. I suffered through the awkwardness which most everyone has gone through. I thought I was really ugly with my straight hair and persuaded my mother to let me have a permanent. Naturally I looked awful with those artificial curls but had to suffer with it until it grew out. I soon learned to do my own hair.
In 8th and 9th grades some of us decided to form a dance club and boys and girls at different houses to dance on weekends. Anyone interested in joining could come. It was the custom to roll back the rugs in our houses, push the furniture to the walls, and sprinkle the floor with talcum powder or cornmeal. Everybody got to dance. Lots of toes were stepped on, but we had fun. No one was a wall flower. I was surprised but pleased when the dance was at our house and one of the boys, George S. Schwinning, asked my mother to dance. She accepted! I didn’t know until that night that she even knew how to dance.
Edith May is top row, third from right.
By 9th grade we could go to high school dances held at the big Boy Scout Hall where all the parents came and sat around to watch us enjoy the evening. It was roomy and often rented out to the ‘big town’ dances open to everyone. But we had to wait another year or so to go to those. There were good hardwood floors which were perfect for dancing and the hall had a record player and sound system. We were beginning to hear about the fast dancing they were doing in the cities, but we loved dancing to Glenn Miller and all the forties’ bands.
Dances were great fun, and I was always thrilled when an older boy who was usually taller than I would ‘tag’. It was there we all learned to dance waltzes, two step, polkas, Schottische, put-your-little-foot, ten pretty girls, to music provided by a small band or sometimes recorded music. To make sure everybody got to dance there were dances to ‘mix’. One was to have the boys lined up on one side and the girls on the other. The girls took off one of their shoes, throwing them into a pile in the middle of the dance floor. The boys had to find the matching shoe on a girl when the whistle blew, and then music started. Somehow no one was left out. A dance partner would always be found. We danced to Paul Jones, too, when the girls formed a ring and went one way and the boys formed a ring outside the girls and went the other direction until the whistle blew to stop them suddenly. The music started and we danced with the boy in front of us until the next whistle stopped the music. That was the signal to run back to our circles.
for the high school football banquet.
I began to have a few dates with some of the boys I had grown up with. I was taller than most of them at that stage. I remember once when a very nice boy with pimples asked me to a prom. He wasn’t in the athletic group, but he did play in the band. I knew his sister but hadn’t really gotten to know him. He was a grade ahead. He was shorter than I, of course, and not really my idea of a date to my first formal dance to be held in the gym. I wanted to say no, in case a more desirable date asked me later, but my conscience made me say yes. I was really ashamed of myself for feeling that way. As it turned out, no one else invited me, and I changed my selfish attitude. I was lucky to have a date. He wasn’t a very good dancer, but I did my best not to step on his toes and embarrass him, for I realized he was quite shy. He had never been to our little dance group. He couldn’t have been nicer and besides, in those days we had tag dancing. Lots of boys tagged and also the other girls. It was the custom. There were few, if any wallflowers then, and everybody had lots of fun. A girl would have never dared refuse to dance with the boy who tagged her. We all learned to smile and act like we were having fun, even if the partner was not a good dancer, or if our feet hurt.
One of the big events in my high school life, apart from all the studies, was the football banquet. I hoped someone would invite me to go. I had never been. A boy I knew, but had never dated, asked me to go. We had been friends since childhood. I was surprised but pleased, and I felt so comfortable with him. He was almost like a brother. Mother made my evening gown out of net, and it was a beautiful blue. I felt like a princess. Well, to my surprise, the football players were all honored, and then it happened They announced they would crown the Football Sweetheart. Billy jumped up, took me to the stage, and the captain of the team “crowned” me with a football helmet on which each player and manager, including the coach, had signed. Wow! What an honor that was! That was why he invited me to go…all planned by the team, obviously.
In 1941 I was a sophomore. We only had eleven grades in those days. One December I had gone to the movies with a childhood friend Ricky Boughton, a boy I had known since I was five years old. Our fathers worked together. We went to see Sonja Henie in Sun Valley Serenade. We were going by his house before he took me home. It was December, and we had the radio on for the music when the broadcast interrupted. I remember Chattanooga Choo Choo was playing. The announcer came on with a special message. Pearl Harbor in Hawaii had been bombed.
When we arrived at his house, his family was gathered in front of the radio listening to the news. I called my parents to see if they had the radio on and said I would be home after the President spoke. Soon President Roosevelt was speaking. All our lives changed forever at that moment. High school went by very quickly. I got involved in many activities besides my studies, but the war was forever on my mind. Our lives quickly changed. Men and boys left everything, including their families, to sign up for the War. Red Cross classes were started. Women collected metal to be used at war. My mother worked at the newly set up office of the Red Cross, and a group was organized to make bandages to send overseas with the Red Cross.
Soon every family was issued gas coupons, coupons to buy meat, flour, and other precious things, the main produce was to go to the armed forces. We had all heard about the terrible Nazis and how they marched into Czechoslovakia. Things were just beginning, for the war would last several years after that.
I discovered journalism my junior year and enjoyed it. I worked as assistant editor of the school paper my junior year. Ours was a weekly paper. The local editor of the town newspaper taught me a lot, and I loved everything about it. Our high school editor of The Bronco, as our paper was called, was a good friend. She was a year older and a natural editor. I learned so much from her. That was in 1941 and ’42. I was named editor the following year and discovered what a big job that was. We published The Bronco at the local newspaper office. It was there that I learned to write. The editor of the town newspaper seemed to be looking over my shoulder. Then, that same year, 1942 and ’43 our paper won the top award in the State of Texas for Excellence for our Class A school newspaper.
The War was, of course, in full swing by then. Boys from the school were dropping out the minute they turned eighteen to join the armed services. Our band director was one of the first teachers to go to war. My chemistry teacher/football coach also left. Then the journalism teacher. My brother who had become a pilot on his own soon was instructing Air Force Pilots after being rejected by the Air Force because of his loss of hearing (He could hear in the air.). A few years later he joined the Air Transport Command and ferried every kind of plane made in the forties to allies based all over the world. That was followed by his flying the Hump from Burma to China until the War ended in 1945. My sister married an RCAF pilot who left for Canada to learn to fly. He was two inches too tall to get in the US Air Force. Later they changed that rule, and he remained with the US Air Force until the end of the war flying B-24’s over Europe and Germany.
I was a freshman in college in 1943 and ’44. Terrible news came every day on the radio. Friends were losing brothers, boyfriends, finance and even fathers. We turned our ration books into the college. Troop trains had the right-of-way, and we were not allowed to go home until Christmas. We danced at the local USO with the young boys soon going off to war. Most had never been away from home. All they wanted to talk about was home and family. They were so young and scared. Our school was a small women’s college north of Dallas and near a boot camp called Camp Howze. We were told in no uncertain words to volunteer most every weekend to dance, serve cookies, and smile and talk to as many of the boys as possible. We knew and accepted without being told, that this was no time or place or hanky-panky and to leave the cookies for the boys in uniform. I still think about all those young Buck Privates going off to war. How sad it made all of us.
I received a letter from a former high school classmate the fall of my freshman year. He was a boy I knew in high school. I thought I really liked him once, and he was the first boy to ever kiss me. I was only fifteen years old. It was a very brief sweet smack on the lips, but I saw stars. Wow! His father ran a filling station, and Tommy had a jalopy, a Model T, which he had worked on until it looked like a new car. What fun! I loved it! We only had three dates, and then he moved away. I later heard his mother was a waitress in a hotel restaurant in San Angelo, and that he had joined the army. In the letter, he told me he was in the paratroops and told me he had recently married. I answered it right away in hopes he would get it before he left, for soldiers couldn’t tell anyone when or if they were leaving. I wished him well. I never heard from him again. Later, I heard from someone who had eaten in the restaurant where his mother worked, talked to her, and learned that he had been a parachute jumper in the Battle of the Bulge. His parachute somehow become tangled when he jumped and caught on the wing of the plane. He was killed. I wondered if his grave was among the thousands buried in the cemetery at Normandy, or if he ever received my letter. I will never know, of course.
My boyfriend/fiancé served two years in the medical corps in New Guinea and the Philippines. It was not a fun time for anyone in those days. We all remembered when Roosevelt died and what we were doing at the time. Also, we remember when the War in Europe ended and when the war with Japan ended after two atomic bombs were dropped. And, we remember all too well, the millions of innocent victims and soldiers who died during this tragic summer in our lives. My childhood had ended long ago. I was nineteen that summer of 1945.