Crazy hats & Penny's farm - Mim memory du jour

 

For three years*, between getting her Bachelors & starting work on her MSW, Mim was a houseparent at Girard College (1st grade - 12th, boarding), in charge of 1st graders.  

Imagine being a 1st grader, living at school, away from your home (although often with other siblings in upper grades).  Then, imagine having Mim for your houseparent.  An experience I am absolutely sure they never forgot! 

A recent group of Girard College students.

Beth Shellhammer, Mim's BFF, would be the best one for sharing memories of Mim at Girard - that's where the besties first connected.  Was Beth a houseparent, too?  I'm not sure.  Another name I remember - Bill Kunz.  Now, don't ask where that came from, but it just burbled up from ancient depths.

Only two things clearly stand out in my memories of Mim at Girard - Crazy Hat Day & the weekend she took her kids to Penny's farm, up near Kutztown, PA.  

Crazy Hat Day - on that day, all the kids wore crazy hats.  The kids had never experienced such excellent silliness.  They LOVED it.

As for the get-away at Penny's...  At first, the kids were as terrified of real, honest-to-goodness country living as rural kids would be visiting a big city for the first time.  

Cows, chickens, the terrifying great unknown of seemingly endless fields & meadows that seemed to stretch out to forever - or at least to the country lane.  Alien sources of lurking danger.  But by the second day, the kids were old hands at doin' the country thing!

 

Danger!  Danger!

Penny might have more memories to share.  Wish I could find the picture of Mim sqwinched down next to one of her boys, the two of them the same height.  Perhaps my favorite pic of her of all time.  

 
To paraphrase the exchange between the McLaughlin lad & Mim, they never had a houseparent - or adult - like Mim in their lives before & I'm sure they never did again. 


*CORRECTION:  The original posting incorrectly pegged Mim as working one year at Girard.  She worked THREE, between getting her Bachelors & working on her MSW.

probable correction to FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

In today's earlier posting - Foreign Correspondent - noted, "Mim was all of 15 when she first became a foreign correspondent.  She spotted a tiny ad in a magazine promoting international friendships - a pen pal exchange.  She signed up & was paired with a pen pal way down in Australia."

Have been thinking that might be wrong.  She either connected the way I described this a.m. ~OR~ through a international pen pal initiative at the 1964 World's Fair.  I double checked & Parker Pen  DID sponsor just such a program at the Fair.   I seem to think Mim was older when she started writing to Sue.  Sue might already have started on or was getting ready to start her nurse's training.  Connecting through the NY World's Fair just feels more right.  

I believe I stand corrected.  Will check it out with Sue (once I get her address from Penny who got it from Mim) & let y'all know.   

Foreign correspondent - Mim memory du jour

Mim was all of 15 when she first became a foreign correspondent.  She spotted a tiny ad in a magazine promoting international friendships - a pen pal exchange.  She signed up & was paired with a pen pal way down in Australia.  I don't know where Sue lived when she & Mim started writing, where she trained to be a nurse, but I know that she ended up in the countryside, on a sheep station with her husband.  She's been married to Robert Bennett for so long - we're talking a correspondence that started going on 60 years ago - I only remember her married name!

It was wonderful to experience kindred spirits connecting via writing paper & stamps! She & Sue never met, but they were the best of friends*.  Sue's kids referred to Mim as their American aunt. 

Mim, like Sue, had the gift of writing a great letter - part news, part commentary, all great storytelling.  Their letters formed links that stretched across oceans, islands & continents, forever linking two kindred spirits who would never have connected if it hadn't been for that tiny ad in a long forgotten magazine.  

 

All of us got excited when a letter, card or package arrived from Sue.  Through her letters, we experienced her going to nursing school, getting married, having children, working their sheep station.  We learned that if you have an accident on a sheep station like theirs, it was a 60 mile drive to the nearest medical facility - and they considered that close.  That a Christmas card featuring a burning meadow wasn't as bizarre as we thought - it symbolized rebirth.  That Australian tea towels are stunning, informative & great for drying glassware.  

 

Mim was blessed with Mom's great gift for letter writing, which seemed to just flow out of them.  Mim came of age at the end of the eons-long letter writing era, hundreds of years when writing letters was commonplace.  


In writing this, am realizing how important that gift & grace would be to both Mim & Mom, as they became more place-bound.  Letters arrived & transported them to the place & presence of their correspondent.


Receiving a hand-written letter became a ritual in our family.  We'd draw them out of the mail box, spot distinctive handwriting & the return address, take them into the house & set them aside as we poured a cup of coffee or made a cup of tea, settled into a comfy chair or didn't even wait - opening the letter right by the kitchen counter.  Perhaps we shared it with others or tucked it safely away.  And when we responded, that person - perhaps others around them - would be in our minds, thought bringing an almost tangible form of presence.  Letter writing - pen & paper, envelopes & stamps, photos tucked in for fridge honors - an almost forgotten custom we'd be wise to revive!

I have become a flabby letter writer - may this be a spur to getting better & better!  One thing I know for sure - all the Lockharts were blessed that Mim was, from an early age, a foreign correspondent!




* My brother, Mike, is the only Lockhart to actually meet Sue & her family.  On Mim's behalf, he visited their sheep station. 

Houston, she had a problem - Mim memory du jour

 

Paraphrasing Tom Hanks from Apollo 13 to describe Mim's continuing dilemma about her best fit for a college.  She tried Bryn Athyn College, Berry College & gave the University of Houston a whirl.  

What drew her to the University of Houston?  No idea.  There were several letters to Mom from her days there & she sounded like she appreciated her time there.  Guess it just didn't click.

Once again, wishing I'd held onto the letters, which presented such an interesting microcosm of the later '60s. There were requests for good shoes to be sent down & a particularly nice skirt to wear to a concert.  Bits & pieces about various professors & classes.  Tidbits about Houston, which she seemed to find a little frustrating because it was had to get out beyond the big city to the beckoning countryside.


To the best of my knowledge, she took away two of the things from her brief stint at Houston - her friendship with Prof. Conti, which continued for many years, and a comment made by her roommate, Pam.

It was a major disappointment to Mim that she'd gone all the way to Texas to get a different life experience & ended up with a roommate from New York City.  Not just a New Yorker, but one who grew up in a swank apartment on the Upper West Side, right off the Riverside Drive. 

But Mim - and I - ended up with a great life lesson, thanks to Pam.  Although she'd had an astonishing range of experiences - great schools, great travel, great opportunities - Pam gripped to Mim, "I can't wait to graduate & get out into the real world."  

Thanks to Mim & her roommate, I was still in high school & already knew that we ALL yearn to get out into a bigger world, that feeling hemmed in wasn't limited to being raised in a small town. 

For years, that was the greatest lesson I took from Mim's short time at the University of Houston!

Arbutus Motor Lodge - bonus memory du jour

A bit of Mim magic, still happening!  

On that last Friday that Peter, John  & I shared with her - talking & laughing in her hospital room - Mim asked me to go to where she'd been living & retrieve some things from her room.  Some, she wanted;  others, she wanted me to have.  Mostly books & dvds.   But she specifically mentioned wanting me to take the commemorative coins struck for Charles & Diana's wedding.  Struck me as a bit strange - they are worthless, now - but did as she requested.

The commemorative coins aren't worth anything, but something with them is priceless.  A couple days ago, opening the small plastic ziploc the coins were in, came across the true treasure.  A small plastic box - no more than 2" x 1" x .75" - with ARBUTUS MOTOR HOTEL in gold letters across the top. 

Oh my - so many feelings came flooding in; time swirled around my head.

How delighted Mim must have been, finding & staying at the Arbutus Motor Hotel - that was the Maryland town where Mom & her family attended church!  For us, Arbutus brought to mind Mom's Baltimore home, her beloved father, the long leisurely days of childhood with Bets under the lilac bushes.  

I opened the lid & the scent of the soap within it wafted up, as fresh as if she'd just returned last week.  It's impossible to think she didn't get a mate to the tiny soap box for Mom, but I don't recall ever seeing it in her things, so the sight of it took me totally unawares.

Arbutus Lodge was built for a wealthy merchant in the late 1700s. Charles J. Cantillon, Mayor of Cork in 1865, extended the house in the 1860s. Later occupants of the house included Sir Daniel and Lady Ellen O'Sullivan, who were the great-grandparents of the actress Mia Farrow, and the Dwyer family who owned the Sunbeam Wolsey textile plant in the city.

In 1971 it opened as a restaurant and hotel managed by the Ryan family and quickly picked up a reputation as one of the finest restaurants in Ireland. The Ryan family sold the hotel in the late 1990s and in March 2005 Cork City Council granted permission for the partial demolition of the hotel and its conversion to an apartment complex.

Her 2nd big island - Mim memory du jour

Three cheers to the Lach Pitcairns - parents & kinder - for chipping in to give Mim a terrific giftie in thanks for her years of devoted, inspired TLC!!!  Their pooled money was envisioned as a fund to get her back to Hawaii, but another island beckoned her.  She asked - "Would you mind if I used it to go to Ireland?" 

Away she flew, taking off from JFK.  Mom & I went up to the rooftop so we could see the iconic shamrock on the tail fin as it took off.  It was dark out when the flight's wheels lifted, but a light spotlighted the green shamrock  - what a thrilling sight!  She was on her way!!

Mim had a glorious 4+ weeks, rambling around first Ireland, then taking the train to Northern Ireland & finally back south.  She bused & walked, even took pony carts & occasionally drove.  

 

I’d love to have the letters Mim sent home about her travels – she was enchanted by the land & people, staying with families who rented out rooms rather than conventional places.  Mom saved them, but I sent them off to Mim years ago.  Oh, to have held onto them!  

 Mim LOVED the Giants Causeway!

She loved to tell about her arrival in Northern Ireland, the train pulling into Belfast Central.  Just as Mim’s car was about to enter the station, a brick came crashing through her window.  She talked about brushing bits of glass out of her hair for the rest of the day.

But Mim’s favorite tale of that magical trip had nothing to do with Ireland or the Irish.  It happened when she was heading home, flying out of Shannon back to JFK.

 

In the Duty Free Shop, she heard an young, adamant American voice, speaking emphatically but inaudibly.  The person being spoken to said clearly, “No way.”  The other speaker continued, still unclear but determined.  Again, the other voice replied, “You’re daff.”  Finally, the first voice was loud, clear & INSISTENT – “I’m telling you, that’s Miss Elsa’s sister over there!”

                   

It turned out that the Lemole parents & brood were also on their way home from an Irish holiday, booked on the same flight.  Emily Jane urged Mim to call home & wave us off from picking her up, that they’d drop her by.  She thanked them, but turned them down, explaining that I’d  be disappointed to miss the trip to & from JFK.

Reality Check:  I almost throttled her.  As much as I love driving to Manhattan, the drive to JFK has no allure, is almost 100% what we’d refer to as a “trash drive.”  And she turned down a ride home just so I wouldn’t have to miss the “pleasure” – arrrggghhhh (said with an Irish brogue).