My Mother

My mother grew up in Belleville, PA. She was born in 1920, which was the beginning of the Roaring Twenties, grew up during the Depression years that lasted into the early years of my parent's marriage. She had two brothers and two sisters and was a second-born child between her two brothers. She loved school and wanted to attend high school but her mother needed her at home. Mother is standing between her brothers.

She loved school and wanted to attend the local high school but was needed at home.

(school picture, unknown age)

There was a strong love of horses in the family.

Pictures from her teenage years.

I love this one - a little shy but a tad flirtatious.

But mom was not a flirty woman!

I knew her as almost extremely reserved and quiet but cheerful. And she sang a lot!

I'm thinking she was married in this picture but it's undated.

My parents were both twenty when they got married and soon began a family.

At Niagara Falls.

This was taken at the same time as the one below it of all of us.

One of the few professionals that was taken of them in 1997.

This was taken two years later at the beginning of her thirteen years of dementia.

The 'lost look' in her eyes is already evident here. My mother had a very real sense of what is proper and a composed dignity even in her dementia. Her death at 85 was one of a joyous homecoming when she again knew who she was...that was so important to me - her death was a new beginning!