From Diana Vance

Monroe

To the Editor:

To my mother’s regret my father purchased a boarding house for her to run. He was always looking for ways to bring more money home. So just hours after their wedding my father escorted her to see where my father’s crime was committed. It stood in the middle of the block and was so huge my mother picked it out immediately. She turned around swiftly and said “I cannot and will not run it!”

This was in late June in 1929. In those years women usually did what their husbands told them to do. But my mother was from a wealthy family in Denmark and her dream was to work in an office like she did in Denmark. But a boarding house! She was a hard worker but she was not a slave. Yes that was what ran through her brain when she thought of this. My father had written to her that he had a surprise for her. I guess he was proud of himself. My mother on the other had thought he was going to teach her how to play tennis.

So my dad put the house on the market but he wasn’t getting any takers so they lived there. By October he was ready to give it back to the seller of the house. Mother was relieved and she was listening to the radio. Suddenly a news cast broke in. It was October 29, 1929 and the Stock Market had crashed. Both my parents didn’t think things like that happened in America. They had to face the awful truth. No one could buy the house now.

Within a week my mother had seven boarders to care for. This was the beginning of washing sheets, hanging them on the line outside and cooking for nine people. She came from a family of nine children so she did not wince at the numbers. Every day she went shopping for groceries because they had an icebox. She dusted, washed the floors and the fifteen steps up to the second floor. She washed the men’s clothes. Every day that was what she woke up to. My mother was to do this work for the next fifteen years of her life. But she did make a positive out of this negative. She became the best cook anyone could ever have. The boarders helped by making wine in the cellar and whiskey in their bedroom. My father volunteered to make breakfast so my mother could sleep in a little longer. But it was MOM that handled hard times. I am so proud of her. The times caught her but she knew millions of Americans were caught in the same net. Well done, MOM