Mother's Day

I called my mom today to wish her a happy Mother's Day and she was having a great time cookin' out with my stepdad, my brother and his wife and kids, and I realized how very very lucky I am to still have my mother and to have such a wonderful mother. She's amazing and has always let me be me, and has always supported everything I do...even when I was 18 and quit my good job and quit college and moved across country from IL to CA. She has always been very hands-off, letting me figure things out on my own, while at the same time giving me so much love and support and always an ear and shoulder. I have her to thank for so much, especially my sense of independence.

So while I was being all thankful and nostalgic, I dug out my grandma's old yearbook, Canton High School class of 1941. My grandma, my mom and I all went to the same high school (small midwestern town ya know). This is my mom's mom, Shirley Elizabeth Fouts (I was named after her middle name); Walker became her married name...



Yearbooks back then are such a trip! This was so much fun. I flipped through the pages trying to find everything about my grandma. Here are a few tidbits about her I learned tonight.

The class of 1941 put together the "Class Will" in which each student willed something to someone else. Here's my grandma's will...

"Shirley Fouts wills her knack of drawing profiles of people to Caroline Jones."

What?! I didn't know grandma could draw. Here's another funny one I read that makes me laugh...

"Jack Condo wills his way with the 'wimmin folks' to Eugene Hamilton." Ha!

and another similar one (how did they get away with this in 1941?!)...

"Dick McCartney wills his way with the female sex to Eben Lou Campbell."

Then I discovered that my grandma was the Treasurer of the Quill and Scroll club. She then became a school teacher for the rest of her working days.

Next to my grandma's yearbook photo it says "Sagacious, Faultless." I keep wondering if each student had to pick their own words to describe themselves or if someone else picked the words. It also says she was in the National Honor Society (so was I grandma, high 5!), and in Girls' Glee Club, and the Feature Editor of the yearbook, and she was in Pep Club (I was in Pep Band, not nearly as popular).

I wish she was still alive so we could sit down and have tea and chat about her life. So many questions. I plan to do more of this with my mom.