I'm doing pretty good at this challenge and I'm only a bit behind. I've been putting off writing this one. Mostly, I have a lot to say - or I don't know what to say. How do you begin to write about a woman you greatly misunderstood in life but came to understand in death?
Dorothy is a Greek name and it means God's Gift. Click your heels? No, no - she was my grandmother.
Grandma was born in June 1917 and had an older brother, Bob. Her father was HJ and her mother Isabel. During the 1929 crash the family continued to do well due to HJ's business skills but do not mistake that she was very much a child of the depression.
They went to Europe often. Grandma had a run in with the Gestapo. My father says it didn't happen, my Aunt Linda says it did.
After she died I was able to read her diary. She received a diamond ring for her HS graduation. She graduated Ohio Wesleyan. Her mother died during her college years. She married my grandfather after college and they settled in her native Cleveland Heights. Grandma was a Librarian and kept the schools plants. She carted them home each school break to care for them.
As a child, I thought she was a hoarder. It was her depression upbringing coming into view. Bread bags were lunch bags, stocking held onions, etc.
Grandma loved arts : Ballet, Orchestra, Opera, Museums, etc. She adored the Nutcracker, something that makes me miss her more around Christmas.
She hated pictures, I'm assuming because she literally buried every member of her family (and in-laws) over her life. All she had left was the family she created - children and grandchildren.
We all miss her, I wish I would have known her better but she died a few days after my 14th birthday in 1999.
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| Dorothy, Isabel, and HJ. |
