My Bonnie lies over the ocean...

My father's mother. This is a killer dress, and I'm putting it here for bonho! This picture was probably taken in Denver, when my grandparents and my father and aunt lived there, sometime about 1919?

My grandfather had TB, as we've discussed. One of the places they sent him to live was Denver... I'm supposing it was because of the dryness of the air, but I somehow think that would have been mitigated by the altitude... talk about thin air for poor lungs! My father had it in his back, and it was only due to this dogged determination of this woman that he was not a cripple. By the time I met my grandmother, she was old and quiet. Patient to a fault, she use to sit and french braid my hair. I can still feel her long nails parting each strand of hair. I loved having her braid my hair...

Before all that, though, she was the one person who kept my father from being a hunchback all of his life. For 6 years she oversaw the changing of body cast after body cast, and finally the fusing of his spine in his teens. He wore a brace most of his life. A lesser woman might have given in, too tired to cope with the constant needs and demands of so exhausting a task. My aunt suffered, I think, from the lack of attention, as she married poorly and her life was... well... sad.

but, because of this woman's patience, my father met my mother...

and the rest, as they say, is history...