Happy 107th Birthday Granny Harper!

* My Menu post will be up on Tuesday this week instead of Monday as I have a special post for today.

Another Grandma Post!  Yes, both my grandmothers were both born in February, 5 years and 6 days apart.

This post is about my maternal Grandmother.  If she were alive she'd have been 107 years old today.

Since it's my mother's mother I've got a few more photos of her since moms are more likely to be keepers of family history and photos than dads. ;-)

Lillian Grace Vassar was born 8 February 1914 in Charlotte County, Virginia, which is in South Central Virginia.  She was the 5th born of 12 children to my maternal Great Grandparents, John and Lucy Baker Vassar.  She was the 4th of 6 girls born to them.

Here's a photo of her taken on the dock of a lake in 1930 when she was 16 years old.

She married my grandfather between 1932 and 1933.  Their marriage record has eluded me for years but Lillian graduated high school in 1932 and my mother was born in 1934 and Grandma Lil being the proper Southern Baptist raised gal raised by strict parents she wouldn't have slept with Grandpa before marriage.  In all likelihood they drove down to North Carolina to get hitched as did many in that area of Virginia who wanted to wed.

Lil, as my grandfather Harper called her, was a strong woman like my Granny Paul.  She was one of 12 kids raised in the country by farming parents.  Lillian did well in high school and had a lead role in a school production before graduating.

Lillian played "Bettie Page", Phil, the football hero's sweetheart.  Maybe I got my acting chops from Granny Lil? ;-)

Here's a high school photo of Lillian, year unknown.

Once she and my grandfather married Lillian's parents gave them a few acres of land off the old home place to set up housekeeping.  It was a piece of undeveloped wooded land.  Granddad, who had worked in a sawmill and was a pretty good carpenter built them a log cabin to live in.  In 1934 my mother was born and they took her back to their humble home with the well pump in the yard.  As it was the depths of the depression, jobs were hard to come by in that rural area.  Granddad worked off and on in a sawmill and grandma was a homemaker and they scrapped by until mom was 5 years old.  

My grandmother found my mom out in front of the cabin playing with a snake and that's when she made up her mind that they were leaving the country.  In the back of grandma's mind was the lure of jobs in the big city of Norfolk, VA for her husband as it was 1939 and the world was gearing up for war.  Norfolk was the home of many shipbuilding yards and factories as well.

So Grandma wrote to a relative begging for a loan of $10 or so in order to be able to move her little family to Norfolk for a better life.  I'm sure that took a lot of courage to ask for money during the Depression and to move to a place where they had no family and knew no one.

They rented a tiny house and granddad ended up getting a job in the shipyard making decent money.  After the war granddad bought a lot and singlehandedly built them a house in the Portlock section of South Norfolk(now Chesapeake).  The shipyard job went away after the war ended but granddad was creative and went to work for himself.  He ran a barbecue shack at one point and another of his businesses was as a locksmith.  When my mom was in high school he had the locksmith business I believe.  But his health wasn't great by then.  We now know that he got asbestos poisoning in the shipyard and drug the particles home to unknowingly expose his wife and daughter too.

Granddad had to quit working fulltime sometime in the early 1950's and Lillian had to take on the breadwinner position for the family.  Being the no nonsense woman she was she got a job with Sears and Roebuck on 21st St. in downtown Norfolk, VA.  She worked as a saleswoman in the carpet department all through the 1950's into the 1960's.  She was a star at sales, winning awards and a nice paycheck while granddad held down the home front.

In 1951 my mother "had" to get married at the age of 16 and dropped out of school.  I think my grandparents were a bit shocked but they understood as my mother was deeply in love with my father.  His family lived in the house behind theirs so they grew up together.  My mother was friends and in the same grade with my dad's younger sister, Marilyn, who was the same age as mom, so that is how mom and dad got to know each other.  It was a neighborhood romance.

My Grandparents knew because they had been and still were deeply in love.

This photo is of them in their 30's(Lil about 30, Wirt about 35), still acting like kids.  My granddad Wirt adored Lillian.

This photo was taken in front of their tiny house in Portlock(undated but probably mid 1940's).  Notice how Lil is looking at her husband.

Fancy duds for Easter sometime after the war, late 1940's.

I like this photo of Grandma Lil with my brother from Christmas of 1955.  The love and pride in her eyes is palpable.

When I was born in 1959 both my Grandmothers were waiting at the hospital.  My mom use to tell me that when the nurse came out and told them I was a girl(after my parents had had 2 boys), my Grandma Lillian got so excited and ran to the payphone to call all her relatives about the joyous news.  She had rolls of dimes and had unrolled one of them and dropped all those dimes and they scattered all down the hallway making a big racket!  I can imagine my almost 45 year old grandmother laughing and scooping up change off the floor. lol

Here's both of my Grandmothers with me and my two brothers at Easter in 1963 in front of Grandma Lillian's house.  Lil is behind my oldest brother on the right.

I do remember Grandma Lillian use to have to make sales calls at peoples homes in the evening.  Sometimes she would bring me with her on these visits.  We'd lug(well mostly Grandma would)the handled carpet books with samples into people's living rooms.  Grandma may have had to take me with her(babysitting me)but she used me as her secret weapon to get folks to buy carpeting.  I was just an adorable child who enjoyed singing and preforming so I am sure I helped her get some of those orders.

This was the beginning of when wall-to-wall carpeting became the new thing instead of rugs.  It was not cheap but Lillian proved to be a star saleswoman with Sears, earning awards from the company and was the top performer in her store.

I remember those carpet samples fondly too.  When a style/color was discontinued the sample was thrown away.  Grandma took them home to use for some little job(a doormat, etc.).  My mother bought double sided tape and my childhood bedroom was carpeted in those samples when I was about 7 years old.  I had Joseph's Coat of Many Colors on my floor! lolz

We spent lots of weekends at Grandma and Granddad's house they had built in Chesapeake in the early 1960's.  Here I am at Christmas in 1966 in my new cowgirl costume watching the "Jackie Gleason Show" on their color TV.

I'd sit on Grandma's lap in their den watching tv and she'd rub my back for hours.  Maybe that's why I still like my back rubbed so much because it reminds me of her.

My Grandma had to retire from her job when I was 7.  She had been at work at Sears one day and a roll of carpeting started falling over and she twisted to catch it and felt a sharp pain in her back.  After going to the doctor and x-rays and such it turned out she had cancer.  It had already metastasized around her body and was in her breasts.  

Back then there were no treatments, especially for a metastasizing cancer so she we sent home to get her house in order.

She knew her husband would be lost without her so she took some savings and bought a trailer home and set it up on a piece of land back where they were born and raised in rural Virginia.  Being back "home" she knew extended family would be around to help him out as he was at this point quite sick with COPD and ravaged by Alcoholism.  

Here is the last photo I have of Lillian and Wirt.......

It was taken the month before Grandma died, in August 1967.  I remember being there because grandma's oldest sister, Louise, had come to visit from Delaware where she lived, and to say her goodbyes.  Lillian is still looking at Wirt in that special way with love while he stares at the camera with a sad expression on his face because he knows the love of his life will soon be gone.

A month later Lillian went "home" to the country to her mother's house(my Great Grandmother Lucy)and died in a hospital bed in the downstairs bedroom of that house.  Lil was the first child my Great Grandmother lost while she was still alive(LLucy outlived Lillian by 6 years).  I remember being in the next room(the den)with some relatives and being brought in to kiss and see her for the last time when I was 8 years old.  My Great Grandmother Lucy and Lillian had a special bond.  Lucy was so distraught the doctor had to sedate her a couple of times.  My mother likewise had to be sedated.

My Grandmother Lillian died relatively young at age 53.  She has now been dead longer than how long she lived.  I have outlived her by 9 years so far.  I wish I had had her in my life a bit longer.  I can tell you it's hard to loose a Grandparent who was such an integral part of your life when you were so young.

Happy Birthday in Heaven Granny Lil!  You left a lot of love down here when you went and I'll remember you forever.

Sluggy