Stories need to be told. Many of my family stories are embedded in my treasures, such as the candy dish in the last post. I find that sharing stories is an urgent and irresistible need in the lives of many of us seniors. Stories help narrate and sustain our culture, our heritage and our values. Stories must not be lost. Thus, I share this family story with you…to keep it alive and to inspire you.

My Mother became an orphan in Kuna, Idaho in 1935 at the age of 10. Unlike many orphans, my mother had two older sisters and a host of uncles and aunts who loved her and would have raised her. Nonetheless, my dying biologic grandmother, Mirtie Hale, selected fellow church members to raise her beloved 10-year old. Burt and Verna Hale were a respected, childless couple, ironically with the same last name as my biologic grandparents. The careful, precise, explanatory letter Mirtie wrote to Burt and Verna is one of my most treasured documents. It is the story of love, grief, and letting go from a very rational brave woman facing death…an ancestor with amazing courage and care! You can read her letter and more about Mirtie Hale, my biologic grandmother on my Wiki-Tree page.

However, this story will feature the woman I knew as Grandmother Hale, my mother’s second mother by adoption. Grandmother Hale, maiden name Verna Hiscox, was born in Oakland, California in 1894; her sister Mervil was born 5 years later. Sadly, the mother of this little Hiscox family died in 1903. Family legend is that their father, Lester Hiscox, became an alcoholic and abandoned them; the little girls took in laundry in order to survive in rough and raw Nevada City during the interval of 1904-1910, when they were just 10 and 5. The heavy work tragically contributed to their later inability to become pregnant.

Facts add a different perspective:  the Nevada silver rush ended well before 1903, it’s unlikely that Lester Hiscox expected to find riches in Nevada after 1903.  Why did he take the girls to Nevada City, California and why did he leave them there? The 1910 US census finds Lester Hiscox remarried and working in the Oregon sawmills. At that same time, in 1910, the little girls (now aged 16 and 11) were living with Jasper and Ada Landsburg and are identified as Landsburg “cousins’.   Perhaps they were homeless for a time, running to gather and do laundry. Or maybe the girls were rescued and working for the Landsburgs as maids and housekeepers.

We do know that sometime after 1910, Jasper and Ada Landsburg moved with Verna Hiscox to Kuna Idaho, the home of the Landsburg daughter Linda Landsburg Fiss. Mervil was taken in by Lester’s brother wealthy lumber store owner Richard Hiscox; she graduated from Univ of California in Berkeley, Ca and became a teacher. Richard Hiscox watched over my mother, sending regular letters and cards to her, me and our young children.

Verna probably served as maid to the Landsburg household in Kuna. An aging “Grandma Ada Landsburg” ruled the household (and reputedly the town) from her bed in the Fiss living room. In 1916, Grandma Landsburg tatted a linen handkerchief for Verna’s wedding to Burt Hale.

That handkerchief came to me for my wedding in 1966, along with a letter expressing Grandmother Hale’s sorrow that she “thought your mother would carry it for her wedding, but we didn’t know their wedding was to take place until phoned it had.”  I carefully saved Grandmother Hale’s letter and gifted handkerchief.

My daughters carried Grandmother Landsburg’s tatted handkerchief in their weddings as “something old”.  My grandchildren will hopefully one day carry Grandma Landsburg’s linen handkerchief in their weddings too. The handkerchief and its history signify resilience and survival; there can be love and hope even in the most difficult of circumstances. That’s a value worthy of ceremony.

Grandma (Verna Hiscox) Hale thought it quite important that I have a “hope chest” – a collection of items to help set up my household when (not if) I found a spouse. Each time we visited, she would direct me to retrieve the Betty Crocker box tops from the bottom drawer of the Sears, Roebuck secretary on the front porch. Along with the box tops were the little toys from cereal boxes and cracker jacks. I now have that secretary, and for many years kept Grandmother’s tradition alive by filling the drawer with magazines, small toys and free greeting cards for our young grandchildren. The Betty Crocker silverplate I acquired with Grandma’s coupons still gives me pleasure.  Someday soon, I may let go of the Betty Crocker silverware (and with it the Hiscox silver), but at least I have shared the story. This story, the letter, tatted handkerchief and candy dish will remain in the secretary where they may be found someday by my descendants who can tell the story of our family’s resilience and love in the midst of grief and abandonment.

Did you hear the sound of the story’s escape from the isolation of my memory? Sort of like the sound of  a butterfly’s flight, or a leaf blowing in the breeze…..