by Arturo Clark | Sep 7, 2014 | stories
My grandmother, Emelina de Clark, was a proud teacher. She was an independent, strong woman, who loved her family and loved to travel. Having lost her father at a young age she helped her mother raise her younger siblings, while also working from a young age to put food on their table. Being from the Guatemalan countryside, she migrated to Guatemala City when she turned 18 years old to pursue her dream of studying to become a teacher. Growing up during a period of authoritarian military dictatorships in Guatemala, she understood the importance of democracy and social movements. She was proud to have supported the election of President Juan Jose Arevalo, a former university professor who is know deemed as the founding father of modern Guatemala. Together with her generation my grandmother fought for the introduction of a number of critical social reforms like the establishment of the social security system (IGGS), the development of labor law, and the establishment of trade unions. My grandmother worked as a high school teacher for over 35 years until she finally decided to retire to spend more time with me, her first grandchild. Her pension, for which she had fought for decades before, allowed her to retire comfortably and live independently for the rest of her life. Teaching was her life calling and it was touching to see many of her students (men and women in their 50’s) come pay their respects to our family during her funeral, a few years ago. She was fiercely proud of being a teacher and the accomplishments of her generation. Only a couple of years before...
by Bradley | Sep 7, 2014 | stories
My fathers’ parents came into adulthood during the Great Depression. My Grandpa Harmon had to build a home for his mother, two sisters and himself in “free land” in the Missouri Ozarks after they lost their family home. He did this while staying in high school and finally graduating. He went on to support a family of seven as a carpenter and a union member. My Grandma Harmon worked in the home. She never learned how to drive and kept house and raised five children. This picture is of my fathers sisters as adults sitting in front of the cabin Grandpa Harmon built for them in Like Kiln Hollow in Crawford...
by Carl Lipscombe | Sep 6, 2014 | stories
Grandparents Day is especially meaningful for me because I was raised by my grandmother, Ellen “Olive” King, until I was age 13. My grandmother was born in 1912 in the South Bronx, part of the first generation of African Americans born in NYC after the Great Migration from the South after Reconstruction. “Ollie” or “Mrs. King” (as the neighbors called her) was wildly popular. My most vivid memories of my grandmother consist of accompanying her on various errands during the day, stopping almost every hour to talk to one of her many friends in the neighborhood. Throughout her life she worked as a seamstress, a housekeeper, and ran a laundromat for over 20 years. She even had a small part (along with her siblings) in a silent movie. Reflecting on her life and work, the most important lesson that I learned is the interrelatedness of work and community. You see, my grandmother’s work, in the laundromat and as a domestic worker, was how she participated in the community. Before the internet and the 24 hour news cycle, discussions about current events, politics, music, art, etc., took place in the laundromat, or the corner store, or anywhere else where neighbors could gather. While today, the “gathering place” may be different, like my grandmother, I strive to have my community inform my...
by Candace Johnson | Sep 6, 2014 | stories
My grandfather, Bill Flynn, worked as a lawyer and committed his life to public service and combating corporate war profitteering. As the son of a railroad worker in Michigan, he was the only one of his siblings to go to college and later pursue a degree in law. After his first year of law school, Bill Flynn was drafted into the army and was deployed to the frontlines of the infantry two days after D-Day, the Allied invasion of Germany-occupied France. My grandfather’s service in the infantry of World War II was a defining experience of his life and one that determined the future path of his career in law. He witnessed the frontlines of ground warfare, experienced the heart wrenching loss of his fellow armymen, and–upon the 1945 defeat of Germany–traversed through Germany to Czechoslavakia to liberate the concentration camp of Flosenburg. Upon returning to the United States, he returned to law school at University of Wisconsin to find that nearly 2/3rds of his fellow law students had been killed on the frontlines of the war. My grandfather was an understated man–he rarely talked about the realities of warfare or his experience of loss. But I know that this experience defined his sense of purpose and solidified his commitment to the values of democracy, human life, and opposing facism and tyranny. As a lawyer, my grandfather devoted his life to public service and passed over opportunities in the high paid corporate sector to work for the US government. He served as the chairman of the Western Renegotiation Board, a government agency charged with reviewing private defense contracts with...
by Candace Johnson | Sep 6, 2014 | stories
Just this year, my grandmama Gloria Cooper passed away. Only a few years before her death, she was diagnosed with alzheimer’s and from there her health quickly deteriorated. But really, we knew something was wrong much earlier. You see, my grandma was all heart. She called all of her grandchildren, “grandmama’s babies”, and we were her babies. During the day when my parents and my cousin’s parents went to work, all of the kids went to stay with grandmama. She stayed at home, while my grandpa worked constructing elevators. Taking care of a bunch of kids of varying ages and temperaments is real work, but it wasn’t always considered work. Grandmama made us breakfast, lunch, and dinner, cleaned up after us, told us stories, broke up our fights. She did everything; she worked hard. I won’t go into the details of how her illness in her later years changed her, but those who have family members impacted by alzheimer’s know how much it hurts to see them slowly lose themselves. My grandmama was much more than a grandmama, but she frequently said being with us made her happiest. My grandmama loved to care and she was good at it. While her care for us never left, she couldn’t do the things that she used to. For her that was the hardest thing. From my grandmama, I learned that taking care of family deserves just as much respect as being employed. Her grandchildren are a living testament to her legacy. When I have children and grandchildren, I hope to be just like her; a pillar in her family, a matriarch,...
