My mom was named Hattie after her oldest brother’s wife, who tragically died giving birth. She was a child of the Great Depression—#8 of 9 children. When she was young, her father had a stroke, and there was never enough money. She told me how her mother saved the chicken neck just for her, how she shared a bed with her brothers (and they said her feet were cold), how she once received a pair of skates only to have her brother take them apart to make a skateboard (I’m not sure she ever forgave him), and how her mom sewed ruffles onto her sister’s flour sack dresses because Hattie was always very tall.
She got her first job at 13, claiming she was 16, and proudly put her first real dress on layaway. After graduating high school—the first in her family—she moved to California and lived with her sister Floella, who sadly died of pneumonia. Hattie and her mother stood on the train from California to Missouri to bring Floella’s body home to be buried. She supported herself working as an expeditor for Northrop Grumman during World War II.
She met my dad when he was in the Navy, and after the war, she supported him through law school and worked as his secretary in his first law office. Believing she could not have children, she adopted my brother—and cherished the woman who gave him to her. They moved to California in 1954, where my father became City Attorney of Anaheim. She was the woman behind his success: ensuring he looked sharp, handling the social side, and managing everything at home so he could work late and golf on Saturdays.
When my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer, she cared for him, helping him work until the day before his final hospital stay. She was a rock when my brother died, even as she faced her husband’s decline. She cared for me, went back to work, saved her money, and put me through college and law school without student loans.
When my children were born, she became “Nana.” She was always there, picking them up early from daycare and spoiling them. She set aside money for my son’s college and started a Roth IRA for my daughter when she began working.
She survived uterine cancer, and even as congestive heart failure slowed her down, she lived at home, independent, until a stroke made it necessary to move her to a care facility for her safety.
She will always be my hero. I aspire every day to be more like her. I will miss her forever and love her always—to the moon and back.
