AN AMERICAN LIFE by Michael S. Malone
As my mother lay dying, 4th of July fireworks were exploding beyond her hospital window. That seemed appropriate, as hers was a quintessential American life, the likes of which, in our very different world, we are unlikely to ever see again.
My mother was born on November 15th, 1920, on her grandfather Collin’s farm, near Marshall, Oklahoma. But her heart always lived at the adjoining farm, owned by grandfather Hasbrook, where she and her three sisters and brother spent many happy summers playing in the creek, sleeping under the firefly-lit night, and hiding in the dugout cave that had been her mother’s first home during the Oklahoma Land Rush.
My mother grew up in the nearby city of Enid. A child of the Great Depression, she learned to do without, especially when her father was seriously injured, and the family might have starved had it not been for food brought in from the farm. My mother vividly remembered being sent home from school one day as the horizon darkened and one of the great Dust Bowl storms poured over their community, leaving piles of talcum-fine dust in the corner of every sealed window.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked, my mother was already out of high school and working. The nearby Army Air Corps base was soon filled with young men heading off to war. It didn’t take them long to notice my mother.
One of the traits that most defined my mother all of her life was her beauty. It was always there. When my mother was 80, she sat in a doctor’s waiting room for an hour because the nurse kept looking for an old lady, and walked right past what she thought was a 60 year-old woman. Last week, as my mother slept in the hospital bed, with hardly a wrinkle on her face, a nurse confided to me that “none of the staff here really believes your mom is 90-years-old.”
Needless to say, for three years, beginning in 1942, my mother’s Friday and Saturday nights were booked. The boys arrived, stayed a few months, and then left for the war, some never returning. Those who did come home were ready to settle down and start families. But, even as her younger sisters and brother married, my mother stayed aloof, awaiting the right man.
He appeared in 1945, when my mother was 25, long after mom’s family and friends had conceded that she might become a spinster. My father, a cocky, troubled young captain, had finished his 30 missions in a B-17 and had now found himself stuck in the Mid-West waiting out his enlistment, and anxious to get home to California. His had been a tough childhood – passed around from family to family, he had ridden the rails, been a lumberjack, and even a razor-blade swallower in the circus. His only goal at that moment was to have a better future than his past.
They met on a blind date that each only accepted as a favor to a friend. My mother heard the car pull up, but when the doorbell never rang, she went outside — to find her father and her date down in a drainage ditch looking for a raccoon. My mother looked down to see a young man in uniform with a crooked grin; my father looked up to see a stunning young woman illuminated by the headlights of his car.
My father wasn’t dazzled by good looks – he’d dated Hollywood starlets before the war – but what did impress him was how casually my mother carried her beauty; as if it was an afterthought, even a subject of amusement. But ultimately, what won his heart was the realization that behind her gentle manner was a will of iron. Unconsciously, he knew he would need that will to save him. And it did: though she never quite tamed him, my mother civilized my father — as she did two more generations of Malone boys.
My mother’s family quickly went from worrying that mother would never marry, to worrying that she would. My father drank too much, drove too fast, and was way too clever and reckless for his own good. Each of my mother’s sisters in turn tried to talk her out of it.
But my mother ignored them — and was gone. Off to the film colony in Southern California . . . and from there, the world.
My father chose to stay in the U.S. Air Force, in intelligence, and his work soon took the young couple to Baltimore, Minnesota, and then on to Europe and North Africa. It was an exciting life. In Wiesbaden and Munich, my mother would make sure that my father had a good dinner and a loaded gun before he went off a mission. One night, when half of another couple came to dinner, my mother studiously pretended that she didn’t know the other’s husband was still crawling through high grass on the other side of the wire in Czechoslovakia. In Morocco, my mother drove my father to clandestine meetings with revolutionaries, flashing her lights outside of walled compounds and circling until the gates furtively opened.
When the French caught my father and gave him 72 hours to leave the country or be arrested as a spy, my mother still managed to write out holiday cards before they packed and dashed for Gibraltar. They celebrated Christmas that year with a tiny tree in a Madrid hotel room.
It was also a very romantic life. Every free minute my parents had they explored Europe, making friends from Nice to Rotterdam with whom they would correspond for decades after. As family lore has it, I was probably conceived in a tiny inn, high in a pass of the Italian Alps.
Very nice.
Very nice. Thank you for writing.
What an amazing woman!
beautiful story – thankyou
Condolences on your loss. What a remarkable woman!
Your story brought tears to my eyes
A beautiful tribute. Thank you.
ah, jeez
Thank you, very much.
LL
Thank you so much for posting this….I am at a lost for words right now…God bless your lovely mom.
Great story. I enjoyed it. And, thanks for sharing it with us.
That’s the life for me. Wild, adventurous and exciting when you’re young…then you settle down and raise a family…if you survive the wild part.
Wonderful tribute to your mother…thank you for sharing.
That was one of the most amazing eulogies I’ve ever heard or read. What an incredible woman and your dad was incredible too. Something to aim for….
Beautiful story.
Sorry for the loss of your mother.
Best Regards,
Robert
A Wonderful story, well told. I knew a women somewhat like your mom.
She was some years older born in 1911. Sadly your correct we will not see the likes of these folks, our parents again. They made this country sing and sizzle with energy, intelligence and joie de vive. Wonderful story
thanks
Redball “6″
I understand. My own Mother, 1918 vintage passed in March. As I flew to her bedside and funeral I was thinking, “She and her peers are the end of an era. Educated in America, proud of America, working to make America great.”………Somehow, attending church in a small town, growing up in a one room school and having two loving parents must have been parts of the recipe for a happy and productive life.
So sorry for your loss, I’ll toast your mother, and mine…….sweet tea all around for the sweet ladies.
Thanks for sharing. k
Thank you for sharing a beautiful story.
My family lived in Sunnyvale while you were there. Before the dot-com days.
Bless you and your family.
Michael,
A beautiful tribute to a wonderful lady. And, as always, perfectly communicated.
Very Best Wishes,
David
What a great essay.
Beautiful story and moving tribute. May God rest her soul.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful story about your wonderful mother. I plan to share this with everyone I know. Very touching. This shows the extraordinary lives lived by ordinary Americans.
A tip of the old chapeau.
We will not see the like of these women. They sublimated their lives but they were richer in other ways. My mother died in August 2001, having lived in three centuries. She was born in 1898 and her father died less than a year later of pneumonia. He was a railroad engineer, a career as glamorous as an airline pilot now. She was raised in poverty almost as harsh as your mother’s but was supported by a wonderful man who married her sister and then took care of all his relatives. I learned how to be a man from him.
My mother remembered the sinking o the Titanic and wrote letters to “Doughboys” in World War I. After her mother and brother died the same year, she moved to California in 1926 to live with relatives. One of her high points was having danced with Victor McLaglen at a party in Hollywood. After 1929 devastated her aunt’s finances, she returned to Chicago where she met my father. He had his issues but he was a man’s man He had served in World War I as a sailor in a submarine (at the age of 15) and was too old for World War II. However, on VJ Day they began a party that lasted three days and, after each young man came home from war in 1946, they had a big party for each of them, including many buddies from B 17s who had never been to Chicago but who stayed on the marry one of those girls they met at a party at our home.
Even in her death, she was considerate. She spent many weeks with my children who, from the age of 10, would go back to Chicago, often alone, to spend a week with her. She would check into a downtown hotel so they could shop and visit the tourist places. She told them stories of the family (some of doubtful provenance but still with a moral) and they got to know her. She died in August 2001, just in time so they could all attend her funeral. A month later and they could not have done so due to airline problems after 9/11. They also all attended her 100th birthday in 1998, three months after she had finally given up her own apartment to live with my sister.
We will not see their like again.
Mike_K, your tribute is heart-rending, too. Americans are great.
Heartwarming story. You’re a lucky man to have had such progenitors. Would a photograph be too much to ask?
Sweet story – I was hoping your mother had somehow made it back to Oklahoma and my home.
Very nice tribute and a legacy anyone would be proud of…
Wow!
Thank you so very much for sharing that story with us. I had teared up by the time I finished. I drank a toast to your mom… and dad… I somehow thought they’d like that.
A wonderful story. Thank you so much. I love your mother. And your Dad. Thirty Five completed missions on a B-17! The greatest generation is an understatement.
Thank you for sharing. My mother passed away at almost 90 in 2007 after a wonderful, full life of adventure, love, home and family. You are right – hers, too, was “a quintessential American life, the likes of which, in our very different world, we are unlikely to ever see again.” I think of her everyday and, as I read the news and see what’s happening all over the world, miss her more and more.
No wonder you turned out so well, Michael, with parents like that. Thank you for sharing this wonderful tribute. My dad was born in Oklahoma in 1893 when it was still Indian Territory.
Thank you for sharing this.
My mother was a jazz pianist who left Oklahoma for New York City when she was 17. A few years later she had her own band and was booked into the top clubs. She met my dad at one where he was assistant manager. She gave it up to move back to Oklahoma to raise a family and hold the fort while the men were off to WWII. In my teens the kids always wanted the parties to be at my house because they felt welcome, and could talk her into a turn at the piano – boogie woogie was the favorite.
My parents had their issues, but we were raised to understand right from wrong, and responsibility. I disagree that we will not see their like again – the character shown by our volunteer armed forces, and the rise of the tea parties, demonstrate that the old virtues are alive and well in our country.
Another reason to call it the Greatest Generation.
the crucible that forged their character is gone but their legacy lives on in the grand kids. God blessed America with women like her.
What a brilliantly written essay! As I type through my tears, I send you both my most heartfelt condolences, and my most profound thanks. This essay should become a classic for all future generations to read.
A wonderful story graciously told. Thank you.
A wonderful story about a wonderful woman that brought a tear to this jaundiced eye.
Your story made me cry, but not with sadness for your Mother, who lived a full and fascinating life. I cried for myself, as my Mother of 84 will soon follow yours to another life. We relied on them so much and being always there for us, we (or at least I) tended to take Mom for granted. No longer. Thank you for sharing her life with us.
The story of your family’s special history was a gift for all of us whose parents are from that time to reflect back on how amazing the times and the people were then.
Thank you
Thank you for sharing your mother’s remarkable story.
A lovely tribute, beautifully told. Your wonderful memories will be a source of comfort as you grieve. Blessings to you all.
What a beautiful, loving tribute. It would make a wonderful American Movie. Write the screenplay!
Thank you for giving me the gift of knowing your Mother. She seems to have been a special lady to all in her life.
What a wonderful tribute to your mom. Thank you for sharing it with us.
For the first time in my life, words fail me. You used all the beautiful, most meaningful words in the world. My heart aches for your loss.
Awesome. What a life! Great piece. Am calling my mother tonight..
MICHAEL, why in the world do you not make your email address available?
But that’s beside the point. You have written an absolutely wonderful tribute to your mother and also to a father. She was obviously one of a kind, beautiful, highly intelligent, kind and strong. What a combination!
No wonder you grew up to be such a tech maven living as you did in silicon valley when you were 16 or 17? Your dad was the luckiest man alive and he knew it all the time. To have such a woman by his side is a blessing. Such a story could have been made into a movie back in the 40′s and 50′s. Today most people would not appreciate it as much as then. Michael, you have also been blessed by G-d to have had such a wonderful family, your sister, Edie and your wife. Your cup really runneth over. I offer you my most sincere condolences.
I got to this late, but enjoyed it immensely. A welcome relief from the political blather and a story which deserved to be told.
I may have passed her at the Sunnyvale library where I used to hang out to research for homework years ago, or I may have walked by her on the aisles of the commissary at Moffett Field. Your story gave me memories of growing up in Silicon Valley. Thank you for that, and thank you, Mr. Malone, for introducing us to your wonderful mom. A truly, beautiful American story.