My parents even managed to be the scandal of the 1953 Oktoberfest — my mother, by violating the then-taboo of appearing in public pregnant with me; my father by getting crazy drunk, stealing a bunch of beer steins and then looping their handles through his belt like a pistolero. Anyone who was there long remembered the sight of a crowd of thousands of people parting for my wobbly father, clanking away and held under each arm by a Munich policeman (who also happened to be workmates of my dad) who led him out through the festival gates, followed by my very pregnant mother, chin high, looking neither left nor right.
Through all of this, my mother was transformed. Gone was the small town, mid-Western girl. She cut her hair fashionably short, wore tailored Italian wools, and could bargain for a deal anywhere from a Munich butcher shop to the Kasbah in Casablanca. But in other ways, she was still the same: a half-century later, my father’s German translator would confess to me that everyone in the office was secretly in love with my mother. When Mark Clark gave her a birthday kiss in a restaurant, she assumed that’s what four-star generals always did.
My father finished his Air Force career in Washington, D.C. It was the late 1950s now, and my mother’s world swung back and forth between motherhood by day — Little League and swimming classes and bundling me up to play in the snow; and the life of an officer’s wife — elegant cocktail parties and embassy soirees — at night. It was the climax of the second act of her life.
The third act began in 1963, when my father retired from the military, took a job with NASA and we moved to California, first briefly to Mountain View, then for the rest of my mother’s life, to Sunnyvale. Soon, with the arrival of my sister Edie, we were four, and settled down into the heart of Sixties Silicon Valley suburbia.
For the next quarter century, my mother, in many ways, seemed to slowly vanish, sublimating her own life and desires for that of her husband and children. Ballet and Boy Scouts, yard work and real estate investments, washing and patching clothes, and twenty five years of weekly trips to the commissary. She nursed my father back to health after his heart attacks, and dealt with having a caged lion in her home when he retired.
Thankfully, in time, with my sister and me at last of age, the old wanderlust returned with vengeance. This time, with the clock ticking down for my father, the two of them decided to take on the entire world. My father’s last years with my mother were filled with stays in London, Salisbury, Paris, Carcassonne, Rome, the Greek Isles, New Zealand, Sweden, Indonesia and India — often for months at a time. In the Himalayas, they even survived an earthquake that cracked their hotel in two.
After my father’s death in 1988, it would have been understandable if my mother had stepped out of her busy life and enjoyed her own long retirement. Instead, she embarked on the last great act of her life, one that astonished everyone who knew her and which in the end made everything that came before it seem like a rehearsal.
My father’s death broke my mother’s heart, but it also set her free. Never again would she have to compromise her freedom and will to anyone else. She began by joining, or increasing her involvement in, a myriad of social and service groups — Widow & Widowers, Chat ‘n Sew, Newcomers, Community Services, the Sunnyvale Historical Society, to name a few, and volunteered for leadership positions in each of them. Soon, she had the social life of someone half her age.
Each afternoon, she walked with her neighbor and good friend Mildred, until the sight of the two of them, strolling arm-in-arm down the sidewalk, became something of a Sunnyvale institution. And on the weekends, her happy dates with her thoughtful gentleman companion, Bob, gave her a reason to dress up and stay young.
My mother also established a series of goals that she wanted to achieve before she died. The first of these, a goal she’d had since she was a little girl, was to see the new century. She met that one easily – and, indeed, the turn of the new millennium and the occasion of her 80th birthday seemed to set my mother off on a quest for ever-greater and more difficult accomplishments. In the end, she achieved every one of them — and gave everyone who knew her a lesson on what can be done even in one’s ninth decade.
It had been my father’s dream to rebuild Sunnyvale’s founding Murphy House as one of Silicon Valley’s signature museums – and my mother had helped him for two decades to fulfill that dream. Now, more than a decade after his death, the new museum at last seemed a possibility. And when the moment came, my mother stepped up and made the first, and still the largest, private donation to the museum’s capital fund – an amount so big that it literally took my breath away when I announced it. Her donation proved to be the catalyst for others – and my father’s dream became my mother’s reality: her memorial was held in the new museum, just above the room named for her, and in the hall that will hold the first permanent, dedicated Silicon Valley exhibition.
There was another, equally large goal. My mother’s beloved Hasbook farm had been lost during the Depression. And as a seventeen-year-old girl, my mother had stood watching as her grandfather’s farm equipment had been auctioned away, and swore that one day she would win the farm back for the family. It took her more than sixty years. By then the farm house had been abandoned, the cave left to the rain and snow, and the barn had all-but collapsed. But, she re-bought the farm, and as the local papers reported with amazement, soon a bright red barn with a shiny new cupola rose again over the prairie. Someday, the Hasbrook homestead will likely be an Oklahoma state park.
My mother had fulfilled her promise to her grandparents. Now it was time to do the same for her grandchildren.
At the beginning of this year, my mother began to fade. My wife Carol took over her correspondence and finances – something that had always been my mother’s forte. In the end, it was only through the superhuman efforts of my sister Edie and her partner Tony, cooking endless meals and dropping by twice each day to check on her, that my mother was able to spend her final days at home. No mother ever had a more caring daughter.
My mother’s last two goals were smaller, but no less important – and ultimately no less ambitious. She had always been the perfect grandmother, a part of almost every day of her grandsons’ lives. The woman who had once counted her husband’s bullets, now counted cookies for his descendants. In the end, all that my mother wanted was to live to see her oldest grandson, Tad’s, high school, and her youngest grandson, Tim’s, junior high school, graduations. She attended them both, the latter with just three weeks to spare. In the end, through sheer force of will, she stayed alive long enough for Tad to return from England to see her. My mother was able at the very end to tell us all that she loved us.
She saved her last laugh for one of her grandsons; her last tear for the other. And she departed this world with fireworks.
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.