Thank you, Susie It has been some time since I put a family story up on this blog. This one is special because it is one our sister, mother, Grammy wrote down and I want to share it with everyone. After I started this blog I asked Barbara at some point to write down her remembrances about her childhood. She did send me some notes to put with pictures but I didn’t know she had done these pages. I think it must be a continuation of other pages because it starts out “Still at Grandmom’s”…and it has no date so I am guessing it was after 1936 when Granddad Lines died , since it does not mention him as part of the household, (obituary below) and during Mama and Daddy’s (Lilley) separation. When Aunt Alice was married to John Zeimer in 1939, her sister, Mrs. William Lilley, of Allentown, ‘attended her’. (See clipping to the right). So what the dates are is anybody's guess. A heartfelt thank you, Susie, for finding these notes and sending them to me. Seeing your mother’s handwriting made me cry. |
We moved to Aunt Alice’s on Douglas Street for a short time. Aunt Olive’s next--always babied me if I cried- not Joan though. I think Joan hated (me).
Next stay an apartment in Allentown and I started school. I was a sort of sickly child then and I went to the Dr. a lot. The Dr. asked Mommy and Daddy if I would help with the test for penicillin. It was new at that time. They said OK. (See next page) {my note: no information re this on next page}
We moved to Pottstown next at 534 Chestnut Street in an apartment in front with the Frys in the back with 2 boys, Sammy and his little brother, and Lilley girl #2 became part of the family. She was Virginia Christine and we called her Gina (until Ann Louise came next and couldn’t say it so we called her Gim.)
We moved to an apartment on the outskirts of Atlantic City. Daddy worked at a gas station and the owner of the apt. house lived downstairs. That was where my birthday trips to the ocean became a yearly celebration (Brr). At Christmas there, Daddy made me a doll house out of an old radio shaped like this
and the lady downstairs worked at the Salvation Army and brought a doll home and Mommy made clothes for it. “
The pages end here. I would like to note that I think the last paragraph regarding moving to Atlantic City came prior to the Pottstown move and maybe after the Allentown move. I don’t think Gim was born when they lived in Atlantic City. I have a picture of Daddy and Barbara in Atlantic City where I thought Barbara was about 4 years old, though she doesn't really look to be four to me now, and that doesn't work via the timeline of the separation which I always thought was between 1936 and 1939-40) Barbara was born in 1932 and Gim was born in 1940. You can figure out the timeline with as much accuracy as I can with these notes :0)
*NAS: might be Knights of the Golden Eagle, an organization to which Grandmom Lines’ (Hattie Siegfried Lines) father belonged. “It was founded with the objective of cultivating the social, moral and intellectual feelings of its members and promoting their welfare in all walks of life; providing kindness, relief against the trials and distress attendant upon death and sickness, to aid the members of the order who are out of work, to provide for the widows and orphans of deceased.” Sort of like an insurance policy.
http://mill-valley.freemasonry.biz/marin_knights_golden_eagle.htm
http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/masonicmuseum/fraternalism/kge.htm
Or it might have been the P & R Relief Association or the Liberty Circle Brotherhood of America, noted in Elmer LInes' obituary, which I am also assuming (despite what they say about assuming) was an insurance fraternal order, though I cannot find anything on the net regarding either of these entities.