With four young children not yet in school Mary was a full-time mother as well as a wife. There were meals, diapers, laundry, skinned knees, hugs and kisses, grocery lists, trips to the doctor, and on and on. She was ever grateful that Granny was happy and eager to tend to the kids occasionally to give her a break from her daily routine. Mary took the opportunity to spend a little time with her friends, go shopping or whatnot. It seemed that she was always ready for bed at bedtime. She was always ready to get breakfast for me next morning to help me get to work. Folks who knew Mary shook their heads in wonder at how she managed her task. I too sometimes wondered how she did it.

Despite their mother’s loving, tender care, the kids were not perfect. As they grew to school age, flaws began to develop. Some of the flaws were tonsils large enough to impede swallowing of food, thumb sucking, bed wetting now and then, too many teeth that crowded each other into crookedness and a few others. Besides these kid problems, Mary had her own. Her teeth were not good and she ended up with dentures long before she was old enough to be a grandma. We managed to get most of our major flaws corrected and live a pretty much normal life.

Once the children were in school Mary had time to do more of the things she liked to do. She liked to sew. She made clothes particularly, but not exclusively, for our little girls. She made matching outfits for the girls; things not found in the stores. She made sport jackets for the boys. Heck, she even made one for me. 

Still, Mary’s priority was the children. She paid close attention to their progress in school. She dragged me to all the PTA meetings and she knew the teachers. She even baked cakes for PTA bake sales. I thought such sales were useless. It would have been a lot easier to ask for a dollar donation and not have to bake a cake, or eat someone else’s stuff. I guess the women had a different take on the bake sale.

Supper time was always family time at our house. We discussed all kinds of problems involving family life. Nobody left the table without being excused. When I asked about what happened at school or what new thing somebody learned or what exciting thing happened I usually got the same reply, ”nothing”. Nobody wanted to repeat their earlier story, already told to Mom in great detail before I got home. I had to talk to Mom later to get their stories.

R. C. Hoiles, owner of the local newspaper as well as several others, often wrote editorial pieces for his paper. A proposed new library came up for a vote. Hoiles strongly opposed its public financing. His opposition was enough to get it approved by a large margin. The library became known as the house that Hoiles built. Hoiles also editorialized against public schools. Mary thought the local schools, though not perfect, were all right and served the community pretty well, and the local people were in charge.

Mary wrote a letter to the paper, challenging Hoiles on his stance on public schools. Little did she know that Hoiles was in town, but she soon got a phone call requesting a talk with her. Next evening he showed up, ready to straighten her out. For more than an hour they discussed and argued the topic of public schools. At length they finished in a draw. Neither’s mind was changed at all, but they had a good argument. I tended to agree with Mary mostly because the schools were locally controlled. If I heard the argument today I would agree with Hoiles on more of his points simply because federal government and unions are so involved.

As our boys became of age, they joined the Cub Scouts. It wasn’t long before the Cubmaster retired. Scout leadership depends on parents to serve in those positions and I was nominated as the new Cubmaster, a job I held for ten years. Meanwhile the girls grew to the age of Girl Scout Brownies and of course just had to join. As with Boy Scouts, leadership of Girl Scouts came from the parents, namely mothers. Of course Mary got involved, but not as a troop leader. She took training to learn to train troop leaders. She continued the effort so long as the girls were in Scouting. This took her to national conferences, one in Florida where she incidentally went deep sea fishing. She actually caught a fish, a marlin I think. She probably learned something about leader training too.

Each summer I saw to it that the family took a vacation trip. Usually, but not always, we went on camping trips. We went to various state parks over the years and simply stayed for a week, enjoying the features of the parks. Other times we took extensive tours, camping along the way. Our longest tour lasted a month and took us to the great national parks in the west from Grand Canyon north to Yellowstone and many points along the way. Mary had not camped before her experience with the family but she soon became a fine camper and loved it.

Mary recognized the shortcomings of how reading was taught in schools and sought improvements in the methods. Seems that the gaze and guess method was prevalent where kids were expected to memorize words by their shapes. If they learned the sounds that letters represent then many words could be identified simply by sounding out the letters. She joined three other women, another Mary, Sally and Jane and set out to promote phonetics as a reading method. They even engaged a teacher from Xavier University of Cincinnati to help them promote phonetics among the educators. Sister Monica spent a week with our family while helping the women.

The phonetics group went to conferences at the state capital to promote their idea. Arriving home from one such meeting Mary offered her hand declaring that the Governor had shaken it. I said that I would shake the hand provided she had washed her hands since the handshake. I didn’t like a governor so eager to raise my taxes as Celeste.

Mary continued with her mission so long as her health permitted. She never finished her work, but she made her voice heard so long as she could.