One of the greatest moments I have experienced as the daughter of my mother was when I graduated high school. The last four years had been difficult. My father died during my sophomore year leaving my mother a widow with two children. Eighteen months later my brother and only sibling died of drowning.
On graduation day from high school I possessed the fourth highest grade point average in my high school class. Being a teacher, my mother valued academics and academic success. She had worked hard as a domestic for two years following graduation, her attempt at saving enough money to enter college.
A note from her mother and father stating they had gathered enough money to send her to college saved my mother from the stalemate of what she feared might become indentured servitude. Saving money was hard, even when you did not have to pay for room and board. Though nice people, my mother’s employers paid her little.
Much of the money that went into paying for my mother’s college tuition came from the allotment that her elder brother, a sergeant in the Army, sent home to their parents.
My mother felt forever indebted to my uncle, her brother. While she protected her younger brother, who was the baby of the family, she looked up to my uncle who was her elder brother.
He had saved her life, a class valedictorian who while reading her valedictory speech to the class of 1938, had held no idea where and if she would attend college. And yet she did not give up when her mother stated they did not have the money to send her to college straightaway.
I know the lack of fund must have pained my mother as well as her mother, my grandmother. My maternal grandmother, born in 1895, had attended finishing school, the completion of which had allowed her to work as a teacher.
A host of ladies in the community where my mother grew up and who had attended finishing school with my maternal grandmother did just that. They, unlike my grandmother who had chosen to marry and have children, had collected their own monies.
My maternal grandmother’s lack of personal funds spoke a loud and resounding lesson to my mother.
My mother would have her own money, never depend on any man for her financial freedom and security.
And in this she would save money for her children, particularly a daughter, to attend college.