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maids.
P.S. - John E. has a new ‘53 Oldsmobile. Very pretty.” One of the biggest laughs we had was in hearing Mother’s letter to grandmother Mary Helen describing how much I had grown and that I fell asleep while riding in the car leaving the May Day festivities in 1959. I was three years old, and I’d fall asleep almost instantly, even when she promised to pay me $.25 if I’d stay awake to keep her company.
My husband, whose name is Howard also, was amused at this “revelation” since he now has the same complaint. Some things just don’t change.
My mother, Dorothy Carter, was bom in August 1925 in Baltimore, Maryland, but grew up in and around Washington, Va. and was mostly raised by her grandparents, John and Ruth Payne Wills, along with her brother John E. (Eldridge). Her mother, Mary Helen, was a domestic worker for many years until her retirement, and in many instances, she was not allowed to have her children with her at the live-in jobs that she acquired.
Dorothy attended segregated schools in Rappahannock for her first two years and again in 6th and 7th grades; in between, she went to live in Welch, W.Va. with her uncle and aunt, Lacy (Mary’s brother) and Beatrice Wills, in the 3rd through 5th grades; and again in 8th and 9th grades because there were no middle or high schools for Blacks in Rappahannock, or any other neighboring counties at that time.
She remembers having a great desire to go to school. She recalls, with tears in her eyes, the night that her Uncle Lacy, who probably drove all night from West Virginia to Little Washington, picked her up and took her back to West Virginia to begin high school.
It was already October of that school year. But, he made the trip anyway so that his niece would have a chance to complete her education. As she looked around the community at many of her friends who lacked focus or opportunity, she knew that an education would be her ticket to a better life for herself and her family.
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