Gertrude Williams Archives - Page 2 of 2

Generations of mothers

Oneonta is a lot closer than Charlotte

I’ve long been aware of how different my mother, my daughter, and I were raised. My mother grew up with her mother, Gertrude Williams, but also her grandmother Lillian (and her second husband, Maurice Holland), and her mother’s siblings Adina and Edward Yates at 13 Maple Street in Binghamton, NY. She had generations of mothers.

My sisters and I grew up with my parents, Les and Trudy Green, at 5 Gaines Street. But my parental grandparents, Agatha and McKinley resided just upstairs. My maternal grandmother, Gertrude, and her sister Adina lived just six short blocks away from us. In fact, my sisters and I went to 13 Maple Street at lunchtime during the school year and spent much of the summer there as well. It was a fair approximation of having generations of mothers.

The daughter of my wife and me saw her maternal grandparents maybe every six weeks or so. But they were over an hour away. Her maternal aunts and uncles weren’t close by either, though she at least has had a decent chance to know them and their kids, my daughter’s first cousins.

But my birth family was more geographically scattered. My parents moved to Charlotte, NC in 1974. Since my father died in 2000, my father and my father never got to meet each other. My mother and my sisters and niece Alex (daughter of Marcia) came up from Charlotte and San Diego a few times, and I went down to Charlotte with my daughter in 2009, when she was five. She doesn’t really remember my mom, who died in 2011.

So no local familial babysitters on either side except when we dropped her off in Oneonta for a few days.

Jade

The first time my daughter saw her cousin Rebecca (daughter of Leslie) was on television. Rebecca and Rico were on some show called Wipeout. My niece actually came in second. The first time my daughter saw her oldest cousin in person was at my mother’s funeral.

The next time was in 2013 when my cousin Anne invited Rebecca, Rico, and my family to Thanksgiving dinner. (That was also the last time I saw my mother’s first cousins Robert and Donald Yates before they died.) My family did see Rebecca perform in NYC in 2017, but we spent five minutes with RJ afterward. At least we all had dinner together in Syracuse in 2019; thanks to Shela E. for both of these opportunities.

This explained why my daughter was so annoyed with me, after the fact, that I didn’t take her to the Dave Koz Christmas show on Long Island featuring Rebecca. And it’s why she and I are going to see Leslie singing in New York City in June. Leslie’s coming to my daughter’s high school graduation, and maybe Alex can too.

My daughter recognizes that I want her – maybe she also wants for herself – to better know my (tiny) side of the family.

Grandparents Day: my grandmas, and one of my daughter’s

Curiously, this picture triggered a memory of some kind about my OTHER grandmother.

One of those holidays I think WAS created by Hallmark is Grandparents Day. Well, technically not, but it FEELS that way.

Here’s another picture my sister Marcia found, taken at some point in the 1940s; no idea where, when or why. The woman in the top row, second from the right is my great aunt Charlotte and the guy next to her in the sweater is her husband, Ernie Yates. Ernie died while his kids Raymond (directly in front of Charlotte), Frances (sitting on the floor), and Donald (on the blonde girl’s lap) were still young, but Charlotte had grandchildren, as Fran, Donald, and Robert (either not yet born, or an infant) all had children. Fran and Donald now have grandchildren.

The woman behind the blonde girl, partially obscured, is my grandma, Gertrude Williams, Ernie’s sister. She had three grandchildren, including my two sisters. And the young woman in the back row next to Ernie is my mother. I don’t know who she was holding hands with, but it was not my father. She too had three grandchildren, as my sisters and I each had a daughter.

This picture was posted on Facebook, and a cousin suggested that it was taken on the second floor of something called the Interracial Center at 45 Carroll Street in Binghamton. The only people I recognize are my mother and her mother in the front row.

Curiously, this picture triggered a memory of some kind about my OTHER grandmother. A guy named John wrote, “I worked with your Grandmother Agatha Green in the Sunday School as a teacher at Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church Binghamton NY at the earlier location on Sherman Place & the church moved to Oak St. in 1960. Yes, I of course also recall your Mother and VERY artistic Dad, Les … A GREAT encouragement, motivation to me was knowing your Grandmother … (& I do mean “Grand”)…one fine Lady who made a HUGE difference in [my] life to the extent that she did NOT, sadly live to see. God Bless Her Soul!!!”

F is for Family

I was 51 when I had my daughter, only a year younger than my father was when he had his first GRANDCHILD. So who IS this old man with this little kid?

Rose wrote, in response to my post P is for (Helicopter) Parenting, that it was the first time I had written about family. This surprised me, initially, because I’ve gone on about my daughter every month on the 26th of the month, without fail. In fact, it was one of the two purported reasons I STARTED this blog back in 2005, the other being to tell the JEOPARDY! story.

I’ve written about my wife at least twice a year, on our anniversary and her birthday. My late parents I’ve discussed on the anniversaries of their births and deaths, and my sisters on their respective birthdays.

It’s true, though, that I’ve seldom written about them for ABC Wednesday. Here, then, a summary.

My parents both grew up in Binghamton, New York, a small city near the Pennsylvania border. They were both only children, so I have no direct aunts, uncles, or first cousins. Anyone I have called cousins are either my parents’ cousins, or their children. So we have a very small tribe.

My parents met cute, with my father delivering flowers to 13 Maple Street when they were intended for 13 Maple Avenue in Binghamton. Though Trudy initially thought Les was a bit full of himself – probably accurately, from what I’ve been told by others – they ended up getting married on March 12, 1950.

My mother had a miscarriage in April 1951. I always thought that was why my father was a little…distant…when I was born five days shy of their third anniversary. I was named for no one; my father just liked that my initials, ROG spelled out a shortened version of my name.

I found it interesting that when my sister came along in July of 1954, my father named HER for him, Leslie. (This caused me all sorts of complications. People knew my family had a child named Leslie and assumed that it was MY name, and some guys in church called me Little Les, which WAS NOT MY NAME, and to which I refused to respond.) It was also confusing when we’d get phone calls; my father was Les, and my sister became Leslie Ellen.

My sister Marcia was born in May 1958. We all went to school at Daniel Dickinson, staying at my maternal grandma’s house at lunch.

My parents and Marcia moved to Charlotte, NC in 1974. Leslie and I kidnapped my grandmother and brought her to Charlotte by train in January of the next year. She used coal for heat in Binghamton, and going up and down those rickety cellar steps in her mid-70s was not an option. She died in Charlotte on Super Bowl Sunday, 1983, but is buried in Binghamton, less than two blocks from her former home.

My father died of prostate cancer on August 10, 2000, less than 18 months after he arranged the flowers for my marriage to Carol Powell. I’ve long been sad that he never got to meet my daughter Lydia, who was born about three and a half years later.

Once I figured out how to put pictures into Blogger – I READ THE MANUAL and still couldn’t figure it out – I used to put pictures of the Daughter all the time. At some point in the past two years, though, my wife expressed concern about my daughter’s pictures appearing in this blog. It’s for that reason, not my own, that I’ve limited the number of her photographic appearances here.

Frankly, I don’t agree. I thought by having her picture out here it would make her well enough recognizable that she would be LESS likely to…well, whatever scenario the Wife was envisioning.

At the same time, I also thought it was better for ME – some public photographic proof, or at least indication, that she was my daughter, in case the cops ever stopped us. MY paranoia is a function of the fact that I was 51 when I had her, only a year younger than my father was when he had his first GRANDCHILD. So who IS this old man with this little kid?

I remember the utility worker who first asked if she were my granddaughter. I used to be miffed, but now accept the reality.

My mom died, reasonably suddenly, in February 2011. I got an outpouring of caring, from Jaquandor, Arthur, plus many in the ABC Wednesday community. Oddly, it wasn’t a post about my mother’s passing, but a post about going down to visit my mom after her stroke that triggered the comments, which, even as I write this, make me teary-eyed, not just with missing my mom, but of all the support I received at the time.

So there you be: my family. Well, except for my two nieces, Rebecca, Leslie’s daughter, and Alexandria, Marcia’s daughter. Oh, my mom’s three granddaughters are each separated by about a dozen years – Becky, Alex, and Lydia, in that order. Glad Lydia got to meet my mom, and vice versa.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

G is for Gertrude

Gertrude means “strong spear/spear maiden.”

My grandmother was born Gertrude Elizabeth Yates on August 10. For the longest time, we all, i.e. her daughter and her family, thought she was born in 1898, which I found easy to remember: the Spanish-American War was that year. But one day in the 1960s, she decided or was persuaded, to register to vote. And we were surprised to discover that she was in fact born in 1897. Why had she lied about this fact for so many years, we never knew.
My mother was born Gertrude Elizabeth Williams on November 17, 1927. The younger Gertrude was called Gertie by her family. Turns out, she HATED being Gertie, and, at some point before I was born, became Trudy. Only some of her cousins still referred to her as Gertie.

I’m fascinated how some names somehow get dubbed as “old-fashioned.” Gertrude is a perfectly serviceable name. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Gertrude is Hamlet’s mother and Queen of Denmark. Yet, in the Social Security’s baby name register in the US, Gertrude was #25 in 1880 for girl names, the first year for which there was data, and stayed in the top 30 through 1912, but fell out of the top 100 in 1931, the top 200 in 1942, the top 500 in 1955, and out of the top 1000 in 1966, never to return.

It used to bother me, and I suspect it bugged my mother, that comedian Red Skelton, who had a variety show on CBS-TV for many years in the 1950s and 1960s, featured cross-eyed seagulls named Gertrude and Heathcliff in his act.

But I do find it interesting that Gertrude means strong spear/spear maiden since Roger means famous with the spear/renowned spearman.

***

The Mission Choir, the Catholic choir that my sister sang with for years and still an inactive member, requested and was granted the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to be offered in honor of my mom. That’s pretty amazing, apparently, since they know she was not Catholic. It will be Sunday, May 1st, 2011 at noon when the choir sings: Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala’, 10818 San Diego Mission Road, San Diego, CA 92108.

Also, a member of the Mission Choir enrolled Mom in the St. Patrick’s Mission Circle as part of the St. Patrick’s Fathers. The document says: “All members, living and deceased, are associated with the work of St. Patrick missionaries throughout the world, share in their daily Masses and prayers and in three special Masses each day as well as in sixteen Novenas of Masses each year.”

Not being Catholic, I don’t exactly know what that means, but it sounds nice.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

E is for Ed and Edna

Gert requested/demanded that Trudy, who was an adult, to have nothing to do with Ed either, and she capitulated to that. I know that, except in passing – they lived only four blocks away – I never saw them.

Sometimes, I felt bad for my mom. She got stuck between a couple of dominating personalities and often sublimated her own.

But let’s go way back to the early part of the 20th century. My great-grandparents, Edward Yates and Lillian (nee Archer-pictured) had four children who lived past infancy: Gert, Ed, Ernie, and Deana. Edward died by 1920. Gert fell in love with a guy named Clarence Williams, got married, and had a child, Gertie (my mom, who I’ll refer to as Trudy because that’s what she later called herself.) Well, Lillian didn’t approve of Clarence, a baseball player in the Negro Leagues, for reasons not clear to me, and apparently drove him away. So my mother was raised by her grandmother, her mother, and Aunt Deana. The primary male role model for her was Ed since Ernie had gotten married and started raising a family. Lillian died c 1937, but by then the damage to Gert and Clarence’s relationship had been done, I gather.

Ed fought in World War II and everyone was proud of him. I remember seeing his picture in uniform on a mirror in the house Gert and Deana shared when I was growing up. But just as my grandmother stopped talking to another relative when he started having children with a woman without the benefit of matrimony, so too did she pretty much disown her brother Ed when he started living with this woman named Edna in the mid-1960s. And I suppose that was her right, though I found it sad. And peculiar too, since she wasn’t really that much of a religious person; I can tally on one hand the number of times she went to church while I was growing up.

What I found more painful, though, is that Gert requested/demanded that Trudy, who was an adult, have nothing to do with Ed either, and she capitulated to that. I know that except in passing – they lived only four blocks away – I never saw them.

Then, in 1970, we got a call to rush to the hospital; Ed was dying. We got there after he passed away; he was the first dead person I had ever seen not in a casket. My burning recollection is of Gert and Edna crying on each other’s shoulders at Ed’s funeral. Edna died within a couple of years of Ed.
***
Want to read an uplifting tale of an Ed and Edna? Go HERE.