More travels and more grandchildren

My grandmother, Jeanette Shrum Willett, left us a wonderful handwritten manuscript of her life which she wrote in the mid-1980s. She was born August 4, 1897, in Bloomington, Indiana, and died March 3, 1988, in Salem, Massachusetts.  I have been transcribing her manuscript here. You can start from the beginning with Part 1.

My brother gets more of a mention than I did in this entry.  My Dad was in a very bad car accident on his way to work in February of 1959. He and three other men in his carpool were on their way to work at Hamilton Standard in Windsor Locks, CT. The roads were icy and the car slid off the road and into a snowbank. My Dad was in the passenger backseat. When the police and ambulance came, they thought he was dead, so they pulled him from the wreck and laid him in the snow while they freed the other men. But he wasn’t dead. All four men survived, but my Dad was in the hospital for six weeks with amnesia, a head injury, and internal injuries. When my mother, seven months pregnant, visited him in the hospital, my Dad looked at her and asked, “Who are you?” His memory eventually came back and he went home to recover further.  My mother went into labor in the early hours of April 16 and had to be taken to the hospital by Bob Callihan who was the neighbor across the street. Dad wasn’t allowed to drive yet. After Rick was born and he and my mother were back home, my mother started bleeding heavily. She had to go back to the hospital for a few days. Luckily my grandmother was there to take care of the baby. This wasn’t an era of breastfeeding, so because my mother needed more rest and my grandmother was set to leave on a trip, my Aunt came to get Rick and bring him back to Reading, Massachusetts. She had two small children at home. Even if my Dad had been fully recovered, Dads really weren’t expected or trusted to take care of children, and especially babies, all by themselves back then.

You’ll see a brief sentence of me being born, but that’s all I rate in this journal. I don’t really take it personally. I was named after my grandmother, and I know that was a sense of pride to her about that. I honestly think she was just trying to rush through finishing off this journal and unfortunately I came into the picture later on in the story of it. There is only one more chapter after this one.

She also recounts a trip she and my grandfather took to Europe and to some of the places my grandfather had been during World War I.

The grammar, punctuation, and any spelling errors are left as Jenny Shrum Willett wrote them.

Part 13

“Ricky was born just after his father’s bad auto accident. M.L. didn’t recover as quickly and I couldn’t stay any longer with her. Bob was home recovering too so Jean went over & took Ricky to her house & cared for him for a month. He was born Apr 16, 1959. Jean couldn’t believe a baby could be so good. Both of her girls were colicy and Ricky just ate & slept. We continued to go to Florida in the winter, then in 1965 Jean & Burleigh took a sabbatical & took their two children to Europe. Harold & I joined them for the last 6 weeks and we had a glorious time. Howard wanted to visit the battlefields. We sailed on the Brennen and landed in Le Hoore. In Paris we rented a car and drove to Limoges where Harold had been in the hospital. He wanted to see again the chateau where he went to Sunday dinners. The duke had given him a folder with pictures of the chateau, the servants etc. And we had kept it all those years. When the caretaker saw it she let us look around. She told us the Louvre had sent many of their valuable paintings for them to keep in their wine cellar. We met Jean & family in Lousome – took the boar around Lake Geneva and then made our plans to meet every night at a hotel but not try & keep together during the day & it worked out fine. We visited Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Switzerland – Germany & Holland – then we left them and Harold & I drove to Verdeen – landed there on Memorial Day and I will never forget the sight of all the crosses marking the graves of our soldiers. We went to the Vesle River where he had to swim across with the Germans shelling it. The soldiers on either side of him were killed. He wanted to see Fere en Tardenio where the Germans kept blowing up the bridges. There we found a lonely old castle made into a hotel. We found another town Montfacan which had been completely destroyed and rebuilt 19 miles away. We also discovered a monument to Harold’s division near the Argonne. While we were doing this, the Wellingtons were in Belgium and we met in Paris for Leigh’s 12th birthday. We turned in our car and took the train to Colnis & boat across the channel to Canterbury. There we hired another car and were trying it out when a car came towards us on the wrong side of the street & it was Burleigh. Did England and sailed for home on the Rotterdam. Harold & Helen won a bridge tournament on the U.S. trip to Panama & Caribbean. I sprained my ankle & was in a wheelchair whole trip.

Jenny was born Feb 15, 1965.

In 1967 we took a Mediterranean trip on S.S. Constitution Mar 9 to Apr 25. We left the ship at Gebralter and rented a car and did Portugal & Spain then met the ship on its next trip and returned on it. We met the Inslies, Perry and Demerests on that trip and have seen them all since.

In 1969 we went on Raffaello with Wales, Shrums, Reynolds, then left them in Naples & went to Capri, Amalfi Drive, Sorrento, Paestum, Rome, Florence, Pisa & Genoa. In Florence – I was recovering from flu & Harold reading in the lobby when a little 5 yr old came up to him and said “Will you take care of me. I don’t care for the babysitter they have for me. Harold brought him in to see me & when I asked his name he said I am Sandor Habsburg. He was the son of Otto, heir to the throne in Austria. They are not allowed to return to Austria for fear he would try to become emperor. We came home on the Michale Angelo.”

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I have joined an online challenge by Amy Johnson Crow to write about 52 ancestors in 52 weeks. I’m writing about the prompt “Diary.”  I am hopelessly behind on participating, but Amy says there really is no “behind.” Writing at your pace and getting something out on the page is what is most important.   You can join any time and find all the details here: 

Click here to sign up for the 52 Ancestors Challenge