Great-Aunt Marie Thurston

In 1943 my Great-Aunt Marie Thurston was born on November 1st into a large family that was very close. She grew up in a small farming community just outside of St. Louis, Missouri and Marie is now in her seventies, living in the same home she grew up in. Marie led a full and interesting life traveling the country, raising four children, and eventually learning her chosen profession. Our interview session was conducted April 22, 2017 by telephone as she lives in Missouri and I live in California.

We first spoke of Marie’s parents, who first met at a social gathering in their small rural town, and then married just a few short months later. Marie’s great uncle was a physician and was the one who delivered her in the local hospital that was approximately fifteen miles away. She spoke of her mother who was a housewife which was standard for the time frame we discussed, and her father ran his own business. In spite of having such a large family her mother was very close with her parents and siblings and saw them as often as possible. Her grandparent’s had an old farmhouse not far from where Marie and the rest of her immediate family lived and a place she fondly remembers visiting the most during her childhood.. The house was old and very big, with a wide wrap around porch and several wide sets of stairs in the front and in the back. Marie shared memories of sitting on the front steps and playing with one of the many cats living on the farm as she waited for her father to return home after work. She also spoke of the many times she followed her grandma around the house and helped to clean, but was terrified that the vacuum cleaner would suck her up.

Because her family moved often Marie remembers she attended many different schools over the years with what felt like more time spent in many different schools than spent in the same one. When asked about moving so often had interested her the most, she says the phrases people used to describe the same thing. For example, on the east coast sodas were called “pop” or “soda water”, in the west it was “cola”, in Maryland is was a “cold drink.” If you didn’t say certain phrases the way the locals did, you were branded an outsider for a very long time.

I listened as Marie told me how she had developed an independent personality early on and rarely relied on her family for help. She was accustomed to collecting her school records from one school, and when the family settled in a new place, getting enrolled the next school. One move in particular seemed to stand out in her memory. One principal at a Pennsylvania school stands out in her memory. After briefly looking at her transcripts from her previous school in Texas, he told her that he was going to hold her back a year because the Texas school system was behind the Pennsylvania school system. As this seemed to be a statement based on opinion rather than fact, she grew very angry. It seems that Marie had a very clear distinction of what was right or wrong, because she told me that she debated the point until the principal conceded and placed her appropriately. She said that is was not acceptable for the principal to do such a thing when it was only his opinion and she especially didn’t want anyone to think she had failed. She said that she convinced him to let her be in the grade she should be in according to her transcripts, and if she was unable to keep up in her classes and maintain a reasonable grade, she would be willing to be put in the lower grade. Needless to say Marie had no trouble maintaining her grades and the principal eventually apologised.

Marie said she had grown up being a serious person, even as a child, who enjoyed learning and had done quite well in school. She told me about the sad experiences that had turned her attention to eventually studying medicine. When she was fourteen her father had died of a heart attack over her Thanksgiving break from school. This was her first experience with death. The experience seemed so difficult to work through she said, because she was so close to him. Marie spoke of her feelings of anger and sadness, then finally acceptance. She said when she saw the people around her going about their everyday lives when her father had passed it made her so angry because she was struggling with all of the emotions, and realizing that her life would never be the same. Sadly, approximately a year and half later her mother passed away from a brain tumor, which left Marie on her own by the time she was sixteen. She told me about working as a housekeeper to support herself and continuing to attend school.

Eventually she had to drop out of school, which was devastating for her as she loved to learn. Marie had been told at one point in her school career that if she took her classes through correspondence courses she could still obtain her high school diploma. She said it was difficult taking her classes this way, she felt like she thrived when there was a structured schedule in place and now she had been left to create her own. It seemed like it would take forever to complete the requirements but she was determine to graduate. The classes that were the most challenging for Marie were bookkeeping and accounting. Marie