50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge: Story Time

 Jennifer Jones, whom I follow on Substack, has issued a challenge:  Can we make an entry to our genealogy blogs every day for 50 days?  I'm already over-extended, but that's me.  But I can't resist.

I need a goad to get myself to the keyboard and get some stuff done.  So here we go . . . 

 Story time:

My mother was an intra-family adoption.  Her father, Benjamin Franklin Reed, was killed in a railroad accident when Mom was not quite a year old.  According to her sister, my Aunt Margaret, the Reed family "ganged up" on my widowed grandmother and took her two daughters away from her and had two brothers and their wives adopt them.  Mom's brother, the oldest of the three, was 16, and was left with his mother.

My mother was adopted by her uncle, Perry Wilmer Reed, and his wife, Mary LeSourd.  Perry, after a career in railroads working with the rules, rates, and regulations as a general freight agent, became the head of the Chamber of Commerce in Pensacola, Florida, in the late 1920s.  And here's a story, as told to me by Mary Reed when I was a teenager in the 1960s:

Mary LeSourd Reed, as the wife of the head of the Chamber of Commerce, had to maintain a certain lifestyle and appearance, as a member of the Pensacola upper crust.  And part of that appearance, among "decent" women in the 1920s, was long hair.  Hers was down to below her waist.  All that heavy hair caused Mary to have awful headaches, as it must have done to most, if not all, the high-society ladies of Pensacola.  Well, Mary was not one to put up with that which she need not endure.  Aware of the fashion trends of the "Roaring Twenties," she went to the beauty salon and had her hair "bobbed," as they called it in those days -- she got it cut.  Short.  

She went to Perry's office to get his opinion of her new "do."  She marched into his office and asked him how he liked the new look.  Perry's secretary was standing nearby.  "Well, Mary," Perry said, "It looks all right."

Mary stormed out of Perry's office, leaving him totally befuddled as to what his offense may have been.  His secretary let him know, as Perry probably told Mary later:  "Mr. Reed," she said, as if admonishing a recalcitrant student on the fine points of proper behavior.  "You never tell a woman that she looks 'all right.'"

That's not the end of the story.

The next day, the other elite women of Pensacola went to the beauty salon -- and what a banner day it must have been for that establishment's bottom line!  They all had their hair bobbed.  If Mary Reed wasn't going to put up with those horrible headaches any more, neither were they!

 

How Did They Meet?

 I am inspired today by the Genealogy Tip of the Day newsletter sent out by Michael John Neill.  What caught my eye was this:

"Determining how your ancestor met their spouse can be an interesting genealogical endeavor. It may not even be possible to do anything other than conjecture about their meeting. But at the very least, researching them with the intention of discovering how they met may result in new information–even if it has nothing to do with their marriage."

I know how my mother and father met, because my mother told me.

Mom was raised in Pensacola, Florida, and graduated from Pensacola High School in 1935.  My father, raised in Pasadena, California, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland in 1934.

Dad had always been interested in flying, having been a member of the "Aero Club" at Pasadena High School/Junior College, a combined educational institution.  After graduation, Dad served on an aircraft carrier, and, in 1937, was chosen for flight school at Pensacola Naval Air Station.  Ah, fate.

My mother could be very determined.  Once she made up her mind to do something, it was going to be done come Hell or high water.  She and her friends, the social elite of Pensacola, would hang out at the Officers' Club at NAS Pensacola to see who they could meet.  My mother told me that she spotted my father across the proverbial crowded room, and decided, "That's the man I'm going to marry."  Dad's fate was sealed.

She most likely introduced herself to him, rather than wait for someone else to arrange an introduction.  And the rest is history.

They were married 16 July 1937.  These wedding pictures are hand-colored and mounted on tiles of porcelain.