A Tribute to a Remarkable Woman

This tribute is in honor of International Women's Day, to the woman who has influenced me the most, my mom.

My mom was born to teenage parents in 1935 just after the Great Depression. My grandmother was the first of eight children, the last of which had only been born three years earlier. As the first grandchild, my mom was doted on. A treasured black and white photo shows a lithe girl on the beach, holding a very healthy, chubby baby – my mom, Eleanore (Ellie for short) – in the arms of my grandmother.?

While Ellie was in high school, her parents bought a used typewriter for her, which I now have – it looks to be from the 1920s. When she graduated, her parents took a loan from a brother-in-law, and sent her away from their home in Bronson, Michigan, to an “electronics” school in Omaha, Nebraska. My mom’s parents were people of very modest means – they never owned their own house. This act of borrowing money, sending their eldest away to school, buying a used typewriter - these were the ultimate acts of love and the hope of an entire family. They wanted more for the eldest child and grandchild.?

When Ellie graduated from trade school, now competent in bookkeeping and as a teleprinter and tie lines operator, she was placed at Western Union Telegraph Company in Marion, Ohio. This is where she met my dad. She asked her colleague to get her a date with this fine-looking Western Union lineman who came in to cash his paycheck, but he was headed out of town. When he came back through, he came to her teller window and asked her out on a date. Three months later, they were married. The way my dad tells the story, when she cashed his paycheck, “I asked if she wanted to help me spend it, and she’s been spending it ever since.” That telling remark describes the societal roles of the late 1950s – my dad was the breadwinner, my mom stayed at home to do the work of raising their four children. That’s just how it was, and it was set from the beginning.

Together, my parents raised four children, three girls, and a boy. The girls all went to college, and the boy stayed home to farm. My parents owned their home and 160+ acres of land. The modest start they got from their parents was enough to take a generation out of poverty.

Once mom’s girls were gone, and she saw the life they were living and the opportunities available to them, she became restless. She started taking correspondence courses from Frontier College, writing the answers to the reviews from the readings she was given and sending them in, one by one over several years. She never met her instructor, but she was able to obtain an Associate’s degree on a shoestring while still tending the house, garden, family, and farm, and working as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) and ward clerk at a local nursing home.?

Then one day, mom announced, with barely concealed excitement, “I’ve been accepted to nursing school!” We had no idea that she had even applied, or that nursing was an aspiration. She said she didn’t tell us in case she didn’t get in (I feel such a pang of sadness when I write those words).?

After completing the requirements for Registered Nurse (RN), taking classes next to students that were the same ages as her kids, she graduated at age 52. It was such an exciting moment to attend her graduation and pinning. Ultimately, Ellie Bailey, RN, became the Director of Nurses at the nursing home where she had once been a CNA and clerk.?

I watched as the dynamic between my parents changed after my mom completed nursing school; my dad treated my mom with much more respect than he had before. She worked well into her 70s and had a special gift for caring for the dying. She spent many cherished moments with the elderly who were transitioning to the next world. She is now retired, and my dad has since passed. My mom stays active in her garden when the weather cooperates and cooks ceaselessly for her family, always the caretaker, in nursing and life.?

Not because of what she said, but because of what she did – who she was - I know that there is nothing that we cannot accomplish - at any age - if we set our mind to it.