Family Memories: Family Memories: Mom's Early Years

Mom was raised by her paternal Grandmother, Mary Jane Graham. She sounds like a very strong willed woman. As a child, whenever I exhibited temper or stubbornness, Mom or Grandma George would call me "Mary Jane", in reference to her.

The story is that she had five sons, one of the youngest being Mom’s father, Harold Victor Graham (born August 15, 1897). She never married the father of her children. Harold's father apparently was a hat manufacturer, and had a wife and children elsewhere. She was born Mary Jane Grieves, and changed her name to Graham so she wouldn’t have to change her initials. The family only found out she was not married to him at the reading of his will! Apparently it caused quite a stir, and family legend has it that one of the sons left for America, never to be seen again.

Mary Jane Graham, in black, described by Dad as a very prim and proper person

Harold Graham enlisted in the British army during World War I, by lying about his age. He was sent to Ypres and was gassed in the trenches. He contracted a form of tuberculosis from which he did not recover. He married Sylvia, and they lived in Switzerland where he passed away 6 weeks after Mom was born in a sanitarium there. Mom was born just over the border in Annemasse France, and so has a French Birth Certificate. Sylvia and Harold traveled to Annemas by train while Sylvia was in labour because Sylvia did not want her baby to be born in Switzerland, and she considered a Swiss nationality to be no nationality.
Sylvia returned to England with Mom and lived with Harold’s mother. Later she wanted to marry George Wilson. Mary Jane convinced her to leave Mom with her. The way I remember it being explained to me, I think by my grandmother, was that Mary Jane made her promise that if she ever remarried and had another child; she would leave her with Mary Jane. Mom got the message, possibly from Mary Jane that Sylvia wanted to start a new life with her new husband. It was always a source of great hurt to Mom as she felt abandoned. She and her mother were able to speak about it many years later and reconciled somewhat.

Mom speaks about her grandmother as being quite superstitious. She says on New Years Eve (Hogmanay), she had to go outside just before midnight with a lump of coal so that she would be the first person to enter in the New Year and bring good luck to the house. This was called “First Foot”.

Mom seems to have inherited some of Great Grandmother Mary Jane's superstitions. For example, she always made beds with the pillow case openings away from the door. She considered pearls and opals unlucky. When she saw hospitals in Canada she was very surprised to see people being wheeled on gurneys feet first. In England they had not been allowed to do that as only deceased bodies went feet first.

Mom also tells of how disgusted her grandmother was when Edward VIII abdicated the British throne to marry “that woman” (Wallace Simpson) in 1936. Great Grandma was so upset she moved his picture to the bathroom, hung it above the "loo" (toilet) and turned his face to the wall.

Edward VIII

Mom was raised as a Roman Catholic. In the early part of World War II she was evacuated to attend school at a convent. She said the nuns were very strict. Mom attended dancing and piano lessons. She hated her piano lessons, which consisted of hours and hours of practicing scales. She never wanted her children to be subjected to this. Mary Jane Graham owned a small hotel in Margate. Mom tells of having to wash carefully each piece of a crystal chandelier that hung in the entryway.

George and Sylvia Wilson had one child, Uncle John Wilson. Uncle John grew up to be a pilot for Middle East Airways. Following that he and his first wife, Auntie Rosemary, owned a pub for many years. Their marriage ended and he sold the pub and later married another woman, named Jean, and they were very happy. Uncle John never had children of his own.

Uncle John Wilson

During World War II Grandma George as we called her billeted British Air Force flyers. She hated seeing them leave each day, knowing that some of them would not return. She had little respect for the American flyers, saying they would panic when under threat and let go of their bombs, not caring if there were allied pilots underneath them.

John had a very close friend, Alan. Alan’s parents were killed during the Blitz of London, and he came to live with the family. We called him Uncle Alan.

Uncle Alan

Sylvia and George Wilson had a very happy marriage. They both worked for British Airways. They lived close to Heathrow Airport. Uncle George as we called him was a bookkeeper. When we went to visit he used to take John and I on a tour of Heathrow and we got to see the airplanes, and go inside them.

A British Airways Plane. We think Dad took this picture on his way to Canada the first time he came.

They travelled a lot, because as employees they were given free flights. They went frequently to Holland, and visited family in Australia. Grandma George loved Majorca. They visited us in Canada several times.

Grandma and Uncle George visiting in Bienfait

Uncle George was a great gardener. He had a greenhouse in the garden of his house, and had the most wonderful flowers and vegetables. He entered competitions and won prizes. Mom relied on his help and advice with her garden. I remember him building the rose garden in our home in Peterborough. It was beautiful.
He was a very kind and gentle man, with infinite patience. I remember him taking us on outings, once to the blind garden in Peterborough Park, and to play miniature golf. His hearing had been affected by being an artillery man in WW1, and he wore a hearing aid. Mom used to say that when he was tired of the noise of all the kids he would just turn his hearing aid off.

Grandma George

Uncle George.

Beside him is the "Guy". On November 5 in England Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated to commemorate the foiling of the gunpowder plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament on November 5, 1605. Bonfires are lit, an effigy of Guy Fawkes, the most famous of the plotters is burnt and fireworks are lit. Our family usually had a big celebration and invited the neighbours. Dad spent hours setting up the fireworks display, and Mom roasted potatoes in the fire (called potatoes in their jackets) and served tomato soup. It was a lot of fun.

"Remember Remember the 5th of November

Gunpowder Treason and Plot

I see no reason why Gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot"

When we came to Canada, Halloween was celebrated instead, and we didn't enjoy it nearly as much. Mom hated Halloween as she thought it an excuse for begging, blackmail (trick or treat) and vandalism.

Graham remembers Uncle George as the man who taught him how to play pool, billiards and snooker. We had a full sized pool table in the basement of the house in Bienfait; and Graham and Uncle George would practice for hours, side shots and bank shots until Graham was very good. Uncle George would then bet these pool sharks at the Bienfait poolroom in the back of Guv Ronyk's barber shop that Graham could give them a good game if they would spot him 20 points. Uncle George used to make money. Graham would have been about 8 years old at the time. He stood on an apple crate to reach the table. Graham later went on to make make lots of money at pool because he was so good at it.

Uncle George died suddenly of a heart attack, at work in 1968. Grandma George passed away in 1989 after a long illness.

St. Mary's Hospital, where Mom and Dad met

Mom and Dad met while he was a medical student and she was a nursing student. It would have been in around 1942. Mom said the choices for girls at that time were limited. All the girls wanted to be in the Women’s Air Force because they liked the uniform but few could get in.

Other choices were to work in a factory, or on a farm, replacing the male farm workers as the “land army”. She chose nursing. She was away from home and the strict control of her grandmother for the first time in her life. Nursing students worked pretty hard, but still found time for some fun. She sounds like she was a bit of a rebel, because she talked about organizing a protest and threatening to have everyone walk out.

Mom outside the house she lived in with her grandmother,

20 Riverside, Sunbury on Thames.

Dad talks about Mom as being very popular with the medical students. He talks about them following her around, and hiding from the nursing sister, who was very strict and took a very dim view of their behavior. He describes Mom as very adventurous, and always full of mischief. He describes himself as a “stick in the mud” in those days.
Dad did not have a lot of money during his medical school days. He supported himself by becoming a photographer and taking a lot of pictures of babies and weddings, by playing Bridge for money and by mending cars. He was a very good Bridge player and Bridge remained a passion throughout his life.

During World War II Dad continued his medical studies. Medical students were not allowed to enlist because they were needed in the hospitals, though some of them “failed” on purpose. Dad describes driving an ambulance during the Blitz, and “pulling bodies out of bombed buildings”. Mom talks about working in the burn units and some of the very terrible injuries. They also talked about the fun times “Fire watching” together up on the roof during the dark of the blackout. At first they went down to the subways to shelter from the bombs, but later on became fatalistic and just stayed where they were.

Ration Books

They spoke about the privations they suffered during the war. Because of the naval blockade by the Germans food was very short, and rationed. Dad says they lived a very unhealthy diet, high in starch. Butter, fruit, sugar, milk, oil, meat and other foods were luxuries, and strictly rationed. What food there was went to the soldiers. But morale was high, and people didn’t complain. Dad tried briefly to keep bees for honey, but learned the hard way that he is allergic to bee stings. Neither of them would eat rabbit after the war, saying they ate so much rabbit during the war they never wanted to see it again.

Mom and Dad met, and spent some time together, and then they were separated for about 6 months. Both dated other people. Then Dad describes how Mom wrote him a letter suggesting that they get together. Dad agreed, and the rest, as they say, is history. He often spoke about that, after Mom died, wondering what would have happened if she hadn’t written that letter, and very grateful that she did. He always said she knew what she wanted, and he didn’t. Dad had many other girlfriends, one of whom was called Elizabeth. Dad liked her, but she was very controlled by her mother. He said it would have been disastrous if he had married her.
Mom tells the story of how they went to a very formal event where their names were announced at the door by some kind of functionary who pounded a stick on the floor and called out the names of arriving guests. Unfortunately Dad got a bit nervous or something and gave him the name of a former girlfriend! Luckily Mom forgave him eventually.

Dad was always reserved and quiet socially. Mom was always the happy bubbly one in company. Dad was very happy to stand back and watch Mom as she made friends and socialized at gatherings.

At the end of the war Dad volunteered to go with other medical students to assist in treating the survivors of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. It sounds pretty horrific. He described how the people were so starved that some died when they tried to feed them because their stomachs could not accept food. He also described how they were terrified of an intravenous needle as some of them had been subjected to having gasoline given to them intravenously. Bergen Belsen was where Anne Frank was sent after her capture and died. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen-Belsen_concentration_camp

Barrack at Bergen Belsen

Shortly after the war, Dad set sail as ship’s doctor on a banana boat to the West Indies. It was a grand adventure. He did a bit of doctoring. He said he thought he might have had to operate on one fellow, with no equipment or proper facilities, but fortunately he didn’t. There were a few passengers on this boat, and crew and a drunken captain. He toured around the Caribbean, and fell in love with it, and came back with two suitcases full of sugar, as sugar was still rationed in Britain.