This is really tough for me. I don't know yet if I'm going home for the funeral. Instead of deciding, I wrote this because for some reason I just felt
like it. I'm not sure that makes any sense.
My grandma passed away at 7am Oklahoma time.
She was 98 and she had full and very wonderful life.
She was born in the great state of Oklahoma in 1910.
My sister said during my last visit to the US that everyone always treated grandma as a princess throughout her entire life. I think that was true. She was a princess. But, she was never haughty or precocious. Everybody knew Myrtle and Myrtle knew everyone. And if she didn't know you, she'd ask. That personal touch somehow seemed as if it were her prerogative, as Princess Myrtle.
She didn't stand even five foot tall. She'd sit on a pillow in that sky blue Ford Falcon so she could see over the steering wheel. She taught me how to drive in the hay meadow in that car when I was no more than 12. I also sat on that driver's seat pillow.
I remember shopping trips to Ardmore and the usual stopping by a grocery store on the way home to buy bread and baloney for a picnic lunch.
Our favorite TV show was "Let's Make a Deal" and we'd try to guess the door with the best prizes.
Grandma has often told the story of riding in the back of a wagon on the Santa Fe Trail as a little girl and being frightened by the celebratory gunfire in a wagon lot in New Mexico at the end of WWI.
She went to school by horseback in the Yellow Hills (Durwood) between Madill and Ardmore.
Myrtle was no saint. She would tell of playing tug-of-war with the Indian kids. The white kids had a code word; and when someone said it, the white kids would drop the rope and watch the Indian kids fall down.
She graduated from Dickson High School, class of 1928. She briefly attended the teachers' college in Durant that became Southeastern. She was so proud that my mom, my sister and I all graduated from Southeastern.
She married a handsome farm boy and became a housewife. They faced tough times during the Dust Bowl years. Through hard work and determination, they kept their farm and added to it in the subsequent years.
I've heard people say that Grandma was the brains of the family. I never quite got that impression, although Granddad was certainly the brawn. Grandma always deferred to Granddad and I never, ever heard one cross word between them.
I think much later Grandma was referred to as the Little General. She would often say: "We are going to make a deal and this is the way it's going to be."
Grandma essentially raised me since my mom was getting her undergraduate and graduate degrees while I was a young kid. When I told her I was moving to Asia, she said that it is my life and I am going to have live it, so make it good.
She wrote me a letter every single day for the first 12 years I was in Asia. I still have all those letters and they are my most cherished possession.
Myrtle could have excelled at anything, given different times and circumstances. As fate would have it, she was a farmer's wife, a mom and grandma. And, there is no doubt that she certainly excelled at that.
RIP Grandma Myrtle. I love you.
My grandma passed away at 7am Oklahoma time.
She was 98 and she had full and very wonderful life.
She was born in the great state of Oklahoma in 1910.
My sister said during my last visit to the US that everyone always treated grandma as a princess throughout her entire life. I think that was true. She was a princess. But, she was never haughty or precocious. Everybody knew Myrtle and Myrtle knew everyone. And if she didn't know you, she'd ask. That personal touch somehow seemed as if it were her prerogative, as Princess Myrtle.
She didn't stand even five foot tall. She'd sit on a pillow in that sky blue Ford Falcon so she could see over the steering wheel. She taught me how to drive in the hay meadow in that car when I was no more than 12. I also sat on that driver's seat pillow.
I remember shopping trips to Ardmore and the usual stopping by a grocery store on the way home to buy bread and baloney for a picnic lunch.
Our favorite TV show was "Let's Make a Deal" and we'd try to guess the door with the best prizes.
Grandma has often told the story of riding in the back of a wagon on the Santa Fe Trail as a little girl and being frightened by the celebratory gunfire in a wagon lot in New Mexico at the end of WWI.
She went to school by horseback in the Yellow Hills (Durwood) between Madill and Ardmore.
Myrtle was no saint. She would tell of playing tug-of-war with the Indian kids. The white kids had a code word; and when someone said it, the white kids would drop the rope and watch the Indian kids fall down.
She graduated from Dickson High School, class of 1928. She briefly attended the teachers' college in Durant that became Southeastern. She was so proud that my mom, my sister and I all graduated from Southeastern.
She married a handsome farm boy and became a housewife. They faced tough times during the Dust Bowl years. Through hard work and determination, they kept their farm and added to it in the subsequent years.
I've heard people say that Grandma was the brains of the family. I never quite got that impression, although Granddad was certainly the brawn. Grandma always deferred to Granddad and I never, ever heard one cross word between them.
I think much later Grandma was referred to as the Little General. She would often say: "We are going to make a deal and this is the way it's going to be."
Grandma essentially raised me since my mom was getting her undergraduate and graduate degrees while I was a young kid. When I told her I was moving to Asia, she said that it is my life and I am going to have live it, so make it good.
She wrote me a letter every single day for the first 12 years I was in Asia. I still have all those letters and they are my most cherished possession.
Myrtle could have excelled at anything, given different times and circumstances. As fate would have it, she was a farmer's wife, a mom and grandma. And, there is no doubt that she certainly excelled at that.
RIP Grandma Myrtle. I love you.
