All the Days of My Life: The First Ninety Years "God's Prevenient Grace in Action"

By Eleanor W. Cunningham

From there, she chose to become a secretary, and attended Temple Secretarial school in Washington, D.C., graduating in 1941.

Eleanor has been writing articles and short stories for much of her life. While in mid-life, she wrote the story of her friend, Anne Wetzells, miraculous healing, titled, He Touched Her. She submitted her manuscript to a Christian Writers contest by Warner Press, Anderson, Indiana, where it won second prize and was subsequently published.

In the 1970s, the Montrose School was scheduled to be demolished by the State Highway Administration. Director, Eileen McGuckian, of Peerless Rockville, rescued it. She asked Eleanor to write a history of the school she had attended as a child. Her book, Montrose School, The First Ninety Years, was published by Peerless in 1990.

In the late 1990s, Eleanor discovered letters her father had written to her mother. Her mother had traveled from Maine to Kentucky to teach black children who had no public schools. Thinking this was a story that must be told, Eleanor set about writing her third book, Miss Apple, the Story of a Maine Teacher in Kentucky, published in 2002 by AuthorHouse.

Eleanors gift for writing poems convinced her friend Eileen that they should be published, and another friend, Peggy Bjarno, agreed to compile her fourth book in 2003, Portraits in Poetry. In her book, All the Days of My Life, Eleanor tells how she became a Christian at ten years of age, and how that influenced the many important decisions of her life to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496900555

Eleanor W. Cunningham

Eleanor Cunningham was born in Rockville, Maryland on October 6, 1923, and on this 90th year of her life, received encouragement to write her life story. Growing up, she and her siblings went to nearby Montrose School, moving on to Richard Montgomery High School. From there, she chose to become a secretary, and attended Temple Secretarial school in Washington, D.C., graduating in 1941. Eleanor has been writing articles and short stories for much of her life. While in mid-life, she wrote the story of her friend, Anne Wetzell’s, miraculous healing, titled, “He Touched Her.” She submitted her manuscript to a Christian Writers contest by Warner Press, Anderson, Indiana, where it won second prize and was subsequently published. In the 1970’s, the Montrose School was scheduled to be demolished by the State Highway Administration. Director, Eileen McGuckian, of Peerless Rockville, rescued it. She asked Eleanor to write a history of the school she had attended as a child. Her book, “Montrose School, The First Ninety Years,” was published by Peerless in 1990. In the late 1990’s, Eleanor discovered letters her father had written to her mother. Her mother had traveled from Maine to Kentucky to teach black children who had no public schools. Thinking this was a “story that must be told”, Eleanor set about writing her third book, “Miss Apple, the Story of a Maine Teacher in Kentucky,” published in 2002 by AuthorHouse. Eleanor’s gift for writing poems convinced her friend Eileen that they should be published, and another friend, Peggy Bjarno, agreed to compile her fourth book in 2003, “Portraits in Poetry.” In her book, “All the Days of My Life,” Eleanor tells how she became a Christian at ten years of age, and how that influenced the many important decisions of her life to come.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

MAINE MEETS MARYLAND

My story begins in the state of Maine where my father, Howard M. Leighton, was born in Cumberland Center on May 8, 1894 and my mother, Ethel Valentine Applebee was born in the little town of Enfield on February 12, 1893. My father lived on a farm and my mother taught school. Ethel’s life changed when she was teaching in Easton in northern Maine as she listened to a representative for the American Missionary Association in 1919 make a plea in the Easton church for qualified northern teachers to travel to the south to teach African American children who had no schools. She accepted the challenge and asked her lifetime friend, Lena Spencer, to go with her to Lexington, Kentucky where they taught these uneducated children. This decision proved to influence her life in many ways. Not only did she enjoy teaching the children, but she also enjoyed the friendship with the other teachers.

One of these was Sara Leighton from Cumberland, Maine. She was the home economics teacher at Chandler Normal School; Ethel became the Junior High teacher, and Lena the Elementary Teacher. When Lena and Ethel submitted their applications to teach at Chandler, they noted that one requirement was that they should be a Christian. Ethel had become a Christian a few years before at the little Baptist Church in Enfield. Lena and Sara were also Christians as AMA required, and held to the highest standards of the school. Mr. Werking, the Director, on the first day they were there, informed the three teachers that Chandler was part of an education crusade, which Mr. E. B. Du Bois called the Tenth Crusade, the finest thing in American History with the highest standards of morality and truthfulness. Ethel was hoping she could live up to expectations as well as be a friend to her eager students.

At the end of the first year at Chandler (1920), Sara Leighton invited Ethel to come home with her to Woodland Farm and meet her family. That summer she met Howard, the oldest of Sara’s four brothers. Ethel and Howard immediately fell in love and were married the following October 20, 1920 at her home in Bucksport, Maine. However, because she was married Ethel was not allowed to return to teaching. This was a big disappointment. She loved teaching the children and in the years to come was glad she had touched these young lives, while at the same time grew to be the socially-conscious mature adult her family cherished.

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Howard and Ethel Leighton with Baby Alice 1923

Howard and Ethel rented a small house near Cumberland Center, Maine, not far from his previous home. Their daughter Alice was born on September 10, 1922. Dad was always interested in horticulture, and had taken night courses on raising flowers, trees, bushes, and plants. I do not know how he met M. G. Coplen, who was starting a nursery in Rockville, Maryland. Evidently, he was impressed with Howard and offered him a job as superintendent. Howard made a life changing decision that would affect his life for the years to come. In the summer of 1923, he and Ethel packed up the old Model T Ford and headed for Maryland. (In later years, I thought back to their trip from Maine to Maryland and realized my mother had been pregnant with twins!)

We were born October 6, 1923 in a very small house on Montrose Road, just below the B&O railroad tracks. The Coplen family lived in a house on the large nursery nearby. Ethel planned to go to the Montgomery Hospital for the birth, but when the doctor found that the baby might arrive early, he sent a midwife to stay with Ethel. What a surprise for Dad when he came home that evening and Ethel pulled back the covers and revealed two babies instead of one! In later years, this move to Maryland and all that came to mean proved to be a providential decision for them and for coming generations.

With Alice only one year old, it didn’t take long for Dad to write his sister Ethel in Maine asking for help with the three babies! Also on his mind was the need for a larger house for his growing family. It was fortunate that just up Randolph Road was acreage for sale, soon to become a small sub-division called Montrose. Howard took a look at half an acre on Maple Avenue, and ordered a $4,000 house from Sears Roebuck, to be sent by rail. Howard asked his brother Philip to come help with the building. Young Phil on his motorcycle arrived from Maine, and with his help, Howard was soon ready to move the Leighton family with daughters Alice, Eleanor and Jean into their new two-story home. The next phase was to dig a well and add plumbing to the house. In 1932 a baby son was born in that home. They named him Howard Noyes. Big sister Alice, then ten years old, claimed that little Howard is the answer to my prayers.

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Twins: Eleanor W. and Jean F. Leighton with their dad in Maine

CHAPTER TWO

BEING A TWIN

Being a twin prompts me also to write about my twin because it was inevitable that our lives were closely entwined. What games I wanted to play she played, what I read she read, what she wore I wore. Not that I demanded she constantly be with me, nor did Jean always demand that I do what she did; it is just the way twins are. It was natural that we always stayed together. It was natural for us to learn to sing together, even harmonizing on our favorite hymns in church services when we were teens. However, there were differences, which come back to me now.

I do not remember ever discussing with Jean how she felt about being a twin. I did sometimes wonder why our mother did not give us matching names, such as Jean and Jane. There were times when people looked surprised when they learned the other twin had the different name of Eleanor. Perhaps it was because Mother did not want us to be identical. We grew up hearing people say Which is which? Which is the oldest? I can’t tell them apart, or Do you always dress them alike?

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Twins: Eleanor and Jean, age five

While in today’s culture twins from first grade on are placed in different classrooms, that was not the case with us. From the beginning, Mother made our dresses alike, but left a slight difference so we would know which dress was ours. Each morning we were careful to pick that particular dress that was ours personally. We played together, washed dishes together, went to bed at the same time, and got up at the same time. Once at Christmas a friend gave us one large doll—to be shared by the two of us. That was what we were expected to do. Our shoes were alike, our coats were alike, and our hair was the same light