Verlie: Stories My Mother’s Family Told

By Virginia Gayl Salazar

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669813323

Virginia Gayl Salazar

Author: Virginia Gayl Salazar discovered single life again after 16 years of marriage. She joined Parents without Partners and became the discussion group leader for a few years. She met her second husband Joe R. Salazar at a house party and joined him in starting a tropical plant nursery. Currently she leads a writing critique group at Parnell Park Activity Center in Whittier, Ca and is editing her next novel Holy Terror about the aftermath of 9/11 and revenge.

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Copyright © 2022 by Virginia Gayl Salazar.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/04/2022

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Foreword/Introduction

Verlie’s Family Tree

A Family Story About L.d. Garrison, Verlie’s Father

Early Schooling

Aunt Allie Taught The Younger Ones For A Few Years (Circa 1915)

Cooking From Scratch

Homemade Yeast: Recipe

Found On Facebook In 2019

Too Many Children

Not Much Money

Killing For Meat

A Treacherous River

Large Families And Preserving Food

Mother/Doctor/You Name It

Aunt Hettie 9-18-1907 To March 1998

The Brothers Were Crack Shots: From Aunt Hettie

L.d. And Library Books

First Christmas Party And Other Rules

A Patient Horse: Quoted From Aunt Hettie’s Autobiography

Headstrong Hettie & The Stallion

Sending Some Of The Kids Away To School

Church Was Their Social Life

Birth And Other Records

My Mother’s Family As Virginia Sees Them

Making Soap

Laundry

Appendicitis

Basketball Team: From Aunt Hettie

Breads And Other Rising Comments:

First Love

Verlie Rejects A Local Farmer

The Quilt

Nancy’s Younger Sister, Mary

Nancy’s Sister Malva (More From Aunt Hettie Hansen)

Fun Memories Via Aunt Hettie

No Draft Dodging In Her Family

The Garrisons Visited In Oklahoma Nine Years

Family Feelings And Lots Of Children

Moving From Place To Place

Singing And Such

A Brother’s Dyslexia

Finding Another House

Church And Other Activities

Other Stories From Hettie

Obed And Learning Patience: From Aunt Hettie

Another Farm

Life And Death

The Family Moves Again From Eastern Oklahoma

Staying Home From School

Going West

The Work Ethic: From Aunt Hettie

School In California

Adjusting To California Living

Hettie’s First Kiss

Walter Has An Accident

Nursing Training Or Bust, Year 1926

Uncle Powers Takes A Wife

Hettie Meets Her Husband

Aunt Hettie’s Politics

Hospital Training Stories

Monroe And The Fleet – Mid 1920S

Verlie’s First Car And Driver License

Life, Babies And Such

Becoming A Registered Nurse

More Hospital-Training Happenings In The 192

0S

Never A Doctor

Verlie Was Ambidextrous

Brains Came From Grandma Nancy, Says Aunt Hettie

Letters Changed Verlie’s Life Plan Early In The 1930S

Ocean Voyage To A New Life

Verlie’s Letter From The S.s. President Hoover

The Toe And Cleanliness

The Brother I Never Saw

Walking, Running And Back To Crawling

Letter Writing

Virginia’s Allergy To Milk

Friendships While Overseas

The Restoration Movement/The Great Awakening In America

About Dancing, Rings, And Things

My First Word

Setting Up Housekeeping

The Voyage Home

Returning To The States

A Black Dog And Ice Cream

Hornets’ Nests And Sisterly Love

Verlie’s Favorite Brother

Five Years Between Walter And Shelby

Information From Aunt Elizabeth. 1995

Uncle Shelby And The Neighbor

Uncle Walter, The Ninth Child

My Very Proper, Strict Grandmother

Returning To California From Oklahoma

My First Birthday Party

Health Problems Make Us Move Again

We Learn About Buddhism—1942 To 1944

An Unalert Bus Driver

A Loving Father

Teaching My Dad To Drive

My Dad Was A Peacemaker

Cousin Carmen Comes To Live With Us

My Daddy’s Diary

Cousin Jean, Erskin’s Daughter, Sent Me A Few Words:

A Widow With Small Children

A Time For Grieving

Moving To Small Town, Usa

A Letter From Aunt Hettie

Using Her Nursing Skills And Helping After Hours

Learning About Ethics

Learning A Foreign Language

Allie As Her Sister Hettie Remembered Her

Christmas Memories

My Brother Learned To Fight Back

Sunday Evenings

Helping Others

A Near Tragedy

The Lost Civil War Rifle

Verlie’s Love Of Gardening

Froglegs Are Yummy And Other Recipes

My Favorite Recipe Of My Mother’s:

Tommy And Cousin Suzy

Verlie’s Insecurities

About Middle Names

Friends

My Mother’s New Car

Smarter Than She Thought

Shriners Hospital In San Francisco 1946 And 1949

My College Days

My Parents Were Not Racists

Letter Writing And Correspondence

Why I Stopped Smoking Before Really Starting

Church Wedding

Honeymoon – Driving To Northern California And Then Back South To Mexico

My Younger Brother

Verlie Lives Alone

Her Newsy Letters

Uncle Elmer’s Fear Of Dying

Good Advice

More Philosophical Advice

Verlie’s Retirement Party

Caring For Her Health

Time For A Television Set

Verlie Hated Soap Operas

Money, Finances And Decisions

The Future

Marriage Does Not Always Last

Bibliography

DEDICATED TO The Parnell Park Writing Group of

Whittier, Writers Kaleidoscope, Uptown Writing group with

Alice Rivers – for the corrections, editing and suggestions.

And to all the family for input of information, pictures, and

verbal notes that I used and many I didn’t have room for.

FOREWORD/INTRODUCTION

STORIES MY FAMILY TOLD

Verlie Garrison Rodman-1903-1969

The idea to write Stories My Family Told came to me one day, because I want to preserve my memories and stories of Verlie May Garrison Rodman and her family: For her eight grandchildren, eight great grandchildren and in 2021 four great great grandchildren (through Candice Nichols, daughter of Rachel Jefferson Nichols) and (Chelsea Elizabeth Green.) In 2018 granddaughter Chelsea and James Vernon had a girl in April and named her Delilah.

It is my goal to be as accurate as possible. I never caught my mother Verlie in an exaggeration or a lie. She scolded me any time she found me adding on to a story reminding me, God knows all the parts so you don’t need to blow it up. I have asked Aunt Hettie, Cousin Aileen and others to check out the information in Stories.... because my memory is fuzzy in many areas. In some places I have to say I don’t know or don’t remember. In others I must write what was told to me by my mother or others.

Her sister, Hettie Ann Garrison Hansen, four years her junior and still alive in 1987 and approaching 90 years of age, once told me a few years after my mother died in 1969, Your Mother was the wisest woman I knew. I often think of her statement and what it meant.

Verlie’s major decisions in life are amazing. At 23 she began nurses training and graduated from Los Angeles County Hospital in l929. Aunt Hettie told me Verlie graduated with straight A’s, but my mother never mentioned anything pertaining to grades except the time she memorized the book of James from the Bible for a teaching doctor in lieu of a test and made an A. She was never one to toot her own horn. If anything, she minimized any of her accomplishments.

She had to enter nurses training on probation because she had not been able to graduate from high school because she had rheumatic fever at 12 and had been treated like an invalid during those in-between years as people treated those with rheumatic fever in those days. Doctors would not allow her to climb the high school stairs. She lived with a heart-valve problem all her life though few people knew it.

In 1929, she marched down the aisle and graduated with her class with her diploma and her R.N. cap covering her shiny, bobbed brunette hair. She was 26.

By taking a daily afternoon nap before dinner, she learned to handle her energy and often worked rings around other people. Her hands were always busy—crocheting, writing letters, tatting, sewing, and working jigsaw puzzles with me in winter months. (that was often when she and I talked. Verlie was an excellent listener as I remember.)

Verlie did not learn to knit until she was in her mid-fifties. I still have one of her Afghans she knitted in varying shades of green. She learned to sew, crochet and tat when she was quite young. Many people have her crocheted doilies from earlier years.

I know few mothers and daughters who were as close as we were. Yet, she was not a touchy, huggy person as my two daughters can be. My four children rarely leave me that they do not hug and kiss me affectionately on the cheek, something they have learned on their own. I don’t think I taught them that behavior, but I now respond to them that way. They taught me.

Another decision she made was to follow my dad to live five years during the Depression in the Philippine Islands as missionaries. They married in Canton, China, on the way to their new home in the Philippines. It was a most difficult life, because of financial hardship.

After my younger brother was born, Verlie weighed only 90 lbs. on her 5’6" frame. I always remember her weighing l40 to l44 lbs. in her middle and later years—a good weight for her. Her weight must have gone to my brother whom she described as a healthy, happy baby. She nursed me for fifteen months because of my allergy to cow’s milk and nursed my brother for about six months.

After ten years of marriage, she was widowed at 41. I was eight and 1/2 and my brother had recently turned six. Later she shared with me, I never understood why God took your father and left me with two young children to raise alone.

Two months after my dad died, she read to my younger brother and me a letter from a Christian man in Michigan, Dan Ottinger, who asked her to marry him. He was widowed with three children. I remember crying, I don’t want another daddy. I really meant, I want my own daddy. She, to my knowledge, did not pursue the subject with her out-of-state suitor. I never found out how she knew Mr. Dan Ottinger or if it was word of mouth. She told me she left home at 22 because her mother kept insisting that she marry, and she wanted a more educated man than any she had met in Oklahoma or California.

After my mother was widowed, she thought she might remarry, but she compared anyone who was interested to my dad, and they did not measure up. However, most of her life was as a single woman. I remember two suitors from the church in Chowchilla, California. One, Ed Clendennen Sr., after he and his wife divorced used to bring chocolates, which she gave to me, trying to get her interested. (She would not go with a divorced man). The other was a bachelor who never married. I understand her disinterest in Mac although the teen youth group really bonded with him.

When she had a major problem, she would have a dream where my dad came to her in the dream. They would discuss the ways to solve the problem. When she awoke she knew what she would do. She shared such dreams with me on three different occasions. Usually, they involved my brother in his early teen years. She felt overwhelmed at times raising a boy. I know because she mentioned it to me several times. She talked about how he was a happy, cheerful, talkative little boy until our dad died. Then he did not speak for over a year. He and I played together. I was quite talkative, and he became a good listener. He has not lacked for friends because of that trait of quietness.

Verlie had very little of my dad’s poetry left. She told me the Christmas before he died that they read each other’s love letters aloud and then watched the flames in the fireplace claim each letter from the eyes of anyone else. Though she missed reading his words she always remembered the intimacy of that one special evening. In that respect, they were both very private people. I only have one of his poems. The poem called, You, was tucked away in one of his diaries that he kept, one for each year of his life. Most of those diaries have disappeared over the years.

In early April of l944, shortly before he died, he taught Verlie how to do their taxes—something she had not done in their ten years of marriage.

He died on a Saturday in May leaving her a widow at 41.

VERLIE’S FAMILY TREE

Verlie’s GRANDPARENTS

(Parents of Elizabeth Ann Browning* b.l0-25-l854 d. 02-24-1929

John D. Browning born 2-12-1823, died 1-3-1896

Lucenda 5-25-1823 died

Verlie’s parents and brothers/sisters

Nancy Catharine Hoskin’s parents:

Virginia’s parents:

Virginia Rodman’s children

STORIES MY MOTHER AND FAMILY TOLD

ABOUT VERLIE’S FAMILY and HER SEVEN

BROTHERS AND TWO SISTERS

Around 1686 four brothers, surnamed Garrison, came to the colonies and settled in the Virginias and Carolinas. My grandfather, L.D., told they were Scot Irish from Scotland. One brother went north to the New England states or perhaps Canada. Aunt Hettie, surmises, If this is so, William Lloyd Garrison is descended from that brother.

My grandfather, Lorenzo Dow Garrison called L.D., was the oldest child of seventeen children of John Ballenger Garrison who was a great grandson of Isaac Garrison, the Frontiersman (from Aunt Hettie).

John Ballenger Garrison was born Dec. 27, 1853, in Perry County, Kentucky, a sawmill operator. He married Elizabeth Ann Browning, born Oct. 25, 1854, of Harlan County, Kentucky., and died Feb. 24, 1929. He died April 8, 1942, at Mt. Victory, Kentucky. NOTE: Virginia, the writer of this book, was born on Elizabeth Ann’s birthday 10/25/1935

Lorenzo Dow Garrison, their first child was born September 21, 1871, in Kentucky. He married Nancy Hoskins on October 5, 1895. He died June 9, 1957, in Chowchilla, California. He is buried in the local cemetery. Nancy Catharine Hoskins, born June 9, 1878, from Clay County, Kentucky. Nancy died August 19, 1960, and is buried next to her husband, Lorenzo Dow Garrison in Chowchilla, California.

The following ten children and grandchildren were born to L.D. and Nancy:

Allie G. Garrison Wilmeth born Sept. 24, 1896, in Knox County, Kentucky, married August 18, 1916, Tecumseh, Oklahoma, DIED October 15, 1991. Married John Elmer Wilmeth, born November 13, 1890, in Bell County, Texas, died June 19, 1966, in Chowchilla, California, Allie died in 1995. Their six children were Lloyd Dow Wilmeth, died 1918 at birth. Aileen Wilmeth Brown, Glenna Kathryn Wilmeth McGinley, Joseph Dow Wilmeth, Robert Stephen Wilmeth, and Charles David Wilmeth.

Erskin Bowles Garrison born September 28, 1898, died October, 1968 in Chowchilla, California, married on January 28, 1925 to Ruby Evans, born May 24, 190_, in Rome, Georgia, not Carterville, Florida, as written in some bios, died 19 . Two children: Patricia Jean Garrison Autrand, George Crawford Garrison.

William Ophard Garrison, born September 29, 1900, in Laural Co. Ky. died 1984 in Missouri, married Maudie Mae Webb, born Nov. 1905 in Tribby, Oklahoma, died in Missouri, 1994. Their ten children: Ulus, Duleth, J. B., Kenneth, James, Joyce, Donald, Billy, Paul and Dorothy. Yes,8 boys and 2 girls. All had light hair except for James who had Grandma Nancy’s brunette hair like my mother and Aunt Hettie.Mae told one of my cousins she had so many children because there was no birth control.

Verlie May Garrison, born March 19, 1903, in Knox County, Kentucky, died Feb. 5, 1969, in Arlington, California, married June 1, 1934, in Canton, China to Orville Thorla Rodman, born February 20, 1892, died May 6, 1944. Two children: Virginia Gayle Rodman Jefferson Salazar (four children, Jefferson) and Thomas James Rodman (four children).

Caleb Powers, born April 19, 1905, died February 14, 1963, born Mt. Victory, Kentucky, and died in Sebastopol, California, in February 18,1963, married Pearl Reid in 1927, she died 1950. Two sons: Walter Dow Garrison and Jack Reid Garrison.

Hettie Ann Garrison Hansen, born Sept. 18, 1907, in Mt Victory, Kentucky, died in Medford, Oregon, on March 14, 1998; married husband Monroe (Munro) Hansen June 28, 1927. He was born February 14, 1906, and died November 2, 1966. Two children: Barbara Ann Hansen Henderson and Kathryn Sue Hansen Reed.

James Obed Garrison, born March 19, 1910, died November 11, 1959. Married Minnie Kiker. One male child died at birth. (Obed was born on his sister Verlie’s birthday.)

Shelby Garrison, born June 19, 1912, married wife Elizabeth Fox in 194_, born 192_? Four children: Mickey Wayne Garrison, Larry Garrison, Sarah Garrison Muller, and Teresa Garrison Williams.

Walter Basil Garrison, born in Romulus, Oklahoma, in July 27, 1917. Wife, Leona Bollinger. Two children: Max Edward Garrison now of Boise, Idaho, (two daughters), and Carolyn Garrison Hillhouse, died in Chowchilla, California, (two children: Michael and female Donna?).

Thomas Maxwell Garrison, born November 2, 1919. Spent 20 years in Navy. Wife Anita who had two sons, Dan and Don, from her previous marriage. He served in World War II, Guam and Viet Nam and retired as a chief petty officer and moved to 29 Palms, California, where he became the assistant postmaster for 20 years. Died January 15, 1992.

A FAMILY STORY ABOUT L.D.

GARRISON, VERLIE’S FATHER

In his youth my mother’s father, born in 1871, was a coal miner. The story is told he was trapped in a coal mine for three days. All he could think about was his next cup of coffee. When he was rescued, he vowed never to drink another cup of coffee, because, he figured, anyone who craved coffee that much must be addicted which made it a sin. To his dying day he only drank warm water rather than coffee. He lived a strict, devout Christian life all his days.

My grandfather L.D. Garrison was born in 1871, the oldest of 17 children born to one mother and one father. All lived to adulthood except the youngest who was stillborn. There was one set of twin boys. L.D. or Lorenzo Dow, died in 1957 a month following granddaughter Virginia’s graduation from Pepperdine College in Los Angeles. He had throat cancer.

EARLY SCHOOLING

My mother, Verlie May Garrison, was born in Knox County in Kentucky. I don’t know where her parents got her name. Her father had a sister named Durlie, but I doubt if there was a connection. I am not sure of all the places she lived, but she told me that at lunch time and recesses, there were caves to play in. Aunt Hettie thought that might have been when they moved to Woodring, Oklahoma, for Aunt Hettie remembers hills. Verlie was born on March l9, 1903, the day before the last day of winter. If she had been alive, her 100th birthday would have been March 19, 2003, the day the second Gulf War started.

Her mother, Nancy, was called Mama, and their dad L.D. was called, Papa. He refused to be called father because he believed we have only one father and that is our Father in Heaven. I heard Grandma often saying to her adult children, Your Papa... She showed great respect for him as I remember.

When I was a child, my grandparents and we children walked the 5 1/2 blocks to church each Sunday morning and evening, he always walked several feet ahead of Grandma and the children. I was surprised when I became an adult to find it was because of his religious beliefs that he walked in front and not because, as I had thought, he was in a hurry to get there sooner than the rest of us. (His strict beliefs are explained elsewhere in this book.)

Grandpa, my mother Verlie’s papa had the palest blue eyes. When he wanted your attention, he would look you right in the eye. And I did