Happy Birthday, Grandma

Blanche Hutzel Ewart - 16 months

I never knew my mother's mother. She and my grandfather were killed in an auto accident 4 years before I was born. I know I look like her, as did my mother. In 1885 on October 4, she was born in the Franklin Township of Indiana. It was a blisteringly cold autumn that year and she arrived a month early - the family legend says she was so tiny they put her in a shoe box lined with dishtowels and into the warming oven to keep her from the cold. When she was 16 months old she weighed 16 pounds and was 16 inches long. She was always short of stature, 4'10" - but long on intelligence, strength and love.

Upper right - Grandpa & Grandma Ewart - 1930's

Lower right - Grandma - 1885

She and my grandfather homesteaded in west Texas, farmed in Indiana and eventually moved to California in 1920. They had 6 children - 2 boys, followed by 4 girls - the last, my mother who was born in Azusa, California in 1925. My grandmother raised rabbits and vegetables and did paper deliveries during the depression to help bring in needed cash. She lived to see several grandchildren born, and, the death of one of her sons.

I've been told she had a great sense of humor - something my mother and I shared. One of the regrets of my life is that I never knew her. Happy Birthday Blanche Hutzel Ewart, my grandma.

pages from The Grandmother Sepia Journal - 13 Journals Round Robin 2005-2006