VIOLET MAY LAURENCELLE

6/16/1889 - 6/24/1951

In her time, education in home economics came with the daily charges of living as part of a family. The country boy followed his father and learned the skills required of a farmer; the daughter, city or country raised, worked with her mother and so learned what she needed to know in order to manage her own household for it was expected that every girl would marry. True there were some, male or female, who stayed single for a variety of possible reasons. Those were the people who remained at home with the parents and cared for them during their last years of life. There were retirement homes then, but they were only for the affluent; no nursing homes as we know them today existed. Other siblings married and started their own families, drawing upon the store of knowledge and experience which they had gleaned as part of daily routines.

So it was with my Mother, third of the Laurencelle children. She told of cooking soup for Grandfather; he ate it with relish. Instead of barley she had used pearl tapioca. Of such are saints and good fathers made. Young we all make mistakes. I wonder if the tapioca package of that day came with a label on it which read: 'you can't make barley soup out of this stuff'? I doubt it because, without a doubt, the tapioca had come home in a plain brown bag. It is maturity to be able to tell tales of your own mistakes and laugh at yourself.

I do not know the age variance between Mother and her siblings; I do not know why she stayed at home while sisters, Florence and Mabel, worked outside the home. I do not know just when Laura and Bill married and left home. It was Violet who remained with the parents until Duncan Campbell came courting. My Father was about twenty-six years older than Mother. At that time he probably was well established for apparently, in spite of the age difference between bride and groom, he was very acceptable to Grandfather for more reasons than just his money. They were married August 17, 1910 (I'm guessing for I have no papers recording the year; of the day I am certain.). (My Father and Grandfather must have been closer in age than my Father and my Mother.)

Out of the past, I have only a few names and, except for snapshots (in those days everyone owned a Brownie) I recall few faces and only a few early places - early places that today are Detroit's slums, a sad decay for the small homes of the past.

There were the Pohles and it seems to me that I was born in their house. Mother has said that she was not permitted to go down to the first floor for a month after the birth - I have always assumed that it was just the custom of that time. So Mrs. Pohle must have taken care of the two of us. Mother kept contact with them for long years; I remember some of the visits. Mrs. Pohle developed arthritis; Mr. Pohle bought a mom-and-pop store so that she could stay abed on the second level of the building; there he could handle the store business and take care of her at the same time; such dedication meant cooking, cleaning, as well as the chores of nursing an invalid, bathing and moving her from bed to bath as well as earning their living, being on call at all hours. Bed-ridden with hands that looked like claws, with every movement meaning an excess of pain, she filled her time by embroidering alter cloths of fine linen drawn-work. The store was finally sold when Mr. Pohle could no longer handle both responsibilities. They bought a single residence somewhere near Forrer Avenue; we saw them frequently.

Then there were the Wagners; Margaret Wagner was my baby-sitter; even grandmothers needed baby-sitters when they were both young.Margaret eventually married a Seelof (he was always 'Mr.' to me although he must have had a first name); they had one son, Wade, who grown became an employee of the Ford administration. Margaret had a sister named Pearl (an old-fashioned name that is seldom used today), another named Grace, and a friend, Crystal, who worked for a brokerage firm and who was interested in 'puts and calls', (today's options market and even then a good way to lose your shirt). Funny the absolutely useless things which I remember; I do think that every action or reaction which you have ever had is etched in memory; it is only the key that unlocks those memories that we misplace.

The MacKays were an interesting family, I think that they were not related to us in any way - just another part of a large clan. Mr. Mackay, the same as Mr. Wagner, worked for the railroads, rented a second story flat on Twenty-fourth Street, and lived there for more than twenty years. That became a horrible example of lost-equity. There were three daughters in that family; they and Mother were great friends. Mother amazed at her own boldness told me that she would take me, small, go up to the MacKays on a Monday and spend the day - wash day and an old-fashioned wash day at that! People actually did things on schedule in those days; that made certain that you and all the rest of your world were suffering the same problems at the same time. Why did one 'wash on Monday', 'iron on Tuesday' and so on for the rest of the week? For all of the hard work, there was beauty to compensate. I have two prints, copies of the work of James Montgomery Flagg, in the lower level powder room, which remind me of pictures taken of my Mother and the MacKay girls in the early nineteen hundreds. No wonder I am fond of that period.

Violet Laurencelle and Duncan Campbell bought a house in Detroit and settled down to spend their lives together there after my birth. My brother, Milford, was born and died before I was two.Things would go from good to rugged as the Campbells moved from city to farm; life was always accepted as it came. Mother did her best, with whatever she had, to make a pleasant home. I remember lots of soup during the WWI years; I remember lots of canning for that was the best way to preserve a variety of foods for use during the winter months when all foods were scarce. One enjoyed food in season; today there are no seasons for trucks or planes bring us food form all of the world at all times. Who today will know, having waited a long year, the joy of the first fruits of the season fully ripened on their own plants? Being daughter, I helped with the canning and Mother and I did bushels of this or that, whatever was in season and whatever was to the taste of the family. Mother would always pull the product up the side of the container in order to see the bottom. Seeing the bottom of the basket made all the difference - it established the certainty that there would be an end to the job. Her fruit closets were always well stocked; she could prepare a meal for guests from meats to dessert from those shelves. I learned my lesson well; when we sold the house on Pilgrim in '51, the realtor asked why there was no lock on the fruit room door.

Mother was a small woman. She probably never weighed more than ahundred and twelve soaking wet and pregnant. She ate everything in sight - all the lovely scraps of crusty roast pork left on plates and she preferred her chocolate cake frosted and buttered, for then it was good. She served three full meals a day, plus 'coffee' at ten in the morning, 'tea +' at four in the afternoon, and an additional 'snack +' in the evening before bed - nobody put on weight and that was city living. Of course, Mother never walked; she was always a step or two ahead. We jested that Mother ate so much that it kept her thin carrying the food around. What a thyroid!

Mother sewed. She had had good training at Webster School. She could cut dresses without a pattern - a lesson which I never learned; printed patterns were just beginning to appear in the stores. She crocheted endlessly for that was the only lace which she could make. She tried to teach me how to ply my needle by insisting that I crochet edges on Laurencelle's diapers; never learned. Long years later, after the end of WWII and Father's death, Florence and Lloyd came for dinner. He went to wash his hands before the meal and came out of the bath holding a sagging bit of crochet and asking if that was what he was supposed to use. I had been by earlier, known that they were coming for dinner, looked at the thread bare washcloth, cut out the center and carefully hung the crochet edging back over the towel bar. For Mother everything served its purpose until it could no longer be expected to hold together. She was the product of a financially poor family, years of farm life and the depression. The fact that she was of French lineage and had married a Scot made frugality a certainty. There was a cracked teacup which she carefully handwashed and kept only for herself until it was taken to the basement and thrown on the floor - it bounced before it finally broke (I know). After Mother's death, her sister Mabel with her daughter, Ruth, came to go through the things in the cedar chest, with Eleanor and I looking on. We found, carefully wrapped in old newspaper, the sleeves of one of Dad's old red sweaters, each sleeve was out at the elbow, saved without a doubt, to be used for mending the sweater if it ever needed such work. Where was the sweater? No sign of it. I hoard because I do and I throw an article out only after a long period of time; the immediate reaction from any child is: 'do you remember........where is it? where are they? what have you done with it/them?

WWII finally ended. Eleanor had came home from Taunton, Mass. when Laurencelle was sent to the South Pacific; she stayed with Mother. C. Allen opted early out of the Navy after the nuclear bomb fell in Japan, (Mr. McGuire, former G.M. Vice-president, gave him the help which was necessary to cut short a Navy term) and came home with Joyce. I followed shortly after with the boys. Life settled down to steady growth for the Harlans. Laurencelle, returned from the Far East, returned to his old job and he and Eleanor continued to live with Mother. It was in those days that Mother went visiting about with all of her things in a grocery bag. We began to call her 'Eleanor' because she and Mrs. Roosevelt were always on the go. I am wondering now if that was all the luggage that she had; could well have been.

Then came the days of 1950 when I discovered that something was amiss with Mother; people do talk and the news came to me in a round about way. I went to the family doctor, William Seefert; he told me that there were many things which a child could not do to a parent. I decided to do what seemed necessary and he promised to help. At last we got Mother into New Grace where the necessary biopsy was performed; Dr. Strosheim shook his head for the cancer had spread too far to be operable. Poor Dear, we put her through all of the test and cures known to no avail. She was in and out of Old Grace repeatedly for they alone at the time could give her the treatment required. Eleanor and I tried to keep her spirits up. We supplied her with all of the makings of a tea-party so that, when her friends came to visit, she could entertain almost as though she were at home; the nurses heard nothing and saw nothing. I was told by cousin-once-removed, Norma MacLean, who had nursed at Ford Hospital, about a case in which a woman with cancer had been kept alive for two hopeless years by intravenous feeding and opiates; the cancer lived; the patient did not. I took Norma's advice and ordered no intravenous feeding when Mother next went into New Grace. This was before the time that the legislators have made it impossible for people to control their own lives and the lives that are dear to them; but maybe they were protecting Mother from such as I. 1950 was a busy year for me; the new house was being built, Joe was three; Jay was one; Jeanne was on her way. I chanced in at the hospital to find Mother dying. I stood at the foot of her bed until she was gone - relieved of all at last. I called my brother and drove myself home. He and I made the funeral arrangements. She is buried at Windemere in Detroit with her parents, her step-mother, the little lost Laurencelle baby and her own first son. She was buried on June twenty-seventh, 1951.

The cause of her cancer is not known, nor are there any other cases in her immediate family. All manner of reasons have been given as the cause of cervical cancer. Of the cause most commonly cited at that time, all woman-kind would have died long ago. It does not appear to be genetic, or, perhaps, we are simply too close to the one case about which we know. At any rate, every beginning must have an end; it cost pain to get us into this world and it will take pain to get us out.

Mother, having lived at a time when people died much younger than they do today, had divided her life into goals: if only she could live to see me through high school - until I had finished college - until - until. We were almost ready to place my eighth child in her arms. She died too soon....too soon for so many things.