Our Mother's DAY: Happy Birthday, Virginia

~~~Virginia Ann Halter Brown Tibbs turned 90 today.~~~

A few snippets about her early life from various "unplugged" telephone interviews:

Born:  Chicago at Auburn Park Hospital now St. Joseph’s, Aug. 12, 1921.

Parents:  Lillian Short Halter and Frank Marion? Halter

In Chicago, we lived on the south side.  It would be a part of Chicago proper.   It wasn’t very long because we moved to Manistee because of the family business. 

William Douglas came to United States from Scotland.  First came to Canada.  My dad’s family came from the Alsace Lorraine into Canada.  

They first settled in Manistique in the Upper Peninsula.  They were all into lumbering.  I don’t know how long they stayed in Canada . . . .

They finally moved down to Manistee, and they all seemed to be there.  I think my Aunt Annie must have met my Uncle William in Manistee because by that time, he worked for Ruggles and Rademacher at the salt block.  He worked for Mr. Charles Ruggles as his office boy. 

He teamed up with Edward Buckley, eventually.  They were partners in the lumber business out here.  Buckley and Douglas.  First the R and R Salt Co. , then the B and D Salt, then it was finally sold to Morton Salt. 

I was just a baby.  My sister June was born in Manistee two years after I was.  

*******

We lived in Manistee for a while, but my dad did not like the Midwest; he wanted to go back to Oregon.   

Douglas and Buckley owned logging sites in Idaho, Washington and Oregon.  They owned a ranch at Cataldo, and my Aunt Annie made arrangements with my dad to take over that ranch in Cataldo and that’s why we moved to Idaho. 

They also said he was great at construction.  He built a barn that was supposed to be the biggest barn between Spokane and I don’t know what----put together with pegs.  We never did find it. 

That’s where my mother died of a burst appendix.  It was up in the mountains and in the winter.  The snow was so deep they couldn’t get the trains through,  and by the time she got to the hospital it was too late.  She was there for 11 days before she died.

I remember that was my first meeting with a horse.  My dad was shoeing the horse and I was underneath the horse playing with its feet.  They snatched me out from underneath before I got stepped on.

My mother had the manuscripts for two books which were never published. They got lost somewhere.  She brought her typewriter and her gramophone (a radio with a big horn; that was her phonograph....she wrote a poem).

She was 38 when she died.[I was 3].

Burnt Ranch, California

I started first grade there.

I can remember when the wild roses bloomed and it was hot, and the fragrance of those roses was everywhere.

I can remember saying good bye to my dad.

He was crying, and he had hurt his foot; we all seem to have foot problems in this family.  Anyway, I told him I was sorry I had stepped on his foot.

My dad built a house there (in Burnt Ranch, which is up in the middle of nowhere in Northern California). I remember climbing up the side of the house and ripping my hand open on a nail.  I’ve still got the scar; it was horrible.

We had a greyhound and his name was Jack. Jack and I started to the store, and we met another dog; I’d never seen a dog like that; it scared me to death and I thought it was a wild animal

First day of school---there were these cribbage boards; for some reason I was putting sticks in the holes.

I wasn’t in school there very long; my aunt whisked us off to San Antonio to the Ursuline Academy.

Her chauffeur was Voight Hofsteder....he must have been seven feet tall and skinny. He was with her all the time; he drove a moonstone blue Lincoln. She ordered one of those every year,  and it had to be moonstone blue.

I remember some of those snakes in Burnt Ranch; they were huge.  My dad used to kill the snakes and collect the rattles. It was definitely rattlesnake country.  It was awful.

I remember June and my two brothers being there.  The older one Jim was old enough to get married, so he left.  Francis was the younger one.

We also spent some time living in San Francisco.  I remember us walking along the ocean and June almost being swept up by the waves.  We lived in an apartment there. 

My dad was doing some kind of writing stuff for movies.  He did a little bit of everything, including mining for gold.  When we were in the Wallace area, he was taking care of a ranch and doing some mining. 

The reason he left the Midwest was that he had all kinds of interests and did not want to be stuck with one job for life.

When I was about 12 years old, I got most of my information from the papers. I had a thing of Buck Owens when he was a young kid

Every year from the Derby I cut out everything I could from the winners

Twenty Grand and Equipoise

Thoughts after reading the first 12 pages of Seabiscuit, I couldn’t help but think of my Aunt Annie.

She got one of the first cars in Manistee. Its back seat sat on the back porch after she had an accident where she said the car was “turning turtle.”  That meant upside down.

From there on, she always had a chauffeur.   She wasn’t going to drive any more.

Arrival in Manistee:  I remember this great big house and the play room.     It had a  converted bedroom.  There were back stairs that went from the playroom to the kitchen. 

A lot of times we were sent to the play room, and we were not allowed to play with the kids in the neighborhood.  My aunt didn’t want strange kids running around.

She had a library where she spent a lot of time working at her typewriter.  I would sit on the stairs and listen to her get mad when she was working in the library.

I was kind of a tomboy.

She had this denim dress made for me that horrified me.  The boy across the street--his father was the fire chief, can’t remember his name----came over to play one day.  He had a pedal car.  I thought that was the neatest thing. 

My aunt was looking and saw us playing in her yard, so she went and got the hose and hosed him down until he went home. She hosed me down in the denim dress.  She was mad at me. 

At some time or another, about six of us lived (cousins, brothers) with her; she had no kids.  She was really glad when Georgia moved out because she used face cream and got the pillows dirty.  That really made her mad.

~~~~

Marywood Memories:  That was the gist of my living there.   I was sent to Marywood in Grand Rapids when I was in the third grade.  I stayed there during the school year but went home in the summer time.  She sent me to the farm. 

The nuns:  Sr. Jane Dechantel.  She was the prefect for the little kids; she was in charge of us.   She was a jolly nun---a mother to all of us. She was a lovely loving person and was there for years.  She was a great big woman who loved little kids.  I have a write up of when she died

Every Saturday night we would get our baths and she would clean our ears, do our nails and then she would put our hair up in rags.

We were on the fifth floor of Marywood in a big dorm; the whole side of the school. They had curtain, and you had a wash bin, a chair and your bed.  You pulled the curtains and you were in your own little box.

The rest of it was a roof garden, and we roller skated up there; it had high walls.  It was a big expanse.  We ran relays and everything up there. It had a wall all the way around it so we wouldn’t fall.  That was for the little kids.

At that time, they didn’t have private rooms.  There was a sleeping porch, which we graduated to on the other end.  That was a neat place; we had another prefect there.  When you reached a certain grade, you got a new prefect. 

One time when we were on the sleeping porch, we got a whoopy cushion under the nun’s mattress.  She was a young nun; she would “henna” our hair....made of tea leaves; it would turn your hair red. 

On Saturday night that’s what she would do; she was a hairdresser before a nun. 

~~~~

Shortly, Mother will have a hairdresser come to do her hair for today's celebration.  There's plenty more to say about her life, but I thought it would be fun to share some of her early memories on this significant day.

Virginia Tibbs graduated from Nazareth College in Kalamazoo, Mich., with degrees in art and French.  Anyone who knows her knows that she put that art to a wonderful use.  As for the French, I can remember her singing the French National Anthem on occasional mornings to get us up.

Virginia's achievements are many---WWII Rosie, the Riveter, PTA officer, longtime singer in St. Joseph's church choir, St. Jude's Trail Ride organizer, 4-H horse leader, local artist, horse show organizer, Woman of Wisdom for Sandpoint, etc.

I think I'd be safe in saying that her proudest achievement is her family---seven children (our sister Jean Marie died at two months of age in 1950), five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. And, a bunch of beloved spouses.

This week many have and will be on hand to help her celebrate.

Happy Birthday, Mother.

You are a remarkable woman, and we are proud of you!