"Watching my mother accomplish so much later in life taught me that age doesn't have to limit a person. After her retirement, she told my father that she had married him for better or worse, but not for lunch, and if they were going to stay happily married, they couldn't be home together all the time. She decided she wanted to go to college, since she hadn't had that opportunity during the war years. Even though the school offered to let her bypass a few courses, she insisted that she would take all the classes like any other freshman. She enrolled in college algebra, freshman P.E., all of it. In fact, she was voted 'Jock of the Month' in her P.E. class! She graduated summa cum laude from UALR with a bachelor's degree when she was 70 years old, the same year she and my father celebrated their 50th anniversary. Then she went on to get her master's in Composition and Rhetoric and completed that degree when she was 77. Her 230-page master's thesis is a memoir of seven generations of our family. It's a wonderful record to have and sets the story of family into its historical context. Mother is 90 years old now, and we have this book she wrote, this incredible repository of memories.
"Because of her, I feel confident to step out and learn new things now that I've retired from a job I loved (librarian at Cypress Middle School). For example, I've taken up Tai Chi, become an election official, and I'm a radio reader at WYPL. My husband and I didn't marry each other for lunch either."
"Because of her, I feel confident to step out and learn new things now that I've retired from a job I loved (librarian at Cypress Middle School). For example, I've taken up Tai Chi, become an election official, and I'm a radio reader at WYPL. My husband and I didn't marry each other for lunch either."
"This excerpt from Mother's memoir describes the moment when she was reunited with her husband after a long journey across the Atlantic with other war wives":
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