Personal experience

March is both “Women’s History” and “Disabilities Awareness” month. My hero, in both those categories, was my polio-inflicted mother.

Beulah McCormick was born in 1922 in a house (not a hospital) with an outside toilet. Her dad was a mean, verbally and physically abusive Irishman (McCormick) who was in the trenches of France during World War I. Growing up during the great depression, one of Mom’s journal entries stated, “There were no toys”.

At 12 yrs old, she was inflicted with one of the most cruel diseases ever…..polio.

In a 1935 pic taken 1 year after her infection, you can see that her legs are different sizes. She is likely bracing herself with her left arm (good arm).

She wasn’t as bad as some, who had to spend the rest of their lives in “iron lungs“, but her body was infected as if there were a vertical divide between left and right. Her right arm and leg were smaller, shorter, and weaker than her left. She had to buy two pairs of shoes because her feet were different sizes. She could write right-handed but picked things up with her left.

She refused to allow her disability to handicap life, evidenced by her high school class of 1940 1/2 voting her “most athletic”.

Hobbies included hunting, fishing, horseback riding, swimming, and gardening. She was a proficient typist and avid reader. She walked with a significant limp until her last four years when her back and knees just couldn’t do it anymore.

Her teenage friendship with Betty Swindler was so strong the Swindler family wanted to pay Mom’s way to go to college, but the proud papa wouldn’t allow it.

She thrived despite her parents.

Her childhood included going with parents (no choice) to area saloons to watch them drink and dance.

Somehow she got involved in a local church where she met her future husband. They had 5 children before divorcing affecting siblings from age 1 to 12.

So how does a divorced, polio survivor without a car, find a job and raise five children?

She was qualified, but never accepted welfare. Eventually, she took a job and spent about 25 yrs as an Activities Director at the Nursing Home she would retire from, move in to, and die in …. only two blocks from our house so she (and we) could walk to and from. I used to tease her for getting paid to play games all day.

My sisters had to experience daycare in a home nearby. Mom cried about that.

Life was plain, but she didn’t complain.

She paid her debts. Thankfully, the pediatrician allowed her to make $5/month payments.

We walked two blocks to a small neighborhood church my father’s parents helped start. She put a dollar in the plate and, when someone complained about the six of us for her dollar a week, swallowed her pride so we could have a better upbringing than she did. Kudos to the church for installing a handrail on the two steps going into the sanctuary. They did try. 

She encouraged us to sell lemonade to the golfers at the course down the street. Those lemonade sales paid for a bicycle I wanted and then for my part of a new clarinet.

Sometimes she got some extra sugar for her lemonade. Mom’s Aunt Georgia passed away and I distinctly remember walking with her and her uncle to the kitchen door that went into their garage.

“Beulah. Georgia wanted you to have her car. Here are the keys.”

Chores were a reality. She organized us in rotations for dish washing, providing a step stool until we were each tall enough to reach into the sink. Until I left for college, it was mostly my job to push the non-motorized mower, and I was not always the compliant, cooperative teen.

There was one episode where she was following me back and forth over the lawn convincing me with her belt that I should continue.

Another job I loathed was cleaning the dog pen. Grass and hedge trimming, leaf raking, and garbage taking were regular chores. The Christmas decorations weren’t so bad and I liked putting the flag out….but had to take it down at night.

As much as we didn’t have, Mom always helped us understand that there were other people worse off and that they needed our help. At Christmastime, she would ask us to give up a toy to be donated to a “needy” family.

When someone would knock at our back door asking for food, she would fix a fried egg or peanut butter sandwich.

Both parents were hunters, and when dad left, she kept her little (she couldn’t hold a full-sized rifle) “over/under” gun; a combination 22 rifle and 410 shotgun. I got to watch her use it once. There was a bad flood and the water from the river about a mile away covered the golf course, came up over the 4-foot wall at the end of our street and stopped about two houses from ours. In the aftermath, there was a terrible, thankfully temporary neighborhood rat infestation. She instructed us to get into the house when she saw a huge rat on our side yard sidewalk. From the bedroom window, we heard the ‘pop’ and saw the rat briefly stand up on its hind legs before tottering over.

Good shot, Mom.

I’m not sure how I got started in 5th-grade band. With all the other bills, I have no idea how Mom managed to pay off that rent-to-own clarinet that I played at Tenth District School. Seems the band teacher, James Copenhaver, in his very first year of teaching, convinced her that my aural testing was so high that she really needed to get me involved in band.

Another of her favorite stories was during my high school band time. Watching the end of a rehearsal, she heard Mr. Copenhaver say, “Gardner, you march like a cow.” She went up to him afterward and went, “Moooooo” and then identified herself with, “I’m the cow’s mother.”

Mom who taught me to drive, to shave, to do my laundry (for college), to polish my shoes, and to type. She made me take piano lessons, allowed me to take clarinet lessons and somehow managed to be there for most major events. She taught me conservation techniques; the thermostat seldom went above 60 in the winter. There was no air conditioning and the summer window fan had to be turned off before bedtime.

I learned the difference between a need and a want. She took care of my needs.

She wasn’t able to buy many gifts. One year, I had asked for a clock-radio. To make the gift opening last longer, she hid it and placed clues all around the property to help me find it. Like most teens, I wanted a car….so on my 16th birthday, she gave me a little battery operated VW bug and made it clear that would be the only car she would ever buy me.

There was an extended episode where her back was really messed up from her years of walking with legs of different lengths. There was a really hard-core brace that she had to wear for a while and I had to help her get it on and off every day. By the grace of God, she improved and was able to get rid of it. She confessed years later that she was afraid she was losing her ability to walk, which would have cost her the job she had….and she feared not being able to raise us.

We didn’t wear the latest fashions, but always had something respectable to wear.

My brothers always got my hand-me-downs. Sorry. We were all in band and had instruments and everything we needed for that. Three of us used my beginning clarinet and the pro-level horn I bought in high school. 

Grandpa McCormick moved in for several of his later years. After living alone for several years (Grandma Mamie died my high school freshman year), he married a lady who stole nearly everything he owned. Terrified and trounced, he came to live with Mom.

So after all the terrible things she had endured over the years, she would be his care-provider.

I was off to college and then away, so I didn’t have to deal with him much. On visits, at least, he seemed to have mellowed, although he could still unleash a verbal barrage on occasion. I hope he paid some rent to help with the finances, but I never heard and never asked.

Mom did well raising the five of us. No one is rich, but all five are self-sufficient and raising (or raised) a pretty good next generation.

Mom paid for all of her wedding because her parents would not.

In a 2001, handwritten letter, she wrote,

“my life has been very fulfilling and rewarding. Sometimes I am confined to “cell 423” (house number), but this week I went to the Reds ballgame (via radio) and “watched a horse race (TV) at Churchill Downs, tearing at the playing of ‘My Old Kentucky Home and ended in a “musical production in Branson, Missouri, where I had no parking hassels and had the best seat in the house.”

That was Mom, always finding the best in everybody, finding good in her situations and being thankful for what she did have instead of complaining about what she didn’t.

She used life’s sour lemons to make the best, sweetest lemonade.

Love you and miss you Mom…..and will see you soon.

PS Over the last several years, Mom always accused me of bringing the cold, nasty weather of Northern Indiana with me when I would come to visit. She would have said that again about her own funeral with the dismal driving rain that prevented the graveside ceremony.

“I know, Mom….. but I wanted you to know I was there.”