By Mary Hardy, October 7, 2014
At the age of eight, I lost my mother. Because my father was a working man, he said that he needed a wife to take care of his two children. So he put the word out in the community and at church that he was looking for a wife.
In those days people paid as little as ten cents a weeks for life insurance. The insurance person (agent) would come around every week. Our agent who lived in a suburban neighborhood informed my father that she knew of a widow whose husband had been her pastor for 40 years. My father went to visit the lady who was evidently waiting for a husband. The end result is that my mother died in March and by August 14th of the same year my father had a new wife.
We, my brother and I, were fascinated by her because she was so different from my mother who had been quiet and very spiritual. She wore no makeup, never pressed her hair, and wore no tight fitting clothing. Whereas, the second mother was a very fancy dresser (having been a preacher’s wife) and she kept “AVON” in business. The only cosmetics that had ever been in our house was Vaseline, Jergens lotion, and Arrid deodorant. That was the beginning of a new world at our house. And even more strange was that instead of giving orders, my father now took orders. But the two of them were very compatible.