Tiny Teacups Glimpses of Family and Friends over 300 years Diane Perrine Coon 2014 Dedicated to Alison, the bright, loving daughter I’m so happy to claim is mine, to my brothers George, whose passing in 2013 is still a hole in my heart, and Bill who shared so much of my life, and to my wonderful sister in law, Jane Myers Perrine, a genuine author and inventor of memorable characters. In remembrance of Ollie Conway Perrine and George Bierce Perrine, M.D. whose lives shaped ours and encompassed so much of America when it was special. To the Simpson cousins, Nancy and Judy, and to the Bauman cousins, Dorothy and Linda, as our lives intersected at Grandma’s, with Anne, Ollie, and Hope, the three Conway sisters keeping us all a family. To the pirate Conway who walked a plank, to the Huguenot Perrines, to the patriots, preachers and poets, farmers and carpenters, and above all to Naomi, the Lena Lenape Delaware Indian, we found after many years of searching. And to Connor and Colin Runser, my grandchildren, who have no idea their ancestors were so weird and wonderful. 1930s, 1940s, 1950s…. Cincinnati, Ohio Before there was Oprah, Ruth Lyons Reigned My grandmother Conway never missed the Ruth Lyons show. During the 1930s, the 1940s and until her death in 1952, Grandma put her dough to rise in the kitchen, finished churning her butter, pulled the quilt frame out away from the wall, and turned on the radio, readied her thimble and spent the next hour with her friends in downtown Cincinnati. There Ruth Lyons and Frazier Thomas hosted the Ohio Valley’s most influential talk radio show on WKRC and later WLW and its 50 watt clear channel station beamed the show all the way from Louisville to Indianapolis to Ashland to Chillicothe and Columbus. She became the darling of Cincinnati when she broadcast non-stop during the 1937 flood, giving news and information and imploring citizens to give aid to those stricken by loss of homes and food and household goods and clothing during the great flood. And every year she hosted the Ruth Lyons Christmas Foundation gala to raise money to give toys to children in the area hospitals at Christmas time. When she was stricken with small strokes during the 1970s, her progress became front page news in the regional newspapers. Ruth Lyons was the female version of Arthur Godfrey, and the toast of daytime television in the Ohio River Valley. Every entertainer who passed through Cincinnati or its nightclubs over in Northern Kentucky, came on the show. And once Ruth Lyons started the 50 club on television, all the headliners like Bob Hope, Pearl Bailey, Nelson Eddy, David Letterman and Phil Donahue appeared so that the show became more a variety entertainment show than a talk show. Today the signature ending of the show would be considered hokey – all the 50 women dressed up in their finest dresses and hats with white gloves, waving to the television audience as they all sang “The Waving Song.” But my grandma did not think it was hokey; she might have been all alone in a farmhouse 30 miles from downtown Cincinnati, but these were her friends. And there was a three-year waiting period to become one of those 50 gals. Grandma would not tolerate any crudeness on radio or television. When Grandpa was home, the radio and/or television were dedicated to the Cincinnati Reds games. On Sunday afternoon, she always listened to the Grand Opera program out of New York City and found it very educational; Grandpa found lots of things to do in the barn or out on the farm at those times. At her monthly Coffee Klatch meeting in Norwood with several Cincinnati German/American friends, they would discuss the operas and major singers that month as they imbibed Kuchen and coffee with lots of cream and sugar. She and Grandpa enjoyed Fibber McGee and Molly, and Lum ‘n Abner’s Jot Em Down store, and they loved Bob Hope chiefly because of his service to the country during World War II. I suspect Grandma never saw one of his movies. But one of their major entertainments, believe it or not, was to turn page after page in the new Sears Catalog, when it arrived in the mail. Grandpa’s section was toward the end of the catalog where men’s clothing, smoking stuffs, farm equipment and fencing and hunting/fishing supplies were located. Grandma’s section was ladies’ clothing, household implements and kitchen pots and pans, fabrics and chicken brooders. They never purchased an item on time, and they always discussed the purchase together. When I was little, I thought Grandma liked Ruth Lyons because Grandma’s name was Ruth. When I became older, I realized that Ruth Lyons was Grandma’s best friend. In the days when farms were two or three miles from each other and city center required three transfers of trains, trolleys and streetcars, those radio shows and regional television shows made people feel part of something greater than their own family. America had come through the Depression and World War II, in large part because Grandma and Grandpa Conway and all those thousands of other farm families believed that our citizens were kind and honorable and neighborly and the country was worth saving. Thanks Ruth Lyons, wish there were more of you Photo: Ruth Peters Conway with grandchildren, Judy and Nancy Simpson, Dorothy Bauman and Diane Perrine. 1942, 1943 Cincinnati, Ohio Henderson, N.C. Coral Gables, FL KEY West, Fl Clifton Elementary, 1942 First Grade, Four Schools, Three States I started first grade in September 1943 in Cincinnati, Ohio, at Clifton Elementary School. We lived on Cornell Place in a rented house; Mom was a nurse at Cincinnati General Hospital, and Dad was overseas with the U.S. Navy as ship’s doctor on the U.S.S. Hobson, a hunter-killer destroyer. Because my birthday was in November, I started first grade at age five. I remember that beautiful school so well. It had a fountain in front that had developed a teal color patina, and when you entered the main doors a large lobby with a marble staircase that went up and then divided going both left and right. I think first graders did not go up the stairs. To get to school, we never had to cross a street because we walked through people’s yards. I distinctly remember the next door neighbor had a mulberry tree that had a lovely shape. I thought that the berries were good to eat when they turned from green/white to red. Not so. I had a tummy ache of major proportions. During World War II in Cincinnati, everyone looked out for each other, and walking to school was very safe. We must have had baby sitters because Mom worked as a nurse and my baby brother, George, was only two years old. Then in the spring of 1944, Mom bundled us up and drove her old Chevy to her aunt’s house in North Carolina. Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Chub had purchased a motel in Henderson, North Carolina. It was one of those family style motels; each cabin had a tiny sitting area, a bathroom, and a bedroom but no kitchen, and an outdoor wooden bench. The motel cabins strung out along the ridge road so that every cabin had a view of the mountain valley below. The reason we were there was because Mom got word that Dad was being transferred to the U.S. Marines who needed experienced doctors for the Pacific theatre. While Dad was stationed at Camp LaJeune, I went to school for three weeks in Henderson, North Carolina. The only thing I remember about that school was coming home to teach my little brother his ABCs. The third school was in Coral Gables, Florida, in spring 1944 where my Dad, as 2nd Lt. in the U.S. Navy was in the process of being transferred to the Marine Hospital in Hawaii. But first he had to go to take special courses in south sea island diseases and surgical procedures for badly wounded soldiers and sailors coming off the Pacific islands. Dad had been taken off the Hobson about three weeks before the ship was engaged in bombardment and rescue operations for the Normandy landing in June 1944. However, he had already undergone substantial naval engagements at Casablanca landing, shepherding merchant ships carrying armaments and airplanes across the southern Atlantic route, going after the Quislings and Germans in Norway out of Scapa Flow, and running the Murmansk run more than once, so missing the big operation at Normandy was not something Dad regretted. How ironic, when many years later doing Dad’s genealogy, I discovered that the Perrine family were Normans and had originated in the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey, just a short distance from where the Hobson was stationed at the famous assault. I have only a faint memory of the Coral Gables school; as I recall it was one story and meandered among lush bushes. But I do recall very clearly the first day of my first grade at Coral Gables. I went to the corner of our street and I had my nice new satchel, a tablet with lines, and new pencils. No one told me that school buses were yellow; I got on the city bus instead and was a little surprised to find there were no other children aboard. Thank heavens the lady sitting next to me was inquisitive about a little first grader alone on a city bus.