Sharing our Links to the Past
by Wally and Frances Gray

Interview with Reva McNabb by Frances McNabb Gray

February 5, 1981, Escondido, California

Recorded on two cassette tapes. Transcribed, edited and annotated by Wallace F. Gray and reviewed and edited by Reva McNabb and Frances McNabb Gray November 1990.

Frances: My Aunt Reva, my father's[1]  sister, has been visiting us [in

Escondido] for a month. This is February 5, 1981, and we thought it would

be good if she could give us some of her recollections of my father's life

and her life in Iowa, and before that, of the McNabbs and what she has

remembered of the stories people have told her.  We are going to start out

by asking her some questions and see what we can find that is buried in

there.

Reva, what do you remember that was told you about the early history of the

McNabbs when they first came from Scotland?

Reva: I don't ever remember them talking about when they came from Scotland

because my grandfather was born in the United States and they never talked

about anyone older than my grandfather's family, so I don't remember

anything about that, except they did say that when they were coming over on

the boat there were two John McNabbs on the boat and to differentiate them

one's name was spelled with two b's and the other one was left as it was

with one b. Also the original name was  begun with M-a-c.

F: Well, that's interesting.

R: That's all that I remember them ever saying.

F: I never heard that before.

R: That's where the name was changed from M-a-c-N-a-b  to  M-c-N-a-b-b.

F. Right, because that's what it shows on our earlier records.

R: That's the time it was changed.  I can remember often going to my

grandparents'   home[2]   because they lived in the same town that we lived,

in Britt, as a small child. I know at one time they lived on a farm and I

don't remember anything about that. They always lived in the same house in

Britt, Iowa, not very far from Main Street and it was on the way to church.

When we went to the Methodist Church we almost always stopped off at

Grandma and Grandpa's and talked a little bit then we went on home.

And I can remember their Golden Wedding Anniversary. [3]   I think that I must

have been about 11 and there were some people there that I had never seen

before but had heard about. One was my great uncle James McNabb with his

wife Nettie. They were my grandfather's brother and wife. And then Elmer

McNabb was there. In the record he was called Allen Elmer McNabb. I have

never heard him called anything but Elmer.  His second wife with their

child were there. Later on when I was in Los Angeles, I believe, we went

out to see his wife and their son but they did not know where Elmer was at

that time. He was a sort of a wanderer and they never could keep track of

him. This son died after he was in the service. He didn't die during the

service but after the service and then I lost track of them.

F: What did your grandfather do and would you give his name, Reva, your

grandfather's and your grandmother's name?

R: My grandfather's name was Daniel (there's no middle name), just Daniel

McNabb and my grandmother's name was Mary Frances George. George was her

maiden name. My grandfather and his two brothers evidently had some sort

of law training. The two brothers , John and James, had a law practice in

Illinois. John was never married.

My grandfather settled in Britt. I don't know at what time and I really

never thought of him as having an occupation  because they probably were

retired by the time I knew them. Yet I have heard it said many times that

people were coming to him (either as a justice in peace or acting in that

capacity) who had disputes over land or some part of property and they

would come to my grandfather and take his word for a settlement. They say

that he would sit out on his front porch which was raised up quite a way

from the ground and the two people would stand on the ground before him and

each tell their side of the story and he would say what he thought ought to

be done and they took his word as law. They didn't have to go to a lawyer

that way.There might have been some pay, but I hadn't heard about that.

F: This James and Nettie [4]  that you mentioned earlier being at the Golden

Wedding Anniversary, they're the same people that Mother wrote to years ago

to get information about the McNabb family about the first dates, etc., and

they must have kept pretty good records because that's where we got some of

the material.  That's interesting that they were there.

R: James lived in an area which was called McNabb because it was populated

pretty thoroughly with the McNabbs and to this day it is McNabb, Illinois.

It must be, maybe ten years ago now, that I went through that town on

purpose to see the McNabbs' house on the corner. I was told just where to

look for it. It was still there, but I didn't stop to see if any McNabbs

were still living in it, but I understand there were at that time.

F: Yes, we came close to going there once, but we didn't quite make it.

Tell us little about about what you know about Grandfather's, that is, your

father's brothers and sisters. I met some of them. I remember Aunt Lena

very well. We went out to her farm and you told me lots of stories about

going out there. Maybe you would like to describe your visits out there.[5]

R: Well, Aunt Lena was a very heavy woman and she had 13 children that all

grew to adulthood. Going out there was almost like going to a party because

there was so many children around and because Aunt Lena was so heavy she

couldn't really get out to check on us too carefully, and we would try to

get out into the grove that was far enough away, I guess,  so she didn't

think we could hear her when she called. We would play farm.  We would take

sticks and make fences and have little sticks be cows and smaller sticks be

pigs and we'd buy and sell. We had a regular good time out there in the

grove playing like we were farmers. I didn't live on a farm, but my folks,

both sides of the family, were farmers so that I grew up sort of just

knowing the farm language and knowing how things worked on a farm so that I

was almost a farm product. I always lived in a little town.

F: Could Aunt Lena get your attention if she really wanted it?

R: If we wanted her to. We could probably tell by the tone of her voice,

whether we should get there or not and get there fast. They say that her

first four children were girls and so then when the first boy [Frank] came

along, whenever he'd go and ask for anything, he would always say, "Can us

girls do so and so?"  The eighth one was a girl [Myrtle]  and she would

say, "Can us boys do so and so?"  They have lots of stories, lots of fun

stories  to tell about their family and their growing up.  Aunt Lena often,

in order to catch the culprit, when somebody did something that she didn't

like,  would just lick the whole bunch of them. One little boy would run

and hide under the bed and after things were quiet he'd stick his head out

and say, "Is everything all right now ?"

F: Does the Fisher family still live there?

R: No, they sold their farm. There is not a Fisher family or descendants in

Britt  at this time.

F: With so many! Tell us about your home in Britt.

R: Well, we lived in a small house with two bedrooms, a living room, a

dining room and kitchen and there were the three boys older than I was.[6]

They were children of my father's[7] first wife[8]  and  Frances' father was

one of those and I was the oldest one of my father's second wife.[9]   Bertha,

the first wife died.[10]

The house was so small that my grandmother and grandfather had the oldest

boy [John]  live with them so he could take care of their furnace and run

errands for them. Our little house had my two brothers and my sister and I

and my father and my mother. I remember there was a baby bed in the same

room with my mother and father and  I had the couch in the dining room and

my two brothers had the other bedroom. We played together, all of us, and I

think the neighborhood had more boys than girls because as I grew up I

remember playing more boy games that I did girl games. We played football

and we played baseball and we played on a swing bag.  We had a long gunny

bag, full of rags tied to a long rope which was fastened high up on  a

branch of a tree. We'd get up on a step ladder and they'd throw that swing

with the bag fastened to it at us and we'd take a leap and jump on it and

then swing back and forth. It was a lot of fun. Then I remember climbing

trees. We had quite a lot of trees on our place. And I would go up higher

than my brothers. That was about the only way I could beat them. I was

smaller.

F: You didn't ever  let anything scare you! Or you didn't ever let anyone

know you were scared, did you, Reva?

R: Well, climbing trees was not necessarily frightening to me and getting

up on top of the house and running up and down the roof didn't frighten me,

either. But today I'd be scared stiff to be up there and I don't see how I

ever did it.

F: It was a steep roof, too.

R: Yes, it wasn't a flat roof.

F: I remember the house. I re-visited there a couple of times.

R: In our family was John, Donald and George of his first family and then

there were four children born to my mother but only two lived to adulthood.[11]

The other ones[12] died in childhood. There was myself, Reva, and my youngest

sister Verla. Donald was the one who would do things for the two girls. For

instance I remember he made a little doll bed for my sister and he would

sew doll clothes for us. I started sewing when I was pretty little. He did

those things for me. I don't ever remember George doing things like that

for us. It was Donald who always made the doll clothes  for us and it was

Donald who made the Cross Sticks. I really don't see anybody playing with

those anymore. We would take two pieces of wood  and at the end of the

longer piece we would fasten the other piece as a cross piece. Then  we

would get a wheel, any kind of a wheel , and we would run it down that long

end of the stick and then follow the wheel as it rolled, using the cross

stick as a guide to keep the wheel rolling properly.

F: Oh my, I haven't seen that.

R: We kids played more with that sort of a toy than we did with many other

things. John enlisted in the war, the first World War, and then he came

home after the war was over and Donald was a little hard to handle at home.

At  teenage he didn't think he had to do anything anyone told him. My

father enlisted him in the army even though he was only 16. He hadn't

finished high school and he was in for two or three years,  I forget which,

and then he came back and he finished high school.

Donald was quite old as far as most of the kids were concerned. He was very

fluent in speaking and in writing. He could write really well. English was

his forte. Well, he was good in math  too, but I can remember the things

that he would write in school that got attention. I remember when I was a

junior, he was a senior, although he was five years older than I was.

Members of the junior class always sort of vied with each other to see

whose  plan would be chosen for the theme of the junior-senior banquet.

Donald told me, "Why don't you suggest that they have a circus because that

will be a lot of fun. You can decorate like a circus and have animals on

the tables for place cards, etc. So I suggested that at school.  I didn't

tell them that it was my older brother's idea because he was a senior.

That never would have gone over.  That was the theme that they chose and he

helped do a lot of the drawings for me, pictures of animals, etc.

When Donald was a junior, my youngest brother George was a senior and that

was three years before I graduated. Anyway Donald drew caricatures of every

person in George's class,  and they had on there what the person might be

or something like that. Donald had been expelled for a couple of weeks from

school so he stayed home all that time and drew those things so that every

person had a copy of everyone of them.

F: O My!

R: Don't you have that book?

F: Yes.

R: We just had one, that was George's. It included caricatures of every person.

F: Right.

R: I can see him home there yet. He took a window pane and put an electric

light underneath so he could copy.

F: A regular light table!

R: Yes, a light table so he could copy.  When he got through with that he

had to wear dark glasses for awhile because his eyes hurt.

F: A  frosted glass is what you need. I have one out here in the back.

R: He was very talented and artistic. We always hoped that he would go

ahead and do something with art but he never did.

F:  Well,  tell us about your life. I remember when I went back with you

when I was 11 and it was the year Verla got married[13]  and it was outside, a

garden party, and you made me a special dress.  I remember that dress very

well and the fact that I could be in the wedding and be a junior

bridesmaid. I was quite tall then so I didn't have any trouble seeming too

little, but tell me about you and Verla.

R: Well, I'll never forget the wedding. Frances said that I made her a

dress but she did practically all the sewing. I just told her where to sew

and she sewed it. When we  got down to church for the wedding and we were

changing our clothes she discovered she had forgotten to bring the silk

stockings. She didn't have silk stockings every day and she had to go in

without any stockings on.  She felt hurt about it, but no one knew the

difference anyway because they wore long dresses and they couldn't see her

feet.

Verla was seven years younger than I was and young sisters practically

always talk about older sisters bringing them up. In a way, it's like a

younger sister bringing up an older sister. It colors your thinking. It

colors your life. You've got a little sister to take care of.

You go away from home and when you do come home your little sister has all

the things to tell you and you have to decide,  answer her questions which

takes quite a bit. Especially I can remember coming home and Verla having

trouble with Mother because Mother didn't think like she did.  I was sort

of a peacemaker all the time, getting one to understand the other, both

ways. And I think it came out all right, I guess, because Verla began to

appreciate some of the things that had been taught her.

We both worked for a while, one summer, during summer school, when we were

both in college. We worked at a juvenile home. Verla worked in the home of

the director. And the director's mother was a well educated woman. She had

her masters degree in  home economics. Verla was getting pretty good

training. And Verla had a girl helping her who was one of the juvenile

delinquents. They got along  very well. She'd say, "When she works she just

makes a mess all over the kitchen, but when she gets through, she always

cleans it up." She said, " It seems to me it would be a lot better if she'd

clean up the stuff as she went."  I can remember Mother trying to get her

to do that and she'd have a fuss. I think that summer Verla learned more to

appreciate what had been done for her by Mother than any other time.

F: That's often when you begin to appreciate home, when you're gone. From

there, Reva, what did you do?

R: Well, from high school I went to college. And at that time after two

years of college we could teach in public school-not just in a country

school but in little town schools.   I  took home economics. At the end of

two years I got a job in Newhall, Iowa. The school had a bigger population

than the town did. I roomed with two other teachers on a farm which was one

block from the school house and two blocks from Main Street.  You can see

it was a little town. And we had a very good time for the five years I

stayed there. The year before I got there all the teachers had been fired

except one so it was a whole new bunch and  we would get together almost

every weekend at one house or another. There were three at the house who

stayed where I was. There were three who stayed in another house and the

man teacher stayed at a house by himself so we never went to his home., But

the seven of us would get together at one house. We'd listen to games,  (it

was radio, it wasn't TV then) .

F: What year was that?

R: I started in 1929 and I left in 1934. I had gone to summer school each

summer while I was teaching and I had just one year to finish so I finished

up by going to four terms[14]   straight and got my bachelors degree in home

economics with minors in English and biology.

It was always a good idea for a teacher to have two minors because when you

went to teach school in a small  town you never could teach just one

subject. You had to teach several. When I was a public school teacher,  I

always taught home economics  as my main subject but I'd have geography or

history or biology or  typewriting.  Mother was always glad that I did

that. She said, "I think you're getting  a good education  by having to

teach something different every year."

Then after I got my degree I went to Swaledale, Iowa to teach and I taught

there a year. Then I went to Sanborn, Iowa, and taught  there three and

one-half years, and then went to the Kansas City Training School in

Missouri where church workers were trained. It was a deaconess training

school. I went there a year and became a deaconess and then went out to Los

Angeles, California,  to teach  in a mission school,    the Frances De Pauw

Home for Spanish American Girls. And that's where I got really close to

Frances, Gordon and Elsie because they lived in Ocean Park and on my days

off I would  go down to Ocean Park. That was really my second home all the

time I was in California.

F: We were glad it was, too.

R: I was out there for 17 years. I saw Frances and Gordon grow up. At the

school where I was we always told stores for our devotional. So when I came

down to Elsie's  I would remember those stories and tell them to Frances

and Gordon after they had gotten into bed. I remember one story, I don't

know the subject, but there was a statement that said, "And the swallow

flew out of the barn." Quite a while afterwards, I know it was at least a

half hour afterwards, and I thought that both children were sound asleep,

Gordon's little voice piped up and said, "Reva, what's a swallow?"

I had really a fun time each time I was at the beach. Of course we would go

down to the ocean front and play in the sand and jump waves and find little

animals in the sand. There was one place where there were some big turtles

and we'd always go over and watch them. Then I would go back, to school,

sort of refreshed.

The school that I was in was for Latin American girls and some orientals

and Indians. Some of them were from Mexico but a big share of them were

from Los Angeles. They came from areas where it was kind of hard to take

care of children because both parents would work or there might be just one

parent and they had to work. The girls were sent to us so that they would

be safe,  be taught English,  and still preserve their Spanish heritage. At

home oftentimes they were punished if they spoke English and then they

would go to public school they would be punished because they spoke

Spanish.  It made it very hard for the girls.  We had school at the home

for the lower grades and we sent the older girls out to the public schools

as soon as they knew enough English to hold their own with students in the

classes that they were in at school.[15]

F: Many summers while Reva was in Los Angeles, I was allowed to take the

bus and for  a whole week go and spend the time there. She would give me a

room of one of the vacationing teachers so I would even have my own room

which I often didn't have at home. (Often I slept on the couch because we

rented out my room). So that was exciting. I would sometimes be able to use

her sewing machine. I went and got acquainted with some of the girls and it

was a real vacation, a real change of atmosphere. I went with Reva to

church and ate with everyone downstairs.  I  felt very grown up when I

would go over to Reva's and very special that she would take the time and

effort to help me out and give me a break from home. For at least five or

six years it was the only vacation I ever had. That, and for a few days

going over to my Aunt Ruby's in San Gabriel, but  the one I really looked

forward to was the week I went to visit Reva. We had a good time over there.

(Tape 2)

R: Backing up a little, when I was in college we went on a field trip to a

penal institution. It was a one-day trip. Since it was a nice fall day I

left my coat in the bus. During the day it started snowing and I got  cold.

When I got home, the landlady took me to the college hospital. When my

landlady and the home economics head visited me in the hospital on Sunday

and discovered that no doctor had seen me yet they made a fuss. From then

on I had two doctors checking in on me. Mother came up to see me. I was

sick for over two weeks, which meant that I could not go back to school

that term. If you lost two weeks' schooling, you couldn't make it up. When

I went home and I when I got well enough I  went house to house and sold

Bible story books.

F: Like your mother had?

R: Yes. I even hiked out into the country  from house to house selling

books. I got a ride with somebody to nearby towns and I would sell there.

During that year before I got sick, the banks had closed[16]   and I didn't

have any money and my Aunt Flora, Father's younger sister, got a loan for

me of $50 and I paid that back by selling Bible story books, so I got it

paid back that summer.

F: It says here [in some notes]  that it was $26 a semester for tuition.

R: Yes, $26 was for tuition and I do not remember how much we had to pay

for room and board in the dormitories, but it wasn't anything like it is

now. It might have been $125 a term.  The money from George I used for

that,  for the dorms and for the tuition. Then I think  I went to school

the next fall.  I think I must have gotten the money from my Aunt Flora, I

just can't remember now where it came from, but I can't think of any other

place it might have come from.

F: It's got here, "Myrtle Fisher."

R: Myrtle Fisher was my cousin and was my roommate the first year I was at

college. After I had taught five years ( this was during the depression)  I

made a statement to a preacher's daughter, a friend of mine, that if I had

the money, I would quit teaching and go back to school and get my degree.

She said, "My father often lends money to students who want  to go to

college, so that's where I got my money for my last two years of college.,

I borrowed it from a Methodist minister.

F: Well that was a break, wasn't it?

R: Yes. Then I went back to teaching again and got that paid back.

F: You've done it all by yourself?

R: Yes, with other people helping me!

F: You obviously enjoyed your teaching then changed your mind as to the

direction your teaching was taking and went into religious teaching. What

made that change in your life?

R: Well, from the time that I was very small, even before I went  to school

I wanted to be a teacher. Of course, my two favorite aunts were both

teachers, so it  was easy to see.

F: Who were these aunts?

R: One was my Aunt Flora[17]   on my  father's side and the other was Aunt Ina

Jolliffe on my mother's side.

F: Aunt Flora had a big influence on you.

R: A very big influence. I also had dreams of some day being the head of an

orphanage, having children to take care of and then also there were

missionaries who would come to our church and talk. That always interested

me very much. I always wanted to  hear a missionary if there were anywhere

around. I felt like I ought to be a missionary.

I went to an Epworth League Institute Camp (a youth league in the Methodist

Church) with a group of girls from Sanborn. I was their sponsor and took

care of them in the cottage and saw to it that they should have the things

they needed. While I was there I got acquainted with two deaconesses. I

knew from talking with them that that's what I wanted to do. I still was

under contract to teach the next year at Sanborn, Iowa.  But when the

middle of the year came, it just seemed like I ought to quit and get to

school to be a deaconess. So I was released from my contract (I didn't just

up and leave)  and went to Kansas City to school. There they gave me a

scholarship, so I didn't need money. When I got through there, after a

year, I went to the Frances De Pauw home.

F: It seems like it was meant to be.  Of all the places that you could have

been sent! You came out to L.A. where we needed you so much. We really did.

We were very much alone after my father died.

You told me one day about a comment your mother made after you became a

deaconess.

R: Well she said to me, "I have always prayed that you would do church

work." And she said, "I thought that when you got started teaching that

maybe nothing was going to come from it. Now I'll tell you about it. I

never told you about it before because I didn't want to influence your

decision."

F: It interests me that she had the wisdom to  let you find your own way,

and yet encouraged you along in  all the good endeavors that  you made.

We talked a little bit last night about how we feel about our grandparents.

I don't remember your mother being young and having all this influence. I

remember her as an older lady. You also made the same comment about your

own grandmother.

R: Yes,  the grandmother[18]  who lived in Britt. I was always a little scared

of her, I suppose you might say. It seemed like when I sat down I never sat

still, and she would say, "Sit still, Reva."  The only comments that she

would make would be correcting me in some way, but later as I grew older

and I got into high school then I could see what kind of a person she had

been, how she raised her family.

F: I think that's what we all realize as we get older. It's hard to

understand,  though, when you are being corrected.

I get an altogether different picture of your mother (Hattie Belle Jolliffe) as we have been

talking these last few days. You made the comment that she never really

complained, never really had knockout, drag-out fights with anybody. What

kind of disciplinarian was she?

R: She was a strict person. But she always said, "It's only because I love

you that I do this."  We were whipped. We were spanked. I often felt that

if I had been her I would have thought it didn't do any good the way she

kept pursuing the things that we were being spanked for.  When Dad was

home, we really toed the line. We jumped when he told us to do something,

because, while, I think only once in my life did he spank me, he punished

the boys severely. He'd take his belt and go at them, and I'd go in the

bedroom and hide and cry. But he wasn't there very much. So Mother had to

do the disciplining.  It was never, "I'll tell your dad when he comes

home," because she never knew when he was going to come home! So she had to

do the disciplining for all of us.  I can remember that if we didn't hang

up our clothes, we might have to hang them up 50 times or 100 times.

F: Take them down and put them back up! That's  a pretty good idea. I don't

think I ever thought of that one!

About your dad, he was gone a lot. Tell us about why.

R: Well, he was a civil engineer and he had a little room on wheels which

served as a bedroom and kitchen that was pulled by a team of mules. He as

his crew would take that to the site where they were working, whether it

was surveying a field, or drainage, because the fields in Iowa had to be

drained, which might be hard for somebody in California to imagine. They

were just too damp to grow crops. It was marshy. Sometimes it was building

a little bridge, not a big bridge like we have today, but a culvert over a

small stream. He would be on that location two weeks, or a month, I really

don't know because as a child you don't think in terms of days like that.

And when he was gone,  I think he just sort of forgot he had a family

because Mother didn't know where he was and often he didn't send money to

her, and she had to get along the best she could. I remember she went  to

my Grandmother McNabb's and did their washing for them and got paid for

that, and I remember my aunt out in the country,   Aunt Lena Fisher, often

sent in milk and eggs,  and when they butchered, they'd send in a hunk of

liver which we were very fond of.

We got along. I don't think we were ever really hungry. We always had

something, because we had a big garden. We grew enough potatoes to last us

a year. We grew enough cabbage to make sauerkraut for the whole year and we

were all fond of that. She canned  vegetables and fruit. Apples were cheap

and usually given away. The neighbors would give apples away and Mother

would can them, so we always had apple sauce. We grew peas, carrots, beans

and canned them, and corn. We canned  in a big boiler where the jars were

put down and immersed in water and boiled. Then, once in a while, almost,

maybe every year, but maybe not every year, at some time or another, Dad

would bring home a big hunk of meat, maybe a half a hog or maybe a big part

of a beef. He would help somebody butcher and they would pay him in meat

and then Mother would can that.

F: Oh, really! How did you can meat?

R: The pork, you put down with lard. You grind it up and make sausage,

patties of sausage, and cook them and put them in a crock and then pour hot

lard over them and they would keep. And you'd put a cloth over that and

salt on top of that hot cloth, maybe an inch of salt and put that down in

our basement and it would keep.

F: Well, that's interesting. I never heard that method before.  You had a

basement?

R: No, we had a cellar. A cellar is a dirt floor, not finished at all. We

got in from the outside.

F: You had running water in the house, but not bathrooms?

R: When I was a girl, we didn't even have running water. We went to the

neighbors who had an outdoor pump and carried our water home in a pail.

F: I imagine living was really a joint project, especially without your father.

R: When Father would come home, he'd always bring a package of meat with

him so that we would have meat for a dinner meal. I know sometimes my

brothers would come home and say that Dad was eating downtown, and so we

knew he was in town. We didn't know when he would be coming home. It never

occurred to me that we were being neglected by our father. Mother never,

never said a word against him.

F: That's really marvelous.

R: I know that when we'd see him coming down the street, we'd all run for

him. The youngest one would always be picked up and we'd go through his

pockets and find that he had peppermints, or smoked sardines, often. He was

fond of smoked sardines and so were all of his kids. The funny things that

we grow up with and like!  I can remember being overjoyed when Father was

coming home.

F: That's neat. You once told me about  having a chance to ride with your

dad to go see a bridge.

R: Yes, probably he owned a car for about a year or two in all our lives.

When he had that car he took us once out  to show us a bridge that he was

building. I know Mother was really afraid to ride. Cars weren't as common

as they are now. She was kind of scared. We kids hung on for dear life. But

we went out there and saw that bridge. I can remember that

F: Was it big?

R: No, it was little. It was over a little stream. He never was involved

with big bridges, just the small bridges.

Sometimes he brought a sack of sand and a sack of cement and put them under

a tree and we would mix sand and cement and use the little metal forms that

he gave us to make squares, circles and triangles. We would mix up that

sand and cement and make those things. Then we'd used them to build.

 I used this knowledge of mixing cement and sand when I was at Frances

DePauw. We needed a basketball standard, and somebody gave us the posts and

ring for the standard, but we really didn't have a lot of money  to spend

on hiring people to do things. So I  went out and got the sand and cement.

I wrote Dad and asked what proportion I should mix for the standard, and he

told me, so I went out there and we mixed it. We dug the hole, and we put

that standard up there with the help of the gardener. I don't suppose that

it was as high as it should be,  but anyway, it was one our girls could

play on.

F: Did he write much?

R: No, he didn't write many letters. I think Mother wrote the information

that he gave on the cement.  He told her what to tell me. I had one letter

from him and I still have it.

F: Well,  that would be a treasure, considering that he was a man of few

words.

 O.K. I'd like to now, go back a little bit to before your mother came into

the picture and talk about the children there were then. We talked about

John and Lila and then Dad  (Donald)  and then George. It was when George

was born, Bertha died a few days after. Aunt Anna[19]   says here they had to

force her mouth open to put food in because she was in so much pain.

R: Lockjaw.

F: Lockjaw. Blood poisoning. In those days they didn't recognize the child

bed fever type of thing. This was in Emmetsburg, as I understand it, and

Aunt Anna went there to take care of the boys. Now, you remember a little

more about this. Let's take it up there.

R: I don't really remember [wasn't born yet] , but I remember being told.

Aunt Anna came. She gave up a teaching job, I believe  and went to

Emmetsburg as his housekeeper and took care of the two boys because Lila[20]

was taken by her mother's people.  My dad had just plain taken the baby

(George) without anybody's permission or say-so and put him with an

adoption agency.

F: He was just really upset!

R: Yes. The baby who was named George was adopted and when the McNabb

family found it out, my  Grandfather McNabb went to the adoption agency,

but they said that the papers had been signed so that they could not give

him any information about the child. Five years later, that same adoption

society contacted my grandfather and said that the parents could no longer

keep George and that they were willing to let him go back to his family. So

we got George back at the age of 5 and we had the three boys, John, Donald

and George. Lila always did stay with her mother's [Bertha's] parents until

she died.  And she died as a result of an accident sliding down hill in

snow on a sled, hitting her head on a tree.

F: About 11 years old? So she never did see the family again?

R: No. She was going to come that summer. But she never saw them.

F: And the same thing with George. You mentioned that he died the year that

you started school [1926]. He was going to school at that time, wasn't he?

R: Yes, he was going to school at Ames and he was going to come home the

day that I was going to leave to go to college and  give me enough money to

start school.

F: And why did he have money?

R: Well, each of the boys had been left some money that would have come to

their mother. So, of course they had the girl’s share, too. And so he was

using his to go to college.

F: He was really a fairly steady man, then, wasn't he? But he liked to

drive fast. According to Aunt Anna he had calmed down that day. He'd had a

little accident, and he had calmed down.  And still he had an accident that

killed him.[21]  Aunt Anna said that Grandpa went and spent a day or two with

him in the hospital  before he died.  It's hard to ever know what Grandpa

was thinking, what your father was thinking, or how much things affected

him, because he just didn't react. In fact, he had a tight little life

right inside of himself that other people never could get to.

R: Well, when he was home, he would be on his bed and read. If anything was

said in the house that was not true he would correct them. He seemed to

know everything that was going on and yet he was reading.

F: Was that the front bedroom? Or that one in the middle.

R: That one in the middle.

F: That's the one he was always in when I saw him.

R: He knew what we were talking about. I would say that he was a well

educated man even though he never had much schooling. He probably had what

was then, a high school education. He went to an academy, and that's where

he learned what he knew about civil engineering.

F: Evidently he had a talent for it.

R:  He read constantly. He read the Saturday Evening Post religiously, and

I do think in those days, the Saturday Evening Post did give you a pretty

liberal education.

F: The magazines aren't the same anymore, are they? More sensational.

He married your mother in Emmetsburg?

R: No,  probably at the Jolliffe place, but I don't know.  Over in Plover.

F:  And Aunt Anna probably went home, then?

R: Yes. I was born in Emmetsburg, and then we moved from Emmetsburg to a

farm near Britt,  I think. The next baby was born there[22].  That was two

years later.

F: How was the farming. Grandpa wasn't too good of a farmer?

R:  Well, I don't remember, but evidently not, because he kept moving  from

one farm to another (there were two farms there) . Two years later he was

on a  farm near Hayfield. That's where the next baby was born .[23] Then we

moved to Britt. We were in a two-story house there and we all got measles

and whopping cough together.  When I was five, my youngest brother George

brought the measles home and we all got it.

Mother  brought the beds downstairs so that everybody could be on one floor

to take care of us. The two youngest girls, Iva and Viola, died a day apart

because of gastritis plus the measles and whooping cough.  It was a sort of

common thing in the town that year because there were six graves in one

area where babies were buried that had had the measles and whooping cough.

F: The adults didn't get it?

R: They already had had it.

F: You talked about the funeral.

R: Yes, my mother always said that I did not go to the funeral but I

remember going to the funeral and I remember my grandmother taking me, and

of course, it was horse and buggy then and I was not well over the measles

and whopping cough so she kept me in the buggy. I can remember this. Mother

just didn't know it. So much grief.  I do know that Dad was not home.

Evidently he was in town because somebody told me that the doctor went

downtown and told him that he'd better go home because he had a very sick

family. So then he came. I can remember Grandma McNabb coming and helping

Mother and bringing oranges. I remember George got quite impatient with us

because since he got sick first, he got up first and he had to wait on all

the rest of us. We'd say we wanted an orange and he'd peel it and bring it

to us, then we didn't want it.

F: That's the way little kids are when they're sick!

R: We left that house and moved into another house. Most of this moving

around  was due to the fact that Dad did not pay the rent.  When we moved

into the house that we stayed in the rest of their lives,  Mother borrowed

money from her father to pay for it. She got tired of moving and renting,

so she wanted that house to be their's.

F: Did she pay that money back?

R: No, it was understood that that would be taken out of her part of the

estate when Grandfather died.

F: You said she got rather restless at that time?

R: Yes, she didn't have any babies to take care of and so she went out and

sold Bible story books in the town and then, it was three years after Viola

was born that Verla came, the sister that I now have. Then she stayed home

and it was better, I guess.

When Dad had this little room on wheels, there would be space for four men

in it, just two double beds, bunks. One summer they took John with them and

he was their cook. They had a little kerosene stove and they had dishes.

All my brothers could cook. They all liked to cook. My dad liked to cook.

They didn't make cakes or bread or anything like this, but they could cook

meat. He often did the family reunion cooking of the meat. They'd bring the

goose or the turkey or the chickens, whatever was going to be cooked and

he'd put them in the oven and as far as we could see he would just stay on

his bed and read, but they were always good.

F: You said you got kind of excited when you went to the post office and

got the check for the house.

R: I didn't really know what I had. I knew it was a letter from Grandpa

Jolliffe. When I got home, Mother said, "Oh, that's the check for the

house."

Tape 3

F: You said that your dad would walk down on the brick sidewalk, down town,

and pick up the mail and maybe make a stop or two and come back. I remember

you telling me that's what Grandpa did every day, practically until the day

he died.  It was the most important thing he could do was to walk down town

and get back again.

R: Then when he got older, he said the only difference was that it was

farther down town.

F: He was a different sort of person.

You children, as I understand, went out and worked on farms.

R: Yes, I was what you called a hired girl. I started out when I was about

14. A neighbor of ours had a couple of grandchildren in the country who had

whooping cough and the mother needed help very badly and she needed

somebody who had had whooping cough. I had had whooping cough so I was sent

out there to work and help with those two little children. The baby was

just seven months old, so every time it started to cough the mother had to

pick it up.  I got the whole sum of four dollars a week.

F: And that was a lot?

R: That was a lot, yes.

F: You worked hard. You brought the money home,  didn't you?

R: Yes.

F: Home to where it was needed. About this time the Stanford money was made

available to the boys. They knew about it?

R: No, it wasn't made available to the boys.  But Grandfather McNabb knew

that Mother was having such a hard time, because Dad was not sending any

money home, and the little bit that she could get wasn't enough. So he

wrote to the estate, the ones who had the Stanford estate, and said that

there was a need in the home because the family was not being fed well

enough, taken care of well enough by the father. So, the money was sent

each month to help pay for the boys' upkeep. And I know that that was what

bought our food for many a year.  I do not remember the amount, but I think

it was about $9 a week.  Nine dollars for each boy. There were two boys at

home at that time. That was a lot for her to have. She always made our

clothes out of hand-me-downs. She had lots of relatives on the McNabb side.

I think there were close to forty cousins, all the Fishers. And on my

Jolliffe side there were maybe more. Altogether I counted once about 98

first cousins.

F: You didn't feel like being a poor relation?

R: Oh, no, not at all. No, my dresses looked nicer than most of the kids at

school.

F: Because your mother sewed so well?

R: She did very well. And the boys looked as good as anybody at school. We

always looked good, and we were always clean.  I had an awful long neck. I

was skinny and a teacher told my aunt  something like, "Well, Reva may have

a long neck. but it's always clean!"

F: Isn't it funny the things people say? And what we remember!

Your mother began to get arthritis. She had problems after you left home

with her health, and Grandpa got more steady work as things went along.

R: Yes. He worked in the WPA because most of the young men got out of the

area. Maybe they were in the service or some place and there just weren't

any civil engineers left around. And so the county hired him as a civil

engineer. He went around building culverts and doing county work wherever

it needed being done.

I know there was one big bridge that he did work on, but he wasn't the head

of that one.  He was under someone. But most of the things, he was the

contractor, and he did the supervising of it. I know at one time, he built

the bridges four feet wider than he was supposed to. He said, "It isn't

long before our roads are going to have to be wider."  The cars were coming

out then. It wasn't long before practically all the bridges that he didn't

build in other counties had to be widened, but his were O.K. because he had

that foresight.

F: He worked mostly, then, in your county?

R: Yes, always in Hancock County.

F: Even before, when you were little, he did?

R: Yes.

F: Oh, he was fairly close then?

R: Yes.

F: Counties in Iowa aren't all that big.

R: No, but with a horse and wagon, it's different than a car.

F: That's true. I get your point.

So then he worked well into his seventies, or close to his seventies?

R: Yes. After he was 70 he still worked. The state inspector would come

along to inspect his work, and give pay checks and all that. He'd say, "You

have to lay off  George McNabb. He's too old." Well, the county would lay

him off, but as soon as the state inspector left they would put him back on

because there wasn't anybody else to put on.

F: How did he lose part of his foot?

R: Oh, that was when I was a very small girl. I dimly remember it. He had

this team of mules that were pulling this wagon around. They had to move a

railroad car. So they put the team of mules on to the railroad car, and in

the process some way or another, he got his foot on the rail. The railroad

car ran over it. They brought him home. He wouldn't go to the doctor. He

wouldn't do anything, but have them bring him home. He wouldn't let them

bring him into the house. He went on his hands and knees and came into the

house. Then the doctor was called.

F: Wonder why?

R: That's a McNabb!

F: Yes, that's a McNabb!

R: You wonder why sometimes you do things!

F: Stubborn.

R: Well, it's stubbornness when it's in someone else, and it's

self-determination when it's in you!  Well, I tell you, the McNabbs got a

double dose of it!

Anyway, the doctor was called and that part of the foot had to be cut off.

It came down straight at the stump. He kept on working. When he had work,

he worked.

F: Well that's really something!

He died in 1960. That was just a year after your mother died.

R: Three years.

F: Was it three years?

I remember. You left a really fine position. You had worked hard and were

in charge of the Frances de Pauw School by the time you left.  Then you

decided you had to go back and take care of your parents. I always thought

that that was a special thing that you did because they were both not easy

to take care of at that point.

R: Well, there really wasn't anything else for me to do because I didn't

get enough money to pay for somebody. When you start paying for people to

come live in the home it takes a lot of money. I had to do it that way.

F: Well, from that viewpoint, yes. But you know a lot of people don't do it

that way. They just stay where they are. But you wouldn't be that kind of

person!

R: Well, I came home because I was told that Mother was dying and so I came

home. As soon as she saw me, she perked up. She was ready to do some more

living. And she did. She lived-well, I went in February and she lived until

May.

F: Just three months, was it? I thought you were there longer.

R: I was there longer.

F: I went back just before she died.

R: Yes, just before she died. On Mother's Day she died.[24]   Then, of course,

I had to stay and take care of Dad. There was nobody to take care of him.

F: He wasn't hard to take care of?

R: He wasn't hard to take care of.

F: I just remember all the laxatives he used to eat. Ex Lax, or something.

R: All you ever had to do for him was to grab his dirty clothes when he had

them off and put clean clothes there, because he didn't like to change

clothes. Not that he was stubborn about that, but that was just the easiest

way to do it. He just wanted two meals a day, breakfast and supper and he

walked downtown and didn't eat anything at noon because, "you don't need to

eat if you don't work." He kept his weight good because he did diet. A lot

of men when they get to that place become gluttons and eat, but he didn't.

So it was easy to take care of him. I didn't have to entertain him. He

entertained himself by reading because that's what he did best. Downtown, I

understood, he liked to play checkers.

F: Did you have a store where the men would get together downtown? What was

the name of that?

R: It was a furniture store. They would sit around, and then also in a pool

hall, the men would sit around in a pool hall.

I didn't have  enough to do, just to take care of him and the house. In

fact, I needed some money. So I found a place, Fort Dodge, Iowa, about 60

miles away,  as a Religious Education Director.  Mabel Panhoff,  one of the

Fisher girls (her children were both gone, and she was separated from her

husband)  needed work. So she would come and take care of Dad six days a

week.  Monday was her day off and I  would come and have that be my day off

and I would come home from Fort Dodge on Monday.

F: Then you kept busy!

R: Yes Then I would go back. I just came to give her this day off. Well,

because I was there, she didn't go off. She wanted to sit there and talk to

me.

F: You were Father Confessor, too!

R: Yes. So sometimes she would be there and sometimes she did have other

things to do.

We did this until in 1960, Well I guess it was in December 1959,  he went

to the hospital to have an operation. He got through that fine. He came

home, but he had a stroke. He was taken to our local hospital. He had had

his operation in Iowa City at the university hospital. He died in the local

hospital.

I went to see him every day. At the end he always called me Verla.

F: Did he really? Why do you think that was?

R: I don't know. Of course the youngest one was sort of the favorite.

F: He liked his girls. You see  a  picture of him there with Lila and he

has a different look on his face than he had in any of the other pictures.

 I always wanted to get to know him,  but he wouldn't let you get to know him.

R: The last few years, though, when I was there, after Mother died, he

would come out and sit and talk and talk and talk, talk a blue streak! And

it was so different than what had gone on before. It rather surprised me.

F: Talk about his life?

R: Yes. This was the time when he told me that when he was a young fellow

he went to live with an uncle of his, Robert McNabb[25]. When Robert McNabb was

just a young man, he found out he had cancer and so he sold everything he

had.  He wasn't married. He  took a trip around the world and then came

home and as he got sick and couldn't wait on himself, Dad was sent to live

with him. Dad took care of him until he died. Dad was quite a young fellow

at that time.

F: I'd figure he was in his teens, 15 or so.

How old was Grandpa when he died?

R: He was 87 years of age and Mother was 78.

F: He did live a long time in spite of all the problems he had.

Let's go back a little bit over this accident history. All the boys died

from one accident or another and so did Lila. Tell me about what you heard

about John. Then, of course my dad was killed in an automobile accident,

and it was the same year that John was killed.

R: Well, George was killed-I think we mentioned that--in '26. Donald was

killed in an accident up in the coastal mountains of California [1939]. I

guess you would know more about that than I would. Automobile accident.

And then John was living in New York City and I would write to him maybe

once a year, maybe twice a year. Not that he ever wrote to me. But I just

felt like we ought to try to keep contact. Once a letter came back marked

"deceased." So, I wrote another letter to the same address and addressed it

to "Whoever knew about John McNabb's death."  I got a newspaper clipping

which told about taking the body of John McNabb out of the Hudson River and

no one knew for sure what had happened, but foul play was suspected. That's

all we ever knew about his death!  Several years later we had a letter from

his wife. We knew he was married, but we didn't know anything about it. His

wife Margaret was in need of money and she said she understood from John

that he had come from a wealthy family and could we help her?  Well, I

wrote back and  said that I had been helping  to support my parents for

many years and if she wanted to help me, O.K. We never heard from her again.

F: But they had no children, so the only children from all eight of

Grandpa's children were Verla's three[26] and my mother's two.[27]

R: Yes.

F: What was left, were some women, Verla, Mother and you. When did Verla's

husband, John Bidne, die?

R: Verla's husband died the year before Mother did [1956].  And so she was

left with three children to support. She worked for awhile with The

Register newspaper and then she went to the Veterans Administration and

worked there as a ward clerk. She was a ward clerk from there on until she

retired when she was 63.

F: Yes, and now she has grandchildren.

R: Yes, she has two.[28]

F: Right. You  helped Verla on and off all her life one way or another.

When she really needed something,  you had managed to save some money and

could help with things like washing machines, the big items that are so

hard for a widow to buy.  You went back every year to visit. That was a big

thing.

Before we leave Britt, Iowa, I'd like to go back and talk about Grandpa's

brothers and sisters as you remember them and the stories you have heard.

Naturally with them living close by you, they were a part of your family in

your life as you grew up.

R: Yes, I think that we were a pretty close family in that we got together

at Grandma McNabb's sometime, but more often the whole family would go to

the farm, to the Fisher farm (the older girl, Lena McNabb Fisher) and this

is the way that I got acquainted with most of my cousins. I never visited

Mary Gee's[29]   home, but I went up to Aunt Anna's home two or three times.

Because they had girls about my age, it was more fun to go up there. Aunt

Anna was a strict disciplinarian and was very interested in people. She

could talk to anybody and I think she ruled the roost. Uncle Rudolph

[Klingbiel] was more quiet, but her children all got their education-were

nurses All three of them were nurses.

F: Three girls?

R. Three girls, yes.[30]

F: Didn't she raise someone else's son?

R: She raised a boy. They adopted a boy[31]  and raised him and they

considered him their son, too.

Then Uncle John's[32]   home was in Waterloo which was just a few miles from

the Iowa State Teachers' College where Verla and I both went to school, and

we would go over there every once in a while on a weekend whenever we

didn't have classes, sometimes stay overnight. But never did I go over

there but what she[33]  wasn't looking for me and she would have an extra

piece of meat left on the table. She was so good to us.

Then Olive[34]  was the youngest girl and her husband died when the children

were little but I don't think that she had to get out and work until the

children had left home. I think there was money left there, but she didn't

have a lot and she lived in the house that the Daniel  McNabbs owned across

the street from their own house. Whether she had to pay rent on that, I

don't know.

F: Pretty good sized house. I remember it.

R: Yes, a pretty good sized house.

F: How many children did she have?

R: She had four, two boys and two girls.

F: It was her son who came out to visit us years later.[35]

R: Yes. When Aunt Ollie was older and retired, she lived in an apartment

downtown, above a store. When I would go back to Britt, after all the rest

of the family was gone, Aunt Ollie was the only one left in Britt for me to

visit. I would go and stay with her and we would play Scrabble. She loved

to play Scrabble. There just weren't very many people in Britt who liked to

play Scrabble. We would have a game going most of the time. We got to the

place where, if we were in a hurry, we could finish a game in a half an

hour.  When I was taking care of Dad I would go see Aunt Ollie.

F: She's the only one I've really been able to find on either side of the

family that had diabetes, when our children suddenly showed up with it.

R: Yes, she got diabetes when her husband died. Too much shock.

F: She was one of those lucky ones who got it just when the insulin was

coming in.

R: Yes, she took insulin. She had two major operations after she had

diabetes. She got along fine, so she did a pretty good job of keeping the

sugar balance

F: And it wasn't easy with the early insulin. Yes, I remember at Verla's

wedding how you talked of her taking an extra bit of insulin that day, and

that always really fascinated me that she could do that and eat more ice

cream and now I see it with my own children.

R: Aunt Flora McNabb probably had more influence on my life than any of the

others. She taught in the public school at Britt and she lived with Grandma

and Grandpa, too in Britt. They had a system where three teachers each had

three subjects in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. My Aunt Flora had

geography, arithmetic and drawing.  I had those subjects from her for three

years. Once I said something about it  (I was never very good in

arithmetic) and she said, "What do you mean you aren't good in arithmetic?

You were always good in arithmetic."  I said, "Well, I always just got B's.

She said, "What do you want?" I didn't think anything was good enough

unless it was an A.

She died quite young [1932], in her forties, I believe, before they had the

antibiotics for pneumonia.  She did get married, however, after Grandma

died. She married one of my Grandfather's cousins.[36]  She was up in the years

when she married him, but they had some very good years together before she

died. When she died[37]   then Robert Anderson made out his will. He came down

to talk to Mother to see how we were situated because he knew that Dad had

gotten all the money from Grandpa that he was supposed to have from any

estate and it was left like that. Then he just went to the hospital, had an

operation, and died.

F: I guess people can just give up like that.  You used to tell me stores

about Flora. I can't remember them except that I got the impression that

she was a really gracious woman who was very educated -the kind of person

you'd like to be.

R: Yes. Well, she would take our class on picnics out to Eagle Lake.

Sometimes we'd hike out there, which is a five-mile hike, and sometimes

there would be enough cars to take us out there. She was always interested

in the flowers and the trees-the names of them. We would hike through the

woods and identify all the flowers that we found and all the birds that we

would see and all the trees that we would see.  This is the thing that I

remember about her most. She was an artist. She did quite a bit of painting

china, painting some pictures. I don't think we have a picture that she

painted any more. I think we had one once. But she was artistic. This is

where Donald got his artistic ability, from this line, and Frances gets

hers. Those are the family, the aunts and uncles that I think of.

F: Aunt Anna.[38]  I remember that she looked a little like you.

R: Yes, I'm supposed to look more like her more  than like Mother.

F: You told me one time that at the 50th Anniversary family reunion that

they had for her parents, she went to a hairdresser.

R: She went to a hairdresser and had her hair done.

F: They didn't do that very often.

R:  This is something that people do all the time now. But in those days

everybody had long hair and they didn't go to hairdressers, especially my

aunts. They just did their hair up, and that was it. But, oh, she had it

all in pretty rolls and I know she put a net on her hair. It just

fascinated me to see. It wasn't combed. They'd just go over it a little bit

so it wouldn't be disturbed.

F: Well, she looked really pretty in the picture. The others were, not what

you call stylish, but just nicely dressed. I guess everyone was there,

weren't  they?

R: Everyone was there at the Golden Wedding.

F: That was fantastic. All the children alive[39]  and there are nine children

except for the one boy[40]   that died. That was really exciting to have that

picture. I'm grateful for it.

Aunt Anna was the one I remember the most, except for Aunt Ollie. We went

up to Minnesota in 1938 to visit with Aunt Anna and when I went up with

Reva to Iowa,  she took me up again. It was exciting. Rudolph took me out

on the tractors. He was just awfully thoughtful to do nice things. He had

done the same things when Gordon and I had gone as little kids, seeing that

we got around the farm and seeing how it really works. And Aunt Anna-I can

remember the huge, huge breakfasts that she served, because it was in the

summer time and she had a good-sized crew, and it was a big farm. It wasn't

just a little one, and I just couldn't believe,  you know, that you could

cook that much food and have that many people around the table for

breakfast. That just really got to me.

R: Her three girls raised turkeys in the summertime.

F: That's right.

R: And then at Thanksgiving vacation they came home and dressed the

turkeys. I guess they took a week off of college. They dressed  those

turkeys and got them on the market for Thanksgiving. That's the way they

paid for their college.

F: Isn't that something! I remember seeing those white turkeys there flying

all over the place. They were on the ground in big groups.

Well, that's about all I can think of. Now we're getting down to the end.

I'm going to turn the tape over and I want to ask Reva a few more questions

about what were the big moments in her life and what's she's come down to

that is important, living in this world.

Tape 4

F: Those were impressionable years, being my teen years and I had a lot of

responsibility at home and I could go to you and talk it over and you would

give me good advice so I wouldn't go off the deep end and get too upset

over things. Very often you were the balance wheel in my life. Even then I

think you had some really fine principles and philosophy in your life to

sustain you through different experiences. These things came to me and

affected how I approached life and what I did with it. I think now, over as

many more years that you've had a chance, maybe, to crystallize some of

those thoughts. So I'd like to know what you think is important, really

important in this life while we're here. What is important, worth doing,

and why do you think it is?

R: Well , I  think it's very important to be close enough to God to know

what His will would be. Now when I think of His will, I don't mean that He

is going to dictate to me what to do, but I feel like everything that is

good is from God, and God is good. So if you think in terms of doing good

or what are the good things to do, what is the best thing to do,  then all

things will work out for the best. They may not be just what you want, they

may not seem so good at the time, but as you look back, they may be what

was best.

Anyway, whatever happens, you can make the best of it. I don't think that

when something hits you that you don't like, it's time to quit. This is the

time to find out why it happened, and then not let it happen again if it is

at all possible.

F: Learn from it.

R: And I also think that unless we find a bit of heaven on earth we won't

find it in the next life. When I think in terms of a bit of heaven, I mean

happiness, I mean satisfaction.

F: Piece of mind.

R: Piece of mind, yes, piece of mind especially. If you don't find those

things here, you won't find them in another life because if you aren't

happy with the good things, what good would it do you to go to heaven where

things are all good?  You would be very unhappy. That's  part of my

philosophy.

F: I think that when I think of a person that is truly serene, I always

think of you, and that's been my goal. I'm kind of flighty and up and down

a lot,  to become a serene person. Maybe I've achieved some of it, but it's

always because I have watched you, how you handle things as they came into

your life. What are the things that have brought you happiness?

R: Oh, I don't know whether it's things. This serenity,  I think, a part of

that was maybe drilled into me by my two brothers.[41]   I learned that if I

didn't react violently to things that they did, if I just pretend that it

wasn't bothering me, then they would quit. Maybe I learned it that way, I

don't know. But I do know that when we moved into Brooks Howell Home all

new, new carpets, everything, one of the residents let a little hot water

heater go on the floor and it burned the rug. They called  me in a flurry

and  told me that the rug was on fire. By the time I got there the little

fire was out. There was a burned place in the rug. I said to them, "Well we

have some extra pieces left over of this rug. It can just be patched."  One

of them said to me after, "Well you could have knocked me over with a

feather. I thought sure we'd get a laying out!"

F: In other words, you didn't make fusses over little things. You saved it

for the big things.

R: Well, I don't know . . .

F: You didn't even make it over the big things?

R: When you work around people like that all the time, I don't think it

pays to make a fuss unless it's something that would help. I haven't found

many things that making a fuss over, helps.

F: What does help?

R:  Taking it for granted at the time and thinking about it later, maybe.

And wondering what can be done.

F: Having a little time to think about it?

R: Yes, having a little time to think about it.

F: To reflect. Well evidently, what you did was right because those women

were happy.

R: Oh, yes, they were happy.

F: They were happy and they felt like they had a friend in you. That was

really, probably, maybe your happiest job, do you think, what you did

there? Do you think you accomplished more there than at Frances de Pauw?

R: Well, they're so different. I thought with young people you are shaping

a future. And when I went to Brooks Howell Home where I was going to work

with the retired people, I thought, well, I guess I'm not shaping a future

any more. I looked at it as kind of a dead-ended job. But after I was there

awhile, I found out it wasn't.

F: Those years were as important to them  . . .

R: Every one of those women were out working in the community. They were

working in the churches. They were working with young people. What I could

do for them to enable them to keep on working was just mushrooming, just

mushrooming all over that town.

F: Because you made it possible by giving them a good home.

R: Yes. They had a good home. They were happy. They were secure. They

didn't have to worry about their food, about their shelter. They didn't

have a thing to worry about to hinder them from going ahead.  Wherever I

went, and people found out that I was from the Brooks Howell Home, that I

was the director of the Brooks Howell Home, they would say, "You don't know

what that home has done for this town!"

It was a home for those retired missionaries . . .

F: Like having an army of grandmothers, wasn't it?

R: Yes, they were an army of college graduates who were missionary minded

because they were all either missionaries or deaconesses.

F: They've been unselfish most of their lives.

R:  Been unselfish, had always worked with people and for people and never

for themselves, and you put 60 people like that in a town, it's going to do

something.

F: You know, I don't think we talked about how you got to the Brooks Howell

Home. Maybe you might just go over that.

R: After Dad died,   I was free for an appointment. The one who does the

appointing of the deaconesses that I had worked for before said, "How would

you like to work in a retirement home?" I said, "Well, I've been working

with my parents now for three years and I've been very happy doing that,

working with older people." I thought back in my mind, there are only three

retirement homes under her.  I knew that at  the two older homes,  the

directors were not retiring,  so it meant that I was going to get that new

home.

F: Pretty exciting, wasn't it!

R: When I did get the appointment, I told the minister that I was working

for in Fort Dodge, that I was going to go to Brooks-Howell Home in

Asheville, North Carolina.[42]  He said,  "Well I don't know. You certainly

must have it in with the Lord to get appointed to a place as pretty as

that!"

F: It was a beautiful city, wasn't it!

R: Oh, it's a beautiful place, very beautiful.

F: How many years were you there?

R: Twelve.

F:  Twelve years! I didn't realize it was that long.

R: Seventeen years at Frances de Pauw and 12 years at Brooks-Howell.

F: And you got to get some more education, too, before you went?

R: Yes, before I went the Board of Missions sent me to get a year's work in

gerontology. Then, the home wasn't quite built yet, so they sent me to New

York City and Washington, D.C.  to the Washington University during the

summer  to take a course in United States and foreign affairs.

F: Oh, my.

R: They thought since I would be working with missionaries from all over

the world, maybe I should know a little about it.

F: That was thoughtful!

R: That was a wonderful experience because the class as such was taught by

a person who thought that our homework should be out visiting the things in

Washington, D.C. We went to six embassies as a class and we were lectured

at every embassy and showed a film of that country.

F: Was this a religious group?

R: No.

F: Just at the university. You really got exposed in lots of ways!

R: Yes. It was a class funded by Reynolds. I guess maybe it would be

religious because any church could choose and send six people there for

that. Any church. And it seemed like the Methodists were about the only

ones who sent them. And here we had this, all free. They paid our tuition

and our board and our room. We spent five weeks in Washington, D.C., and

then they sent us the one week to New York. We were in a hotel there, right

near the U.N. and we went there every day for lectures. It was really

something. Then from there I went to Brooks Howell Home.

F: By that time, wasn't anyone living there?

R: Yes, there were eight people living there in an old house that was on

the ground. The new building was not quite ready for occupancy. I lived in

the old house with those eight people. One by one, as the rooms were

furnished they moved over.  As soon as the rugs were laid and the furniture

was in, they'd move a person over. I stayed in the house until last.

F: Your room got finished last, downstairs?

R: No, it really wasn't finished last, but I didn't think I should leave

any one woman over there by herself.  We had some other staff members who

were living in the new building.

F: What was the average age of your ladies?

R: When I went there, it was 72, and when I left it was 78.

F: Yes, well I remember some of them were quite elderly.

R: The oldest lady who was there, near the beginning, came in at 94. She

was practically blind. When I took her down the hall to her room, she said,

"Let's see, I have passed so many doors."  That's the way she knew her

room. She said, "Well, I'm glad there aren't a bunch of old ladies living

here!"

F: That's the kind of tone you kept in the whole place,  wasn't it?  I

mean, they had that attitude.

Once again, your place where you worked became a refuge for me. I came one

winter and spent a whole month there when I really needed to get away. My

health was really bad. You wouldn't let me pay for it. In the end I was so

surprised. I really appreciated what you were doing when I watched the

people there and got to know some of those ladies. They were just

fascinating. The places they'd been.

So that was an enrichment to your life. While you never left the country,

you could almost feel like you did in talking to some of those ladies. You

were a real strength to them. I could tell by the way they looked to you

and talked to you what it meant to them to have a home like that.

It was a total care place, wasn't it?

R: Yes.

F:  From the time they retired until they died. It was separated enough so

they could be independent as long as they possibly could. I was very

impressed with it.

One of the first homes that did much of that.  Later on there were a lot of

this type of home. It was some of the first that did it on such a good

scale.  You had a building named after you, didn't you?

R: Yes. We kept buying little pieces of land that were up for sale that

were near us,  that bordered our property so in case we wanted to expand we

would have the land and wouldn't have to go out and  tear down houses to

get it. This one piece was the last piece we bought and it had a house on

it and so they named it the McNabb House.[43]

F: Oh, that's really nice.

R: The little greenhouse, we built,  too, was called the McNabb Greenhouse.

F: Well that was your special place. We used to go down almost every day in

the winter and make sure the begonias were cared for. What else did you

have? There were a lot of pretty plants. And they each had their own garden

outside.

The recreation for several of them while I was there was Scrabble and the

puzzles, and shuffle board. I never did get to be a good shuffle board

player. I just couldn't aim.

R: Well, they have all of that inside now. They still have the outside one,

but they have some on the inside in the building.

F: So then they build another big building since you left?

R: Yes, a wing.

F: You go back now, every couple of years. Well, we're hoping that maybe we

can get you out here more often now. This has really been fun to talk about

the things that mean something to both of us. Maybe we'll add some things

later and maybe we won't.  You're going to go back home now,  after going

to Portland.

I did want to say that the reason I had this privilege of doing this tape

is that Reva came to visit us just after  New Year's and spent the whole

month of January with us. I've been so excited, having her here, I finally

just wanted to get some of these things we've talked about, on tape.

R:  Well, one of the fun things that I did after I retired, I wanted to see

the northwest United States. I didn't have enough money to go do it on a

motel basis or hotel basis or anything like that. I  wrote three Methodist

homes in the northwest and asked if they would have room or would want

somebody that would work part time. I got a callback from  the Willamette

View  Manor in Portland. Would I send them my application? I sent it. I'm

sure before they got that application I got another call saying,  would I

come? What he had done was to call somebody in Charlotte, North Carolina,

who knew me and asked them and  that's when they told them they'd be lucky

if they got me. So I got the job.

I went out there and I had a job that I could do all in a couple of days,

or I could spend several days at it, you know,  part time. If ever I wanted

to be gone for a day or two or three I could find out ahead of time if

there was going to be anything that I had to do on those days. If there

wasn't I was free to go. I had my car and I would take other people, too,

because it's more fun to have groups go than just go alone. I wouldn't like

that. So I got to see a lot of Oregon and Washington. Ended up, going clear

up to Alaska when my two years were up, my sister came up and we took a

trip up into Alaska. That was a fun thing.

F: Oh, I bet!  Why don't you tell us a little about it.

R: There was one time, in Victoria, in Vancouver, Canada. . .

F: That's close to where Gordon McNabb lives.

R: Yes. And it is the most beautiful  city. Little. It isn't awfully big.

Naturally I think it is beautiful because they have flowers on Main Street,

or on all the streets. Great big pots,   maybe 18 inches in diameter.   But

those are kept with flowers all summer long. Beautiful ones. And then the

light fixtures just above them are like round balls, and you look down the

street and they are just gorgeous.  And of course, the big hotel there.

That's the capital of Victoria. Anyway, there is the Butchart Gardens in

that town. I have been to three big gardens in the South that are known all

over the United States. The Butchart  Gardens were all three combined!

It's  the most beautiful place I think I have ever been.

F: Well, when we go to visit my brother, we're surely going to go there.

R: You have to go over by ferry.

F: That would be fun.

R: Lots of fun. You line up for that ferry really early in the morning so

you'll be sure  you get on. There's no reservations. You take your car.

F: What made you decide to go to Alaska?.

R: Why should I go clear back to Iowa before getting to Alaska!  And,

Robert McNabb was there. He was a Methodist preacher. He had the church in

Juneau.

F: He's the son of your Uncle John McNabb. He worked where?

R: At Rath's Packing.

F: It really impressed me that he worked at where I sometimes got bacon.

R: I think that was the most fun time of my life.

F: You know, we deserve, all of us, a carefree time and that's what that was.

R: That's why I'm going back up there because I made some real good friends.

F: It's been what, four, five years since you were there?

R: 1975.

F: Five years, almost.  We visited you there once. We've kind of followed

you around wherever you've been.

This has just really been fun. I've enjoyed this afternoon and last night.

Is there any advice you would like to give your great nephews and anyone

who might listen to you?

R: I probably would say, don't let yourself get too upset about things that

happen. Relax with your emotions, etc., and look at it see how you would

like it to be and how you would like, how maybe the other person would like

it to be. Look at it from a distance as if it weren't you looking, maybe

someone else looking.  How would somebody else react about it? And then

maybe you would go ahead and make a fuss about it. But if you do you do it

because you want to and not because it's just something  that flew off the

top of your head and you regret it later on.

F: Right. That's good advice. And you put respect in your life. You really

have.

R: Yes, I don't know if I did it, but that's. . .

F: Part of your nature.

R: Part of my nature.

F: But that's really what made your life successful.

R: Probably.

F: One of the big things. Plus your trust in the Lord, the two together.

Well, I thank you for that, because I  telling myself those things.

R: When I had ulcers, [44]  I went to a hospital,  to a clinic, I went to a

couple of doctors and then I went home. There was an old family doctor

there. I said something to him about it. He said, "Well, Reva, you're just

one of those McNabbs that think that you can run the world the way you

think it ought to be run. Just sit back and let somebody else do it for

awhile!"

So I went back to work and I thought it's funny. Here I am.  I consider

myself a Christian and yet I don't have faith enough that things will come

out right. So my stomach pays the price. So I started. I watched  to see

when my stomach would act up and I'd have these spells. I would find out

that it was practically always after I'd had a time with some girl upset.

She wasn't doing what I wanted to do and she wasn't listening to what I was

saying.

So I would go to bed and I would pray about it. I'd say "Now if I haven't

done everything I ought to do, let me do it. But if I've done everything I

ought to do, you'll just have to take over."   And from then on out my

ulcers quit.

F:  Well that's true. I think you put your finger on the McNabb problem,

too. I know that I really wanted to make the world come out the way I

thought the Lord wanted it. I wasn't listening, either, always, nor did I

let people find their own way and that's helped me a great deal. I can't

remember it all the time, but I keep trying. I'm glad that you put this

down because this is a philosophy that we all need, and you've made it

work. That's encouraging to all of us.

THE END

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