It is hard to believe my mother has been gone for three and a half decades; the impact she had on my life is still frequently evident. Every time I retrace my steps to retrieve something I have forgotten, I can hear her saying “If you don’t have it in your head, you better have in your feet!” Margaret Mary Klees was born near the end of the nineteenth century and lived well into the final decade of the twentieth. Her birthplace was Emporium, the county seat of Cameron County, the least populated county in Pennsylvania. Shoe-horned in at the bottom of a deep valley cut into the “Endless Mountains” by the Driftwood branch of the Sinnemahoning, Emporium’s population peaked at about 3,000 a century ago. She married Howard Bingeman shortly after finishing high school and soon gave birth to a son. Their happy life together was cut short when Howard died of cancer, leaving her a single parent with a small child. She promptly moved back in with her parents and went to work in a printing shop, as a typesetter. A few years later she met my father, an employee of the Pennsylvania Railroad. By the time they were married, he had been transferred to another tiny railroad town, Gallitzin, high on the summit of Allegheny Mountain.
The next transfer was to Dunkirk, New York, where their life was complicated by my arrival in 1931. Three years later they were moved to Pittsburgh, where they found a comfortable home to rent, “the stone bungalow” at 823 Bank Street in Bridgeville. In 1937 they were able to purchase a new house at 1053 Lafayette Street, a house she would call home for the next fifty years. My brother Joe was born the same year. Mother was a classic 1940s homemaker, living in a classic 1940s neighborhood where everyone acted as if we were all close relatives. She navigated both of us successfully through high school and college. In 1956 our father had a serious stroke and was forced to retire; he eventually died in 1960. By 1963 both Joe and I had married, leaving her with a major empty nest.
The next couple of years were difficult for her, but in 1965 Joe’s wife Pauline gave birth to Paul. We responded with Elizabeth the next year; by 1969 Mother had seven young grandchildren living nearby and had found a new mission in life. In addition to sharing their experiences growing up, she found time to be active in her community. She was a fixture volunteering at the Library, an active member of Bethany church, and a best friend to everyone on Lafayette Street. She was proud of being able to live independently until her death in 1993.
I must mention my two grandmothers, another pair of grand ladies who overcame great adversity to leave behind impressive legacies. My father’s mother, Annie Melinda Smith, was born in 1853 on a farm in Pennsylvania’s Great Valley, between Chambersburg and Waynesboro, snug up against South Mountain. She watched Lee and Longstreet march up the Valley in late June,1863, on their way to Gettysburg. She married Adam Douglas Oyler in 1877 and was enjoying a comfortable life with him and six children when he was killed in an accident working for the Cumberland Valley Railroad in 1892. Another single parent, she and her family survived on subsistence farming on a tiny plot of ground and odd jobs until the children were all grown. She died in 1926, having earned the praise, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!”
My maternal grandmother, Sara Elizabeth Gortner, was born in Muncy, near Williamsport. She married Henry Klees and moved to Emporium to take advantage of work in the timber industry. They had a comfortable life there rearing three sons and my mother until Henry lost a hand in an accident in a sawmill. He eventually found employment as warden of the tiny county jail; they moved into living quarters in the county courthouse. Grandma Klees functioned as matron, providing meals whenever they had inmates. After Henry died, in 1932, she lived with her son Phillip. She died in 1944; in her later years she spent the winters living with us in Bridgeville. Another difficult, but productive life.
Joe and I were both blessed with wives who were outstanding mothers. When our daughter Elizabeth was born, Nancy surprised us all by announcing that she was giving up her rewarding career with the Greater Pittsburgh Guild for the Blind to focus on being a mother. Her philosophy was to expose our children to a variety of experiences and to maximize support for any that interested them. She wore numerous hats – volunteer teacher’s aide, Girl Scout leader, swim club supporter – always in a positive fashion. When Sara left for college, Nan went back to work at the Guild, now in Bridgeville, and put in fifteen more rewarding years there.
Joe’s wife, Pauline, was certainly cut out to be a mother. Thanks to a pair of twins, they ended up with four children in four years, a handful for anyone. Her biggest challenge was a strike at Duquesne Light that stranded Joe in a power plant for 52 days, leaving her to cope with a quartet of tiny children, one still a baby. Her legacy is the successful passage of all four through high school and college, two of whom made it all the way through medical school.
It would be a mistake for me to not mention three more impressive mothers, my daughters Elizabeth and Sara, and Joe’s daughter Becky. They have continued the legacy of their role models and currently are near the end of shepherding five more children through adolescence and into adulthood.
As a male I can only ponder the wonder of the role that women play as mothers in our lives. We are fortunate that that responsibility didn’t fall on our gender.