Things About My Sister

1962, I think
What an adorable little girl.
I'm guessing 1956

This photo is of 3 adorable children, probably looking at a Christmas tree Christmas morning. This is the banister of our Edgar Street home which lead up to our bedrooms and bathroom. The ages suggest this was Christmas of 1962, the last Christmas for my mother.

Mary Anne would have been 7, the only one old enough to remember her.










We didn't have a lot of interaction with her as she was 4 years older than me, and a girl on top of it. Joe and I were just babies, people she thought annoying as many girls do.

She was our father's princess a name he would call her as he picked her up in the air and naturally she loved it. Once she told me that he only did that once after our father remarried. Apparently it upset our new mother.

As the only girl in our new family, and the oldest she took a lot of abuse from our new mother. It started out by having her do everything around the house and once puberty set in - it was game over. She couldn't tolerate another woman in the house and it was ugly.

Joe and I would be eating our breakfast while things clearly wrong were going on but we were too young do do anything about it. We'd look at each both wondering what we could do, and ashamed that we didn't do something. We were 9 and 10 years old respectively and completely unsure about how we could protect her. Our powerlessness rivaled Mary Anne's. It is a very unpleasant experience that repeated itself hundreds of times. Every morning was a nightmare.

1955
As she approached her 18th birthday she moved into a girlfriend's home and we never saw her again in our Red Lion home. I don't blame her. What she endured those years would have had CPS take all of us away and put us in foster homes had it existed in that day.

During those teenage years she worked at restaurants. As a high school graduation present both she and Mike, who was in the same class, received brand-new 1972 Pintos. Interestingly she and Mike received it during the summer between their junior and senior years. She totaled her's that first week and Mike never graduated. Guess who didn't receive new cars when they graduated ;-)

Senior Picture 1972
She married the first guy she ever dated in October of 1973 at St. Joseph's in Dallastown. Our parents didn't attend, but eveyone else did. I had to miss giving the homecoming queen whatever a Freshman Class President gives her. The Vice President filled in for me. She had 3 boys with James Sprenkle; lived in York and Red Lion PA as well as Houston, TX, Yucapia and Colton, CA. I probably forgot some of the places they lived, but that's what I remember. During their marriage she worked as a dispatcher for AAA, police and sheriff at different times.

Her stroke in 1991 at the age of 36 led to me coming to Southern California in an effort to help and meeting Susan Ryan, a delightful schoolteacher in Hesperia. I wonder whatever became of her. Is she still teaching 4th grade? Anybody know?

Comments

  1. MaryGeakeMay 29, 2019 at 2:08 PM

    See, good things (Sue Ryan) come out of bad things (my stroke).

    ReplyDelete

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