A girl named Charlie
My mother greets 1952 Democratic Presidential
candidate Adlai Stevenson aboard a Delta flight
Today is my mother’s birthday. Happy birthday, Mama!
(No, I'm not too cheap to buy her a card!)
I won’t tell you how old she is. Let’s just say time has treated her very well.
Her name is one of the many unique things about her. She has gone through life as a girl named Charlie.
A
t the University of Georgia, she was once assigned to a men’s dormitory. A store in Atlanta once refused to accept her check. The Army, Navy and Marines all tried to recruit her.
t the University of Georgia, she was once assigned to a men’s dormitory. A store in Atlanta once refused to accept her check. The Army, Navy and Marines all tried to recruit her.When she worked for Delta Airlines in the early 1950s, the passengers always were curious when it was announced one of the stewardesses was named Charlie Curtis Smith. In the above photo, the gentleman who is about to get on the plane in Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, who was on her flight while campaigning for the 1952 Presidential election he lost to Dwight Eisenhower. (He lost again to Ike in 1956.)
My mother was named after her father, who died before she was born. He went on a fishing trip and caught pneumonia -- a death sentence back in those days.
She named my brother Charles Curtis, and I have a nephew who goes by Curtis. So the name lives on – on the male side of the family.
Anyway, she’s the prettiest, most charming Charlie I know.
I hope you have a special day, Mama.
posted by Ed Grisamore at 5:18 AM
4 Comments:
I hope you A GREAT birthday "Charlie" my grandfather was named "Charlie" so I have a special love for the name also
Ed tell your Mother Happy Birthday for us and we will send her some belated tomatoes this summer if the water police do not stop our garden from growning. Is that an old DC-3 plane she is flying on? I think they seated about two dozen passengers.
Yes, John, that's a DC-3. Mama still tells us stories about flying from Atlanta to Dallas. The plane stopped 13 times -- in places like Macon, Columbus, Montgomery, Jackson, Shreveport, etc. No such thing as a non-stop back in those days.
As always, look forward to those Kelley Tomatoes. Wouldn't be summer without 'em.
Happy Belated Birthday to Charlie from one of her Riverwood Garden Club buddies, Liz. Charlie and another member, Ann, kept me sane when I had three children under the age of 2 1/2.
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