My dear Classmates,
Robin after five and a half years has come back my way. I had mourned him as lost and can excuse his delay because of the many pleasant places visited and the new babies met and am sure if I had been in his place I would have lingered longer. I have rejoiced at all the good news he has brought and regret all the sadness. My heart goes out to each of you who have had losses, parents, husbands, sisters, brothers, or children- I wish I might have known so I could have sent a personal word of sympathy.
With the passing of splendid Anna Haslup another link in our own chain has been broken. May it draw us just the nearer, I am sure as with Florence Wilson we'll think of her not less often but more tenderly.
What surprises me most in the letters is that Mollie Cullom, the youngest in our class has a son at Princeton and that Hattie Taylor the smallest of us all has a son six feet tall.
Now my son who will be thirteen in February is smaller than his ten year old sister and not yet in High School. He is first year Junior High and doesn't make any such records as Mary Abercrombie and Rosalie report for theirs. But he is all boy and all right except he will fuss with his sister. He took his first Communion with me on Sunday having been recently confirmed by our Bishop.
His sister gets A in all of her studies and has been promoted each year though her yearly attendance averages only 56%. We went to Florida by auto in Dec. 1919 and she contracted bronchial asthma and has been a constant sufferer ever since. We have summered from Vermont to Florida and wintered various and nowhere is she free of it. We spent July 1922 in a Baltimore hospital under the care of Dr. Barker's clinic with *** and no result. Last summer we spent on a farm near Rome roughing it. This winter the attacks are much more infrequent and we hope to outgrow it.
While in Baltimore I had very little time away from her bedside but tried to look up my friends. Nearly everybody was out of town. I saw Carrie Probst at Goucher Hall just as she was starting on her vacation. Miss Agnes Bacon saw me passing through a hall at Hopkins and called, from the room, 'Well if there isn't little Mary Taylor.' It made me feel fine to think that after nearly twenty years I was still remembered. Margaretta can't yet understand the little for she thinks I am much too stout.
During the five years since writing I've only one achievement to chronicle. I've run for political office and been elected. The first woman in our county to do both. Have been a member of the Board of Education of Rome Ga since March 1923. The race was quite interesting, the old board offered for re-election on a platform of complete separation from control by city Commission of school finances. Two women were then announced favoring the same platform only wanting women on the board. Then a ticket of four men were put out by the City Commission and I was asked to take the fifth place on it. This I declined and continued the race independently as begun. It was lots of fun and the last ticket and I were elected, me running fourth in the county. I've enjoyed the work and wish I could tell you some of the insides of Politics.
I had another inside view March 1924 as an election manager. As an ardent supporter of *** I boiled to see the Ku Klux knife him for McAdoo. I gloried when Georgia's work was beaten at New York. St. Peter's Vision Acts X and XI meant much in the early life on the church and it means much today for the peace of the world if Christians would live it.
At this blessed Christmas season I am wishing joy and peace to each of you-
Last Updated 8/26/99.