#52stories - Week 4

Mom. 

My mother was born January 2, 1923, in her parents' home at 3312 Florida Avenue in Richmond, Virginia.  Here is a picture of her in 1923 with Ruth, her sister, and Scott, her brother.  She said that a photographer would come by with the goat and cart and take pictures.  This is in front of their house.

She was named Jean Graham Barnett.  I don't know where the Jean came from; but she was named Graham after her father, John Graham Barnett, Jr.  Her mother was Gracie Allen Van Pelt. 

She lived with her parents, the siblings pictures above, and her half-sister, Eleanor Royall, in the Highland Park neighborhood in Richmond. This picture of Highland Park Public School was taken by by Morgan Riley (own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16024158).  It is the first school that Mom attended and is still standing at 2928 Second Avenue (at the corner of Brookland Park Blvd and Second Ave).

I'm not sure where she attended middle school, but she graduated from John Marshall High School in 1940.  She was a typist for the school newspaper called The Monocle.  They only had 11 grades at that time, so she was 17 when she graduated.  The old building has been torn down, but was located near the present campus of the Medical College of Virginia.  Here is a post card showing what it looked like (found on http://www.oldjayem.com/). 

Her family attended Highland Park Methodist Church, which was on Second Avenue catty-cornered from the elementary school.  This is a picture of the church from Google Map' it is still standing but I don't think it's a Methodist church anymore. 

After high school, Mom attended Richmond Professional Institute, now known as Virginia Commonwealth University, for one year.  She said that when they made her dissect a frog in biology, she decided college wasn't for her.  One of her first lobs was as a secretary in the Old City Hall building, seen below (found on https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/richmond/OldCityHall.html). 

After she and Dad got married in May 1944, I don't know of any jobs that Mom had outside of the home...until my junior year in high school (1968).  Then she started working for the Forsyth County Health Department.  Later she switched jobs and worked for the NC Department of Social Services office in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She stayed there until she retired.

So, I'll end this story with a few pictures of my mom over the years. From the top: Mom in Japan circa 1947; in a church photo circa late 1960s; and another church photo circa 2005.  She still looks like the last one, just a bit older.