Adams Randall Family Tree

MARION ELIZABETH RANDALL: Per Elizabeth Jean Adams Moloney, 03 February, 1992: After high school, my mother, Marion Elizabeth Randall Adams, had thoughts of going to Wellesley College but lacked the language requirement. Her high school math teacher suggested Milwaukee Downer College. His sister went there and liked it; he thought that my mother would also like it. She has very fond memories of vacation time at friends' homes and of Chicago theater. After Milwaukee Downer, her mother did not think that she was ready for the coed university environment. During this year she recalls a trip with her mother to San Diego where her mother apparently had friends and my mother had a Rocky Ford friend, Earl Zimmerman, who was a naval pilot. My mother enjoyed his company and talks of his taking her for airplane rides. The following year she entered the University of Colorado. As she tells it, my father spotted her and told a friend to fix him a date with that girl, and that was her romance from then on. When I asked if she ever was out with my father's twin brother, Will, thinking that he was my dad, she would not own up to this happening to her. I suspect that by the time she knew my dad this confusion had ceased. She finished her graduation requirements in 1921 and she graduated in June of 1922. She married my father 15 July 1922. She taught math at Mapleton Junior High School, Boulder, Colorado, while my father did his medical internship. They went to Santa Rita, NM, where my father took up the practice of medicine with the copper mining company there. I was born there 25 December 1923 and my sister Mary Jo 12 November 1928. For a few years we lived in Hurley, NM, and then moved to Manzanola, CO, where my father bought a private practice. Before leaving NM, my mother learned how to make enchiladas. In Manzanola, my father had blue corn grown for him and found a Mexican lady to make the tortillas for them. Their friends enjoyed the results. My mother was very adept at needlework. I still have a couple of knit dresses she made for me in the late 1940's which I occasionally wear. Her last project was to do needlepoint for wall hangings and for chairs. We now enjoy the fruits of her beautiful work. She was an avid reader, and she always had several books sitting by her chair. She was instrumental in starting a library in Manzanola. She belonged to a mystery book of the month club, and she regularly patronized the Raton, NM, library after they moved there in 1943. Her flower garden was her world. She always managed to have flowers growing even in the years of drought. In Manzanola water was by ditch irrigation; water was brought in by canal from the Arkansas River which ran about a mile from town. In Raton there would be restrictions as to when one could water by sprinkler, and she made use of her alloted watering time to keep her garden growing. She would pick a rose and keep it in the refrigerator to last longer; she would periodically take it out to admire and smell. She liked to travel and has many fond memories of trips with my father. My mother always enjoyed going to the city for theater and especially to shop for clothes, fine china and crystal pieces. During the final years of my father's life she was pretty much house bound. After his passing, Nell Arnold, a Raton widow, went to ask my mother if she would like to be her companion on a tour that two women from Denver were conducting. Nell Arnold apologized for coming so soon after my father's passing but plans had to be made. It was great for my mother, and she and Nell made a number of trips with this group to New York City for Broadway shows and tours abroad. Nell and Mother also took a cruise together in the Caribbean and through the Panama Canal to Peru. During the last few years when Mother was still able to travel and Nell wasn't, Mother would alternate taking my sister and me with our husbands to be her companions. This was great for all of us. After Mother had a fall during the night and, as a result, was not able to maintain herself in her home, my sister and I arranged to have her go to a nursing home in Santa Fe, NM. She had always expressed that this is what should be done for her. One of my last thoughts after "breaking up her home" was "how English is my mother" with her bone china pieces, crystal and her flower garden surrounding her home. This mental picture was a vignette of my seeing England at an earlier time. Mother's mother lived to two months short of being 97 and her grandmother was one month short of 100. When I would mention to her if she would like to break her maternal family's longevity record she would be adamant in her lack of interest on that score. At this moment, her long-life genes are outweighing her will to find peace in her flower garden.