Iva Alice Reid Hamilton 1897-1977
Mother of Norma Faye Hamilton Green
My parents, grandparents, and great grandparents are tenaciously anchored to the American Midwest. From the most modest soddy homes like where we lived when my little sister Blanche was borne to the newer house in 1906 that my dad built that had windows…and one of the first telephones around. The rugged surroundings of the Kansas landscape didn’t hand out anything to those who weren’t willing to work hard for it. My memories of my dad are that he was never idle and he always had hired men around that my mother cooked for. He raised and butchered hogs, delivered cattle by train to Kansas City (twice a year), he did a little real estate work, owned a harness shop, and managed a well drilling business by himself. When I was 9 years old our family suffered a devastating blow when my dad and several of his crew got typhoid fever from drinking bad water. My dad died at age 36 leaving my mother with five girls ages 9 to 1-1/2 years. We had a home but we all had to work hard just to get by. My mom’s dad, Grandpa Kirk, and my dad’s brother, Uncle Louis (Reid) helped us as they could but we ate mostly potatoes, beans and bread.
I took advantage of any opportunity to extend my schooling past the 10th grade and with a lot of hard work and help of friends and family I finished high school and passed a State exam to get a teaching certificate. I was teaching at the Schoen School at age 19.
A widowed neighbor in Clayton had two children and a sister named Doris that would come to visit. Her name was Mattie and she was quite the matchmaker and had arranged for me to meet her brother Will. Our 200-mile courtship became an engagement when Will came to see me on the following Christmas vacation.
Will’s friend Charles was engaged to my sister Eva so we had Charles’ white-haired grandpa, who was an English Minister, perform both weddings on the same day. The honeymoon was short though, Uncle Sam had a letter waiting for us in Greeley, Will and Lew were both to report in three weeks. Plans change – I updated my teaching certificate and made the best of what WWI was offering. Finding that I was expecting, my plans changed further, my teaching year would be cut short and I agreed to stay with Mattie. I was at Mattie’s when I delivered Reid, a perfect 7-lb baby boy! Reid was 3-months old when Will saw him for the first time.
November 14th, 1940. We worked hard to get prepared to have a farm sale; everything was on the ticket, we would be out of feed by Christmas, but a nasty storm had closed most of the roads and it was sloppy and cold. Many of the men we hoped would come just couldn’t make it. The dairy herd sold well but not much of anything else. We left Kansas, heading for Idaho. The 30’s had been a series of terrible events, things that our friends and neighbors all lived through but nothing that could be described with any sober detail to anyone that hadn’t lived through it.
Bank failures were the first of the stinging chain of events as man failed man, mother nature, not to be outdone, dealt us the flooding of the Republican river – rich fields were buried under sand, trash, and debris; houses were pushed into ruin and roads were impassible. Three of our milking cows perished in the subsequent lightning storm. ’34 brought searing heat – 100-degrees or more for several weeks fostering depression, misery and fatigue. Richard contracted polio the next year but reprieve of our misfortune brought him through without any lasting effects – truly a blessing. Richard had just recovered when Grandpa had a stroke, dying just a few weeks later. The dust storms of the 30’s had replaced all color in our lives with a ghost gray coating of despair that only retreated as we headed for the greener valleys of Notus Idaho.
Cancer took my Will just a couple of years after we arrived in Notus…reaffirming that life is hard.
I would have missed a lot of happy times if I had given up. Enjoy life’s little victories, love your family, and live with hope in your heart for the joy of tomorrow.
