Mother's Day Talk 2006

 

Mother’s Day Talk 2006 Douglas Poll Ridge

On important occasions when it is appropriate to honor important people we sometimes quote from the 44th chapter of Ecclesiasticus which says “Let us now praise famous men and our fathers who begat us.” I would like to take as my text a similar passage that is not in the scriptures but should be, “Let us now praise famous women and our mothers who gave us birth.”

Let us now praise famous women.

Some years ago I attended a scientific meeting also attended by scientists from a number of European countries. I was impressed to observe that in contrast to the delegations from the United States and other major countries, the majority of the scientists in the French delegation were women. Mentioning this to one of the French scientists I learned that approximately one third of French Ph. D. scientists are women. This was at a time when in this country women Ph. D.s in the physical sciences were something of a rarity. The strong representation of French women in the sciences is in significant part the legacy of one woman born in Poland into a family of teachers during a time when Poland was under the heavy hand of the Russian Czars. Little Marie Slodovska as a child was terrorized by visits to her school by Russian inspectors trying to make sure that no one was taught in the Polish language or about Polish history. The Russians also limited the teaching of science in Polish schools so her father, a teacher at her school, seldom brought his physics apparatus into the classroom. But Maria was fascinated with the apparatus and with the physics her father taught her. Ultimately she managed to get to Paris and begin her advanced studies of physics. She undertook as a doctoral project a study of the mysterious Uranium rays that had been recently reported by Becquerel. Marie correctly deduced that these emanations were an atomic property which she gave the name radioactivity. In the process she postulated the existence of new elements exhibiting this property and then isolated first Polonium, which she named after her beloved Poland, and then Radium proving her hypothesis. Her discoveries ultimately won her many honors including Nobel Prizes in both Physics and Chemistry. She worked in a cold, small inadequately equipped laboratory, recording carefully her efforts day by day. At the same time at home she was raising her young children, nursing and bathing babies, comforting them in the weary hours of the night. Her records and correspondence note first teeth, first steps, childhood illnesses and household chores like a successful batch of fruit jellies bottled for later use. She was supported, encouraged and advised throughout by her husband and physicist colleague Pierre Curie, but her scientific accomplishments were certainly her own. She became famous and celebrated but remained unpretentious and devoted to her family and her work. Einstein said of her, “Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted.” She became an ideal for young women all over the world, especially in France. She changed the world both through her scientific work and through her family. Marie Sklodovska Curie is the mother of women in modern science and the mother of French Science.

Let us now praise famous women.

It is now commonplace to see African Americans serving in the House of Representatives, the Senate, the President’s Cabinet or the highest Federal Courts. Such things were rare or unheard of a generation ago and are possible now in significant part because of the courage of a woman born February 4, 1914, in Tuskegee, Alabama, named Rosa McCauley. Rosa worked as a child to help support her family, but ultimately earned her high school diploma, of which she was very proud. She worked for many years as a nurse’s assistant at a hospital in Montgomery. She grew up in a world where Negro people were considered inferior and had to attend separate, poorly equipped schools, had to live in segregated neighborhoods and could not use public swimming pools or whites only drinking fountains. These things never seemed right to her, but she learned to live with them as a child. She married Raymond A. Parks and the two of them sometimes discussed the unfair treatment of Negros in our country, but Mrs. Parks wanted primarily to live her life in peace. On December 1, 1955, Mrs. Parks got on the bus after work to ride home as she always did. At a subsequent stop some white people got on and the driver told her to get up and give her seat to a white person. Mrs. Parks knew it was the law that she had to give up her seat because she was Negro, but she was tired of being pushed around and refused to give up her seat. The bus driver had her arrested. She was convicted but there was a bus boycott in protest and legal appeals. The Supreme Court ultimately declared segregation on buses unconstitutional. This was the real beginning of the civil rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King gave Mrs. Parks a copy of his first book entitled, ”Stride Toward Freedom”. In it he inscribed, “To Rosa Parks, whose creative witness was the great force that led to the modern stride toward freedom.” Mrs. Parks was never blessed with children, but she is the mother of fair and decent treatment for people of all races in this country.

Let us now praise famous women.

I think I first saw a painting by Mary Cassatt in Chicago. I was traveling by train from Provo, Utah to Boston to attend college. It was necessary to change train stations in Chicago. Getting from one station to the other I found the Art Institute of Chicago and wandered in. Mary Cassatt’s pictures lifted my spirits and relieved my homesickness and apprehension about what lay ahead. I wondered why I had not heard of her before. I subsequently learned that she is one of America’s most important artists. She was an important member of the Impressionists group which included Renoir, Monet, Degas, Seuratt and others—nearly all men and nearly all French. As an American woman of her time her accomplishments seem almost unbelievable. She painted primarily women, mothers with children and children. Her vision of mothers and children is beautiful, touching yet completely unsentimental. She turns a mother giving a child a bath, a mother playing with her baby in bed, a grandmother reading to her grandchildren into great art. She teaches us to see the beauty in these scenes. Mary Cassatt never married and had no children, but she is the Mother of American Art.

Let us now praise famous women.

Miss Emma Bennett was my third grade teacher, and I counted myself fortunate to be in her class, to be one of her people. In my memory she always called us people, never boys and girls. She expected us to be grown up. Nothing was too hard for Miss Bennett’s people. We could do anything we set our minds to. Something I noticed at the time was that she wrote in a funny way. She seemed to write with her fist clenched and the pencil or chalk pushed between her thumb and the knuckle of her first finger. I learned from my parents that she suffered from crippling arthritis and was probably never free of pain. I think she gave us the sense that we could do anything because of her absolute determination not to be hampered by her illness or anything else. I am absolutely certain that Miss Bennett was capable of anything. I think, for example, that if Miss Bennett had been president of GM in the 60’s and 70’s, Honda would still be selling more motorcycles than automobiles. But because of the foolishness of men and the wisdom of women she was not. The foolishness of men because of silly ideas about what women can and can not do, and the wisdom of women because Miss Bennett would probably not have been interested in presiding over GM. She would have thought that third graders are more important than Buicks. Miss Bennett, of course, had no children of her own and was famous only among the children who attended Wasatch Elementary School and their parents. But in the minds of a succession of third graders she gave birth to the knowledge that you can always reach a little higher regardless of the obstacles you face.

Let us now praise famous women and our mothers who gave us birth.

My mother Ruth Marie Poll was born in Salt Lake City and grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, where her father worked for Continental Oil Co. For years her father was either branch or district president and her mother Relief Society or Primary President. Her mother also played the piano for nearly everything. She always played John Phillip Sousa’s “Under the Double Eagle” as the children left Sunday School opening exercises for their classes. Ruth grew up with a strong sense of what is decent and right. Her family enjoyed relative prosperity during the Depression, living in a modest brick home and owning an automobile. She remembers relatives from Salt Lake City living with her family and her father sending money to out-of-work relatives. Her extended family assumed the responsibility to care for one another as a matter of course. If she and her brothers got new clothes for Christmas, they would not be allowed to wear them to Church. There were feelings to consider in such things. Ruth went to BYU, but interrupted her education to marry and worked to put her husband through dental school. After dental school and the birth of her first child, she devoted herself to home and family. Soon my younger brother arrived and then my sister. Some years later there was a tail end brother 12 years younger than me. Our home was a place where children could be secure and confident because of her devotion to us and the structure and order she so gracefully gave to our daily life. She cheerfully maintained the relentless round of meals, getting us to bed, getting us up, getting us to practice the piano, getting us to Little League practice or dancing lessons, getting us to scout camp, helping with homework, attending recitals and baseball games and basketball games and track meets and scout courts of honor, preparing holiday and birthday celebrations, and on and on. She never missed a beat. We took it all for granted then, but from my current perspective as a

parent and grandparent it is simply awe-inspiring. Then having raised her family, after 32 years of marriage she found herself divorced and alone and reeling from the most cruel and painful shock of her life. For a time she hardly know how her life could go on. But she refused to be defeated. The heritage of courage and strength that came from her parents helped her endure. During that time she told me that her father, my Grandpa Poll, had told her, “Now Ruth, you just have to tell your troubles to line up and each take a number. You only have to deal with them one at a time.” My Grandma Poll had died a few years before, but as I think of my mother during this time I see Grandma Poll at the piano playing “Under the Double Eagle” giving instructions over her shoulder as she used to instruct the Sunday School children to go to class reverently. “Now Ruth, it’s time to get on to whatever is next in your life.” And she did. She remarried, courageously building new and enriching ties, and in so doing she widened the circle of family indebted to her. Her courage in the face of great trials has, if possible, increased her importance to all of us who look to her for love and example. She taught her children always, always to do the decent, right and considerate thing. She taught us to make the best of our abilities and opportunities. She taught us that we owe that to ourselves and, at least as importantly, to others. We had no obligation to excel, only to do our best. Her children’s accomplishments are in large part hers. Her sons served missions and earned doctoral degrees in chemistry, physics and medicine. He daughter, like her mother, interrupted her college education to marry, start a family, and nearly matched her mother’s energy and skill in undertaking to keep up with the 90’s version of her mother’s relentless round and is now a grandmother herself. Encouraged by mother’s example, her children gave her 21 grandchildren who in turn have given her 15 great grandchildren. Though she died five years ago my mother changed the world through her children who will forever call her blessed.

Let us now praise famous women and our mothers who gave us birth.

Julia LaPrele Spratley was born into the family of a teamster when that term had something to do with teams of horses. But horses were on their way out and the family always struggled. LaPrele was an excellent student and a good musician. She became the first female student body president of her high school. Showing a political cunning of which women were thought to be incapable, she launched her campaign for the office when she learned that the election was to be held of the opening day of deer hunting season. It is not a coincidence that from that year onward the opening day of deer hunting season was a school holiday for her high school. She became the first in her family ever to graduate from college. She taught fourth grade, and she sang for many years in the Tabernacle Choir. She signed the mortgage so her parents could have their own home. Too busy to marry until after she was thirty, she did not have her fourth and last child until after she was forty and as a result was never really been free of demanding responsibilities to her parents or her children. She always accepted these responsibilities gladly and considered freedom from responsibility to be of little worth. The three girls grew up wanting to be like her and striving to keep up with her example. Tears were shed over the baby of the family, as he and the Church parted ways as a young man. She struggled to balance her roles of wife, mother, teacher, and Relief Society President, always sure that she was falling short, but always exceeding even what any sensible

person would suppose was humanly possible. Her faith in her children and in the gospel never faltered. Her son has grown up to be a great father to three beautiful girls. Her daughters married returned missionaries and have given her thirteen additional grandchildren. She finally saw to it that her husband went on a mission by taking him with her on a full time mission in Louisiana. Julia LaPrele Spratley Brown was an LDS mother and grandmother who has changed the world in many ways. She has immeasurably enriched my world as the mother of my wife, who still seeks to follow her mother’s counsel and example, and as the grandmother of my children. It may be that the Tabernacle Choir could give her a nearly adequate musical praise. Certainly no one else could. In my mind she is best honored in the life of my wife Julie who combines her mother’s energy and devotion to her family with her father’s sense of humor and love of fun. Julie gives her mother incomparable praise by daily serving as the indispensable center and heart of the lives of her husband and family.

Let us now praise famous women and our mothers who gave us birth.

Amme Zitella Startup Ridge, my grandmother, was another LDS mother and grandmother. She graduated from 8th grade when that was all that was available in her home town of Provo, Utah. She married, raised a family of seven boys, never worked outside her home, and served as Relief Society President for a cumulative 20 years. At the time of her death she had over 100 living descendants. The last time we saw her she was crippled and speechless from a stroke and only a few days from her death. Julie told her that we were expecting another child, our sixth. She was visibly excited and as my father walked into the room she struggled to raise her one functioning arm and pointed emphatically at Julie. Dad said, “I know, she is pregnant. Isn’t it great!” She nodded her head with all her waning strength. It seemed remarkable to me that a woman whose body had betrayed her so badly and had spent years in a wheel-chair and was obviously near death would so rejoice at the beginning of another life. But she knew with the wisdom of women that the joy of birth and life ultimately prevail over the sorrow and fear and grief of death.

Let us now praise famous women and our mothers who gave us birth.

Emily Martin was 6 months old when we moved to Delaware in 1972. I would simply observe that it seems totally stunning and miraculous to me that our happy little baby whom we guided through teething and toilet training and kindergarten and grade school and music lessons and girls camp and youth conference and band trips and learning to drive and going to college is now, herself, the mother of 5 adorable little girls, the youngest born just weeks ago. The cycle of diapers and lessons and PTA and homework and the endless round of meals and laundry and housework is renewed. The ongoing miracle that Emily represents is now at the heart of our lives, and we can only look on with awe and admiration and gratitude.

The lives of praiseworthy women are as varied and different as those of Mary Cassatt and Rosa Parks, or those of Marie Curie and Emma Bennett or those of my mother and my grandmother, my mother-in-law and my wife and my daughter. Praiseworthy lives fit no

single model. Every life finds its own path to its own measure of fame and praise. Yet all these women, and all women around us whose stories may not be known beyond the circle of loved ones, but who have changed lives for the better deserve our praise and our emulation. They are mothers of us all. They personify a feminine, maternal capacity found in all women to bring love and new life and hope to all those whose lives they touch. God bless them every one.