Walter and Bessie Peterson, a Photo Essay

     Having just written about my grandparents, Walter Leonard Peterson and Elizabeth "Bessie" Hudson Peterson, I notice that I have many photos of them together through the years. So I thought it would be nice to do a photo essay showing them as they grew old together.

     This is the only photo I have of Bessie before she met Walter, she is around 14 here I think.

     And here is Walter's High School Graduation photo:

Walter and Bessie's wedding photo 17 Aug 1917.

Walter and Bessie and their first son, Wally, in 1918.

Walter, Bessie and family: Wally, Betty and Jack, 1924

Walter, Bessie, Wally, Betty, Jack and Bessie's sisters ca 1927

Walter and Bessie, 1928

Walter, Betty, Bessie and Jack, ca 1930

Wally, Betty, Walter, Bessie and Jack ca 1936

Bessie and Walter ca 1935

Walter and Bessie ca 1939

Walter and Bessie ca 1940

Walter Bessie and Grace about 1940

Walter and Bessie also around 1940

Walter and Bessie with Edith and Luke Kells about 1942

Walter and Bessie 1943

Walter, Bessie and Walter's brother and sisters, Aug 1945

Walter and Bessie 1947

Walter, Bessie, Wally, Betty and Jack, June 1947

Wally, Jill, Rick, Bessie and Walter, 1948

Bessie and Walter at Mt. Rushmore, ca 1950

Walter, Bessie and Jack ca 1956

Walter and Bessie 1959

Walter and Bessie 1964

Walter, Bessie, Ruby and John ca 1965

Walter and Bessie, Aug 1966

Walter, Bessie, Margaret, Wendy and Rhonda June 1967

Walter, Bessie, Jill, Rick, Margaret and Rhonda 1966

Walter and Bessie, 50th Wedding Anniversary, 1967

Walter and Bessie, July 1968

Walter and Bessie, ca 1969

Walter and Bessie, 1970

Walter, Bessie and Alma ca 1970

Walter, Bessie, Alma and Grace ca 1970

Walter and Bessie, 1971

Walter, Bessie, Betty, Jack and Rhonda 1971

Walter and Bessie 1974

Walter and Bessie, 57th Wedding Anniversary, 1974

Walter and Bessie, Athens, 1974

Walter, Bessie and Wally 1974

Walter and Bessie, 1975

Walter, Bessie, Grace, Alma, Michael, and Jill Apr 1976

Walter and Bessie, 60th Anniversary, Aug 1977

Walter and Bessie, Aug 1977

Walter, Bessie and Jack, 1979

Walter and Bessie, 1979

To Walter and Bessie for all the love that was and is and will ever be!

My Grandparents and I Part III: My Paternal Grandfather

     My father's father, Walter Leonard Peterson, was my favorite grandparent. He was a Presbyterian Minister but he wasn't censorious or didactic. He didn't make you feel wrong or lacking or unworthy. I remember going to a Church service of his once and his sermon was on love, no hellfire and brimstone anywhere around. He was scholarly as befit a Minister but also generous, warm and friendly. His congregations loved him as my sister and I witnessed when we went to a farewell party given for him at the time he left the church in Tacoma. His parishioners gave him and my grandmother a big farewell dinner with a cake and speeches. He had a true sense of humor. At that dinner he stood up and introduced my father as "the baby of the family". Then my father stood  up. My Grandfather was 6' tall but my father was 6'2" tall-the baby of the family!

     Before I was 11 my grandparents did not live nearby but they would visit occasionally. The visit I remember was in  1959 ( I know the year because Ancestry has the passenger list that shows him arriving in the UK the year before!).  He had spent a year in Europe through a Ministerial exchange program. He had taken a Scottish Church and that Minister had preached at his Church in Tacoma. This gave him the opportunity to visit Sweden from where his parents immigrated  He and Grandma visited us in Little Rock, Arkansas on their way home. I'll never forget his telling us about Scotland and Sweden and how happy he was to find living relatives in Sweden. He gave me a Scottish bagpiper figure and a Danish doll, both of which I still have 58 years later.

     Walter was very proud of his Swedish heritage and he told us stories of his father's trip to America and of his mother's father's journey. He spoke Swedish and corresponded with relatives in Sweden  in both English and Swedish. He got me very interested in Sweden as a child, one year I even saw that we carried out all the Swedish Christmas (Jul) traditions. My mother in law was also of Swedish heritage so I continued this with my own children. My interest in genealogy largely started with hearing my grandfather's stories and wanting to know more. Two years ago, my sister and I visited Sweden ourselves and saw the places his parents came from. We even met the grandchildren of one of the relatives he visited when he went there. Throughout the trip I was very conscious of how happy he would have been to know that we were there following in his and his ancestors footsteps.

     Walter was a very tall, thin man but he had a sweet tooth and we always had dessert at my grandparents' house. I remember that he liked to drink coffee through a sugar cube. You put the sugar cube between your teeth and drink the coffee through it. A dentist's nightmare but quite delicious!  He claimed that it was a Swedish custom. When we were in Sweden I asked our cousin, Roger, if it actually is a custom.  Roger said that it was but only among the older people and he seemed amused by the question. I  always half suspected that he had made up the Swedish custom bit so it was good to get that confirmed. My grandpa always said things with a twinkle in his eye so you never were sure if he was joking or not.

     Family was extremely important to Walter. He would visit family members wherever he went, driving out of his way to see them. Unfortunately he often didn't call ahead. My grandmother would beg him to do so but he would say, no, they'll be happy to see us. He was absolutely certain that he would be welcomed by anyone in the family. I'm sure he was but I'm also sure that they were annoyed to not have any notice. So going places with my grandparents,

My grandfather with me n his knee and my cousins Jill and Ricky Jan 1950

Walter in kilts in Scotland, 1958

Margaret, Wendy, Bessie, Walter and Rhonda, Seattle 1967

Walter with Swedish cousins 1958

Wendy and Rhonda with granddaughters of  Swedish cousin, 2014

Bessie, Jack and Walter 1979

Wendy, Walter and Devin 1981

my sister and I met many relatives that we would otherwise not have met. After my Dad died I received his family papers. Included in them was my grandfather's address book. He had addresses of not only his brothers and sisters, his children and grandchildren but many cousins of both his and his wife's. There also was a typed list of birthdays, anniversaries and dates of death of everyone you could think of. This was done with a page for each month and a list of days with the name of the person born, married or died on that day. He even had the family of his wife's sister's ex-husband.
                         
     After my parents divorced in 1959 my mother, sister and I moved to Seattle. Thus we were close     to my grandparents in Tacoma and saw them often.  My grandfather was an important man for me at that time. He listened to me and treated me like an adult not a child. I recall going on a walk with him at one point discussing existentialism, something I wouldn't have been able to do with other relatives. He accompanied me to the Father-Daughter Dinner at my High School in 1965 and I felt very proud to be there with him.

     The only person I ever heard complain about my grandfather was my stepmother, LaVerne. She felt that he mistreated his wife because he always was asking her to do things for him, get him this or that, for instance. And it was true, he did. I just didn't think she minded and I did hear her voice her displeasure at him for various other things. Their love and devotion to each other for 65 years was exemplary and I have written about it elsewhere. But one story I haven't written before shows clearly how much she meant to him. Near the end of their lives they were in a retirement home in Duarte, California. I used to visit and one time I came and found that they were in separate rooms. I asked my Dad how come? He said that my grandfather had started to not care about getting up and doing things so the caretakers had moved him across the hall. This way he had to get up and get dressed and walk across to see Bessie. And so he did everyday, spending the day with her, walking together to the dining hall or perhaps taking a walk on the grounds. She was the center of his life.  In 1982, he died 7 months and two days after she did.   He meant a lot to me and I hope to be as meaningful a person to my own grandchildren.                                                                                              

My Grandparents and I, Part II: My Paternal Grandmother

     My father's mother was named Elizabeth Hudson at birth but was called Bessie. I never heard anyone call her by any other name than Bessie. She was always warm, kind and gentle with a sweet smile.  In fact, pretty much the way you want a grandmother to be!

     She and my grandfather loved to visit family. They kept in touch with everyone as I saw when my father died and I inherited my grandfather's (and grandmother's) address book. They had siblings, children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, cousins, the families of their siblings' spouses and ex-spouses and on and on in the book! They regularly visited everyone all over the U.S. My grandmother was particularly close to her sisters, Alma and Mable, and I recall many visits with them. It gave me a real feeling of belonging to a family and having a wide circle of relatives.

     When I was having some trouble with sleep and talking in my sleep as a child she said she  understood and told me two stories I have never forgotten about herself. It seems that she used to sleep walk as a child.  One night her parents woke up hearing a noise of someone walking around downstairs. Her Dad picked up his rifle and started down the stairs, swiftly followed by her mother saying, "Don't shoot, Ben! It might be Bessie!" This became a family catch phrase after that! (It WAS Bessie.) Another time they followed a similar sound only to find Bessie walking in her sleep on the top of the railing around the front porch. The house was built over a basement and on a hill so this was actually quite high up. They didn't want to startle her so they watched silently with their hearts pounding as she walked around the railing. Fortunately she didn't fall and when she got down they picked her up and took her back to bed.

     Bessie was the youngest of four girls but she was the first to marry. When she came home from College with her young man in tow the family tried to convince her that she was too young to get married.  But she prevailed and they were married. And they were married the rest of her life. It was always apparent that they were devoted to each other, equally in both directions. My grandfather was a commanding figure and could dominate a conversation but when she quietly and calmly gave her opinion he always listened. He was raised a Lutheran and became a Presbyterian minister. I asked him once why he had become a Presbyterian, not a Lutheran, minister.  He said, "Because Bessie was a Presbyterian." That says a great deal about her position in his life.

     As I have researched the family tree,  I have come to have even greater admiration for her. In about 1931, with the "Great Depression" in full sway, my grandfather decided to go to Seminary and become a Minister. In my mind most wives would go, "Are you out of your mind? We have three small children to feed and there's a depression on!" But instead, she went to work and supported him and the family while he went to Seminary. (She might have said that, too but her actions were completely supportive.) She had a College education when most women didn't and she used it to support her husband and family. Because her family came first.

     In an entirely different area she always amazed me because when we went places she would know the names of all the trees and all the flowers. She loved flowers and we often went to visit gardens with her

Bessie about 16 and her Dad

Bessie on her wedding day

Bessie and Walter wedding photo

Bessie and Family 1925

Bessie and Walter, 60th Anniversary, 1977

. I found a description of her wedding in the local newspaper and it described the Church as being abundantly decorated with smilax. I had to look that up, smilax, a small white flower. So I see her there surrounded with flowers. I will always think of her with her Walter and her flowers!

On Grandparents' Day: My Grandparents and I, Part 1, My Maternal Grandmother

     My sister reminded me today that it is Grandparents' Day. My grandparents were very important people in my life. One grandparent, though, I didn't know.  That was my mother's father, Lucas C. Kells. He died in 1946, two years before I was born. I feel a strong connection to him, nonetheless, because my mother spoke so highly of him and wanted me to know him through her.

     My mother's mother, though, Edith Rosetta Stefani Kells, I knew quite well. When I was younger she would come visit us in the summer, staying for a week or two. I remember picking her up at the Greyhound or Trailways bus station, marveling that she came all that way on a bus! The main thing I recall about those visits is that she taught us card games Old Maid and War when we were young, Gin Rummy and Canasta when we were older. But, especially, she taught us Solitaire. My recall is that she taught me that when you couldn't make any more moves then you went through the remaining cards one by one instead of by threes. So this is how I played it (you win more often that way!). One day I was playing it and someone saw me and said that I was cheating. I said I was playing it the way my Grandmother taught me. He told me that if I played it that way in Vegas they'd toss me out of the casino! But since I don't care what some guy in a casino thinks I go ahead and play it the way she taught me.  Like I say, you win more that way!

     When I was 11, my parents got divorced and my mother, my sister and I moved from Little Rock, Arkansas to Seattle, Washington and moved in with my grandmother.  My grandmother was quite upset with my father plus, my mother had changed from having been a woman living on her own away from home as compared to when she was a girl. So I heard much harsh criticism of my father from her and overheard several loud shouting matches between my mother and her. I didn't like hearing bad things about my father or angry words addressed to my mother. I really didn't like hearing my mother cry.  So my grandmother and I got off on the wrong foot at that time. I never said anything to her or my mother about any of that. Meanwhile, I was a pre-teen and then a teen.  My grandmother was very critical of me, mostly to my mother and other people in the family.  I was lazy, I ate too much (my sister ate too little, neither of us seemed to be satisfactory in this area), I didn't help enough around the house or the yard (this was true). So, the relationship was somewhat strained. To be honest, I pretty much ignored her criticisms. None the less, we did often have a good time together.  I wish now that I had asked her to teach me to knit and crochet or to bake the Christmas cookies she made every year.  Even how to take care of a house and yard. She could have taught me all these things. I did learn to crochet and made one shawl. But since then I have forgotten the technique.  My daughter recently started to learn and I told her how happy my grandmother would've been to know that she was learning to do that.

     Now, after many years of working on my family tree I feel quite different toward her. Having inherited many of her photos I have been struck at the resemblance between her and my daughter. And now my granddaughter always asks me about a picture I have of my grandmother in my bedroom. I realized that my granddaughter looks a lot like she did in that picture. We are all on the maternal line together. I have had great satisfaction in tracing my grandmother's family, both of her parents from Northern Italy, her mother from Piemonte and her father from Trentino. In so doing I suppose that I have gotten to know her better as well. I wish that she had been here to hear all that I discovered of her Italian roots! Perhaps she would have felt that all that reading wasn't a total waste!

Edith about age 8

My daughter, Devin, age 6

Edith, age 18 (the picture on my wall)

Elinor, age 3

My grandmother, my mother, my daughter and I November 1981