I found this front page of the Springfield Republican for August 30, 1946 – the day I was born – on Genealogy Bank. Click on it to enlarge. You can read my birth story here – Friday’s Child is Loving and Giving.
I am the first daughter, born during a thunderstorm in the middle of the night.
I was born at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts, August 30, 1946. My parents arrived there the fall of 1945 when my father was chosen as Pastor of St. John’s Congregational Church. My mother was 23 and my father was 33. Although I was one of the people present in the delivery room, I’ve had to rely on the memories my mother shared with me. 
My mother was given a wiff of ether as I crowned so she did not see me born. I had a head full of dark hair, enough that a nurse pulled it up into a little pony tail and tied a ribbon around it. The nurse told my mother that all of the dark hair was going to come out and I would have blond hair. She was right. All of that fell out and I had a small amount of blond hair. It would be years before there was enough to pull up in a ribbon. My eyes were blue/gray.
My mother said that she was unable to breast feed me because she had no milk. I always felt very sad about this, not so much for me, but because I think that if I could have gone back in time with what I learned about nursing when my own babies were born, I could have helped her make a go of it. After ten days in the hospital, we went home. A member of the church, Reginald Funn, drove us to the parsonage because my parents didn’t have a car until I was 8 years old. Looking at my baby book, there were many visitors and gifts from friends, family and neighbors.
Both of my grandmothers came from Detroit to help out. I was the first grandchild on my father’s side and the second on my mother’s side. My maternal grandmother, Fannie Graham, had a cold so she was regulated to washing clothes and cooking and other duties that kept her away from me so I would not catch her cold. My Grandmother Pearl Cleage had the care of me. My mother said that her pediatrician told her not to give me any water because it would make me drink less milk. Below is a letter my Grandmother Pearl wrote home about it below. Poor baby me.
In this letter, Toddy was my father’s family nickname. Louis was his MD brother. Barbara is my father’s oldest sister, left in charge while her mother was in Springfield.
210 King St
Springfield Mass
Monday 23/46
Dear Barbara,
How are you? How are Gladys and Daddy and the boys?
We have had a time with this baby, the first nights and all last week Toddy and I were up all night each night! She cried and cried and screamed until she would be exhausted and so was I! Last night and today, so far, she has slept a lot better. Before we talked with Louis I’ve put her feedings 3 hours apart, just last night because she acted like she would burst open, with crying. This a.m. we got the Bio Lac and are giving her water regularly too and she is acting 100% better!
When I would have given her water before, they told me her stomach would not hold it and food and had me stop her feeding at about 3 ounces, for fear she couldn’t hold it all, not to feed her too much, and Kris just starving to pieces! I did as they told me until I said I was going to talk to Louis because I had never seen a baby eat and be dry and then just act like she was starving to death and never sleep!
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I regret that nobody took any photographs of little me with either of my grandmothers.
Two excerpts from a letter my father wrote home in January. Actually, I did look like him, and more and more so as the years passed until now, if he were still here, we could pass as twins.
January 1, 1947
“…Doris and Kris welcomed in the New Year in their own inimitable way…at home. They got out only once during the holiday…on Christmas day we went to a Turkey dinner at the Funns. We had a tree “for Kris (and Doris) which Kris ignored…disdainfully. Our double-octet went out caroling to the hospital Christmas eve (yes Louis, for the white folks) and came back by and sang carols for us afterwards. Kris listened to them with her usual disdain…and they all agreed that “she is the most sophisticated looking baby they had ever seen!”
“…. She loves to play from 2 until 4 a.m. She had the sniffles for part of one day…but seems to have so far avoided a serious cold…even with us and the rest of Springfield down with Flu, Grip and everything else… She weigh 11:4 (last week) She’s learned to yell or scream or something…and will scream at you for hours if you’ll scream back (Just like M-V) and seems to love it…then after an hour or so…her screaming will shift into a wild crying…and then she must be picked up and played with for several more hours…SHE LOVES ATTENTION…No, mama, we do not let her cry…and her navel seems to be doing O.K. AND SHE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE ME! All reports not withstanding!”
March 18, 1947 – from a letter to my father’s sister, Anna by my mother.
“Kris (with her 2 teeth) says anytime for you all laughing at her bald head – I fear it’ll be covered all too soon with first one thing and then another.”
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March 31, 1947 – From a letter to the Cleage’s from a friend of my parents in Springfield
“Last night at home, Kris had quite a time with her teeth and I think Doris was quite anxious. Reverend Cleage had to leave for Loring before Kris really let go so he didn’t know how much the baby suffered. I know it won’t last long, tho’ for mother says some teeth give more pain than others, but it is soon over with.”
__________________
From an April 7, 1947 letter my father sister Gladys wrote home while visiting Springfield.
“Kris is no good- but cute! Head’s not like the picture – kids! I definitely have no way with babies – I have truly lived!”
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June 29, 1947 (from a letter by my father’s visiting sister, Anna)
“… Doris went to a reception today and I watched Kris. I tricked her, I played some soft music on the radio and waltzed around the room with her a few times, then eased into a rocking chair and first thing she knew she was asleep – so I put her in her crib and the next thing she knew Doris was home waking her to feed her.”
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I seem to have done fine, as you can see below, with my dirty bare feet I am sitting on the porch with my father’s father and my parents. I started walking at 9 months and my first words were – “Bow wow.” soon followed by “Some manners if you please!” My mother said that people didn’t usually understand what I was saying when I came out with that.
You can read the front page of the Springfield Republican for the day I was born here.
I am the first daughter, born during a thunderstorm in the middle of the night.
I am the one walking to school whistling when the woman turns around and says “A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to a no good end.”
I am one of the cousins squashed into the back seat singing on the way to and from our grandparents.
I am the six year old sick with pneumonia, upstairs in bed for months.
I’m the 12 year old elementary school graduate, out of school early and throwing snowballs with my friends.
I’m the double promoted 7th grader without friends who knows how many minutes left in each school day.
I’m the high school student longing for escape.
I’m the girl standing on the sidelines at Youth Fellowship dances.
I’m 19 and hopelessly in love.
I am 20 with a broken heart.
I’m the printmaker using found zinc scraps for my pieces.
I’m 23, alone and in labor with my first child, in a large dark house, waiting.
I’m a woman, carrying, laboring, birthing and nursing.
I’m the city girl milking goats, chopping wood and plucking chickens.
I’m the 35 year old mother of 5 dancing around the kitchen with my young son.
I’m the 45 year old mother of 6 walking four fast miles around the lake, ignoring my aching achilles tendons.
I’m the granma with bad feet making my way around the track.
I’m the child and the woman moving from place to place.
I’m a woman who has been with this man forty eight years.
I’m a gardener without a garden, a water woman without water and a sewer who rarely sews.
I’m an artist and a writer and a teacher.
I’m a feeler trying to be invisible.
I’m the one the ancestors come through.
This is a small undated Polaroid snap shot. I dated it by looking at other photos from that year that were dated. It was probably taken in the summer or early fall. I was 16 and would be a high school sophomore in the fall of that year.
What were we reading about? I decided to look up what happened during 1962. It was an eventful year. Lot’s of above ground nuclear tests; countries in Africa and the West Indies gaining their freedom; Civil Rights demonstrations in Albany, GA; the Berlin wall; Thalidomide; the Cuban missile crisis and George Wallace winning the governorship of Alabama are a few stories we could have been reading.
In February of 2013 I did post about reading the newspaper on a Sunday morning Reading The Newspaper – 1962. Appears my mother and I did a lot of tandem newspaper reading.
My grandfather, mother, sister and I were spending several weeks at my Uncle Louis Cleage’s cottage in Idlewild. We made a day trip to Ludington, on Lake Michigan, about 30 miles from Idlewild. We had walked out to the light house, which was no longer in use. 1956 was the year I wore glasses.
In this picture, taken facing land but on the same pier, you can see how the cement walk slopes down toward the lake. There was a flat part down by the water where fish had washed up and they were flopping around trying to get back to the water. My sister Pearl and I climbed down and were throwing the fish back in the water until our grandfather noticed and told us to come up and stop it before we fell in the water. We did it but we were not happy about it.
In 1968 when I was an art student drawing all the time, I often went to the Detroit Institute of Art to sketch in the Entrance Hall where two long rows of knight’s armor stood against the walls. They are now enclosed in glass cases, but at the time they were just out there, standing along the walls.
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In 1997, my youngest son Cabral and I took a train trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico from our home in Idlewild, MI. We went to visit another homeschooling family. I had met the mother, Sandra Dodd, online in the AOL Homeschooling forum. 
Other 
homeschoolers in our area of Lake County, Idlewild were few and far between. I thought it would be interesting to actually meet in real life one of the people I spent so much time (and money in those days) visiting with online. When unschooler Sandra invited us out, we went. We were there almost a week and saw a inactive volcano, played miniature golf, watched videos and went to a science museum. What stands out in my mind the most is the day we visited a museum that had actual items from New Mexico’s early days, including Spanish armor, and they let people try it on. Above you see my son trying out the various items. He even got to go outside for a photograph and in the New Mexico landscape.
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This weeks prompt for Sepia Saturday is Boudica, a freedom fighter for the local British tribes against the Roman invaders, this makes my choice of Robert Williams all the more relevant. Robert Williams died in 1996. He was author of the book “Negro’s With Guns” and an advocate of self defense for black people. He was from North Carolina. He published his newsletter The Crusader for years. The logo was a little figure of a crusading knight.
I remember a letter from my mother describing Robert Williams picketing the local newspaper, The Lake County Star, with a photograph of him wearing his WW I German helmet. Unfortunately, I can’t find it. I did find a description of the picket by Father Joe Fix given at Robert Williams funeral. Father Joe was the Priest at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Baldwin, MI where Robert’s wife, Mabel, was a member. Below are his remarks. You can see the full transcript of the funeral by clicking the title.
Father Joseph Fix St. Ann’s Catholic Church Baldwin, MI
I first met Robert almost nine years ago. I was invited to a party for the priest who had preceded me at St. Ann’s. Father Ray was saying good-bye to his people. I’ll never forget he singled out Robert and he looked at Robert and he said, “Robert, thank you for being the conscience of Lake County.” I never forgot that. It was only last week that Father Ray came by, and he was going to help a celebration and he said, “Robert is the first prophet that I have ever met.” The first prophet. I wanted to add, in my book, he was the first martyr that I ever met, because Robert had a sincere table appetite for news and he would watch 
all of Rush Limbaugh. Anybody who listens more than two seconds to Rush is definitely a martyr. I remember walking Downtown Baldwin. It’s not very big, and I seen this character on the main street. And he had this funny helmet on, with this red light bulb on top. It was flashing, and he had four-sided sandwich board, not two sided. And I walked up and it was Robert. He was protesting the local rag because it refused to print his letter to the editor. Guess what? The letter was printed the next week. I remember going to one of my first meetings involved with a new superintendent, and Robert was there, voicing his displeasure with the counselors of the high school because they were not reaching the needs of our youth in that county. I remember going to courthouse and sometimes supporting people I knew that were on trial, and Robert was there. He was there much more often than I was, and much more vocal… standing up for victims of an unjust system To me, Robert truly was Prophet. When I was a child, I always thought of Prophet as someone who foretold the future. Robert did that. But the main job of a prophet, as I’m growing up, is to speak out against injustice; whether it was Isiah or Jeremiah called by God to speak to the Jewish people. And he mentioned they were killed, but that was their job. Whether it was Ghandi who answered the call in India, or Nelson Mandela in South Africa. But it was Robert Williams who answered the call in Monroe, NC. He answered the call to speak out against the unjust system and people that would not let children swim in a pool because they happened to be a different color. He spoke out against the injustice that would allow a man to protect his wife, his children, his property. And even though he was exiled, he spoke, from Cuba, and as far away as China, against the injustice of the system that would not allow someone to be free. I believe that God gave us the gift of Robert Williams to challenge us to be Prophet, and if not to be Prophet, to
support prophets. I really believe that. I believe that we need to answer the call to continue to speak out against racism and sexism… and maybe when we do, people of different cultures and races can get together and share food and laugh together, cry together, but especially learn to dream together. We need to speak out against the injustice of violence and war. An exorbitant amount of our tax money is spent to create the largest military operation in the whole world. And maybe when we speak out against the injustice, there will be money to teach our children to take care of our elderly and to protect our land. We need to speak out against the injustice of greed. There’s a greater chasm now between the rich and the poor.. we’re losing our middle class. And maybe when we continue to reach out and speak against the injustice, all of God’s children will be able to enjoy the gifts from God. We come here today to say thank you for the gift of Robert who answered the call to be Prophet. I will never forget (and I really believe that Mabel is Prophetess, right along with Robert), I will never forget on the day that Robert died. Mabel and I were praying over him, and afterwards, she said these marvelous words, “He really did make a difference.”
To read more about Robert Williams In Memory of Robert F. Williams
For several years after we moved to this house, a scene from my past would come to me every time I was getting ready to brush my teeth. I would see a couple that modeled for my life drawing class. he was white, short with longish, almost white, blond hair. She was black, brown skinned with an afro. We were at a small demonstration on campus. Their two daughters, in my memory they were about 8 and 6 with curly afros, coloring between their parents. The woman and I smile at each other. And then the scene is gone.
The photograph below was taken in 1981 when we lived on St. John Road in Simpson County, Mississippi. You can read more about that time in this post P.O. Box 173 1/2. I was 35 and pregnant with my fifth child, who turned out to be my first son, James. Tulani and Ayanna (with a piece of gum hanging out of her mouth) are in the photo with me. My husband, Jim, was the photographer. He was about to go to Boston for an organizers workshop. He was working for the Woodcutters Union at the time and not making a living wage. My son seems to wear a similar expression sometimes. Maybe I passed it on. I’ve added a photo of my father and grandfather.
My chemistry career is hazy. I took the required 1 year of classes in high school. I remember the periodic table on the wall, the bunsen burner and the smell of the room. I don’t remember who my teachers were. Maybe it was Mrs. Peterson for the second semester. I know that she was my homeroom teacher for my senior year. We had home room at some point during the day, not at the beginning or the end because we all came to school and finished our day at different times, depending on our schedule.
I didn’t like Ms. Peterson. I can’t remember what she looked like. When I try, I see Ms Jones in the photo above. I didn’t like her either. At some point Peterson asked if she could call me “Kirsten” because she liked that better than “Kristin”. I said no, she could not.
Early in my senior year, I decided not to go to my graduation and not to get graduation pictures and therefore not to pay the senior fees. As the year ended, Peterson told me that if I didn’t pay the fees, she was going to put me out of her senior homeroom and I would have to go to the auditorium instead. For reasons I don’t remember, I must have cared because I paid the fee and went to my graduation. That made my Grandmother Cleage happy. It was past time for senior photos by then, but I was in the year book for a few group photos – the one above and another one for the Library staff. I enjoyed my high school career as much as I look like I did in this photo.
I took 1.5 quarters of chemistry in college. At the end of my freshman year, I decided to go into nursing so that I would always be able to find work in the far off places I was going to live in. Chemistry was a television class with a day or two of lab work a week. My experiments never came out right. I worked in a hospital that summer and didn’t feel drawn to the medical field after all. I started off the fall semester taking the second quarter of chemistry but the day of the mid-term, I dropped both chemistry and biology. Such a feeling of relief. I changed to liberal arts and decided to be totally impractically and major in art.
Today’s post is about the Michigan Freedom Now Party. My photographs were taken during the first convention, which took place in Detroit in September 1964. It was held at Central Congregational Church, now the Shrine of the Black Madonna. To read an interview with Henry Cleage about organizing the party and what happened during the election, click this link – Freedom Now Party,.
On the far left, back of my sister’s head and the back of my head. Standing in the checked shirt is Oscar Hand. Behind Mr. Hand, in the white shirt, is Richard Henry (later Imari Obadele) Writing on the wall is Leontine Smith. Against the wall in the white dress is Annabelle Washington. I cannot name the others.
For more about my family and elections go to these posts: More From Elections of Yesteryear and Wordless Wednesday – Elections Past.
Great minds think alike. I downloaded the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald for the day I was born just this week but I posted it on my Book of Me private blog. I wasn’t as brave as you – my age is no secret but I couldn’t bring myself to share publicly.
I figure I’m still the same age, if I tell or not. Unless I can find that time machine LOL.
Where is that flux capacitor when you need it?
Exactly!
That is great Kristin. You will enjoy one of the later prompts……
Can’t wait to see those later prompts. But it does give me a chance to do other things in between, either related to the Story of Me or all that other stuff I need to do!
What is interesting is seeing where the prompt takes the discussion within the Facebook group and where it leads individual participants.
I gave it a try and Genealogy Bank doesn’t have any newspapers in my area in my birth year, let alone birth date!
Perhaps in the future… 
Such a great idea!
Awww. Maybe there’s a front page from somewhere nearby? Or for the week you were born? I have lived places that only had a weekly paper and didn’t have any world news, just local things.
I checked the whole state for the whole year. I’m sure that as Genealogy Bank adds papers, one will pop up.
Oh, I should check for my hubbs and son though! 
Nope. Not for hubbs and son either. Well darn! Guess I could do a national paper like the NY Times or something though. That would give a good idea of world events…