Last December, you may remember, I wrote about my Dad because it was 100 years since he had been born. It just popped into my head at the time that it would be fun to tell you a little about him. And I thought, at the time, that I'd do the same when it came to be 100 years since my Mom's birth. And that is today.
My Mom, Mary Champion Huntington, was born in WuHu China to American missionary parents. She had two sisters and a brother. She spent the first sixteen years of her life in China. In those days, her family had Chinese servants and it was mostly the servants who raised my mom and her siblings until they were old enough to go to boarding school in Kuling. It was common for missionaries in foreign countries to send their children to boarding schools back then. The family left China when it was deemed not safe for them to stay any longer.
I have photos of my Mom riding a camel in Egypt, having lunch overlooking the Swiss Alps, another where she was curled up in a chair, reading, in a lovely English cottage, and one of my favorites of her opening a beer in her tiny Boston apartment kitchen. And of course many pictures of my two brothers and I with her when we were growing up. She loved Blues, Janis Joplin and taught me to drive a stick shift, which is still my preference.
I remember my Mom as a very laid back, hard to ruffle, kind of woman, although my Dad could sure get her in a huff. She was an artist and taught me a lot about figure drawing. After returning to the US, in her late teens, she purposefully flunked out of Smith College in order to be allowed to go to the Boston School of Fine Art. Her family wanted her to go to Smith College, which she did, as she set out to prove to them that she belonged in art school, not college. She was pretty stubborn in a quiet way. She didn't say much, but did what she wanted regardless of other peoples' opinions. If my Dad was colorful and gregarious, my Mom was the perfect balancer of that. She quietly kept our lives together and was quite possibly the most accepting person I have ever known.
After art school, she had a small business of constructing and painting stage sets for plays in Boston. That's where she met my Dad. And I think I told you about them being married in three different states, because, according to my Dad, if she ever wanted a divorce it would have to be from all those places and that might discourage her.
Before she met my Dad, she was a "hot roller" in a steel mill in Pittsburgh during WWII. One of the things I remember about her most was her love for working people. If there was a black sheep in her family, she was it. She loved the Chinese servants that cared for her as a child. She loved the friends she made in Pittsburgh working in the steel mill. She loved my Dad, who was the son of Italian immigrants, and worked with his hands all his life.
I have a few of her sketch books which are filled with working men, building things. I'm thankful for her influence on me, including art, not to mention my love for Wyoming and wide open spaces. She's the one who advised me, at 25, to stay in Wyoming for a year before I decided if I would make it my home. I've been here ever since.
