The Augusta Chronicle published an interview with me about my new book Singing to the Cows and I emailed a link to a number of friends because I thought they would get a kick out of it. A lady I work with replied to my email and said "OMG - your mother was a celebrity in her own right."
I've been thinking about that a lot this afternoon.
When she was a young woman, my mother had a chance to become a celebrity. She started studying voice when she was about 12 and she had a beautiful voice with a huge range of several octaves. She sang in church choirs, school choirs, was a soloist with the Men's Glee Club at the University of Georgia, and sang all over Atlanta. She was actually offered a scholarship to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, but had to turn it down because it wasn't enough to cover all her living expenses and travel expenses.
When she was a senior in college she met my dad and decided to get married instead of trying to do anything with her music professionally. In those days, women were always told "You can get married and be a wife and mother, OR you can have a career. You can't do both." It sounds archaic and ridiculous to our 21st century ears, but it was a reality back then.
My father wouldn't have been encouraging and supportive if Mom had said she wanted to pursue a singing career. He told her the day they got home from the honeymoon he expected a full breakfast on the table every morning -- sausage, eggs, grits, toast, coffee. It never even occurred to her to say fix your own damn breakfast. The next morning she got up before dawn to try and figure out how to make his breakfast. She couldn't cook. She had never cooked anything in her life except tuna salad, congealed salad, and fudge.
She didn't tell him that before they got married.
She was barely 23 years old.
He was 26 years old.
My mother and I talked once about why she chose marriage over career. For one thing, it was the 1950's. Women were expected to want only a home and husband. Women who tried to have careers often faced brick walls. A young attorney named Ruth Bader Ginsburg couldn't find a job when she finished law school in 1961. Female lawyers, even those had attended Harvard, were nonetheless routinely discriminated against.
Mom also had parents who were very Victorian. They were in their 30's when she was born. They wouldn't let her get her own apartment after college because they felt it was improper. She went right from her father's house to her husband. It may be hard for a young woman of today to understand, but that was very common back then.
The first inkling I ever had of Mom's celebrity as a young woman was when I was a sophomore in college, at UGA, and my roommate and I figured out that her dad had been at UGA the same time as my mom. I called Mom and asked her if she remembered Bill S and she said "Yes. We can talk about it later." I thought that's weird. Next time I went home for the weekend she told me she had dated Bill S and he had asked her to marry him! That spring I went home with my roommate one weekend and got to spend time around her father and he went on and on about how beautiful Mom was and what an incredible singer -- to the point it got rather awkward. Mom said she loved him but she couldn't marry him because he wanted her to drop out of school and she was determined to finish.
My mom knew something about the price of fame. Her father Bob Hasty was a major league baseball player for 5 years. Long after his big league career ended he was well-known, and going out in public could be frustrating. Elva: "Especially in the south, we were accustomed to people coming up to Dad asking for his autograph and wanting to talk about baseball. It could be annoying to us, but never to him and he never refused or lost patience. People brought baseballs to him to sign and even mailed them to him."
Mom would get very frustrated as a child, seeing her father get so much attention [out in public] when the family really wanted his full attention. It wasn't in his nature to ever be rude or inaccessible to a fan.
Fame pulls you away from your family. Even after he left big league and minor league baseball, Papaw was often hired to manage and play on company baseball teams, and Mom said he was gone a lot when she was small, on road trips with the teams.
I have no doubt if Mom had really pursued a career as a singer she would have been successful. Her talent and beauty were immense. The personal sacrifices were such, however, that she never wanted to pursue fame. She didn't want to travel all over and leave her family and friends behind. She felt like she had to choose marriage OR career. She told me that being a wife and mother was more satisfying to her than fame ever could have been.
Do not think she was a meek little housewife, though. She was strong, decisive, and assertive. She told me once it took her ten years to get Dad properly trained to do things like put his dirty clothes in the hamper and take out the trash.
Fame and riches were not important to her. I don't think she ever regretted her decision. What a blessing for all of us who loved her, because she knew how to love, beautifully.
