Helma Johanna Alexanderson

My grandmother used to take care of my sister Cindy and me when we were young, in the early and mid-60s, when my parents wanted a break. Our Uncle George (Helma's brother-in-law) was a constant companion to my grandmother. They would play cribbage while my sister and I played on the rug with a box of very old toys. She had an old Philco television but there wasn't much on back then so we rarely watched it. She'd let me rummage through her collection of costume jewelry, very exotic stuff, and through a big gallon jar of buttons she had collected.

Grandma always wanted to be a nurse. She told us she would have given anything to have been able to go to nursing school. When she was young she nursed people through the 1918 influenza epidemic, and when she was older she volunteered for the Red Cross. There were many tearful pleas, over the years, for us to stay in school, and to not smoke, though leaving school and smoking never tempted us. She was a wonderful person.

Helma Johanna Alexanderson

Wedding Photo

My mother told me Grandma learned to cook on a wood stove. She seemed to have a hard time transitioning to electric. Because I loved her, and being with her was kind of magical, I learned to love food that wasn't prepared that well - scalded milk, gummy rice, stale cookies, and the like. She was thrifty. There was always a big jar of pencils on the kitchen table, a string across the laundry room holding multi-colored plastic bread clips, and a can holding various rubber bands, paper clips, pins, and unidentified treasures.

When we stayed over at Grandma's we slept under a painting of a woman holding a dove. She looked like an angel. When my grandmother died the painting went to my aunt Eleanore, who later gave it to me. It hangs above my bed today. - TSS