When Mom began working full time, her being away from home when we returned from school precipitated a new phase for us kids: we had to learn to cook. We took turns cooking supper for the family. Not without support. Mom had written out detailed instructions for us on 3x5 cards. So we learned to cook, something our peers couldn’t do. I don’t know about my brothers, but I was proud of being able to cook supper. 

With her Yankee roots and as a child of the Depression, she was also concerned with teaching us financial responsibility. When we turned 12, we got what at first seemed to be a huge allowance. In 1969, $5 a week seemed like a lot to this 12-year-old. But it wasn’t really huge. The hitch was we were to be responsible for buying our own clothes from it. We really could get whatever we wanted, provided we could pay for it. Some of the our wardrobe choices caused Mom some worry or concern, but that was the deal. A very firm deal: if we spent too much, tough! There were no additional handouts for spendthrifts. So when my peers were spending their allowance on candy or movies and asking their parents for more, I was learning to sew to stretch my allowance further. Learning how to budget was an important lesson that stood me in good stead later on when I was living on very little, for a while well below the official poverty line. 

All in all, Mom was a thoughtful and careful parent. She supported us as we grew, helping us learn to be self-sufficient and to achieve our goals.

Dave, Steve and I all benefitted from this upbringing. These days,  we’re all old codgers with more or less fancy titles. We all enjoy what we do and we’ve been fairly successful at it. And it was Mom’s support that enabled us to grow to be self-sufficient adults, choosing our own goals and climbing to reach them.

Everyone loves their mother. But when you’re young, you don’t necessarily realize what’s so special about her. When I was little, Mom was a housewife, like all the other moms in the neighborhood. She did the normal “mom-like” things, like being a Brownie leader for me or a Cub Scout Den Mother for my brothers. I remember her nursing me through horrible chickenpox…but not the measles. She had made a point of getting us that new measles vaccination that had just come out and wasn’t standard yet. All the other kids around got awfully sick, but we were spared.

When I was a toddler, before entering kindergarten and school where there were dress codes requiring skirts, she thought putting me in skirts and dresses was impractical, so I got boy’s clothes, I wore Oshkosh B’gosh overalls or other pants, except on dress-up occasions. Was that women’s liberation, or just practicality?  I have no idea. Anyway, as a result, I didn’t think I was very different from boys.

It wasn’t until I was about 12 that I realized she was special and different from the other moms in the neighborhood. That was when she went back to school.

I was so proud of her! She had a serious looking briefcase, full of computer printouts. She had to go to the Computing Center in the middle of the night. This was in the age of batch jobs run on mainframes, where the programs were on punchcards. And students like mom had higher priority on the mainframe around midnight. I thought this was all very cool.


Alexander Funeral Home-East Chapel

Carolyn Bennett

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Carolyn Gove Bennett

16 février 1934 – 24 janvier 2020

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16 février 1934 – 24 janvier 2020

Alexander Funeral Home-East Chapel

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