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Carol's Eulogy for Mom at the Memorial
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In Memory of Josephine Knicely
6th June 1919 – 24th February 2008
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Josephine: My Mother
Thank you all for coming here today to remember my mother Josephine. Most of you called her Jo, but, in fact she had a number of names people called her. Once she started having grand kids she encouraged them to call her by either Swedish terms, Fahr Mor (dad’s mother) or Mor Mor (Mother’s mother), or in my children’s case, because my husband is French, they took to calling her MeMe. (It could be confusing, but she liked the special engagement this made) While Jo must have touched you all in different and various ways, I want to share with you some of my thoughts and experiences that have developed over the years, but have come into sharper focus these last few weeks as my brother Allen and sister Mary and other friends and relatives have been reminiscing about her. One thing I am sure you have all heard my mother say is that she was an Optimist. This allowed her to see the positive side in almost every situation and always believe that things would turn out well in the end. Since she was also very determined, things usually did work out for her. Mom had an incredible memory. She could remember significant details of an event many weeks or years in the past that others never caught even the first time around. I was always amazed to see how the slightest mention of something that happened in my life or that of my children or husband Serge would be repeated and made even more interesting by Mom when she was speaking to others or sending out her ¬very detailed annual Christmas letter. All those Christmas letters should be put together and we will have a book length memoir of our family with Mom at the center, not to forget her many friends. So it is in this spirit that I would like to put together some memories of Jo and her character.
The Farm Girl:
Mom grew up on a farm in Kansas but to hear her tell of it, there was none of the dreariness or drudgery one might imagine. Sadly her mother died when she was only 8, but the family was loving and her older sister Irma stepped in to act the mother for the younger siblings. There were of course lots of chores on a farm but there was also lots of time for reading. Because my mother was allergic to dust she got out of most of the heavy cleaning and dusting. She took up sewing instead and later at college she continued with the study of Home Economics.
The stories Mom like to tell me about the farm were not about constraint but about the freedom she had on her horse Pet. She sometimes rode Pet to church and was able to make a fast get away across the fields.
Strong family ties:
As a high school girl she used to go on double dates with her brother George. They remained the best of friends and throughout her years she maintained close ties with all her family: the New York branch (Marie and George and children), the Midwest branch, Waldy’s family and especially Irma and Emory and children as well as my father’s parents and brother Jack and family. Here on the west coast we would go on long drives to visit my great aunt Mabel, sister of my father’s dad, who lived in Redlands. She had a wonderful laugh. My mother’s father, Frank W. Lann, lived with her sister Lu, Uncle Russ and cousin Al in the Los Angeles area. As far back as I can remember we have been spending holidays together: Easter, many summer trips, Thanksgiving and especially Christmas where we have maintained the Swedish tradition of the Christmas Eve smorgasbord-highlighted by delicious meatballs but also, the brunt of everybody’s jokes, horrible slimy lutfisk, which my mother insisted she liked, especially with a light cream sauce. The great thing about a Swedish Christmas as kids, is that we get to open presents Christmas Eve. Mom would always make a Christmas trifle for desert, but invariably it would get too late to eat it before it was time to go to church for the night service.
The Professional
After college my mother trained to be a flight attendant and worked just long enough to get a flight to California. The war soon broke out and Jo got a job in airway traffic control. Although these were scary times, my sense is that they were good times too: I’ve seen lots of pictures on the beach in Coronado, flashy photos taken in night clubs, everybody with a drink and a cigarette. That was when she met my dad, Clarke, a handsome young navel officer.
My mother’s real professional career began when she went into teaching home economics for which she had been trained in college. This was in the later 1950’s. We lived in Sherman Oaks but she taught at Paul Revere Junior High School in Pacific Palisades. This was in the days before the building of the freeways. It was a long commute over the mountains and down sunset Boulevard. She was often pretty tired by the end of the day. But I remember she had real enthusiasm for her teaching and for her school. She especially loved to teach the boys in the foods class.
After we moved to Ojai, she eventually took up teaching again, this time with little kids. Her first job in Ojai was in fact right here in the Presbyterian church, where she was a preschool teacher for a number of years. With the help of my brother who was a great naturalist, she was always bringing in little beasties and creepy crawly things. One of the most impressive was the pet tarantula that she insisted didn’t bite so she would hold it in her hand. Later she moved into teaching elementary school, the lower grades at Santa Ana and later Arnez School. I remember she spent much time decorating her room and preparing tasks for the children to do. She always had special projects: taking the kids to visit Milner’s Ranch, having them plant tulips and so on. During this period she worked taking extra classes and eventually a whole term at USC where she completed her Masters Degree. This gave her the qualifications to become a specialized reading teacher which she did until she retired.
Apart from her great teaching contributions, one of the best things to come out of Moms teaching career was the group of friends she developed over the years. I am not sure when it began, but they took to meeting on Fridays and have been doing that for years. My sister and brother and I have been so happy to know she had this loving and interesting group of people to be with. I know this was a great comfort and strength, especially after my father died.
The Cook and the Nutritionist
As I am sure the Friday group will attest, my mother was a great cook. She loved watching out for recipes and trying them out. She always had a special dish planned for every occasion. As children we were given the benefits of her knowledge and training as a nutritionist. We always had well balanced home cooked meals. Growing up we ate whole wheat bread and we never had desserts unless it was a special occasion. This was pretty hard for my dad who liked sweets. I know he sometimes snuck off somewhere to have a milkshake—sometimes he took me along with him. But I am forever grateful to my mother for giving me the love of cooking and the interest to try out new things. When mother finally decided it was time to sell her house and move to the Gables, she insisted they put a stove in her kitchen even though meals were served. My mother had boxes and boxes of recipes she had collected—many still just raw clippings from newspapers. I think she was planning to put together a line of cookbooks. It was extremely had to get her to part with all of this for the move. We finally narrowed
it down to a couple of boxes.
Flair and Creativity
Jo approached her cooking in quite a professional way but there was also a lot of creativity involved. Indeed she was creative in many ways. She had a real flair and artistic interest whether it was the clothes she wore or how she arranged her house, the many nice pictures she collected all nicely framed and displayed in careful arrangements. She worked really hard with the help of many to fix up her new home at the Gables. It took a while but it came out beautifully-to the point that we all are very happy to come and visit her there, it was so pleasant. I am sorry she did not have more time to enjoy it. Back when we were kids, I remember my mother took a course in flower arranging and even in gift wrapping. She always took great care in wrapping her presents, a trait my daughter Flora has picked up as well. However, sometimes her insistence on good design went a little too far. Mom would always have some interesting new approach to decorate the Christmas tree. This was very frustrating to us kids because often times she wouldn’t let us have a hand in the decorating. Mom was thoughtful in her gift giving, always wanting to find something that would personally suit the individual. Sometimes she would do something very unique. A few Christmas’ ago she had my great aunt Mabel’s long string of jet beads from the 1920s altered to make several shorter necklaces with very nice clasps. She then gave these out as gifts. It was a very special idea, because now when we were these beads or see them we not only think of Mom but also aunt Mabel; we call the necklaces aunt Mabel’s beads.
Current events and Politics
If you knew my mother at all well you will know she had a great interest in politics and current affairs. She kept up on everything with 2 or 3 subscriptions to magazines, a daily newspaper and the television turned to the news channel almost all the time. This was usually Fox news. Recently when she was ill but had begun to make good progress in her recovery, my cousin Alan, who had been keeping the wider family up to date with email notices, told everybody she was much better and back to watching Fox news on the TV. My cousin Kempton responded, that’s great but it would be much better for her health if she switched to MSNBC. It’s true, she was quite conservative. I remember when I was young she would even have arguments with our east coast relatives who were Rockefeller republicans. I couldn’t help thinking last week when William F. Buckley died just a few days after Mom, it must have thought with Jo gone it was finally time to throw in the towel.
In spite of her conservative politics, my husband Serge and I always thought that this was rather incongruous, because deep down inside she was a genuine feminist. She truly appreciated the way her father, Frank Lann, encouraged all his farm born girls to get an education. Jo was a long time member of the League of Women voters. She admired strong women who participated in society. She even had good words to say about Hilary Clinton. She was generous with no hint of racism or social snobbery.
Besides, in spite of a few heated arguments over the years, she was pretty mellow in the end and able to get along well with all her good friends no matter what the politics. I really laughed one day when we came to visit her about ten years ago and saw she had a framed portrait of Bill Clinton on the bookcase. This was a tongue-in cheek gift from one of her Friday group friends. The picture stayed there until she sold her house.
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