my_grandmother.rtf

February 10, 2015

My grandmother, Lila May Cramer Crawford was born in the old Cramer home place on Cramertown Loop southeast of Martinsville, Indiana, May 21, 1876 to George Whitfield Cramer and Sarah Ann Crawford Cramer. She was the youngest of nine children. She married George William Crawford on March 10, 1897. They lived near Martinsville most of their marrried life, moving to Hillsdale, Michigan the spring before his death in 1925. Their son, Horace was attending Hillsdale College.

In 1939, when I was 3, I remember Grandma Crawford moving to the 2 bedroom house at 1497 E. Valley Road, next door to where we lived. At the time in the archway between the living and dining rooms was a built in bookcase and a built in desk. The kitchen had a sink with a hand pump on the side of it on the north wall. The east wall on the south end had a floor to ceiling cupboard. There was a small table under the south window. I remember the basement being divided into rooms by wooden partitions, one of them being the coal bin. Sometimes, there was water in the basement and boards were used to get from the stairs to the furnace and over to the coal bin. On the small back porch was a lattice slats around it that went to the ground. Grandma used to grow nasturiums along that lattice work. She had a row of daffodils in the backyard before you reached the garden. In the dining room by the windows stood a high wooden plant stand made by her son, Horace, which held a large fern hanging down from it.

We liked to go to grandma's house because she baked good cookies and liked sharing them with my brothers and I.

Grandma had a lady that she took care of that lived with her. Her name was Stella Haines. I used to visit with her, when I went to Grandma's house. Mrs. Haines developed a growth on the side of her face, which continued to grow. It was cancer. My first of hearing about cancer. Evidently they didn't have treatments for it or it wasn't treatable.

Sometime in my teen years after my brothers went in the service, Grandma Crawford moved in the farm house with my mother and I. She used the 2 south lower bedrooms as her apartment. One was her living room, which was on the other side of the wall from our living room. The other was her bedroom and kitchen. She did her own cooking even though she had no sink or drain. She had to carry her water in and carry it out when she was through with it.

I remember she loved to crochet. One day she was going to show me how. She was right handed and I was left handed, so I sat on the floor in front of her and she tried, but I didn't figure out how to wind the crochet cotton around my fingers and do what she did. I never did learn to crochet.

When the farm was sold in May of 1957, she moved to 177 Bailey Drive with my mother. It was there in July of 1962, that she stood up from her chair one day and fell down with a broken hip. We never knew if her hip broke when she stood up or if she fell and the hip broke in the fall. She was 85 and had never been in a hospital. After surgery, she was in a small nursing home, then later moved to Maple Lane Manor on Cadmus Road just before Sand Creek Highway. She was in a large room with several other ladies. She never was able to walk after that. There were 2 ladies across from her that were 102 and 103 that I used to visit with. They both were hard of hearing, so it made it more difficult to visit, but they were always glad to have the company. Grandma died April 1, 1963.