People Remembered: Rita Ladue: My Mom's Centennial--Born 100 Years Ago Today

July 27, 2016

Plattsburgh, New York

Ten years ago today, when I was toasting my mother for her 90^th birthday, I said with all sincerity that I was certain the entire group present would be gathered once again ten years hence, on her 100^th

That would be today.  July 27, 2016.  Had she lived, and at 90 it seemed quite likely, she’d be 100 years old.

My mother’s birth name was Anna Rita Boyer, but my mother told me just before she died that because there were so many “Anna’s” going around in 1916, her parents decided to use her middle name.  She was born in Saranac Lake, New York on July 27, 1916 to Homer Boyer, born Boyea in the Malone, NY area, and Alice Hamel Boyer from Redford.  There was an older brother, Larry, and a younger sister would come nine years later.  She was loved and nurtured and grew into a Saranac Lake that was culturally rich and more than a small town should have been in the 1930’s, largely due to the influence of TB patients who flooded into the village’s “cure cottages” for almost fifty years.

She finished high school in 1936, a year later than she should have.  In fifth grade she’d’ been diagnosed with a hearing impairment that would dominate her life until the day she died.  All of us who grew up with her lived in a world of a handicapped person—a skill that paid off over the years in our patience with other handicapped persons.

Rita went to Plattsburgh, NY to study business and worked for several years at Montgomery Wards as a bookkeeper.  She didn’t make much money and would often put things on lay away and pay for them over a period of time.  Each Christmas the Nativity set she bought that way adorns our Christmas world.

It was at Montgomery Wards that she met a young delivery man, Howard Ladue, and in time they got engaged.  This was all prior to December 7, 1941.  My father enlisted in the Army and my mother, upon the advice of her mother, broke off the engagement.  Fortunately, Howard came home and they were married on September 15, 1945.

Four years later I was born and three years after that my brother, Richard, was born.  By then we were living on Grace Avenue in Plattsburgh, but my father, who’d been comfortably stationed in Honolulu during the War, wanted nothing to do with winter and moved the family to Lakeland, Florida, and move that would affect my mother, and the rest of us, for the remainder of her life.  It was not a good move, and they returned to Plattsburgh less than three years later.

In one of my earliest memories, my mother, still in her 30’s, is making a picnic lunch for my brother and me.  It was the late 1950’s and Grace Avenue was still not fully developed.  There were still large swaths of undeveloped land that was once a quarry.  Small streams and rivulets ran through large flat plates of granite.  She’d make egg salad sandwiches and lemonade that she’d pour into old vinegar bottles.  She’d pack a blanket, we’d walk north, find a place on one of the flat rocks, and my brother and I would explore the polliwogs and wonders found in the small pools that seemed to be everywhere.

Life settled into normal routine.  We went to school, my father work on the railroad until layoffs forced him to find other work. In 1961 my parents bought a business they would own until 1976—Plattsburgh Telephone Answering Service.  At first the switchboard was in our kitchen, then moved within a short period of time to a new addition in the back of the house. 

The Service was a 24/7 operation and it’s what my brother and I knew as reality for much of our growing up years.

Once my brother and I were in school, my mother found part time work as a Welcome Wagon Hostess, welcoming many new young Air Force families into the community.  In time, after we were both out of the home, she worked for Catholic Charities for a number of years.

My mother was energetic and blessed with good health, a health that stayed with her well into her 90’s.  She liked people and entertaining.  She liked nice pieces of antique glass and very old and very expensive tea cups.  She loved to go berrying and some of my fondest memories of my mother are the days we’d pile into the car, drive to Onchiota or Blueberry Hill in Keeseville.  There, she’d get lost in the act of berrying, an act that could consume hours of her time.  Many times, especially if I knew she was going to Keeseville, I go along for the ride and sit on rock ledges overlooking Lake Champlain and spend hours reading a book.

She was a great gardener and her flowerbeds on Grace Avenue and then in her condo were always lovely.  Her skill in gardening was surpassed only by her skill arranging flowers.

She had a passion for “sailing,”—mapping out a rummage sale route on a Saturday morning and spending hours scouring Plattsburgh and Sarasota, Florida, neighborhoods in search of bargains.

She loved all things Catholic and was Catholic to a fault, often putting the church before anything else.  One of her greatest passions was the Retreat League that she’d joined in the early 1960’s and was an active member of until it disbanded in the early 2000’s.  For years, she and her friend Louise would coordinate the annual Retreat League bazaar held in mid-November.

She loved all holidays.  I can still see multiple boxes in one of the storage closets in the back den, each box labeled with a different holiday: Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving.  She embraced each person’s birthday and the night before the big day she’d set the table with one serving of her best china, best silver and best glassware.  Balloons hung from the chandelier and gifts surrounded your plate.  For your birthday you could have anything you wanted to eat.

But it was Christmas that was the centerpiece of the holiday year.  She loved Christmas and all

things Christmas.  Sometimes, I think she thought of it in one form or another all through the year.  Certainly, there was no last minute shopping in my mother’s Christmas world.  Gifts would be purchased and stored all year long.

In November she’d scour the countryside and gather up her Christmas greens that would be woven into wreathes for the front windows and ropes to grace the mantle on the fireplace.

In early December I’d come home from school to the rich, spicy smells of her applesauce cake that she’d give to all relatives and neighbors. 

Christmas dinner she’d pull out corn cut off the cob in August and fiddle heads picked in early May.  We’d have summer treats to celebrate her favorite day of the year.

Her love of Christmas was infectious and I know it was one of the things she mourned most as she aged.  Decorating, gift wrapping, and entertaining were all scaled back and I know that made her sad.

She was widowed at 78 and lived sixteen years after my dad died.  She did a fine job creating a new life for herself.  She was an open and friendly person and wanted to meet new people.  Many of those people never knew my dad.

Twelve years after my father passed on, and five months after she turned 90, my mother made another major life transition, leaving the condo she’d lived in for nineteen years and moving into Lake Forest, Plattsburgh’s only independent living facility.  For me, it was a great relief and I was grateful for the “event” that motivated her to move.

It was a good move for her.  While it wasn’t perfect, it was much better than living alone without real neighbors.  He social side needed the company Lake Forest provided. 

Three years later, almost to the date, we had to move her out.  It was horrible for all of us.  Her fierce independence had to be sacrificed.  “I want to move into a nursing home,” she’d tell me.  In the end that’s what happened.  In hindsight, we think she’d been having a series of mini-strokes that had finally make her legally blind. 

Less than four months later, on a lovely early spring day in April, she died.  It somehow seemed fitting for her to leave the world in a season she loved so much.  She was just in time to tend the spring plantings in Heaven.

We mourned, of course, but knew that is what she wanted.  What she didn’t want was to live the way she’d been living—she’d made that very clear to me for a very long time.  There was never any need to second guess decisions that would ultimately end her life.  Her blindness, on top of her profound deafness, was too much for her to handle.  I was never sorry to see her go, knowing she would have hated living in this condition.

All of this was happening while I was away.  Just after Christmas, with her settled into a new assisted living facility, I left for Chile and was more than surprised when I called her to find out that she was in the hospital.  I lingered in South America for a bit, but was drawn home.  She was waiting for me and once knew I was home to stay she stopped eating.  I fully realized she wanted to die and I fully realized she was waiting for me to start the process.  I had no problem accepting this. 

She left this world on April 9, 2010.  The last words she heard were “I love you” spoken to her by Vicki and myself.

She had what Spaniards used to call “The Good Death.”  We should all be so fortunate.

I am both my mother and father, as all children are an amalgam of both parents.  Like my mother, I’m happiest when I’m busy, when I create and when I’m doing things for other people. Like my mother, I’m easily burned and like my mother have stopped doing some things for some people because they have simply come to expect it.

We are, it’s true, a bit of this and a bit of that.  My mother’s this and that are who I am and I can no more get rid of them then change the color of my eyes.

I spent a career working with children and knew far too many dysfunctional families.  My parents were classic parents from mid-century and far from dysfunctional and I am who I am because of who they were.

I am grateful for my mother’s moral compass, for the beautiful things she taught me, for the encouragement she gave at so many levels.

If she were here today I’d take her for a ride, drive to Rolf’s and help her pick blueberries.  At day’s end we’d stop at Stewarts and indulge in ice cream—chocolate for Mom—then head to wherever home would be.

I can imagine her doing that today in God’s kingdom where I know she is.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Dan Ladue

July 27, 2016