This page is dedicated with love  to my Grandmother, Ida Irene Terry

b. Feb 23, 1875 in Onondaga

       Without her loving ministrations, I wonder sometimes what I might have become.  My parents separated and later divorced. Gram was 60 when she took on the job of caring for a baby girl.   I'm over 60 now myself, and I think about what it  must have meant for a woman at that time in life to take on the physical  responsibility of  raising an infant.  She made me feel special, and her love never wavered once.

       Like so many places in America right after the Depression, times were hard in Charlotte, Michigan.  Going to work wasn't what Mama wanted to do after I was born, but it was necessary for our survival; my mother had to become the bread-earner,  and "Gram", as she is lovingly remembered to this day, took me under her wing. Mother had to go into Lansing to find work. Jobs were very scarce and she had to find a way back and forth, which was especially difficult during the cold Michigan winters of that time.  Mother worked in tea rooms, shops and then the defense plants during the War.  She provided a living for her Mother and her baby daughter, Lynette. 

    I don't remember seeing Mother a lot during those early years, but when it was time for me to enter school, Gram sold the house in Charlotte and we moved into Lansing in 1941.

      In 1989, on a genealogy research trip back to my birth place,       I  was privileged  to be invited inside the house that was my first home. After she sold her farm in Onondaga, Grandmother had purchased the house located directly across the road from the Eaton County fair grounds in Charlotte, Michigan.  When I was a child,  Ida and Ollie Zimmerman were neighbors on the side toward the Armory, and George Riddle and his family lived on the other.

    Today, there is a brand-new Baptist Church directly behind our old home. The house is about 100 years old and it still looks good.   The new owners gave it care too, and going inside,  I remembered all the nooks and crannies that were special places to play indoors. Under the big round oak dining room table was my favorite. The four sections that the claw feet at the base of the table made were the "rooms" in my imaginary house. Outside, Gram had a garden, at the back of the property and I had a swing and a sand pile. There were lots of different kinds of trees and shrubs,  one I especially remember that had beautiful   pink blossoms in the Spring. 

    It was a good home, and Gram took good care of me.  One of my first memories is her saying, "What you smiling at, Lammie?"  and the bright golden morning light coming in the front room windows where she used sit to curl my hair.   I was Gram's little lamb, as she called me.  We used to go to bed about dark. Gram would set the oil lamp down on the bedside table and sit on her side of the bed to wind her clock while I was getting settled down on my side of the bed.  After she lay down and listened to me say my prayers, in a few minutes, she would always say, "Now, if you get to sleep before I do, you holler!"  And I  would drift off, making big plans to beat Gram to sleep so I could "holler" first--never did.  Now, all these years later, sometimes I do  "holler in my sleep.  Life is funny, isn't it?

     Now, I'm about the same age as Gram was when she took me to raise. I don't know if I have as much stamina as she did; it takes a lot to care for a baby.  I give her all the credit in the world for the job she did. I couldn't wait to get this web page up-- a little closer to where I know she is--to tell her again, "Thanks, Gram!"   Be  seeing you soon.

     Love always, Lynette

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Lynette's Family History Pagesİ1999-2003