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Generations of Nomads

~ On the Trail of Family Faces, Places, and Stories Around the World

Generations of Nomads

Tag Archives: Hare

A 65th Anniversary

16 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by Generations of Nomads in People, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Family dogs, Goucher College, Hare, Johns Hopkins, Miller, Mills, Oliver, Stephenson, wedding, Wedding anniversary, Wellesley

Celia and Bill on June 16, 1955 in Wellesley, Massachusetts

A big, fancy-numbered anniversary. Today is the 65th anniversary of my parents’ wedding.

Celia Oliver and Bill Hare (born Stephenson) met in college in Baltimore in the early 1950s. She was a student at Goucher College and he was at Johns Hopkins University. My Mum was a year older than my Dad, graduating from college in 1954. Their wedding took place soon after his 1955 graduation from Hopkins when he was 21 and she was 22.

It was a small, simple wedding at the house my grandparents were renting on the campus of Dana Hall School on Grove Street in Wellesley, Massachusetts. My mother wore a dark suit with white piping around the collar. It’s the same suit she was wearing in photos of my Dad’s graduation from Hopkins earlier that month.

Present were their parents–Ken and Elsie (Mills) Oliver and Bob and Esther Jane (Miller) Hare from Maryland, with Bob’s mother, Fern, (Bob was actually my Dad’s step-father); Mum’s brother Peter Oliver and soon-to-be sister-in-law, Connie Gibbs; my grandfather’s brother, A. Douglas Oliver from Philadelphia with his wife, Dessa, and two young daughters, Anne and Susan; and finally, my great-uncle, Clark Stephenson, (brother of my dad’s father, Bill Stephenson) with his wife Louise. And must not forget my grandparents’ boxer, Judy, who was an important part of my childhood a few years later!

Top left my grandfather with his old blunderbuss pistol threatens my dad to “make an honest woman” out of his daughter! Top center, Mum’s cousins Anne and Susan Oliver, Dad’s grandmother, Fern Burnham, and my aunt, Connie. Top right, Susan Oliver, unknown minister, Uncle Doug and Aunt Dessa Oliver. And I’ve never asked my mother, but I wonder if my granny–an amazing baker–made the cake.

I love the intimacy of the gathering, the silliness of my Dad hamming it up for the camera while Mum beams, the image of my dignified grandfather being silly. The house isn’t one I ever knew, but everything they’re surrounded by–furniture, hangings, rugs–is embedded in my childhood memories. It was a day filled with joy and promise.

My parents had adventures together during their six short years of marriage before my father’s early death. They drove cross-country to spend a year living in Alaska. They spent a year working in Germany. They had four years as parents together in Baltimore. And a dog. For all that, I celebrate them and look back on that day 65 years ago with gratitude.

UPDATE: Oh, my, did I get this wrong! My next post sorts it all out…

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This Charming Kansas Bride

17 Monday Feb 2020

Posted by Generations of Nomads in Family history, People

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

1930s advertising, 1930s fashion, Bride, Coffeyville, Hare, Kansas, Miller, Stephenson

From The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pennsylvania, 28 July 1938

“This Charming Kansas Bride” is Grandma in 1938, and newspaper archives may just be my favorite resource.

Esther Jane (Miller) (Stephenson) Hare was born in 1914 and raised in Coffeyville, Kansas. I knew she had done some modeling, and have a copy of this photograph, but until I was poking around in newspapers.com today, I didn’t know what the bridal shot had been used for. It was NOT from the wedding of the “lovely Mrs. Hare,” but the “true story of her romance” with Bob Hare, my dad’s stepfather, told above is one I’ve never heard, and may hold some grain of truth. Or not.

The text is hard to read in the image above, but describes how she first met Bob in high school, (probably not true–he was five years older, but did grow up in Independence, the next town to Coffeyville), but he had no interest in her. “And I blamed my complexion.” Then, thank goodness, Grandma discovered Camay soap.

Wichita–Spring 1936. “Five years passed during which Bob and I never met [During which she started college, met my grandfather, gave birth to my dad, got divorced, all before she turned 23]–and then we met at a dance. What a difference there was then in the way Bob treated me!” All thanks to Camay and her lovely complexion.

Coffeyville–Fall 1936. “Then one fall night under a harvest moon I became engaged–yes, to the man who once had never even noticed me!” And in fact, Jane and Bob were married in February 1937.

Bob and Esther Jane with my dad, Bill. Taken about 1938.

What is not fiction is that she truly was beautiful and charming. Also funny and smart. And, even with a little eye rolling at the “Soap of Beautiful Women” commercial fiction, I’m so happy to have stumbled across this advertisement today.

Relationships:

  • Esther Jane Miller (Stephenson) (1914-1975) and Robert Ralph Hare (1909-1979), my grandmother and step-grandfather
  • William Edward Stephenson, Jr. (adopted by Bob and changed his name to William Stephenson Hare) (1933-1961), my dad
  • Me

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Another Almost Wordless Wednesday

09 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by Generations of Nomads in Family history, People

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1930s, Augusta, Hare, Kansas, Stephenson

Billy Stephenson (1933-1961), my dad, and his cousin, Cynthia Stephenson (1931-2007)
Taken about 1935, Augusta, Kansas

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Back to School

03 Tuesday Sep 2019

Posted by Generations of Nomads in Family history, Genealogy

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

1930s, Dad, Family history, Family photos, First day of school, Genealogy, Hare, Kansas, Stephenson

I don’t know any details about this adorable picture, but my dad, (Billy in those days) is the little guy with the polka dot tie. Too cute! Seems appropriate on the first day of school. Probably taken in Kansas about 1937.

Relationship:

  • William Edward Stephenson Hare (1933-1961) – my dad

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The Kid’s Got Wheels

26 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by Generations of Nomads in People

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Dad, Germany, Hare, Kansas, Stephenson, Wichita

image

This is my dad, on the move early and around the same age as my mum in my previous post.

Born in Wichita, Kansas in 1933, Bill Stephenson Hare was definitely one of the nomads of the family during his brief 28 years.  He was about 4 when my grandparents, Bill Stephenson and Jane (Miller) Stephenson divorced and my grandmother remarried to Bob Hare.

And the Hares did move and move. Bob worked for natural gas companies and seemed to pick up and move on every few years, usually to small rural towns in remote places. (Why was that, anyway?)

Young Billy moved from Kansas to Missouri to Connecticut to Waldorf, Maryland (and maybe more in between?) before staying put long enough to go through high school and then college nearby at Johns Hopkins.

Graduating from college and marrying my mother all at the same time, he had also graduated from two wheels to four, and off they went! During the summer of 1955, Bill and Celia hit the road for Anchorage, Alaska, where he had been offered a job. They drove cross country, stopping along the way to visit grandparents in Kansas, see the sights, and start their adventure. More to follow…

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