Mary Hunt Patterson and Libby Egnor

00:03 My name is Libby ignore and I am 37 years old. Today's date is March 3rd 2006 and we're here in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm here with my mother Mary Patterson.

00:17 I'm Mary Patterson. I'm 63 years old today is March 3rd here in Atlanta. And I am Libby's mother. Okay. Well Mom, I set this up and brought you here because I wanted to talk to you a little bit more but lots of things but I thought it would be really fun to talk about your experiences growing up. You know, you're the oldest of 13 children and your mom and dad didn't go to college and you know, you end up going to college and took graduate school and and making a lot of changes from the time you grew up until now and I just thought that that was something that I wanted to get on tape. So that's why I invited you here. What was it? Like, what was I guess the thing that made you feel special about having so many brothers and sisters. Well, even in the 50s and 60s, it was a fairly unusual thing.

01:17 They have a family of that size. And what is a really special things about it is that your family becomes your best friend and send you also have a lot of experience that other people don't have a pretend it's a positive and a negative but opportunities to lead opportunities to be responsible for others that kind of thing. So there were a lot of things that we were responsible for that other kids wouldn't do is I was thinking about this interview. I was thinking about the famous story with your uncle Michael where I was 16 and Grandma had to leave on a trip. How many brothers and sisters. Did you have at that point when you were sick and so that any rate she said if I got everybody to bed. My sister Kathleen who was fifteen good mind the kids and I could go to the dance and it was occurring on Saturday night. So I was busy doing the dishes and Uncle Michael and his inimitable Style flying to five.

02:17 On the piano. How old is he? He was probably 18 months and fell off cut his eye and it was clear to me that you needed stitches. We were a very poor family. So we had no electric no endure running water, but we also had no telephone and we lived across the road from the person who had no indoor running water. No and though you were doing the dishes after hauling the water inside from the way that you could drink. We did have a little pump that you could pump the water and then heat the water to do the dishes. But it any rate in our family that responsibility was always Mary and Tom and so Tom went to prom with the oldest boy. You were the oldest girl seven-year-old 13 and he ran across the road to the coal dealer who lived down a long Lane and had him come over to take me to the hospital with Michael which

03:17 A very scary experience because the coal dealers always looked like they were called worse. Plus he took me in the coal truck. So there I am with this baby that's crying riding through the night in this cold trucks scared to death. And when I got to the hospital they had me hold him down while they did the stitches in his eye which was one of the most horrendous experiences and amazing to me because years later when your brother fell and I was a middle-class mom. They wouldn't let me anywhere near him. They took care of all that you're a poor kid. That's not how it happened. Michael kept yelling for the Dog Coffee in what doesn't kill you will strengthen you I didn't remember that you told me about how even when you were younger than 16 16 is an age when a lot of people babysit but you started

04:17 Much longer than that. I used to stay alone with the kids for very short periods of time. I think from Bobby the time I was eight, but I can remember be 10 or 11 in my parents going to play cards in the evening in my being home with the kids. And and it. Find how many kids were there and then probably seven or eight of us ate ate some bad and you're expecting to stay there. Yeah, and actually he expected to go to bed too. But if somebody woke up to to a system, so as you know, when you were growing up and you guys never were allowed to stay at home alone and hit the big enough to do that because I didn't like it much lived part of the time in the United States and part of the time in Canada. Right? Right. I was born Detroit and I'm we live there until I was 7 and then we moved up to Canada in about 20 miles from Stratford, Ontario.

05:17 Initially to be near my mother's family. She was the oldest of 11. So there was a fan of the families kind of almost joined together my youngest and is only six years older than I am. So she is emery Emery and Uncle Ferg is 7 years old or so, the two of them were kind of like older brothers and sisters to me and it was that was a real positive thing to be there at Grandma's. So you'd be started out in the city and then you move to the country. What was it like growing up on the farm? I mean you well, I had always spent summers at Grandma's because mother was usually pregnant and two or three of us would go and spend spend the summer there still from the time. I think I was 4 I had spent time on the farm and enjoyed it a lot. One of my very favorite memories is a grandpa letting me drive the horse team while they were hanging and uncles on both sides trying to bribe me to get a little closer to them. So they could it have so far.

06:17 Polar bear throw the baby out of a great lesson. I learned that day just go right down the Middle River very careful pulling in the others are clearly was the horses names were sniffing snort and and I had allergies and see if you would call me to have for the longest nose. Ring is breathing funny. I think I remember you telling me that sometimes grandma would go to Town & tell you to have dinner ready when she got home when you were 12 or 13 Grandma hunt my mother and a little later than that, but she would it was even more than that. She would say kill a chicken and I'll get it ready for dinner. And so we would do that telling her I passing this one year younger than I am to go out.

07:17 Grandma had left the responsibilities with by now and we were quite capable of doing that killing it plucking it getting it ready drawing it out the insides and stuff in that baby and having it ready for dinner. The grandma left a whole lot. But this was there was a lot that had to be done and Grandpa work in Detroit. So she was there by herself with all these children to the week. And so we're just Basics like groceries to be purchased and kids to go to the doctor and all that sort of thing. And then and then when you were fourteen, I think it was Grandma decided to let you go to boarding school. Yes, she called because she was the oldest of a large family. She had a lot of insight as to what that was like, you know him very early responsibility that sort of thing so and I had read about a boarding school in Montreal actually carried on about it, as you know, 13 year olds do and she found one in Chatham Ontario called The Pines.

08:17 Where I could work for my room and board and go there and it was a wonderful experience. There were girls from all over Canada the United States and South America and to buy remember it was just before the Cuban Revolution and I can remember at that time getting a letter back from one of the girls. Her name was dual V. I forget her last name saying what a sad Christmas it was because the revolution had occurred and and life was much more difficult in Cuba. So you are at the pines and you are you aware that the scholarship student you were the one who is working for your room and board. What did that mean dining rooms for so there was more than one girl. There were about four or five girls who worked and they were probably a hundred girls at the school. And so our responsibility was dining room floors that you cleaned on your hands and knees on Saturday.

09:17 And shine with these big polishers of the rest of the time we're responsible for all the dishes and for serving the food for the dining rooms. And there were three dining rooms plus a special dining room for the priest. That was the high honor to be able to clean the priests dining room into serve the priest. I never quite made that don't think so. I think you told me a story about how he kind of didn't really like to get up in the mornings and and do those jobs. You had to get up earlier than the other girls or you just remember something about you saying he would write that we really had to leave Chapel early. Everyone went to mass every morning and we had to leave Chapel early to go down and do that and it just set you apart when you had to choose to be responsible for those things. I'm the good news was if there was good food you got to it first and we used to do silly things and has made cakes and I think they they must have beat them for hours because

10:17 They were so tall. So we'd say we're having a half a piece of cake the top half and just knowing things that kids do I think he said to you I memorized a floor plan of your your dormitory because you you didn't like to open your eyes in the morning and you'd walk from my bed, which was probably I don't know a hundred yards from from my bed to the bathroom. I could get there and wash my face clean my teeth go to the bathroom and get back to my area my bed without ever opening my eyes. How long were you at The Pie 2 years. So what was it like when you came home?

10:59 Well, it was a real surprise and it real difficult in a number of ways. First of all, I was changing my high school in my junior year. Secondly I went from what was a pretty big fairly Cosmopolitan kind of atmosphere back to a farm school that had less than 50 students and everybody practically was related to everybody else. And so it was that was a real change for me. But then in November of that year a grandma decided she'd had enough of this long-distance commuter marriage and so we moved to the states and that was very difficult for me. I felt like I would never catch up to these Americans that they moved so fast they talk too fast for you an American but I wasn't American but I had grown up in Canada and it's interesting. That was the formative years, I guess because I still know that I'm much of my personality is

11:59 But it any rate that was a real shock for us and the school we thought was huge the school had hundreds of students and your Uncle Tom and Kathleen and I had a real hard time adjusting to that plus in Canadian schools. You take more subjects, but you only take them for a half an hour a day. So I was in classes for the first time in my life that were over my head, you know, they were twice as far along and I was trying to catch up and I've never been a slouch I taken two years of Latin in one in Ontario, but it was a real climb to try to do that with algebra 3 for example to show so there you are you in Junior and all these brothers and sisters and probably a lot of people at the you know school started to talk about those hunts. That's what we have is your maybe it ain't right and I'm wondering

12:59 Say yum.

13:01 I'm wondering if a you know kind of amino made fun of you or if they well. It's interesting how we never thought we were poor and we moved the first part of November and for Thanksgiving for different groups showed up with a basket with turkey and all of these things and and Grandma are you know, we always took care of ourselves. And so she said to the last group from the high school don't you know, someone who really needs this and she said the kids face is kind of fell and so she recouped and said, oh thank you very much and just took it but we had turkey for all of December that year because we got four turkeys. So that was kind of a surprise that people thought we were that we were poor and of course we were bought Grandpa worked at Ford Motor Company and we always took care of ourselves. And so that was kind of a surprise to us for someone to intimate that we couldn't take care of ourselves if they're people in the town were very

14:01 Taken aback by the size of the family. We all looked very much alike. And so if you did anything Grandma knew about it before you got home either phone call mrs. Hunt. I know you'd want to know one of your girls was smoking at the laundromat and when we all got home, it would be okay with a lot of that kind of thing and it was difficult to just kind of be yourself there. There were cultural differences. I got an 18-wheeler travel with somebody's mother wants for saying that I went to party we didn't go in till 10 at night, but I come from a farming Community where the whole family would go to these Community dances that they had and they went from 10 to 2 because you had to wait till everybody done the chores and and get cleaned up and and ready to go. So you might out at 10 at night in small town America in 1958. That was like, oh my god, you're letting someone go out till 2 in the

15:01 Morning, grandma got a phone call on that way. So then you were at that point 16 and and you had almost all your siblings. I think Aunt Sharon was born when you were 17. That's correct, That's your youngest sister. And and when did you start to think about going to college? Well mother and dad had always been very strong on the idea of Education especially dad but mother was a reader even though she has an eighth grade education. I think she's probably read two or three books a week or entire life. And so she always read to us and when we had nothing we belong to a book club books, like little red black beauty hands Brinker and the silver skates those kind of classic would arrive each month and I can remember her. I have a vivid memory or for about eight of us.

16:01 Around her on the front porch, and she's reading to us and we all have one of the babies in our armed and she has a baby in her arms. And so she's got people from 13 to probably three months all quiet listening to her read. So it was always a lot of emphasis on that sort of thing and it probably was my adolescent Rebellion because I had never done much of anything that that was very outlandish that most adolescents to and when I graduated from high school, I started talking about colleges and they said we need you to get the job. I already had a part-time job, but we need you to get a full-time job. And that was it for me. I said absolutely not I'm going to college you promised me. I could go to college and I just went off that whole summer. So mother didn't have any money to do this or dad. So she took me to her father who at that point had more than 60 grandchildren.

17:01 And to see if he could help and I remember him clearly saying Merry, I would love to educate you but I have more than 60 grandchildren. I can't educate them all but I can lend you the money. So this isn't keeping in mind. This is 1960. He left me $150 and that got me the first Year's tuition books and a little bit left over in the next summer. I work like a Trojan to pay it back and it was so pleased to pay some interest on it wasn't much interested. It was so important to me that I have this taken care of and then I not owe my grandfather from that and there were student loans available and I was able to get student loans and then also because there were so many brothers and sisters. I mean Kathy was a year behind Tom was to Joanne was three. So I just Refugio hard and I was able to complete it in 3 years. So when your brothers and sister saw you going to college do you think that that made them think that they could

18:01 Go to college to I think so and that was very much my parents plan about everything even though they pushed on the college thing. They had always felt if you got the first kids going in the right direction all the rest would follow along which was of course an enormous responsibility for Tom and Kathleen and I bought that was their plan that that you get the first one, also had another current trick that I really think was not to fare which was to say that you always give in to the younger one, which if your first tooth is hurting and she spent a lot of time there was a story one of the neighbors came down to mother and said I can't stand it. She said Mary got on the teeter-totter and Kathy wanted it so she got off and got on the swing and Tom wanted it. So she got off and played in the sandbox and Joanne, why did that is so if that was an early

18:56 Felt like I was always kind of dodging it down a football field. You know where somebody was going to be coming to take the ball at any moment. It's so what was that? What was the best part about having so many brothers and sisters are your best friends are right there in your family. I think that's one of the neat things another neat thing is if you don't get on well with one there's probably enough to do it. It's not like you have to stick with it that only sister you have no brother. I am so that's I need opportunity now, I think it's been wonderful for us as adults and our children because we get together and large Gatherings and people seem to really enjoy that and I think it's the same held true that sometimes for you all when you were adolescents. You could go talk to an ant when you weren't too fond of me or didn't like what I was going to say. So I think that that was one of the real positives and we had a great sense of pride in our family very proud.

19:56 Out of our family and we were also very child-oriented and Grandpa was a lover of children under 5 you like people under 5 best. I think you and we all got a great appreciation for children and Child Development minis you knew in my career that's been something that I've been very interested in right? I know that before my experiencing a growing up even having be able to say my mom is the oldest is 13 and I have all these aunts and uncles and I have 42 cousins first cousins and it was really special that was things you do that made people stop and pay attention to you and say wow and really were shocked and and that was just residual benefits for me. That wasn't even direct. What was the part that what was the worst part about it?

20:48 Well, there was a lot of responsibility and there was a lot of when you did things that might be normally narcissistic for yourself you off and felt like you were being inappropriate when I was a sophomore in college Grandma had cervical cancer and she lost a child and at that point I had a student loan and so I shared half of it with Kathleen so she could pay her tuition fees. She didn't have when she was just starting collagen and she'd been a late admission. So there wasn't there were no resources for her and I can remember feeling terribly guilty about taking you no problem. It was $30 from this money to buy a dress to go to a formal dance and feel like taking that money right out of somebody's mouth or the shoes or something like that, even though that money was for me. So being a appropriately

21:48 Cystic, it was not something we learned real easily. Do you think that your younger brothers and sisters would say that they felt that it was easier to be the oldest or or do you think they had it? They think they recognize that they had pretty good deal being younger. I think that has the oldest our parents were very child-centered parents and they put an awful lot into us early on my younger brothers and sisters would say mother and dad were tired by the time that they came along and that, you know things slip by as it would have never slept by earlier on Aunt Jane feels like her reading problem was not recognized early on even though I remember taking her to the library. I never caught on that. She didn't read that I was reading everything to her. So I think that there were pros and cons to it and it's a lot of responsibility early on.

22:48 The younger kids were able to see what we had done in benefit from it. But sometimes also to be really cynical, you know, I think I'll call Michael for example, you know 10 year girl shouldn't be worried about the Vietnam War but he was and he went to the days of sitting he just kind of saw a lot of things early, you know, it's hard to get excited about your Prime when you've watched six or seven other people go out the door to promise another prom. So what would you say was the first thing that happened in your family that was really bad. That was really letting I think it was when my brother Pat got hurt in Vietnam.

23:32 And he he broke my parents grandpa had retired. And so they took the six youngest children and went to Ireland four year because Grandpa was an Irish immigrant as you know, and while they were there Pat stepped on a landmine in Vietnam and what we were notified of that buy a letter where he said the Red Cross workers writing this letter because I hurt my hand and you were just a baby you were only a couple months old when we got this really 6 weeks old and went on to say, you know, I'm going to be fine and I'm in the hospital and so on and then at the end of it it says thank goodness. Nothing happened to my head which was the clue and it was true that he had damage to all four limbs. The only thing that nothing happened to was just him and he was very badly hurt and when he came home, I was still here in the States you all are several of Our Family Wizard.

24:32 In Ireland and attention of the wherewithal to come home. So I had the responsibility of kind of being there for him making sure they were doing the right things for him at Walter Reed. You were living in DC at the time, and your dad had had prevailed upon our Congress people to bring him to Walter Reed. So he was there but it was a dad convinced them to let him come to Walter Reed home from Vietnam from Vietnam a supposed to someplace else even that seemed like a mixed blessing because the plane landed something like six different places before they came to Washington that day and hit he had stepped on a landmine. So his entire back was shot up and see if you can imagine the agony. He must have been in to land in for the plane to land all those times and until on put it in your bank when he got to be to Walter Reed.

25:25 Then I have the responsibility every night of getting to visit him with an hour over there. So I get you guys ready for bed have your Dad's dinner ready in a minute? He came in the door off. I went to Walter Reed for for a number of months. And and how did you tell Grandma and Grandpa that Uncle Pat was so hurt. I mean they didn't know.

25:46 You know, I don't even remember that how we did it. We would send pictures. I was a new mom. I mean I had you. You were six weeks old. Your brother was just about to and I couldn't understand or are fathom what it must have been late for my mother to be in Ireland when her child was here heart. I don't think I sugar-coated it because I don't think I had the ability to do that in those days. I was so over right by the letter that a neighbor looked out the door and see what's the matter with like 8:30 in the morning and I'm going down the street with you guys in the buggy. She had me committed.

26:31 Asian how is my cure for everything? All right, right and then Uncle Pat took a long time to recover, but he he did recover and then he decided that maybe College was a better place to be than dropping out and being in the Army. So he went on and labor relations and he just retired from the communication workers of America from their Central staff and actually our whole family got educated. Everybody had post-secondary education. Someone was being a little Domino's to my mother one day and shoot a visit professor at Eastern Michigan and she said I believe six or seven of my children have a degree from your University put him in his place. But yeah, a lot of us have advanced degrees. So when you have such a big family, it's kind of surprising that it would be that late.

27:30 Before something happened. Did you all feel that you were kind of invincible because you would we felt like we were very lucky we felt like we were just very blessed and my parents always Feud new children in the family as a blessing in the end. We just thought that that just carry over for us. We were kind of surprised when Pat gets hurt. Although, you know, there was a great likelihood that he would get any of the other uncles think about going to Vietnam War had they they also join the Army but he got lucky he ended up in Germany. So he didn't go to Vietnam grandpa had always talked about the Irish Revolution which happened in 1916 and he was only 11 years old that but apparently they'd had him do some just enough to make an eleven-year-old kind of idealize War.

28:31 And so I think Pat felt he needed to go to kind of has he said fight is damn war and I think Carrie says they felt that they needed to to be in the military and then when when did aunt and Sheila have her car accident? She was 19 so she would that was probably 3 years after pat got hurt and and she was driving and she pauses have to stop at a stop sign and then pull through and someone hit her going about 65 miles an hour means she was horrendously heard. She was unconscious for 6 weeks is you know, and it was very likely that she would even recover but she too was a real Survivor and recovered finish college when they weren't sure because that was all brain damage. And when when we went to the hospital they said her age is with her.

29:31 The entry is against her so she really wasn't terrible shape now. They thought she wouldn't be able to walk again, right? They said she would be able to walk again and they thought the first IQ tests they did she was functioning at the 8-year level and I remember that day going with Grandma because you know, I'm a social worker and they were going to be meeting with the social worker. So I thought I needed to go in here this much as your sister does when I'm sick as a nurse. She wants to hear what's being said I want to hear is a social worker and I remember them saying that she was functioning at the eighth your level and asking my parents who were older than if they thought they could handle her and I remember Grandma it didn't even Flinch since she didn't come with a guarantee that she meant to wish you would be, you know, the doctor said he will come back or Dilantin in Grandma's. You know, I just started that last week. She was a little sleepy. She was very involved in her treatment and

30:31 Sheila recovered amazingly and so when she started to walk you got was really hard one of those things with brain injuries that you kind of accentuates your traits and she was such a determined person and it always been a runner. I'm so she was determined to run when she couldn't walk and that was very difficult because she was falling all the time, and she was running over at Eastern Michigan University at the track where the football players we were practicing for the fall and I think they couldn't believe her spunk. They all got together and bought her a new pair of Adidas cuz they're her Adidas were a mess. And so she really was just an inspiration and she has run until just died this year. She said she started just walking and she's 15 it I was going to say in a 50 in her 50s, and she still doesn't have a great gate. She has some spasticity, but it doesn't stop her.

31:31 She's a she's amazing. So then so that lets they look will you name all your brothers and sisters in order sure. I'm starting with me. I'm Mary Kathleen who lives in New York Tom who has owned a trucking company and is a should say Kathleen is a computer supervisor at Montefiore Hospital Tom has on the trucking company in currently works with my uncle first rocket company Joanne lives in Ireland and she has run bog tours, which is kind of an interesting thing where tour is coming. She takes them through the box to show them that just retired from the communication workers. Teresa is a paralegal and is is just an amazing person Terry works for the federal government. The Department of Defense. Shelia has worked as a social worker. I'm not sure if she still

32:31 Working as a social worker currently, but stuck. That's her profession. Jimmy is an attorney and Troy, Michigan.

32:40 Jane lives in Florida and works for American Airlines

32:48 Michael Michael is kind of a different one in the family. He's a bartender. He's always been a bartender and he probably knows more Trivial Pursuit than anybody that you've ever met. Julie is a teacher in Louisville, Kentucky and Sharon sells real estate in Houston, Texas. And when you are going up, what did you think you wanted to have a big family like that? I never wanted a family that big I would have like six children and we ended up with three moderate number moderate. I'm glad you wanted to be moderate that so when when you had us you must have felt like oh this is easy because I've had so much practice.

33:34 You know I did and I didn't I mean I remember being very nervous with your brother when I first brought him home. I thought his head with misshapen and made your dad call the hospital and just check that baby out. And there's nothing wrong with them fine. But in many ways your brother, you know who always has a lot to say said I wasn't just he wasn't my first child that I'd be children before. He said he felt no need to act like an old is he wasn't the first but yes, I I've always enjoyed children as you know, well, one of the things that I've heard from several of your sisters, they all feel like they there baby kind of has to pass the Mary test and they would I think my Aunt Sharon who's the youngest is 17 years younger than you told told me that if she felt like if you hadn't said that marry her daughter Mary was the most

34:34 Beautiful baby in the smartest baby and so verbal, she would have felt there was something really really wrong with it here the baby saying the the preamble to the Constitution before the year old. I really enjoyed infant language and that's something I'm interested in.

34:58 Well, one of the things that I want to tell you some site I got something to to to hear your stories today is that you know, all of the experiences that you had made you such a good mom to us because when maybe another mom would have felt like oh, well, they they really need to take on more responsibility. You would say. Oh no, it's okay to just let them play or just let them be kids and you never made us feel like, you know, you never made us feel like what we weren't doing was just wonderful. I think it was Aunt Dorothy Uncle Pat's wife who said that, you know, your mom has never said a bad word about you kids to anyone and you might have told us what you thought needed correcting, but you never never told anyone else that you thought there was anything wrong with us. I guess growing up feeling like you had that kind of approval from your mom.

35:53 Atmel light to you, huh? Well, I appreciate you telling me that and this has been kind of fun. We could probably go on for another five hour. I suspect we could but I am really glad you had a chance to come in and and let me interview. Thank you.