I got a phone call yesterday concerning your mother, she told me. A woman who read the obituary called. She had noticed the last name and saw that Dad had a sister Margaret. She wanted to know if this Margaret had taught at Preston Lake School in Lymburn in 1939. She'd had a teacher there by that name.
Well, Mom began to teach in 1939 and I know she taught in a one-room country school up north in the Peace River Country, I replied. But I really don't know the name of the school.
I have the woman's telephone number and I'll email it to you after the funeral, my cousin said. She's in her 80s and lives in a nursing home. But she's very hard of hearing, so I'm not sure your mother could have much of a conversation with her.
I immediately pulled out my mother's oldest photo album to see if I could discover the name of the school she had taught in up north... and there it was Preston School.
I also found a picture of my mother standing at the Lymburn train station. She was only 20 at the time! It was her first year of teaching!
My mother must have visited families from time to time. I found pictures of home visits. Here is a picture taken at the Dashevsky home. Later I found a class list. The student who had contacted my cousin had been in grade 7 that year. She would have been about 13... Her name isn't mentioned in the photo (above) of her siblings. Had she perhaps taken the picture?
Here is my mother with a younger sibling, a girl in grade 6...
Should I try to contact her? After all, she had remembered my mother's name after more than 70 years?! Would it be a big disappointment to them both if they couldn't communicate on the phone because both now had hearing problems?
I was still wondering what to do when, a few days later, another email arrived from my cousin: I was reading the obituaries in today's paper, she wrote, and this woman has the same name as the woman I talked to. [Link to an online obituary.] I think your mother's former student has died.
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