Aunt Dot: The Christmas Gift

It was Tuesday, December 22, 2009, three days before Christmas, and I was working on my mother's genealogy. Her grandparents were Ross and Ada Pugh, and Ross had a younger brother Robert with wife Emma and a large family. I was researching some of Robert and Emma's children when, much to my surprise, I found that their youngest daughter, Dorothy Isabel Pugh, was still living. She had been married and widowed twice, which made her difficult to find, but she was alive and living with her son Larry and daughter-in-law Susan in a town not far from me. I found the phone number and called. Susan answered and when I identified myself and explained the purpose of my call, she was surprised to learn about the relationship between my mother and Dorothy, whom she affectionately called "Aunt Dot."

I pulled out my 1932 Pugh family gathering photo and found Dorothy standing behind my mother. In the photo at right, Dorothy is standing at top left and my mother is sitting at bottom right. Dorothy was 14 yeas old and my mother was about six. I found out later that they weren't close (probably due to the age difference), so this photo might have been the only time that they were ever together. When I "found" Dorothy in 2009, she was approaching 92 years old, and my mother was 83. It had been 77 years since they were together at that family gathering in 1932.

I had an idea for a Christmas gift for my mother, and made some arrangements with Susan. I e-mailed her the 1932 photo and she printed it out. I didn't say anything to my mother until Christmas day, when I showed her the photo, pointed to Dorothy, and asked her if she remembered her (she didn't). Then I used my cell phone to call Susan, who had "Aunt Dot" waiting for the call. I handed my phone to my mother and told her that she would be talking to that girl in the photo.

With the 1932 Pugh family gathering photo in front of my mother, and Dorothy holding a copy, they "caught up" for about one-half hour. The phone reunion was so successful that a few weeks later my mother and I spent an evening with Dorothy and Larry and Susan at their home. There were many stories to share, photos to look at, and much reminiscing about "the old folks."

During the Great Depression, my mother and her parents Richard and Pearle Pugh lived with Ross and Ada Pugh, Rchard's parents, until my mother was a young teenager. The Ross Pugh family lived in Somerset, and the Robert Pugh family lived a short distance northeast of town. Dorothy remembered that Ross and daughter-in-law Pearle would often walk out to visit them. She remembers my grandmother Pearle's hair being a "striking red color."

My mother and I have often speculated about her grandmother Ada being cursed with chronic depression. My mother told me that Ada would awaken before the rest of the household and go on long walks, usually returning later in the afternoon. There were no medications for chronic depression at that time; there wasn't even a diagnosis for this disease. Dorothy recalled that when she was married and living southwest of Somerset, she would sometimes see Ada dressed in black walking in the area of Chickentown Road, several miles away from where Ada lived in town. This confirmed what my mother had told me. These long walks must have been how Ada coped with her depression.

Dorothy was 14 years old when her parents died. See the story about Robert's and Emma's death on the page "Tragic Endings," and also in a paragraph about them on the page "Pughs and Oscar Bennett." Dorothy was just one of several of my Pugh relatives to relate the same story to me.

"Aunt Dot" passed away in 2012, the last of her family. I'm glad I was able to reunite her and my mother before she passed.