Four Lives
Despite The Odds
By: Janice Rubin,Theda von Schultz Bray, Honey Hilzen, Peggy O'Hea
INTRODUCTION
It takes courage to register for a workshop in which one will review one's life, put the memories on paper and share them with erstwhile strangers. Few people reach middle age without memories that are painful to recall—incidents that involve loss, shame, regret, anger, guilt, feelings that make one uncomfortable.
The four women, whose lives are the subjects of this book, met several years ago in just such a workshop at Glen Rock Community School in Glen Rock, New Jersey, and have continued to write, share, and maintain an amicable association. I was the instructor and Theda Bray, Honey Hilzen and Peggy O'Hea were three of more than one hundred men and women who have registered for workshops during the past seven years. Like some others, they returned semester after semester to continue writing their stories, reading them aloud in class, and receiving feedback from their fellow students. I was struck by their ability to tell their stories, their dedication to their projects, and the unusual lives they had lived. I have become an unabashed admirer of the strength of character that enabled each to bring dreams to fruition despite environments that seemed designed to thwart them.
Theda Bray ends "A Time Remembered" with her emigration to the United States and Peggy O'Hea ends "Unusual Upbringing" with her marriage. Honey Hilzen is the "One" in "Six and One Are Seven;" her story stops shortly after her marriage, but she brings us up to date in the lives of her mother and the other six. I contributed "My Mother's Daughter," chapters spanning my seven decades, in this joint effort to understand our beginnings and figure out how we were able to achieve lives we can look at with satisfaction—lives that one might describe as successful—despite the obstacles.
I have often wondered why one person is able to survive, thrive and, perhaps, even excel, while another, in roughly equivalent circumstances, cannot. What combination of influences, genetic and environmental, enables one person to take control of his or her life, aspire to reasonably-high levels of achievement, and succeed, while his or her siblings either set goals beyond their capacity, which they fail to achieve, or have levels of aspiration far beneath their potential?
As I listened to the stories written by my students, it became obvious that the ones who continue to do the work of life review, some for many years, are people with the determination and courage to face whatever they might uncover. I also observed that these were people who, despite deprivations in their early lives, had enough positive, supportive influences along the way to develop a reasonably healthy self-image. Perhaps it was their willingness to accept a helping hand when it was proffered that enabled them to withstand the slings and arrows and go on to live rewarding lives. These are the fortunate ones. Life and literature are littered with those who didn't get the nurturing they needed in their early years and couldn't find fairy godmothers or other mentors to help them along the way.
In writing our life stories, some of us have discovered qualities in ourselves of which we may justly be proud—strengths that were always there, but which we were not aware of until we gave them credence in writing and had them acknowledged by others. Why we were fortunate enough to develop these positive attributes, which enabled us to succeed where our siblings or others in similar circumstances did not, we may or may not determine as we continue our life stories. Perhaps it is enough to know that they are there to be called on when needed.
Theda von Schultz Bray, born in Hitler's Germany in 1937, was bombed out of her home in Berlin and later again during the Allies' saturation bombing of Hamburg. She fled north on foot with her parents to the home of relatives on the North Sea. She lived through the exigencies of wartime, the defeat of her country, and its occupation by the soldiers of a foreign government, apparently so secure in the love of her parents and other family members that she is able to recapture in words the sweet, sad, tender feelings of a childhood and youth that were alien to many of her German and American contemporaries.
Studies have shown that children sent away from their parents to safer areas during wartime fared less well emotionally than those who remained with their families even under perilous conditions. In spite of the horrors of war, Theda was one of the lucky ones and "A Time Remembered" provides ample evidence thereof. After arriving in the United States with her parents and sister, she married and, while her children were growing up, attended school and became a nurse. Recently retired from her full-time position with a hospital in northern New Jersey, she is still on-call when needed. The mother of three and grandmother of two, she writes regularly and enjoys traveling with her husband, Bob, sometimes piloted by him and sometimes driven in their motor home.
Honey Hilzen's "Six and One Are Seven" is a Cinderella/horror story replete with an assortment of saints and fairy godmothers and topped off with a real-life Prince Charming. She was the third of seven children of a woman who had seven successive husbands and a number of other liaisons. Honey never met her father, although she might have, after exchanging letters with him in her teen years, if her mother had not sabotaged the budding relationship. As one reads her story, one wonders where, in various situations with which she was confronted, she found the strength and courage to persevere, and what made her loyalty to her mother and siblings as steadfast as it was.
Saddled in her youth with responsibility for the home and three younger sisters, she stood by her family members throughout their lifetimes. Unlike her mother she has been married 46 years to Bob, who accepted her and the younger siblings as a package when he proposed marriage, and may well be seen as the hero of this family saga. Honey and Bob raised and educated their own three children and, when called on to do so, helped her siblings and their children. Like her mother, Honey is a generous person who has an open door and a place at the table for others.
Peggy O'Hea was placed in a Catholic orphanage before she was five years old because her alcoholic parents were unable to raise her. By the time she was nine both her parents had died. She lived in one orphanage, then another, until she was sixteen, spending summers with cousins and their parents and eventually going to live with them after leaving the orphanage.
There is no trace of self-pity in her tales from the orphanage and Peggy insists that she did not feel deprived because "we were all in the same boat." The title she chose for her book gives no hint of the bright, spunky child we find therein. The cheerfulness, intellectual independence, and sensitivity of the adult Peggy seem all the more remarkable when one reads "Unusual Upbringing," which she describes as the tale of "someone nobody wanted but who was strong enough to survive." She was a working mother of four who earned her Bachelor's degree while employed as an executive secretary and raising her family. Peggy is now retired and enjoys traveling and dancing with her husband, Bill, a retired police captain. She is also baby-sitter par excellence for her four grandchildren.
As for me, what did I have to overcome? Unlike Peggy, I had two parents during my childhood. I experienced neither war, as Theda did, nor poverty and physical and sexual abuse like Honey.
For the most part, I attribute the difficult times in the past and the self-respect I enjoy today to my identification with my mother whose values, warmth and sense of humor I see in myself in alongside recurrent depressions. Not until my adult years was I able to experience as losses the disappearance of my beloved Uncle Lou in my childhood and my mother's death in my teens. I still work to overcome feelings of inadequacy engendered by a father who, like Honey's mother, refused to acknowledge I had met his high standards even when I exceeded them, and remained withholding to the end. Why I accepted his evaluations, yet, like my co-authors, continued to try to prove myself instead of giving up, is another story for another time. Most of all, I am glad I was "My Mother's Daughter."
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Despite The Odds
By: Janice Rubin,Theda von Schultz Bray, Honey Hilzen, Peggy O'Hea
INTRODUCTION
It takes courage to register for a workshop in which one will review one's life, put the memories on paper and share them with erstwhile strangers. Few people reach middle age without memories that are painful to recall—incidents that involve loss, shame, regret, anger, guilt, feelings that make one uncomfortable.
The four women, whose lives are the subjects of this book, met several years ago in just such a workshop at Glen Rock Community School in Glen Rock, New Jersey, and have continued to write, share, and maintain an amicable association. I was the instructor and Theda Bray, Honey Hilzen and Peggy O'Hea were three of more than one hundred men and women who have registered for workshops during the past seven years. Like some others, they returned semester after semester to continue writing their stories, reading them aloud in class, and receiving feedback from their fellow students. I was struck by their ability to tell their stories, their dedication to their projects, and the unusual lives they had lived. I have become an unabashed admirer of the strength of character that enabled each to bring dreams to fruition despite environments that seemed designed to thwart them.
Theda Bray ends "A Time Remembered" with her emigration to the United States and Peggy O'Hea ends "Unusual Upbringing" with her marriage. Honey Hilzen is the "One" in "Six and One Are Seven;" her story stops shortly after her marriage, but she brings us up to date in the lives of her mother and the other six. I contributed "My Mother's Daughter," chapters spanning my seven decades, in this joint effort to understand our beginnings and figure out how we were able to achieve lives we can look at with satisfaction—lives that one might describe as successful—despite the obstacles.
I have often wondered why one person is able to survive, thrive and, perhaps, even excel, while another, in roughly equivalent circumstances, cannot. What combination of influences, genetic and environmental, enables one person to take control of his or her life, aspire to reasonably-high levels of achievement, and succeed, while his or her siblings either set goals beyond their capacity, which they fail to achieve, or have levels of aspiration far beneath their potential?
As I listened to the stories written by my students, it became obvious that the ones who continue to do the work of life review, some for many years, are people with the determination and courage to face whatever they might uncover. I also observed that these were people who, despite deprivations in their early lives, had enough positive, supportive influences along the way to develop a reasonably healthy self-image. Perhaps it was their willingness to accept a helping hand when it was proffered that enabled them to withstand the slings and arrows and go on to live rewarding lives. These are the fortunate ones. Life and literature are littered with those who didn't get the nurturing they needed in their early years and couldn't find fairy godmothers or other mentors to help them along the way.
In writing our life stories, some of us have discovered qualities in ourselves of which we may justly be proud—strengths that were always there, but which we were not aware of until we gave them credence in writing and had them acknowledged by others. Why we were fortunate enough to develop these positive attributes, which enabled us to succeed where our siblings or others in similar circumstances did not, we may or may not determine as we continue our life stories. Perhaps it is enough to know that they are there to be called on when needed.
Theda von Schultz Bray, born in Hitler's Germany in 1937, was bombed out of her home in Berlin and later again during the Allies' saturation bombing of Hamburg. She fled north on foot with her parents to the home of relatives on the North Sea. She lived through the exigencies of wartime, the defeat of her country, and its occupation by the soldiers of a foreign government, apparently so secure in the love of her parents and other family members that she is able to recapture in words the sweet, sad, tender feelings of a childhood and youth that were alien to many of her German and American contemporaries.
Studies have shown that children sent away from their parents to safer areas during wartime fared less well emotionally than those who remained with their families even under perilous conditions. In spite of the horrors of war, Theda was one of the lucky ones and "A Time Remembered" provides ample evidence thereof. After arriving in the United States with her parents and sister, she married and, while her children were growing up, attended school and became a nurse. Recently retired from her full-time position with a hospital in northern New Jersey, she is still on-call when needed. The mother of three and grandmother of two, she writes regularly and enjoys traveling with her husband, Bob, sometimes piloted by him and sometimes driven in their motor home.
Honey Hilzen's "Six and One Are Seven" is a Cinderella/horror story replete with an assortment of saints and fairy godmothers and topped off with a real-life Prince Charming. She was the third of seven children of a woman who had seven successive husbands and a number of other liaisons. Honey never met her father, although she might have, after exchanging letters with him in her teen years, if her mother had not sabotaged the budding relationship. As one reads her story, one wonders where, in various situations with which she was confronted, she found the strength and courage to persevere, and what made her loyalty to her mother and siblings as steadfast as it was.
Saddled in her youth with responsibility for the home and three younger sisters, she stood by her family members throughout their lifetimes. Unlike her mother she has been married 46 years to Bob, who accepted her and the younger siblings as a package when he proposed marriage, and may well be seen as the hero of this family saga. Honey and Bob raised and educated their own three children and, when called on to do so, helped her siblings and their children. Like her mother, Honey is a generous person who has an open door and a place at the table for others.
Peggy O'Hea was placed in a Catholic orphanage before she was five years old because her alcoholic parents were unable to raise her. By the time she was nine both her parents had died. She lived in one orphanage, then another, until she was sixteen, spending summers with cousins and their parents and eventually going to live with them after leaving the orphanage.
There is no trace of self-pity in her tales from the orphanage and Peggy insists that she did not feel deprived because "we were all in the same boat." The title she chose for her book gives no hint of the bright, spunky child we find therein. The cheerfulness, intellectual independence, and sensitivity of the adult Peggy seem all the more remarkable when one reads "Unusual Upbringing," which she describes as the tale of "someone nobody wanted but who was strong enough to survive." She was a working mother of four who earned her Bachelor's degree while employed as an executive secretary and raising her family. Peggy is now retired and enjoys traveling and dancing with her husband, Bill, a retired police captain. She is also baby-sitter par excellence for her four grandchildren.
As for me, what did I have to overcome? Unlike Peggy, I had two parents during my childhood. I experienced neither war, as Theda did, nor poverty and physical and sexual abuse like Honey.
For the most part, I attribute the difficult times in the past and the self-respect I enjoy today to my identification with my mother whose values, warmth and sense of humor I see in myself in alongside recurrent depressions. Not until my adult years was I able to experience as losses the disappearance of my beloved Uncle Lou in my childhood and my mother's death in my teens. I still work to overcome feelings of inadequacy engendered by a father who, like Honey's mother, refused to acknowledge I had met his high standards even when I exceeded them, and remained withholding to the end. Why I accepted his evaluations, yet, like my co-authors, continued to try to prove myself instead of giving up, is another story for another time. Most of all, I am glad I was "My Mother's Daughter."
GoHome