Edith Gump
is honored with a Brick from Martha Vliet
Written by Marilynn Gump
Read by Susan Gump Watkins
For Edith, her home was the heart of her life, and she was the heart of her home. Her considerable intelligence and creativity were lavished on her family and home. It was a way of life that is vanishing with Edith and her peers, and with it goes so much of the grace and charm of our society.
Every day she prepared three wholesome meals. Every afternoon her children would tear through the door calling, "Mommy", and every day they were answered with the teasing response, "What-ee?". She was, in short, always there.
As a wife, she gained the deep and abiding devotion of her husband, Bob. Theirs was the love story of a century. Their joys and difficulties mirrored those of their world, during that period of intense change and upheaval that was the 20th century. They both were born to a horse and buggy era, were driving cars by their teenage years, flying around the world and witnessing space exploration by their late middle-age.
As a mother, she kept an eye on everything concerning her children's welfare. She kept four children, clean, groomed, dressed and pressed -- and this in an era before easy-care anything. She cut and shampooed their hair, sewed beautifully many of their clothes, sent them out the door before 8 a.m. with a hot and healthful breakfast eaten and the piano practiced. She saw they got to the doctor and dentist for their physical health and to Sunday school and church for their spiritual health.
Whenever any one of them expressed an interest or affinity, she created an opportunity to develop it. Music, dance, art and language lessons; band, youth orchestra and thespians at school; Sunday afternoons at the symphony and the occasional road show at the Forum. She was committed to exposing her children to the best the world had to offer.
And she found time -- how, we now wonder -- to create fun times, too. We all remember the monthly "family parties" when we roasted wieners and played games; the parties at the farm with cook-outs, hay racks, horses and singing around the campfire; ice-skating with the whole family, then home for hot chocolate.
As a grandmother, she was their dear EE, named by a grandson who couldn't quite get his mouth around the name, Edith. She had more time to enjoy quiet pleasures with her grandchildren. She would stand them on the kitchen counter, tiny binoculars in hand, to watch birds in the backyard; take them to play on swings at EE's park; teach them the "right" way -- that would be her way -- to do things. One granddaughter says she always is amazed when her friends don't know to put the detergent and water in the machine before the clothes go in… "You mean your grandmother didn't teach you that?" she asks.
Edith admired continual self-improvement above all else. "If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing well," she often said, or the dreaded, "I'm only telling you this for your own good…" She had an unwavering intellectual curiosity and responded to questions by saying, "Let's look it up in the World Book" or "Go look it up in the dictionary."
So how did this admirable woman become who she was? She was born into a large family of exceptionally good-looking people -- the Carnahan girls were legendary throughout Cherokee County -- and the product of a mother and grandmother who valued education above everything except virtue. Her maternal grandmother, Alfretta Mitchell, was president of the Cherokee County Socialist Party (which really was the Populist Party). Grandma Mitchell refused to get married until she saved enough money to buy a dictionary, and when her children were ready for high school, she did a remarkable thing. She and her husband closed the door at their farm and moved the family to town where they opened a stationary store to support themselves. When the last child finished school, they closed the shop and moved back to the farm. Edith's mother inherited this love and respect for knowledge and passed it on to her own children.
Edith grew up on a dairy farm, where she had many chores, including milking the cows. She was quite happy never to pull another udder after she left home. There were 11 children in her family, eight of them younger, so she also had much practice in child care. She attended school in Riverton, KS where she met her life long friend, Edris Simon… the two maintained a close and loving friendship for more than 80 years. In 1928 Edith received her teacher's certificate from Kansas Sate University, at which time she accepted a job at a country school near Holland, KS.
It so happened that Bob Gump's family lived near Holland. Bob and Edith met at a political rally at the Holland town hallo, where speakers were expounding the respective views of presidential candidates Alfred Smith and Herbert Hoover. Remarkably, Bob had been selected to represent Hoover! Anyone who knows him would attest this was the first and only time he ever defended the republican position! Bob was smitten immediately with Edith and announced to his sisters that he "liked the blonde with the naturally curly hair." His sisters -- who really did have naturally curly hair -- knew a perm job when they saw it and teased Bob for his naivete. Bob was in college at the time, and he and Edith maintained a courtship for six years while he finished his studies. While Edith was teaching in Columbus, KS, Bob would hitchhike hundreds of miles from Manhattan just to spend a few hours with his "turtle dove."
The couple married June 7, 1934, a hot summer day with Bob sweltering his only suit, a heavy worsted wool, and Edith resplendent in a white silk crepe dress she had made. A wreath of pearls held her veil, and she carried a fragrant bouquet of roses, sweet peas and snapdragons. The first few years of their marriage, Bob and Edith traveled around Oklahoma, as Bob was employed by the government inspecting cattle. They settled in Ada, OK in 1936. Those were happy years for the young couple. In spite of the Depression, Bob had a good job and they did well. This is not to say that money wasn't a little tight. Bob tells the story of their trying to see the Clark Gable - Claudette Colbert movie, "It Happened One Night." They had been chasing the movie all across the state … it always had just left when they arrived in a new town. Finally, they were in Ada, and the movie was showing for one last night. They were ecstatic. Unfortunately, the admission was 15 cents each, and they only had 20 cents. To add the irony, the next day, while cleaning out the car, they found a dime.
Bob opened a veterinary practice in Ada, and their first two children, Linda and R.J. were born. In July 1942, with babies at home and a new business just started, Bob was called to serve in World War II as a veterinarian. He was sent to China for a long, painful four year separation from Edith.
After the war, Edith and Bob moved to Wichita for a job opportunity, and life became easier. By 1950, two more daughters, Marilynn and Susan, had been born, Bob had opened a successful practice and Edith began her "glamorous" years. Bob and Edith joined country club and attended many dances and parties. Always an elegant dresser, Edith now had occasions to wear beautiful dance gowns and formals. Her children were enraptured watching her careful rituals of dressing and fixing her hair and make up; her husband displayed obvious pride in escorting her.
As her children grew older and required less of her attention, Edith developed interests that would last the rest of her life, chief among them were vigorous daily walks and bridge. She was an accomplished player of duplicate bridge, and her social life centered around the game.
Her knowledge of natural history and concern for the environment lived in such a bone-deep part of her that they scarcely can be termed a mere interest. She instinctively recognized the dangers of pesticides and preached conservation long before "Silent Spring" and Earth Day. She could identify a tree, bird, wildflower or bird song a mile away. She said that her daughter, Linda, had come by her interest in ornithology honestly because while pregnant with her first born, Edith had wandered the fields looking at birds.
All these things about Edith we loved. But the rarest and most remarkable quality about Edith and her husband has been their willingness and ability to keep changing, learning, growing and developing. They have continued to read, study and -- until osteoporosis limited Edith's mobility -- to take classes and learn new skills. Well into their eighties they attended Mira Merriman's art history classes and took upholstery classes through they county extension. When Edith died at almost 92 years, she was a wiser and more loving person than she had been at 90.
Each and every day she became the better, the wiser, the richer in love and in faith. She has been deeply loved and shall be sorely missed.
If she were here, she would be honored to bless you with her favorite Irish prayer:
May the road rise up to meet you;
May the wind be always at your back;
May the rain fall gently upon your fields;
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
