Sunday May 10th is Mother's Day.  It's a day to reflect on the first person to pick us up -- and the last to let us down.

 

I am blessed with three "mothers" in my life.  My wife Sharon, the mother of our three children.  Her mother Eva Kim, a wonderful mother-in-law and grandmother.  And my own mother, Mary Petersen, who has steered my life since it began.  They are all great. 

 

But this Mother's Day I reflect back on my grandmothers, both of whom are now dead.  They were very different women, but each a strong and compelling personality that made my parents (and me) who we are today.

 

My father's mother, Hazel Emmeline Sturgeon Petersen, was born on a ranch in Oklahoma when it was still Indian territory.  Raised by her father and older brothers, she lived the frontier life.  She could ride a horse, rope a calf and shoot a gun at an early age.  My Dad still has the "matched pair" of twenty gauge shotguns from her youth.  Yes, they work.

 

Widowed during the Great Depression, Hazel raised her first son (my "uncle Chap") in rural Louisiana.  Along the way, she got her pilot's license and began delivering the U.S. mail to remote farms.  When World War II began, she flew for the Civil Air Patrol over the Gulf of Mexico tracking German submarines.  To my knowledge, she was the only woman to serve in that capacity. 

 

She married a second time to an immigrant's son, Earle Petersen, from Nebraska.  Their son John -- named for John the Baptist -- was born in 1940.  The couple and their two boys later moved to Arlington Height, Illinois, where my Dad graduated from high school.  My grandmother Hazel taught music for several years in the Cook County public school system.  She always said that music was her first love.  Next to her boys, of course.  She died in 1990.

 

My mother's mother, Mary Walton McCandlish Livingston, was born in Fairfax.  She was the eldest daughter of a local attorney and niece of "Uncle Walton" Moore, the U.S. Congressman.  The entire family, three generations strong, lived on the same block in the Town. 

 

Mary Walton was smart, opinionated and a natural leader.  After graduating college, she was an officer in the County Chamber of Commerce, back when Fairfax was mostly dairy farms.  She organized the Chamber's "Young Professionals" events in the late Thirties to fight the perception of Fairfax as a rural backwater. 

 

In 1940, Mary Walton married a lawyer named Schuyler William Livingston and they had three children who they raised in Alexandria.  Mary Walton returned to work in the Sixties and spent twenty years working at the National Archives in D.C.  She kept a legendary vegetable garden and all the grandchildren learned to love it. 

 

When the General Assembly instituted "massive resistance" in the Fifties, Mary Walton was one of the first in our area to speak against closing the schools.  She was a passionate advocate for public education.  Years later, the local NAACP awarded her for her efforts at integrating Virginia's schools.  She died in 2007.

 

I'm lucky to have such strong women in my life to remember on Mother's Day.  I'll bet you feel the same.

 

JCP Notes:  Again, Wednesday, May 13th is our big day.  Please come one and all to the Hard Times Cafe.  If you need information, please feel free to contact us at www.fairfaxsenator.com. 

 

Then on Tuesday, May 19th, I am co-hosting an event for Jon Bowerbank, Democrat for Lt. Governor, at the offices of Reed Smith in Tyson's Corner.  Please join us to meet Jon and learn about his campaign. Visit Jon's website at www.jb2009.com.

 

The Assembly is out of session through the summer.  If you have any questions or need information, please contact us at 703-349-3361 or kathy@fairfaxsenator.com.