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Campers: Nellie Lott Strickler
 When
my parents married in 1904 my mother was twenty four, my father
thirty five. Their married life was a union replete with love.
Both were imaginative and creative. My mother, right up to her
final days, always had a project. She made all kinds of things,
most often involving needle work. For years she made my father's
shirts, and later mine. And, of course, she made many of her
own dresses. She loved making baby clothes, no matter for whose
child. She made quilts, braided and hooked rugs. She knitted
mittens, sweaters and dresses. She loved to read, kept her favorite
books about her, and read many of them over and over again.
David L. Strickler
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 Small
in stature she might be, but amazingly tough and resilient.
She lost two children: Charles, my older brother died at age
six from complications following diphtheria and my younger
brother, Sidney, died at childbirth (Caesarean section, in
which we almost lost her). I remember her return from the
hospital following the episode. She was wearing a black sealskin
fur coat which my father had bought her out of gratitude for
her recovery.
David L. Strickler
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 She
loved music. As a young woman she sang in the prestigious choral
group, the Euterpean ladies' Chorus. The group traveled coast
to coast here and even invaded Wales, where it walked off with
first prize in a national eisteddfod. I have a picture of the
chorus. The ladies, all clad in white, are clustered about Mrs.
Cassel, the leader, who is clad in black, a row of medals strung
across her ample bosom. I remember reunions at our house and
being impressed with the booming alto section and uncanny precision
of their singing. Many of the voices by then were definitely
over the hill, but wielded bravely like an old warrior's unscabbarded
sword.
David L. Strickler
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 People
who garden glow in a special way. Both of my parents had that
glow. we always had gardens and my mother canned their produce.
We raised strawberries, cucumbers, squash, beans, peas, tomatoes,
lettuce, cabbage, corn asparagus, and God knows what else. My
only problem with this compulsion of my parents was that I got
to do the weeding. I once ran across a setting of an Emily Dickinson
poem and the only line I remember went, "...when thou art
weeding in the sacred hour of dawn..." I never sang the
song. My parents were made of stouter stuff, loved the feel
of soil in their hands and reveled in watching the garden grow.
David L. Strickler |
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