My Grandma, Betty LaDue was born June 18 1923 during the depression, in St. Paul Minnesota. She grew up poor but doesn’t recall feeling poor because nobody had any more than her family. She learned by watching her mother how to manage a household, how to cook, clean and discipline children. Her father also participated in her early work experience. Her father was a contractor who only did repairs during the depression. After building a floor he paid my grandma to wash them. Also during her youth my grandma would stay overnight at her neighbors house taking care of the children to give the parents a chance to go out. For these services she was paid a quarter and felt fortunate.
As the family grew up her dad bought her brothers dump trucks and taught them the contracting business. She graduated from highschool in 1941 and worked as a secretary for two years then she went to college. She paid her own way to college, working as a statistician in the admissions and records office. She went to college because that’s where the boys were, she never thought about what she would be. She majored in business advertising and met and married a navy officer, Cal LaDue who was going to school to be a Dentist.
The Navy moved the new couple from Minnesota to San Diego where my grandpa set up a dental practice and my grandma set up the home. She mentioned that the philosophy of marriage was completely different at that time, when she got married she got married for keeps. As a Christian in the Lutheran Church she saw marriage as the unifying of two people where you submit to each other and work for the success of each other. She knew her part was working in the home and helping her husband in any way possible with his profession that they considered theirs.
In helping her husband she would fill in as a receptionist at the dental office. She wouldn’t get paid because she considered it helping herself as much as her husband. She used her business education to do all the bookeeping for the business. After work her and her husband would go and clean the office themselves because they felt they did a better job than hired help could do. She also volunteered for an auxiliary club of dentist’s wives which raised money for scholarships to send people to dental school. The women’s auxiliary club also educated the public about dental hygiene. In fact my grandma felt it her duty to advance her husband’s career.
But her greatest joy was motherhood. However it had it’s difficulties. Her first child was a little girl and she was stillborn, there is a grave for her in Minnesota. Her next three children were boys and she worked for 25 years raising them, disciplining them, sending them to school and making sure she was home when they returned. She cleaned up after them, fed them, taught them, praised and scolded them, went to their school activities, and baked them cookies, and impressed upon them her Christian values. She raised them in a neighborhood filled with children their own age and never had to worry about anything bad happening to them.
As a homemaker she spent 24 hours a day and 43 years managing the home. She had a housekeeper named Etheline help her with the chores every two weeks. Etheline was black and was the first black person her children had ever seen. Together she and Etheline would do the more difficult chores.
She was willing to work in the home because of the philosophy of marriage that she held and that many people of that time period held. Marriage was for keeps, and when you were married you became one with the person. Each member had their role in the marriage. My grandma didn’t understand what women wanted to be liberated from. She never felt oppressed, always felt respected. She realizes though that she was fortunate to have a husband who appreciated her and loved her.
Now that her work is done, my grandma is enjoying life. She travels all over the world, and tries to stay healthy by biking and playing tennis(which she still beats me at). She visits her family and gives us advice more and more as she get older and realizes she won’t always be around us. She says she doesn’t like getting older but she’s getting her house in order and spreading her love and support to her family and charities.
She deserves this award for being a homemaker and raising three men of integrity. However, this award is a small symbol of the impact she has made on the lives of her friends and family, and the impact people like her have made on the face of America. As we turn to see where we come from in history we should be careful to acknowledge the women who had such a large part in bringing us here.
