Interview with Marion Sender (MS), granddaughter of Bessie Hicks. Conducted by Joe Manning (JM), on October 27, 2007. Transcribed by Seunghee Cha and edited by Manning. 

JM: How did you react to the picture of your grandmother?

MS: I was shocked to see her at a log cabin. She always acted like, you know, she was a southern lady, that she came from money. And I’m sure she told her second husband that, and he told her that. And as soon as they found out that neither one of them had money, he left.

JM: She went back to her maiden name then?

MS: She went back to her former husband’s name. Most people didn’t know she’d ever been married again.

JM: Who did she marry the second time?

MS: His last name was Richards.

JM: And she married him in the Washington area?

MS: No, I think they were in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

JM: Did you know that her first husband died pretty young, at about 35 years of age?

MS: Yes. Bobbie was a bartender the way I understand it. And he died of delirium tremens. That’s what everybody always said.

JM: That’s what happens when alcoholics suddenly stop drinking.

MS: Yeah, you know, bugs and snakes coming out of the water. My brother and I were very careful. In fact, my brother wouldn’t take a drink.

JM: Where would your grandmother have been living at the time you first knew her, and where were you living?

MS: Mount Rainier, Maryland. She lived with us I think nine years. You know, we could never get her age straight, ‘cause she kept changing it. When she was younger, she made herself much younger, and when she was older she made herself much older. But we got the impression she was about 83 or 84 when she died.

JM: Her obituary said she died in La Plata, Maryland.

MS: Right. She was living with her son Joseph.

JM: Now that’s interesting, because Joseph was one of the two children in the picture.

MS: Oh really?

JM: Yes, I was able to determine that by their apparent ages in the photo and by the census information. The photo was in 1911, and Camilla would have been about two or two-and-a-half years old. Joseph would have been about five or six. I noticed that Camilla married someone named Negus. That was her last name when she was listed in Bessie’s obituary.

MS: Yes.

JM: What was she like? And did she have any children?

MS: Yes. She had three children. She had one by Leonard Negus. That was Christine. She’s now living in Florida.

JM: Did you know Joseph?

MS: Oh, very well.

JM: Where did he live as an adult?

MS: In Baltimore.

JM: What did he do for a living?

MS: Well, he kind of moved around. For a while he drove a gasoline truck in Baltimore. He married Susan. I can’t remember her last name. That was his second marriage. He had three children. And he married a third time. He lived with her off and on for two years while he was still married to Susan. And when they divorced, he married this other lady, if we could call her that, if you know what I mean. His first marriage was to a woman named Sadie. And then he found out she was corresponding with a boyfriend that was in jail. They were living with my mom and dad in Baltimore in an apartment, and this fellow got out of jail and came knocking at the door, and he said, ‘I come for Sadie.’ And my father said, ‘You what?’ So Sadie just packed her bags and left with him. Joe was heartbroken. Then he married Sue.

JM: When Bessie’s husband died, how did she support her kids?

MS: She was a dressmaker.

JM: In the caption, Lewis Hine says that she is going to try to go into business for herself. I wonder if that’s what it was.

MS: Maybe it was. She always earned her living by sewing, and in Harrisonburg there was some upper-class people that she claimed she sewed for. She made their clothes so that they wouldn’t have clothes that looked like anybody else’s. Like a designer. Part of the way she supported her family was I think that my father was only 15 when he went to sea as a merchant marine. He said he lied about his age, and he claimed he traveled the world three times. Every time he’d come home to port, the merchant marine paid him when he got off the ship. And he would bring his paycheck home to help pay all the bills they had run up, and then he’d go back to sea.

JM: What did your father do for a living?

MS: He was a printer. He learned to print as a young boy one summer on school vacation at his uncle’s place.

JM: Where would that have happened?

MS: I don’t know. It had to be Virginia, close to where Daddy was born. He was a printer the rest of his life. He worked 35 years at the government printing office in Washington.

JM: And you lived in Mr. Rainier?

MS: Right.