ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 4, 1997 TAG: 9702040064
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
DATELINE: MONETA
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Betty Wood is standing in the kitchen of the Smith Mountain Lake home she retired to 10 years ago. Scattered before her are piles of photographs and old letters - family heirlooms she did not discover until the death of her father, H.D. Martin, two summers ago.
The hand-tinted photograph shows a young couple seated on a stone wall surrounding a pond. It was taken sometime around 1930, somewhere near Covington.
The man in the picture, Walter Hudson, worked off and on at the paper mill there during the Great Depression. His wife, Marie, was the first woman in the family to work outside the home, clerking her way up to the title of assistant secretary-treasurer at the town newspaper, The Covington Virginian.
Until recently, this is what Betty Wood knew of her Aunt Marie's life:
``All my mother would say about her is, `My sister and her twin babies died in childbirth.' She didn't like to talk about it.''
As a teen-ager growing up in Roanoke, Betty remembers brushing her mother's hair on the front porch.
Occasionally, her mom would reveal a few details about the young woman in the photo: That Marie had a premonition of her death, that family members frequently saw Marie kneeling in prayer throughout her pregnancy.
Brushing her mother's hair, Betty would gently prod her with questions. ``It was sad for her, talking about it,'' Betty recalls. ``On the porch at night was the only time she would. She could hide her tears in the dark, I guess.''
Much later, the letters surfaced - one typewritten, one penned in an elegant script, another written on newspaper stationery. Betty and her sister, Wanda Myers, didn't find the letters until after they'd cleared out their father's home in Southeast Roanoke County.
Betty was shocked to hear Marie's story, especially told in her own voice. Written just before and during her pregnancy, Marie's letters not only reveal the timeless concerns of an expectant mother. They also offer a window into a hard time in history - opened by a woman who happened to be way ahead of her time.
Dated March 31, 1930: Walt has finished washing the woodwork and walls in the kitchen, it looks pretty good. They are still laying them off at the mill, so why shouldn't he do the house cleaning? Somebody has to bring in some cash, and if he can't I must.
On Feb. 1, 1931, two months before her due date, Marie Hudson shared with her sister the details of assembling her layette: I guess I'll have all my little clothes washed and put away in another two weeks anyway, then I'll have more time. See I worked so long and then had Xmas immediately afterwards and didn't give me any time for sewing.
It has been a big job for me preparing for our baby, with the experience I have had in that line. I have tried to buy as sensibly as possible. I don't even have a baby bed. I just padded and lined me a clothes basket with pink sateen. It cost me about $3, whereas a bed would have cost about $20.
I was to see [midwife] Mrs. McCormick last week. She says she will take me. I'd so much rather go there as to the hospital. Her price is $60 for 10 days without the doctor. The doctor bill is $25 or $30. But I couldn't stay home for a dime less. The nurse here would be $5 a day, no night service and a cook on top of that.
Walt couldn't work all day, come home and prepare the meals and probably be up half the night with the baby or I, then work the next day. What does he know about a baby?
Walt wants me to go over to Mrs. McCormick's Maternity Home and I think, too, it's the best thing I can do. I'm not expecting a picnic anywhere, but if our baby is alright and just lives and I can live with it, that will be all the reward I will ask. We are mighty anxious to see this baby, hope we are not too anxious.
Marie's third and final letter was written a few weeks before her death. It centered - predictably - on two things the nine-months-pregnant woman cannot talk enough about: the baby and food.
I'm still getting along alright. I am not going to complain until I have to. I baked a coconut cake and three pies this morning. That don't sound like I'm sick does it? I have a time at night, tho. I can't turn over or get up when I get down. (But it won't be long now.)
I weighed 191 last Sunday night and I only get one slice of bread for each meal now, and that's not good at all. I'll be so glad when I get so I can have things to eat. I am just going to cook me everything, if I live.
You mustn't forget to send me that gingerbread receipt again. I got my butter [in the mail] last Friday afternoon about 5 o'clock the day you were here. I don't know where it had been so long. Tell Mother she doesn't wrap that butter very securely.
Mrs. McCormick says she has my bed sterilized and all made up for me. Can you beat that? That's no extra good news to me in a way cause I'm expecting to do a lot of suffering on that ``old hateful bed,'' as Cleta [a younger sister with Down syndrome] says.
Walt says he will write to mother as soon as he has any news, tell her. I have addressed him an envelope.
I have to close and get a bite of supper. You write soon. Always, Ree.
Where the letters leave off, the obituaries begin. Marie's newspaper carried two stories and two editorials about her death, believed to be caused by high blood pressure. One story described her seven-year marriage as ``one of continuous bliss with the responsibility of both her home and the office. Her burdens were never too great. She never complained.''
Another described the loss felt by fellow newspaper staffers and paperboys: ``Not a boy here but who loved her as the big sister she always was to score or more of little urchins. She mothered them from the day each of the lot commenced to follow the older brother to the office with all its bullying and rebuff, until `they got their own bags' and finally grew up and graduated and passed out into the world as men in business, in the professions, in industry.''
Walter Hudson died of blood poisoning the following year.
Betty Wood and Wanda Myers don't understand why their mother, Nellie Martin, never showed them the letters she kept tucked inside a dresser drawer. Perhaps she felt guilty, Wanda speculates, given that she had 10 healthy children herself, including a pair of twins in 1932, a year after Marie died.
``We were very upset with her, that she didn't share this with us'' before her death in 1986, Betty says. The sisters are planning a trip to Covington to search for Marie's grave.
``It's like a part of our history has been lost,'' Betty says. ``We have really grieved for Marie.''
LENGTH: Long : 121 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: This hand-tinted photograph shows Walter and Marieby CNBHudson in the 1930s. Marie Hudson and her twins later died in
childbirth. color.