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Few toys, simple shared joys
Seniors recollect when Christmas meant family
Friday, Dec. 25, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos
by EMILY BARNES
Harry Kriemelmeyer sports his Santa gear at the Waldorf Jaycees Community Center.
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Christmastime may bring an increasing overload each year of secular commercialism, but it's no match for the enduring memories that longtime Southern Maryland residents have of simpler times.
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Waldorf resident Evelyn Bailey Hazelton, 75, said her most memorable Christmas was in 1965 when her late husband, Bill, was stationed in Vietnam and she was left alone with her three young daughters.
"I decided that the kids should have everything in the world for Christmas because their dad was gone," she said, smiling. "I bought everything that I could get my hands on." Hazelton said she hid the gifts in a couple of her neighbors' houses. Many of the gifts had to be assembled.
"On Christmas Eve, I thought, ‘Oh, Lord, I've got to put all of this stuff together,'" she said, laughing. "I went to my next-door neighbor's house and all of the toys were already put together. I went up the street to my other neighbor's house and they had put everything together for me, too."
Much to her daughters' delight, she said their dad was able to ship three Vietnamese dolls to them for Christmas. "It had me in tears," she said. "That Christmas was really special to me because the girls got those gifts and the community helped me decorate my house and took care of all of those gifts. It just gave me a boost that everybody helped."
NANCY BROMLEY McCONATY
Santas on the beat
Lounging close by a fire or sitting around a Christmas tree might be the norm for most folks, but it's the dedication and sacrifice of the men and women in blue who help keep those idyllic scenes unspoiled.
For a combined 65 years, Francis Garner, Robert Jameson and John Monroe served their community with the Charles County Sheriff's Office, and that meant even spending Dec. 25 a few times in the cozy confines of the county courthouse and their squad cars.
"One year I put a Santa Claus suit over my uniform and rode around in my car," Jameson remembered. "I had kids hollering at me and people calling me up asking if Santa could come see them."
"A few times there was so much snow, we couldn't go home," Monroe said of the wintry weather in the 1960s. "I had to sleep on my desk in the courtroom."
Fortunately for the three gentlemen, most of the calls they had to answer when covering the holiday involved residents who'd had a few too many cups of eggnog or wanted to use their chimneys. "We had a few fires, too," Garner said.
MEREDITH SOMERS
‘The best gift of all'
Betty Mae Willett, 72, of Nanjemoy said she has many happy holiday memories of her childhood.
"On Christmas Eve, Daddy and Mama killed and dressed the turkey, boiled an old ham and Mama always made a fresh coconut cake along with other goodies. In the afternoon, we decorated the freshly cut tree and decorated with pine and holly," she said as she imagined the wonderful aroma.
Willett would go to bed that night with the "excitement of knowing there would be presents under the tree the next morning," she said.
"I always wanted a new doll, and somehow she was always under the tree," Willett said, adding that her Christmas stocking was filled with nuts, candy, oranges and tangerines.
Even as a small child, she knew the true meaning behind Christmas. "I'm so thankful for parents who taught me that Jesus is the best gift of all," she said.
SARA POYNOR
He wasn't
packing heat
Harry Kriemelmeyer of Waldorf recalled not too long ago when he would dress up as Santa for the children at the Head Start program in Nanjemoy.
Kriemelmeyer said the Kiwanis Club of Waldorf would hold a Christmas party for the 60 or 70 kids and he would let each child tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas and each child would get a little something from Kiwanis.
He said he remembered fondly Christmastime three years ago when one little boy didn't ask for an action figure like he was used to hearing for many years. Instead, this particular little boy asked for an Uzi.
"Santa doesn't carry any Uzis around. What else would you like?" Kriemelmeyer recalled telling the boy. The boy replied that he would take a smaller gun.
Thinking back even further, Kriemelmeyer recalled one of his Christmas wish list items. As a boy, "they didn't have action figures like they do now." Instead, he remembers setting his hopes on Santa bringing him a bike — and one year he got his wish.
GRETCHEN PHILLIPS
Miss Canada Dry
Sandy Mahoney of Scotland easily recalled how she spent Christmas 54 years ago.
"I was touring Europe as Miss Canada Dry," she said.
It was 1955, and at 20 she was in the middle of a six-month tour of military bases in Germany and France promoting the soft drink company by singing. She had left one base and headed toward another on the Czechoslovakian border when her entourage got lost.
"They kept teasing us and said, ‘Don't get lost or you'll end up in a Russian prison,'" Mahoney recalled. Thankfully, that did not happen, and the group eventually found its way to the base. But they arrived late, she said, and the band was upset and decided not to play, leaving her to sing solo.
"We put the show on without a band," she said. She sang tunes such as "Moonlight in Vermont" and other jazz standards. While it was not her ideal Christmas Eve, she said it did give her a good story to tell and probably helped brighten the holiday for the 1,000 or so servicemen in the audience. Afterward, she and the female piano player distributed presents.
JESSE YEATMAN
‘Everything
is beautiful'
When Sarah Ellis of Waldorf was a young child, her father banned Christmas celebrations for religious reasons. But she didn't mind, because her family's new Seventh-day Adventist traditions, which she maintains today, gave her plenty of people to be with and things to do. These things were more important than any holiday. "My father was really strict. If you did something wrong you had to sit down and read from some part of the Bible. I loved it," she said.
Still, she recalls the signs of the holiday in the town of Kingston, Jamaica, where she grew up. So far south, everything is alive even in the depths of winter.
"Christmas is beautiful. Everything is green; they'd decorate the Christmas tree. There was fresh fruit and everything is beautiful," Ellis said.
ERICA MITRANO
A long, long night
A big, red bike figures prominently in Wayne Walker's favorite Christmas memory. Growing up in rural North Carolina, Walker said his family tradition was to exchange wrapped presents on Christmas Eve. But Christmas morning was when the unwrapped big-ticket items appeared, slipped into the house overnight by Santa. Walker, 66, of Waldorf remembers that when he was 8, he could barely sleep for excitement on Christmas Eve.
"It was one of the longest nights. It seemed like it went on forever," he said.
When morning finally arrived, Walker ran downstairs to find a shiny, red bike, complete with a horn and even a light on the handlebars. The bike was a little too big for Walker at the time, but he was able to grow into it and ride it for years.
"I was really happy, just tickled to death," Walker said.
BETHANY RODGERS
‘It filled my heart'
As a mother, Dolly Fitzpatrick had to provide a magical Christmas for nine children. This could be done "because the expectations of children weren't what they are today," she said. "We always explained to them that Santa has many children to go to. He's going to try to bring you your wishes," but something would be left out.
Christmas then was about people, not presents, she said, and the best part of the day was having extended family over for dinner. Even though she was "dead tired" after the marathon preparations, she liked it much better than the materialistic holiday she sees today at 83.
"Christmas was family and surprises. … Christmas lasted until the last person went home at 11 o'clock at night. It was beautiful and it filled my heart. I would love to have Christmases like that again," she said.
ERICA MITRANO
A gift that truly fit
Annabelle Jones, 77, recalled a Christmas many years ago when a new pair of shoes turned out to be what she said was the best gift she has ever received.
The Waldorf resident said when she was growing up in Washington, D.C., times were so hard that she had to wear a pair of shoes until the soles wore away to nothing.
"When I was a kid we were very, very poor," she recalled. "I remember walking to school with the whole bottom of my shoe loose. I would put rubber bands around them to keep the soles on. My feet were always wet when I got to school."
One day before Christmas, Jones said her uncle, Thomas Sweeney, dropped by, bundled up her and her brother, Michael, and took them downtown to Hahn's shoe store.
"The store gave us new shoes," she said. "I'll never forget it. My brother and I were sitting on the floor with shoes encircling us. The store gave us a whole box of socks, too. I never remember being that happy before. I was ecstatic. I was happy that whole year. One night I even slept with my shoes on. I wouldn't take them off."
NANCY BROMLEY McCONATY
‘We always had stuffed ham'
Frances Indiana "Polly" Abell of Hollywood, 95, is the last survivor of 10 children from a family who lived in the Redgate community when she was born. Abell was 4 when her father, a storekeeper, decided to make a change, and she and her parents and most of her siblings boarded a bus to move to Washington, D.C.
"I was the youngest of the girls. They would take me downtown and I could see all the lights and all the store windows that were decorated with Santa Claus and animals [including] reindeer," she said.
Being the youngest had its advantages.
"The first Christmas we were in D.C., I got a great big doll, a baby carriage and a pretty spinning top," she said, and Christmas still had its mother county flavor. "My mother was from the old school," she said. "We always had stuffed ham."
The family moved back to St. Mary's when Abell was 9, and they lived near Leonardtown in a house built by her father that in more recent years was the home of the Willows restaurant. Leonardtown's Christmas display wasn't on a par with the big city, she said, "but it was nice. You could go down there and enjoy it and not be scared to walk. They had the windows decorated with green and red ropes, and a wreath."
The family briefly returned to the nation's capital before her father built a new home in Hollywood, and they were living in the first house built in Sandy Bottom by the time she was a teenager. Through the decades that followed, the Christmas preparations that now take place over a couple of weeks were done in a much shorter period of time, as Abell and her husband, Francis, raised a family of their own. "We didn't stuff our hams or [do] anything until Christmas Eve," she said. "We would decorate the tree and everything, and then go to midnight Mass."
JOHN WHARTON
‘I never thought we were deprived'
Growing up during the Great Depression on a farm in Cedar Point, the current location of Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Jane Yowaiski, 89, of Leonardtown said she never believed in Santa Claus.
But, one time, she was tempted to.
Yowaiski said her grandfather would often sell off lots from the farm to raise money for the family. One of the "city families" who bought a vacation lot from Yowaiski's family took a liking to little Jane and her older sister. During Christmas of 1926, Yowaiski was 6, and the couple gave the girls what was an amazing luxury for the subsistence farming family.
"That Christmas, they gave me and my sister ‘kiss me' dolls," Yowaiski said, who said it was the first toy she ever got for Christmas. "We didn't know anybody getting toys. … We never made much over Christmas, because we never had the money for it."
Even when the Depression hit in 1929, Yowaiski said her family never lacked food, living on a farm that produced beef and lamb. Even when she and her sister had to split a pack of writing paper as their only Christmas present, Yowaiski said she felt blessed. "I think '29 was the worst year," she said. "We had so many city people here who lost their city jobs. … I never thought we were deprived."
JAY FRIESS
‘Thank you
for the noise'
A resident of Colton's Point for 11 years, William McMurry served domestically as an aviation machinist with the U.S. Navy during World War II and went on to a successful engineering career which included 15 years at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He recently took in the opening of local artist Candy Cummings' exhibition at the Lexington Park library, and when asked to share a Christmas memory, McMurry smiled, then laughed.
He recalled his high school days in Nashville, Tenn. It was Christmas Eve, and he and a group of students went out caroling through the city, having no idea that their singing would garner more than a few tips. "We did not carol for the purpose of collecting money; people just voluntarily came out of their house and said, ‘Here, have some money; thank you for the noise,'" McMurry said.
Rather than keep the money for themselves, though, the students donated the money to an orphanage. "End of story," he said, laughing again. "But that particular Christmas experience is not like the usual."
DICKSON MERCER
‘We had plenty
to eat'
Francis Dean, 85, grew up on the family farm in Hollywood off Sotterley Road during the Great Depression.
"Things were tough," he said from his new home at Cedar Lane Apartments in Leonardtown. The family grew tobacco, packed it up in hogsheads, loaded them into wagons and took them down to Sotterley Wharf to be shipped by boat to Baltimore.
Tobacco wears out the soil so it needs fertilizer. The Deans had to borrow money to pay for the fertilizer and one year the price paid for tobacco didn't cover the cost of the fertilizer, "so that was a whole year wasted," he said. And it was labor-intensive work.
That Christmas, "We were told to have $2.50 to $3 out of the Sears catalog." It was enough to get a toy tractor or a BB gun, Dean said.
"It was an interesting time; people didn't have much," he said. But living on a farm, "we had plenty to eat."
JASON BABCOCK
A pear was
never so precious
In September 1939, at the beginning of World War II, Antonia Roby was 11 years old when she and her sister were evacuated with other schoolchildren from their homes in London to the town of High Wycombe, about 40 miles west.
"My sister and I were placed with a poor but very warm family, and they were very good to us," Roby, now of Solomons, recalled recently.
"My birthday is two days before Christmas, and I was 12 that year," she continued. "The parents of our host mother lived nearby. They had a pear tree in their garden and, when the pears were nearly ripe, they wrapped them in newspaper and stored them in their attic. On my birthday, they gave one of those pears to me and I really appreciated it; not just because it tasted so good, but because it was so nice of them to give me one of their precious pears — and I was just an evacuee," she said.
"I don't remember any other present that year. A year later we were returned to London with the rest of my school."
BOB RENNEISEN
‘I love them all'
For Adele Williams of Prince Frederick, Christmas is all about the music and the true message of Christmas.
Williams, a choir director for 20 years in the 1970s and '80s for Waters Memorial United Methodist Church in St. Leonard and a member since 1964, said her fond memories are of the special music during Christmas Eve services. Whether the music was a piano, organ or a soloist or trio, she said, "It was all special."
Her favorite carols, "O Holy Night," that tells the story of Christ's birth, and "O Come All Ye Faithful," which calls people to join together, both have lyrics of what Christmas is all about, she said.
"You'll have me singing in a minute. I love them all," Williams said as she began recalling Christmas carols.
CAROL HARVAT
No peeking
Janet Rochow, 77, of Solomons said her parents really did not want her to peek at her Christmas presents.
"When I was a little kid, I always got up Christmas morning and my parents always had the presents covered up. We weren't allowed to see them and it was pandemonium after that," said Rochow, who recalled that her parents would always use a large, old blanket to cover the gifts.
Looking back, Rochow said she thinks her parents made the right decision.
"I think it just made it more exciting," she said, adding that while she does not remember specifically peeking under the blanket, it may have happened once or twice.
Rochow said she was so fond of the tradition she did it herself when she had children of her own.
LAURA BUCK
‘We didn't lack
for much'
Sandy Farrell, 75, of North Beach remembers a time when Christmas was confined to, at most, two weeks and focused on family rather than shopping. Actually, in Farrell's family, Christmas didn't begin until the day before.
"Everything was done Christmas Eve. The tree was put up, the presents were put out. [My parents] stayed up all night doing stuff," she said.
Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Morningside, Farrell said Christmas was always enjoyable during her childhood, Santa or not. Her family didn't have much money — her father drove a taxi in the District and her mother worked a circuit board at Andrews Air Force Base during Farrell's teenage years — but they never went without.
"The only thing was we felt we should have more toys, naturally, than clothes, but we had to take the clothes because you needed them," she said. "We didn't lack for much. "
JEFF NEWMAN
