Lois Mae Wallace next to her Great Granddaughter
both in their high school years.
My mothers story is especially important to tell today after the abortion law that Georgia has signed and other States are following. I will try my best not to ramble but this will be long.
July 18, 1947 my mother, Lois, turned 16.
Your 16th birthday is probably your first big milestone, you get your drivers license, you get to officially go on dates, there are school dances, you're on the edge of the adult world. It's a time filled with a new sense of independence.
My mom told me about going to the football games, she taught me the cheers and her alma maters song, Gardena High. about hanging out with friends at the drugstore soda fountain. She loved Frank Sinatra she had all his records had seen his movies, saw him in person and the night before her surgery he had a tv special she was able to watch. She told me about her babysitting to be able to buy his records and fountain drinks. She liked to go to the dance places in Hollywood and hang out on Hollywood Blvd. hoping to see a Star, would go join the crowds at the movie premieres. I don't think she ever missed the Rose Parade, slept in chairs along the route, even as an adult, we never did that together, I've never been to the Rose Parade, but loved to hear her talk about it.
It would seem her teen years were what you see in movies of that time, my mother was a bobby socker. But there was an untold story that she never talked about, at least when I was around.
My mother passed away at the age of 45, May 14, 1976, 2 months shy of her 46th birthday. They had found a tumor on her brain and were going to do surgery. The night before her surgery she told me she was afraid to die, that she knew she was going to hell, I couldn't imagine why she thought this, she hadn't done anything I was aware of that would send her there. She then told me the dark side of her perfect teen years, at the time she told me it didn't really sink in, about 20 years later it hit me.
When my mother was 15 she became pregnant. When she turned 16, her father took her to an area of Los Angeles known as Little Italy, they met another car in an ally, my mother was told to get in the back seat of that car, where she was blindfolded and laid down and the abortion was performed, she told me she heard the baby cry and heard it was a boy. She was let out of the car and got back in her dads car and they went home and it wasn't talked of again. Can you imagine beig a happy go lucky 16 year old being put through such a nightmare?
After she told me this we found the hospital Clergy, they talked at great length, he told her she was a child at the time that it was her father who made that decision and he would be judged on that, it seemed to ease her fear but she carried her quilt to the grave with her.
There's not quite 20 years age difference between me and my mother, I was born in Dec. and the July after she turned 20. I'm an only child, she said she wanted more but it never happened. When she was 35 she had a complete hysterectomy. At that time the doctor said he was amazed she had any children because of scar tissue.
When I was 5 or 6 years old my mother had a total nervous break down. I remember we basically lived with her parents, originally we lived in a little 1 bedroom house my grandparents had behind their house. My mother and father had married in Nov. of 1950, I was born in Dec of 1951, they legally separated when I was 9 or 10 months old. At the time she worked grave yards at one of the aircraft factories in the area and my grandparents watched me, that's why I say we basically lived with them, I slept in their 2nd bedroom. When i was in kindergarden I remember that bedroom being dark I had to be very quite, I remember an IV pole in the bedroom, like flashes of dim memories. Then I remember her not being there and being told she was in a rest home, I was told later by my mother that during that time she had lost her memory.
After she recovered she would go to therapy sessions, she lived on valium, smoked close to 3 packs a day, one cigerette actively smoking, one in the ashtray waiting, as she was putting the active cigerette out she would light a new one with it. She tried to quit smoking but in the end said why should she, she really enjoyed it. Why? Because at age 45 she died of lung cancer, the tumor that was found on her brain had moved there from her lungs, her death certificate says lung cancer, not Ovarian Cancer like she told me. that sounds odd that she told me she had ovarian cancer, but at the time that didnt think it questionable, but i did say earlier she had had a complete hysterectomy, that would have been about 10 years earlier and at that time the Doctor told her if she didn't quit smoking she would be dead in 10 yrs, I didnt question that she told me she had Ovarian cancer I was scared she was dying and it didnt matter what she dying from. It wasn't until about another 20 yrs when I started my genealogy journey and I sent for her death certificate that I saw the cause of deat was lung cancer, at the time it never occured to me she didnt have her overies, in the years between her deat and me seeing her actual cause of death was lung cancer i had my own daughter and my husbands mother had died of ovarian cancer, so i was concerned about my daughter, I wasn't wrong to be concerned with both grandmothers dying from it. I will never know why she didnt say lung cancer but I think she just didnt want to admit the cigerettes are what killed her
20 years after she died a light went off in my brain. One night while I was watching Touched by an Angel the story was about a couple who had chosen not to have children over their careers, because of this the wife had gotten pregnant had an abortion and didn't tell her husband, she started having problems after a friend had had a baby. In the show they talked about Abortion Syndrome, and what people can experience.
My mother suffered the rest of her life because of this. Not only my mother was affected, her relationships suffered, my grandfather became an alcoholic. My mother said there was talk of divorce. The secret was buried deep, I know one cousin she grew up with was aware of it, just a few years ago I asked that cousins daughter if she would ask her mother what she knew, that's how I learned the area she was taken to. For me personally my mother didn't tell me she loved me, there were no warm snuggly moments, there were lots of times she just wanted to argue with someone and I was it.
Once I saw that Touched by an Angle show it was like a fog cleared in my mind, something I hadn't given a second thought to was in my face and I saw all these things differently, I saw my mother differently, any anger I had with her melted away. What my mother went through no woman should have to go through. I pray she is resting in peace now, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she watches over my family and especially my daughter, I have smelled her.
These new laws are sending us backwards and now to have a Doctor face prison for trying to keep woman safe and healthy is terrible. No woman makes the decision to have an abortion with the flip of a coin, and it remains with them the rest of their life, no one should make this decision except for the woman with guidance from her doctor.
I'm labeled Pro Choice but I feel I am Pro Life. Its people my age and older who are trying to change Roe V Wade who should remember how women died because of how society viewed a pregnant unwed woman. Women will be forced in their minds to take those steps again and endanger themselves. A rapist should not be rewarded which in my mind they are if the woman is forced to have that child. There are medical reasons and even that is heartbreaking for the mother. The decision isn't an easy one, but it is one that should be legally available, with help from Doctors before and after, lets not return to the barbaric and deadly ways of the past.
