My mother fell in love with movies and the big screen as a girl growing up in Kaukauna, Wisconsin. When I was young, she told me how she would lay out her father’s clothing for the morning, making it one step easier for him to dress and go to work. His jobs were not steady, but when he had one, he’d often drop a dime into her shoe as a thank you for her efforts. The dime was always spent on a matinee. In 1929, her 11th year, the Vaudette theater in Kaukauna showed its first talkie. The dime only got her into the movie. Nothing was left for popcorn.

By 1930, her father left home and my mother left school. At age 12 she stayed home and kept house. That way, my grandmother could teach sewing at the vocational school and work as a seamstress from home, providing for herself and the six children left behind.

Little Women was one of my favorite stories when I was a girl. I loved to write, so of course I identified with Jo. The character Beth, who the March family referred to as “their cricket by the hearth,” much preferred to be at home rather than out in the overwhelming world or at school. That was true of my mother as well.

Like Beth, my mother was a very humble woman. She never took credit for the impact that her role in the family had. Because of her, the rest of her siblings could give their attention to school. All five of the others graduated from high school in the post-Depression, pre-World War II era.

Even though the family was poor, the children were lavished with names rich in history and poetry. My mother’s name was LaBelle Liberty. In my child’s mind, I always connected the Statue of Liberty to her, and dreamt of traveling East to see it. My childhood dreams became a reality when I retired from 30 years of teaching kindergarten. Instead of heading to the classroom the following fall, I headed to France. There, I house- and garden-sat from September to April, in Upper Bormes Les Mimosas, a village rife with history and beauty, on the Mediterranean Sea.

For the return trip back to the States, I booked a berth on the Queen Mary. My daughter, Hilary, joined me for the transatlantic trip and to sail past the Statue of Liberty as our paternal ancestors had done a century before. On the last day, we rose well before dawn, dressed and hurried to the deck so that we could secure a place by the railing, and an unblocked view of the statue.

Our efforts were for naught. One of the densest fogs that we ever saw clogged the harbor. Nothing was visible except the faintest glimmer of light from Liberty’s torch. We were not the only travelers to be crestfallen. As I opened the door to go in from the cold, foggy morning, there before me stood former First Lady Barbara Bush and her bodyguard. 

“Oh hello!” I said, surprise tinging my voice. My daughter and I had seen her and the former president several times on the journey, even sitting across the aisle from them during one of the evening shows. Still, it was a surprise to find myself face-to-face and in conversation with this woman who had lived in the White House.

“Can you see the statue?” she asked.

“It’s only a distant side view now, and a bit anti-climactic at this point,” I answered. “Sailing past her was the main reason that I decided to return from Europe by boat.”

“That’s why we came on this trip as well, to sail past the Statue of Liberty,” she told me.

“My mother’s name was LaBelle Liberty. That’s always made the statue even more special to me.”

“What a beautiful name,” Mrs. Bush replied, before heading to the ship’s rail to see it for herself.

My mother never lived to know about my trip to France and the fact that her name was deemed beautiful by one of our nation’s first ladies. I hold the story tenderly in my heart, where my mother, and her humble, kind, and loving ways, will always reign as First Lady there.