UPBEAT TIMES • July 2014 • 15 LDER ISDOM
hen I met Jean (Mc- Cormick) Bell of San- ta Rosa, I was struck by the richness of this humble woman’s life.
W The
daughter of a former stage actress and a writer, Jean was born on her grandmother’s kitchen table and also born into the arts. Her parents divorced when Jean was young, and her moth- er became a farmer’s wife in southeast Wy- oming when she met Arvid Anderson, a Swedish immigrant. Jean’s fi rst school
experience was in a three room school house in Wyoming. Getting to school could be quite an or- deal, as the family lived on roads that were im- passable by car during the bru- tal winter months.
They had
to hitch up a horse and cov- ered wagon or sleigh as trans- portation. Jean’s older sister, Bunny,
attended the nearest
high school 20 miles away as a boarding student. Despite the challenges, Jean fondly re- members their farm on the edge of “table land,” taking her dog into the nearby canyons, sing- ing, and playing piano. Recounting the
“terrible
locust invasion” and severe drought in 1931 that plagued America’s heartland and trig-
gered the Dust Bowl, Jean de- scribed the Locusts eating their crops, getting into the house, and the family putting towels
by Eloise Tweeten
Eloise@TweetenEldercare.com Humble Woman...Rich Life
harsh winters, Jean soon left Wyoming once again to attend eighth grade in New York City, living with her father who was then working as an ad- vertising writer for the fi lm industry.
Jean returned to Wyo- ming for high school, as a new school had been built in town.
Her step
father’s farm was still not productive, but Jean’s mother put her prior ex- perience singing and act- ing in a traveling theat- rical company to work, teaching drama and music at the local high school, thanks to Roos- evelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program to support employment.
After high school, Jean went to Graceland Col-
around windows to try to mini- mize the dirt that got into “ev- erything”.
They had to wear
scarves over their faces when they fed the cattle.
Due to the drought and hard- ship, Jean spent seventh grade living with her cousin’s mis- sionary family in Southern Cal- ifornia. It was quite a culture shock to transition to a “huge” school with over 3000 students. Jean was “lost all the time,” but seemed to take it in stride. Her west coast experience became relatively short-lived, however, when her aunt became ill. She returned home, but due to the
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lege in Iowa, where she studied art and music, and then to New York where she attended art school to become a commer- cial artist like her sister, Bunny.
However, due to the expense, Jean ended up becoming Bun- ny’s understudy instead, and lived with her for about six months. At this time, she also discovered her real love, sing- ing, and took vocal lessons. By now, her father worked in ad- vertising for RKO Radio Pic- tures, and eventually became the advertising director for this major studio. Jean was intro- duced to movie stars and even had her picture taken with a “young Lucille Ball.” Much to her father’s chagrin, Jean was “insuffi ciently impressed” with movie stars and her father’s ca- reer, and she returned to Den- ver to work in advertising for the May Company. This experience was also Jean’s
relatively short lived.
college friend, Bruce Bell, who had attended navy fl ight school and visited her in Denver, wanted to take Jean fl ying in a “little plane.” Jean was “scared to death” but did it anyway. To make matters worse, he asked
... continued on page 20 Weird Facts & Fun Trivia -6
The earthquake that rocked South-central Alaska on March 27, 1964, was the second-largest ever re- corded. The magnitude 9.2 earthquake trails only a 9.5 recorded in Chile in 1960.
The Three Gorges Dam in the Sandouping, Yichang, Hubei province of China is a wall across the third largest river in the world (Yangtze River ), and by the time it is fi nished in 2009 will have created a reservoir almost 300 miles long, and tapped an electrical source equal to 18 nuclear power plants.
The Earth’s crust consists of about a dozen tectonic plates, each more than 1,000 miles across and up to 40 miles thick.
The earth’s inner core, a 500-mile ball of iron, is mov- ing faster than the earth’s surface. This spinning ball- within-a-ball may be a major force generating the earth’s magnetic fi eld.
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UPBEAT TIMES • July 2014 • 15
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