I’m absolutely terrible at remembering birthdays, anniversaries, anything of that sort. And yet, I almost never forget that December 27 was the birthday of my great grandmother, Hazel Grace Smith, neé Cath. She was born on this day in 1894, the third child of Teunis H. Cath and Nellie Seaman, who lived in West Glenville. She went to school there and when she was 20 married Ernest Goodrich Smith, whose family lived just down the road. (Family legend has it that Hazel may have stolen Ernie away from one of her sisters, and it’s true that they barely spoke throughout their lives, and her sister inserted a pointed barb at Hazel in her will.) For reasons that will never be clear, they were married in a church in Rensselaer, far from home and not a place that featured in their lives. Seven months after that, in 1916, Hazel gave birth to their only child, Thelma. Ernie was a union carpenter and a small farmer. They lived in Wyatts for years, and then near Aqueduct. She was gentle and sweet, and made a wonderful apple pie.
Most of the time I spent with her was during summers, when she would stay up at her sister Helen’s “country” house in West Glenville. Helen was our babysitter, and in the summer she would mostly watch my sister and me up at the country house. It was a rundown, unpainted two-story just up West Glenville Road from the house they grew up in on Waters Road. There was no running water; there was a two-seater outhouse and a hand-pump in the yard. There they both spent most of their days doing housework, watching their “stories,” and taking walks to the raspberry patch or up to the cemetery.
She lived to be 102, although the last 10 years or so she wasn’t much aware of anyone, which was sad. But her longevity gives us all some hope of genetic predisposition to a long and healthy life.