Some time in the 1940s, Belle and Harriet had saved enough to buy a mansion on a hill in Grand Rapids and slowly fill it with antiques. They used to invite the students at the Junior College to their house for tea, conversation, and sometimes piano concerts. They were well-known in the community. More than 60 doctors and dentists in Grand Rapids had been their students by the time they retired in the 1950s. Arthur Vandenberg Gerald Ford presented them with a flag that had been flown over the Capitol Building while he was Senator.
We would visit Aunt Belle (as we called her) and Aunt Harriet at least once a year. The things I remember most are Aunt Harriet tending to household cooking, (they had a maid for cleaning) while Aunt Belle held court with the children in her bedroom. Aunt Belle’s vision was very poor– because of bad cataracts, her lenses had been surgically removed and replaced by coke-bottle thick glasses some time ago. We would play fishing from the mahogany four poster bed and catch various sea monsters. Or we would sing simple folk songs, like “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” As I grew older, she would tell me about biology and genetics, which she had taught until retirement at the Junior College. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, she taught me. I learned the words but didn't understand. She showed me the drawings made by Ernst Haeckel that were later to stir controversy, but for now were supposed to show the similarity between human and other vertebrate embryos. Her lessons had a lasting impact.
I would go on walks with Aunt Harriet and their King Charles spaniels, Lucy and Jasper. I loved those dogs. She also taught me how to make pies. And she scolded me when I didn’t help around the house but sat reading a book.
I remember watching black-and-white TV discussions of the Presidential Election between Adlai Stevenson II and Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956. My parents were conflicted about who to vote for. As citizens of Illinois, they were very proud of the statesman/governor of Illinois. But as Army, they supported Eisenhower. I was 3. Four years later I saw TV discussions about Nixon and Kennedy at their house, too. They didn’t like Kennedy.
I loved that house. I remember it clearly. It was a marvelous place, with curving front stairs that led to the bedrooms, and a back staircase for the servants that led from the back bedrooms to the library and kitchen. The kitchen was huge by my standards and had a butler’s pantry. There was a swinging door leading to a large dining room with a table that could seat 12, a sideboard, and a silver Russian samovar on a tea cart. The living room was huge, with matching federal-era couches and chairs in green velvet, a small brass table from India with jade carvings on it, a large fireplace, and of course a grand piano. Oriental carpets were everywhere. A collection of paintings of the Madonna hung on the walls. More curio cabinets with more jade and ivory carvings were upstairs and in the hall.
But it was the grand piano I loved. I used to sit and sound out songs with one finger, or experiment with chords. My cousin Miriam McCallister, who had served as a Presbyterian missionary in India, played A Mighty Fortress Is Our God for me on that piano and I never forgot it.
Upstairs, the beds were all antique mahogany four posters. The beds were tall, and without a step stool they were nearly impossible for a child to get in. Ironing was still a huge chore (no such thing as wrinkle-free), and to keep up standards, everything, including sheets and underwear (!), had to be ironed. My aunts had bought nylon sheets that did not have to be ironed to reduce the labor.
To get into bed, I would stand at the opposite side of the room, run, then take a flying leap, and clutch at the sheets to try to haul myself in. The nylon sheets were stretchy though, so they frequently dumped me back on the floor. They were also hot in the summer, and at night the static from those sheets could be seen as little sparks in the dark.
That house is almost a personality of its own. I used to dream about it.