Marshall &Kay Family  Histories

 

 

Leaving Nevada

After my cousin Bernard died, my parents told me that they had decided that I should come back home, because they were a little concerned. I'm told this was rather hard on my Aunt Janet because she had gotten kind of attached to me. And she really didn't want me to go right at that time, because it was already so hard losing Bernard. So I believe they let me stay a little while longer, and then took me back home to San Francisco where they were living.

I started going to school in San Francisco, (Bernard died in the summertime, I might've still been six when I came back). But I remember my impressions of San Francisco and the apartment we were living in at the time. It was different, I wasn't used to apartments. Mother(Mary INGHAM) had gotten a high school girl to take care of me after school every day, and I didn't like her and I don't think she liked me. I didn't care for the school very much either, I didn't like school.

I remember the looks of the apartment, we had kind of a window seat in one of the front windows, I can remember sitting on the window and feeling kind of lonesome. I don't think I was in San Francisco too long because the sitter didn't work out and I had more that one sitter, as I recall. I don't know where my mother got the girls to look after me but it didn't last a long time. 

 

 

Going to live with Aunt Dot

I then went to live with my Aunt Dot(Ardell INGHAM Kay), mother's sister who had married my father's brother, Uncle Jim (James KAY). And they were living in Berkeley at that time. I started going to school there. And I started getting closely acquainted with the cousins who lived there. My cousins were Jo Ann and Kathleen, and at that time I don't think their younger brother was born. My Aunt Pearl, who I mentioned was in that car accident when I was a baby ,was living with them and helping to take care of the children. I think that was for two reasons. Aunt Pearl really didn't have a family that would take care of her. She never had any children of her own, she raised her husband's children and it appeared that none of them cared to take care of her. So, she was kind of all alone, and so she went to go live with my Aunt Dot. And my Aunt Dot kind of supported her, and in exchange, my Aunt Pearl helped take care of the children, and the household and so forth. The reason I remember that so well is because as kids, we would do things that kids did, and most of the time we would drive Aunt Pearl crazy. She was like a grandmother. She was older than my grandmother that had died, she was my grandmother's sister, my great Aunt. So she was not a young woman and she was tired and all these kids bothered her a lot. 

 

My Uncle Jim worked for Sloan Furniture Company. And he was a very important executive at Sloan Furniture Company. Sloan was big time furniture in San Francisco, and he was well known for that. While I was there, I went to church because they took us, so I had some church experience again, you might say. But Uncle Jim and Aunt Dot didn't do many church things in their home. But they were involved in the choir, they were always in the choir. My Aunt Dot played the piano very well, and she played the organ very well for the ward, she did that for years. 

Aunt Dot . . . . how do I put this, Aunt Dot basically had a good heart, but she was not a person I ever got to know very well. She was not an affectionate person, and she was not a person that really talked to me, or I felt inclined to talk to. I don't know how else to explain Aunt Dot. I don't know if she was that way with her own children, but I felt like I never knew Aunt Dot very well.

Her children were younger than I was, I was seven or eight. I can remember being there in third grade, I think it was. Jo Ann was a year younger and Kathleen was almost two years younger.

I remember I liked school there, school was fun. And living with Aunt Dot was okay. There were always disadvantages. I would go see my parents every so often, not every weekend though. I would go to San Francisco and stay a few days and come back. 

 

So I was in Berkeley for a few years and apparently there came a time, probably when my Aunt Dot felt like she couldn't manage it anymore, that I went back to live with my parents. We were in a different apartment, I remember it was a small apartment. 
 

Aunt Dot changed throughout the years, later in life she had Alzheimer's.