Marshall &Kay Family  Histories

 

Mary INGHAM Kay

and Work

 

Unlike her mother before her, Mary Ingham worked outside the home. Her mother, Mary Agnus Pack was a stay at home mom. But Mary had gone to secretarial school and had her business degree and from that time, she knew shorthand and typing very well, and was very good at it. The company she worked for most of the time was called Stedheimer's, which was a wholesale place that handled sweaters, t-shirts, and sports clothing, all that sort of thing. She actually worked in a big business building right down on Market Street, not in the store. I used to go down and visit her every once in a while. They took up one whole floor of that particular building. I can remember going down there and seeing boxes and boxes of sweaters and things. She wasn't the only secretary there, but she was the president's secretary, or one of the chief secretaries and worked there for many years. Then when we moved to Menlo Park, she became the secretary at Jordon Junior High School. This is interesting, because a long time before, that's where my dad (John Black Kay) had gone to Junior High when he was a young man. 

 

She was very well liked in Jordan Junior High. As secretaries in schools often do, she began running that whole office and kept track of everything. They really liked her there. She was sixty eight when she retired but she didn't retire from Jordan, though. At one point because of politics or something , the new school board came in a changed the principal and how the system was run there. So when the new principal came in he brought a lot of people in, and brought in his own secretary. I remember that was a hard time for mother because she like that school, and they liked her. But because she worked for the school system she was given the opportunity to work at another school. However that was still hard. Then she worked for a school that worked with handicapped children, called Loma Vista. I think it was grammar school and junior high age. All of the children were handicapped in one way or another. And after a while she became of the main spokesperson in the office again, they all thought a lot of her. I can remember her getting all kinds of little gifts, notes and letters from people there. It seemed like whoever she worked with really, liked her. So that's where she actually retired from. She could've retired at sixty five, but she decided not to, since she was feeling well she continue working. So she retired at sixty eight and that's when she built on to our house and moved in with us.