George was a farmer by trade (working other people's land) and the Great Depression was still in full swing, so times were tight with another mouth to feed, but she grew up strong and happy. She loved animals, particularly riding behind their team of Belgian working horses.
When she started school, she had to fight the boys in her class who called her "Vera" instead of "Janie." She was a good fighter and her schoolmates soon learned that calling her Vera wasn't worth the trouble it caused.
After WWII, parts of Europe were in need of working horses and her family's Belgian team was sold at quite a profit and shipped overseas. A tractor was purchased and she took to driving it very quickly. She was better than her brother, Farrell, at driving the tractor, but he was better on horseback, so things evened out in the end.
Janie had a Border Collie named Wags who helped her father on the farm, but was completely her dog. She loved him and he loved her. Whenever she sat or stood still, he would lay with his head on her feet. There was also a barn cat who frequently had kittens. One of these kittens became Janie's other best friend. His name was Beanie. Wags knew that Beanie was part of the family, so he would carry him around the farm by the scruff of the neck, even when Beanie was an adult cat. Wags would make sure Beanie was safe on the porch at the end of the day, bringing him in from the barn or yard.
Janie's first car was a 1951 Chevy. The girl who'd been driving tractors her whole life had a lead foot and made a name for herself by drag racing with her male classmates, often beating their better cars because she was a better driver.
Janie was a good student. She wanted to be a doctor, but there wasn't money for college. She went to business school instead and became a bookkeeper. She happily did bookkeeping for car dealerships in Indianapolis after graduation and one of her proudest moments was when the Chevy dealer she worked for at the time let her drive the two official 1955 Indianapolis 500 Chevrolet Bel Air pace cars from the delivery truck to the garage upon their arrival.
In 1955, a family friend named Evelyn Jane arranged for Janie to be at the same basketball game as a young man named Ralph Reeves. Ralph didn't even like basketball, but he went anyway because Evelyn Jane (who he knew through DeMolay and Job's Daughters (Masonic organizations for young people)) insisted that he needed to meet this girl named Janie.
They liked one another immediately and he asked her to go to the movies the following weekend. He borrowed his brother-in-law's car and sports jacket and took Janie to the Indiana Theater to see James Dean in "Rebel without a Cause." From that evening on, they were inseparable. Against Janie's mother's wishes (she thought she should wait awhile), they were married three months later!
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| Ralph and Janie on their wedding day, January 13, 1956. (Friday the 13th!) |
Although there may have been "some talk" and people may have assumed that Janie and Ralph "had to get married," they tried for six years before they had their one and only child, a daughter.
Ralph worked for General Motors and Janie stayed home taking care of the house and their little girl. She was quite popular with the neighborhood kids because, unlike the other moms, she could repair broken bicycles and loved to see everyone's dogs when they came to visit. Plus, she appreciated Matchbox cars and dolls equally.
As their daughter and her friends got older, Janie and Ralph's home was always open to all of them. Many teenage Euchre sessions, special viewings of television music specials (John Denver, Barry Manilow, etc.), and movie parties centered around classic movie musicals happened in their living room and kitchen.
Janie eventually went back to work once their daughter was in high school, in part to ensure that their little girl could go to college and fulfill some of the dreams that Janie never could.
Straightforward and completely honest, you always knew exactly where you stood with Janie. Never pretentious, she wore jeans wherever she went. She never carried a purse and rarely wore a dress.
She unapologetically loved her husband, Ralph, and they did everything together as equal partners, even before this attitude was considered to be the norm. The couple that got married against her mother's wishes merely three months after meeting was married for 55-1/2 years, until Janie passed away on September 2, 2011.
Janie was my mom.
I'm far more reserved and tend to internalize things like my dad instead of being straightforward like her. I always admired that about her, but it just wasn't in me.
I do have a lead foot like her and inherited her love of animals, cars, and sports. (She taught me everything I know about basketball and football and retaught me how to drive after my driver's education teacher did an abysmal job of it.)
Although we didn't always see eye-to-eye and she could get under my skin like no one else, I loved her with all of my heart and will miss her every day for the rest of my life.
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| Ralph, Janie, and me on their 50th wedding anniversary in 2006. |
