Gertrude

 Gertrude

I thought maybe today I would share something about someone I actually knew.  I was 10 years old, almost 11 when my Grandmother, Gertrude (Jackman) Montague passed away...but I had developed a strong impression of and love for her in that mount of time...she had made a deep imprint on my soul.

In looking for something else (hw often is this the case) I ran across two separate remembrances of her by two individuals, each of which capture a different aspect of her multi-faceted life.  I will share parts of eac of them here.

The first is from a friend.  She writes:

Gertrude was a pleasant hard-working woman.  She always had a smile and a good sense of humor  and was very east to associate with...

She was always helping someone besides keeping their home and family together.  She also had a nice family and she worked hard for them and loved them very dearly.

My husband lived close by them and after I moved to Payson I met Lucille Kinder Johnson and she took me to visit Gertrude and her family.  That was when I first met her.  I really liked her.

Then WPA was introduced in Payson.  She became a nurse and helped many people.  She was paid by the WPA which was a work project.  

After Bus & I were married and it was our second son when  Curtis was born.  Gertrude came to our house morning and night to take care of me & the baby.  That was in 1937 and we really appreciated her and what she did for us.  And then in 1940 when our second daughter was born, we had Gertrude come again to care for me and the baby...She was a very good nurse.

We always felt better after visiting with her.  I remember her walking everywhere she went.  She was indeed a good mother, a good housewife and home maker and a good friend.  I am glad that we knew her.

And this from a nephew, William Dean:

She was kind and cheerful.  She had a happy personality.  She loved her family and worked hard to make a good home for them.

In hard times she would fill all of her bottles with fruit, then fill several honey cans with peaches, and as the bottles were empty in the winter she would put the peaches form the cans in the bottles.  She raised a garden...chickens, pigs, and kept a cow for milk.

She cared for women who were confined with baby’s, and worked for sick people.  She was a good worker and always brought a happy spirit into any home that she entered.

She loved her parents and was always ready too help them when they needed her.  She had many friends and the neighbor children loved her and she had a yard full of them a lot of the time.

I have many memories of her, but I will share just two.  She had what seemed to me a huge upholstered rocker, and it was a competition to climb on her lap, it seemed that there were always two or three of us there at any given time, and she would just laugh the most wonderful laugh...and she would read to us, or tell us amazing stories...and I always felt such love and security on her lap in that big rocker (as I type this, I can hardly see the page through my tears).

By the time I was old enough to remember, Grandma had married a fine older man, Leo Condor, and lived in a rural area outside Richfield, Utah.  My family loves to tell the story of when I, probably all of five years old, came running breathlessly into her kitchen, grabbing her by the hand, and taking her hurriedly outside to see the chickens that had invaded her yard.  I think that was probably the first time I had seen free-range chickens, outside a coop.  She very patiently accompanied me, and shared my sense of amazement at these feathered creatures that she had seen every day for many years.

I still love my Grandma...I hope now you do too.