My paternal grandmother Carla Margaret Throckmorton

DOB 1899, DOD 1992

My paternal grandmother Carla Margaret Throckmorton was sometimes kind to me and I was grateful each time. I saw her warm relationship with her mother Gra (my great-grandmother Anna Omelia Strim), her doting over her son (my father Peter Eugene Throckmorton), and her judicious tolerance of my crazy-mean mother. I was very impressed with my grandmother's attentive teaching of the many, many children and young adults who participated in the sports and activities that she organized at the playground(s) in St. Paul, Minnesota where she was director; and her numerous accomplishments such as the musical instruments that she played. She was a natural leader and excellent athlete. She always dressed very well and she had superb composure. She managed to umpire baseball and coach football, all while wearing a long skirt.

The most important thing that she did for me, beyond being an exemplary role-model, was to incessantly correct my English. As a first generation Norwegian-American language was very important to her. Perhaps the gift of precision in language was all that she could do for me. My grandmother would not allow me to call her grandmother, I was to address her as Throcky, "like the playground children do." If only she had known that I was truly her grandchild, despite the claims of my lunatic mother that I was not my father's child, but rather a child of incest. My DNA tests are conclusive, this is the grandmother whom I can claim now, decades after her passing. My family even excluded me from her funeral, which grieved me terribly.

As a child I realized that when my grandmother Throcky was around things would go smoothly, even pleasantly. I still miss her.

I found the following photographs among my late mother's papers.