This past December I made new arrangements with the mausoleum which has been my second home since I brought Rob and Robin back to Dallas. I decided to purchase a family corner consisting of six crypts in addition to the two I already own. In lieu of my usual Christmas checks, I gave crypts to Eleanor and Walter and Andrew and Nell. They were visibly stunned but I assured them they would be grateful later. Sam and I will of course occupy the two remaining crypts and I have an option on an adjoining one for any grandchild who chooses not to marry. Though a person may cherish independence in life, no one should be alone in death.
I have visited all the leading morticians in this area to compare prices and services and have already made my selection, along with a sizable down payment. My children will undoubtedly be too overcome by grief on the day of my death to consider cutting corners, so I have done it for them.
I have also discussed with Dean O’Brien at the Cathedral the service I envision for my funeral. However, I am keeping an open letter with my will, reiterating my wishes in the event he should precede me in death, leaving my last rites to a stranger. My children refuse to listen when I try to discuss funeral arrangements with them, finding the topic unbearably grim, so unless I put it in writing I am afraid no one will remember that my favorite hymn is “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Forgive me for dwelling at such length on a subject that may be as abhorrent to you as it appears to be to everyone else I know. Sam flies into a rage if I attempt to question him about his final wishes and berates me till bedtime for assuming I will outlive him. Sometimes it is hard for me to remember what a gentle, sweet-tempered man he was when I married him. His doctor insists the change in his personality has nothing to do with me but results from the hardening of the arteries that so often accompanies old age. I cling desperately to this consoling thought as I struggle to keep from drowning in the ocean of his abuse.
And yet for all his bitterness at being deprived of his sight and robust health, I never saw a man less ready to die. His stubborn insistence on continuing to live every day just as he always has and at the same time refusing to enjoy a minute of it causes me more pain than my own considerable infirmities. When I am with him, I am ready to die whether he is or not. This may sound like heresy but you do not know how fortunate you were to lose your husband while you still loved him. Life can be as cruel a thief as death, stripping a person of all the qualities that once inspired love and leaving only a hate-provoking shell.
I am so happy to think of you recovering your strength and remaining as alert as ever in mind and spirit. Even though we no longer see each other, I am stronger just knowing you are there.
Devotedly,
Bess
May 15, 1963
Dallas
Dear Dwight and Totsie,
I have been feeling very old since the death last month of my stepmother, who was actually younger than I. However, the enclosed clipping from The New York Times makes me happy I am still alive. It is the first time that august journal has ever taken notice of anyone in my family, though I have subscribed to it faithfully for over forty years. And now not just an article —but a photograph as well. It was a happy day for me, loving the theater as I do, when my oldest granddaughter married an aspiring playwright, but I am thrilled to have the drama critics confirm my high opinion of his talent with an award of excellence—even though it was for what is known as an Off-Broadway production.
When I called to offer congratulations, I was greeted with more good news, though nothing worthy of The Times’ attention: my first great-grandchild will arrive with the new year. Suddenly seventy-two does not seem old at all. I even feel like getting down my suitcases. Now that I have family living in New York again, I am overwhelmed with the desire to make one last round of the theaters.
And after that I may appear on your doorstep. What fun it would be to spend time with the only other two people my age who are as young as I.
A bientôt—j’espère,
Bess
May 16, 1963
Dallas
Ma petite Betsy,
Much as I adore being the first to know about anything, I would have gladly relinquished the honor this morning. Your premature announcement to me has caused your dear mother immense pain.
When you told me yesterday that I was about to become a great-grandmother, I assumed you had already shared the glad tidings with your parents. I immediately made an appointment with your father to revise my will. We were discussing inheritance taxes in his office when your mother stopped by, hoping to find him free for lunch. She was stunned to learn of your impending motherhood from me and not from you. Your father was equally shocked, having assumed we were discussing great-grandchildren in general and not realizing the occasion for our meeting had been provided by the imminent arrival of a particular great-grandchild. Like many lawyers, I am afraid that, in looking for the forest, he too often misses the trees.
Under ordinary circumstances your mother would never allow me to see her disappointment—in anything—but this time it was too new to hide, and she let me take her in my arms to comfort her for the first time since 1936 when she found her poet lover living with a man. How ironic that it took a slight from her daughter to return my daughter to my waiting arms—if only for a moment.
Your father, clearly feeling that so much emotion was out of place in the office of a prominent attorney, especially when the tears were streaming from the faces of his immediate family, was enormously relieved when I invited your mother to have lunch with me. He went as far as the elevator with us, then hurried off to a Community Chest luncheon for which we had already made him several minutes late.
I was quite flattered when your mother decided to cancel her afternoon sculpture class at the Art Museum and spend the rest of the day with me. We did some shopping at Neiman-Marcus (though hardly a sales clerk there these days remembers my name—and I feel the merchandise is slipping a bit, too) but mostly we just talked, saying things to each other we have left unsaid for the past quarter century. I cannot tell you how sad I was when she finally had to leave me for her own family.
I have never spoken to you of the estrangement that has existed between your mother and me since she left my house for hers. Instead I concentrated my attention on you in silence, trying to conceal my disappointment in my daughter by my devotion to her daughter. But even in my silence I must be to blame for your miscalculation in making me the first to know about the baby. If so, I apologize for allowing you to see my neglect and thereby encouraging you to accord me the respect you owe your mother. I am speaking to you now not as a grandmother but as the mother of your mother—the daughter I adore—when I beg you to call home tonight and share your good news with someone who loves you even more than I do.
But I also beg you not to allow this reprimand to reflect in any way on my joy at the thought of seeing another generation come to life before I die. Though I am not free to discuss the terms of my will with you at this time, be assured I am doing everything in my power to see that my estate provides for the needs of your children and hopefully for their children as well. I trust my immediate survivors will not take offense at my decision to delay the division of my estate and the ensuing distribution of principal for as long as possible under law. Your father, who is one of those immediate survivors, of course, made no attempt to talk me out of it. Perhaps by now he considers it a useless exercise to try to talk me out of anything, but I would prefer to believe he agrees with my feeling that I will have done enough for my children and grandchildren during my lifetime. Those who have profited from my life should not expect to derive further profit from my death. Your children and grandchildren, on the other hand, will know me only as the name on a check that arrives quarterly, but I hope in time they will come to understand that the name belonged to someone who loved them sight unseen.
I cannot wait to be with you until you come home for Christmas, so I have decided to fly to New York for a quick visit. I have made re
servations at the Algonquin so that I can get to the theater on my own every night. (At my age it is unwise to depend on the kindness of taxi drivers.) I am reserving an adjoining room for you (and your husband if he cares to join us), so that we can see as much of each other as possible during my stay.
I will be arriving at Idlewild at 5:30 P.M. on Braniff Flight 76. Trust you will be there to meet me. Please make dinner reservations at the Rainbow Room. Don’t tell me it is no longer chic—I have already heard—but there is no more beautiful view in all of New York City. And how I love to dine looking down on a city.
A bientôt,
Nana
June 21, 1963
Dallas
Dear Totsie and Dwight,
I had a wonderful trip to New York. Betsy and her husband rented a limousine to meet me at the airport, a magnificent gesture in view of their limited resources. I repaid their generous welcome by taking them to the theater every night and then to dinner afterwards. They declined my offer of an adjoining room at the Algonquin, preferring the privacy of their Greenwich Village apartment. They never go to sleep before four in the morning so I did not count on their company until after lunch each day.
This left my mornings free to relocate the landmarks of my past. At the Metropolitan Museum I became so completely immersed in memories of my last visit there with Eleanor that I called a stranger by her name. When she turned around in surprise and I saw that she was no one I knew, I suddenly grew faint and confused. I was so dizzy I could hardly walk so she very kindly guided me to the front entrance and helped me down those endless stairs into a taxi.
I did not mention the incident to my grandchildren, who were waiting for me at the hotel. Though they are more inclined than their parents to treat me as an equal, I did not want their solicitude to inhibit our fun. That night at their insistence we saw the play that has caused such a stir, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? I did not care for the playwright’s message, but reveled in his language. After the theater we enjoyed a steak dinner at the Hickory House to the accompaniment of a jazz piano.
However, now that I am safely home, I do not plan to leave again—at least for awhile. Aside from that moment of dislocation in time and space while staring at El Greco’s Storm Over Toledo, I have been in good health, but on my return I found Sam wandering around the house in a state of extreme confusion. He kept asking me where I had been. My explanation would satisfy him momentarily and then he would ask again. According to the doctor, he suffered a mild stroke in my absence and I cannot risk leaving again.
So I am afraid I will not be seeing you after all—certainly not this summer and maybe never. But perhaps it is better not to meet again—just to remember each other as we were. Please write as often as you can—it will keep me from missing you so much.
Je vous embrasse,
Bess
November 23, 1963
Dallas
4 A.M.
Dear Mrs. Kennedy,
I hope you will not allow the postmark on this letter to prevent you from reading it. Though I realize I am only one of millions who share your grief, I cannot help feeling a special kinship with you tonight.
You see, like yourself, I lost my husband when I was still young with children to raise, so I know how alone and abandoned you must feel at this moment. But unlike you, I could not direct my anger at an assassin—or at the city that harbored him.
I moved to Dallas as a new bride soon after the turn of the century and watched with pride as it welcomed people from all parts of the world, of every religious persuasion and political conviction. However, only yesterday did I realize we had also become a metropolis large enough to shelter a madman.
Today is my seventy-third birthday. Until now I have regarded every year added to my allotted three score and ten as a personal triumph. But tonight keeping vigil with my radio and television and reliving the horror of the last twelve hours, I feel for the first time that I may have lived too long.
I feel too close to you tonight to call you Mrs. Kennedy—and you are so much more a person than that title implies. Today the nation sees you only as the widow of our fallen leader, but in the weeks and months to come, you must remember what a remarkable woman you can and shall be in your own right.
Courage, ma chère Jacqueline. Je vous embrasse de tout mon coeur.
Elizabeth Steed Garner
Christmas Eve, 1963
Dallas
Dearest Lydia,
This is the last Christmas I will spend in this house, and I have insisted that the family gather here for the day. In the past I have spent the morning with Eleanor and Walter in their home and the evening with Andrew and Nell at theirs. But this year I want to be surrounded by my family in my own home.
In recent years I have given only cursory attention to Christmas decorating, leaving to the children the task of transforming their homes with trees and wreaths and candles. But today I bought the tallest fir I could find and decorated it with all the trinkets that have been stored in the attic for the last twenty years.
Sam continues in the convalescent home where he has been since he suffered a second stroke on Thanksgiving Day. I visit him every day and though he always smiles when he sees me, his conversation is usually incoherent. I have the feeling he is asking about going home and I tell him we must wait until he is well. However, the doctor holds little hope for any improvement in his condition and feels he should have constant medical supervision.
Under these circumstances there is nothing to prevent me from selling the house, since Sam’s confused mental state obviates the need for his signature on the deed. And I am anxious to oversee personally the distribution of all my worldly possessions. I will require very little in the apartment to which I am planning to move and would like to see the rest properly placed with my heirs.
For the past month I have devoted the time I do not spend with Sam to compiling an extensive inventory of my personal effects and their approximate market value so that I can divide them fairly. The older grandchildren have indicated an interest in certain items and I am doing my best to accommodate them —even at the expense of my new apartment. I would much rather see my grandchildren happy than reserve the items of their choice for my own use. The younger grandchildren who are still in school have shown no interest in anything I own, but I am putting aside a representative selection for each of them so that they will not have cause later to chide me for my neglect.
The house will go on the market after the holidays, and the real estate agent assures me it will be sold within a month. I plan to leave the Christmas tree standing in the front hallway and let the children and grandchildren strip it of its decorations, taking the ones they want to keep. Any sorrow accompanying my move should soon be assuaged by the greatly anticipated arrival of my first great-grandchild.
Joyeux Noël,
Bess
LEADING CITIZEN DIES PEACEFULLY
Elizabeth Steed Garner, prominent resident of Dallas since 1909, died today at her home, a luxury apartment overlooking Turtle Creek.
She was born in 1890 in the little town of Honey Grove, 100 miles north of Dallas, which her father, Andrew Alcott, helped to found. She attended Mary Baldwin College in Virginia but left without a diploma to marry her grade-school sweet-heart, Robert Randolph Steed, son of a leading Texas educator.
The young couple arrived in Dallas for their honeymoon. With the support of his wife, Mr. Steed became a leader in the burgeoning real-estate business that saw the population of Dallas grow from 90,000 to 150,000 in the nine years he lived here.
The young couple and their three children moved to St. Louis to accommodate Mr. Steed’s growing involvement in the field of insurance, and in 1918 he became president of Midwestern Life Insurance Company. However, exhausted by his unstinting efforts in the final war-bond campaign of World War I, he succumbed to the influenza that reached epidemic proportions after the war and died in 1919.
His widow moved back to Dallas, though s
he continued to travel extensively until confined to her home by failing health. In 1922 she married a young engineer, Samson Arlington Garner, who had moved to Texas from Pennsylvania. She watched with pride as he rose through the ranks to become president of Daltex Steel Company, and when he became chairman of the board in 1960, she was a major stockholder in the company.
A member of the Dallas Shakespeare Club and charter subscriber to the civic music series and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Mrs. Garner devoted herself to the cultural life of the city. Her will provides for the donation of all her works of art to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.
In lieu of flowers, friends are asked to contribute to the memorial fund established by the Shakespeare Club in her name for the encouragement of contemporary playwrights.
Mrs. Garner is a member of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Cathedral where the funeral service will be held. Burial will be in Hillcrest Mausoleum.
She is survived by a daughter, Eleanor Elizabeth Burton, and a son, Andrew Alcott Steed, both of Dallas; six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
June 15, 1966
Dallas
City Editor
The Dallas Morning News
Dallas, Texas
Dear Sir:
I am enclosing an obituary notice I have composed in advance of my death for you to keep on file in your morgue. If I have omitted any essential details—beyond the cause and time of death—or if you have any further questions, please feel free to call me. I would like to spare my family any intrusion on their grief on the day of my death—and there are undoubtedly many details in my life about which they would be understandably vague.
A Woman of Independent Means Page 27