s.Lillian Horst

aka susan l ross

My story, quite a different beginning from Rolfs, started also in another part of the globe, much higher north

Biography of an Unknown She

Her parents loved each other to the end. They loved each other through all those years, and it seems for one reason, they had had that experience together. Baffin Island, a place so remote in the Arctic Circle, that even though it is so large, the fifth largest island in the world, still few people are even aware of it. Their eyes brush the map of the world pasted to the classroom wall and somehow miss that island located above Hudson Bay and slightly to the left of Greenland. But it was here that her father took her mother, directly after the wedding. her father always claimed it was an opportunity to save money, nothing to spend it on there, but she suspected, knowing him, that this was an adventure, an experience so off the grid, as we would say today, that he could not resist. Approaching the island, the ship had to anchor a mile out and they had to walk from there across the ice. The Eskimos, as they were called at that time, the Inuit as they are called today, watched from the shore, the women scrambling back into their tents, returning with parkas for her parents, sewn perfectly to their size. And beautiful boots of sealskin to prevent the water from penetrating, and although this was a gift, hand sewn, and perfectly so, her mothers first thought was to ask that instead of the grey mottled fur, she would prefer white fox. That was her mother, detail oriented.

So let us take a step back for a moment and look at who this person was. Her father, Marcel Richard, descended directly from Daniel Jean Richard, the Henry Ford of the Swiss watch industry (who looked up at the town clock and thought he could make a smaller version, distributed the parts to farmers for them to put together, an excellent business plan as three hundred years later, it was still a family business, the making of watches). he arrived in Manitoba, Canada and taught french at the University of Winnipeg where a young student, Gwendolyn Webb, took classes. Now here is where it gets interesting. At least to me. Gwen got pregnant with my mother, and what I did not know until after my mother had passed away and my father mentioned it in passing, was that my mothers grandmother was rabidly Catholic which explains so much. It is my guess that the two had an affair with my mother being the result. Gwendolyns father, Colonel Webb, was the mayor of Winnipeg, a Canadian war hero whose leg was mostly severed, hit by shrapnel on the field, so with a knife he cut off the rest. Six months later he was back on the battlefield commanding the troops. After the first world war, he was editor for the Winnipeg Free Press. The family had money. During the Depression the front page of the newspaper had a photo of the sister, Phyllis, elegantly dressed with a large fur wrapped around her, dainty foot on the running board of a Duesenberg, the caption below reading, a girl can have fun even in the Depression. So you can see, the revelation of their daughter being pregnant most likely did not gladden their hearts, he after all had been the bastard son of an English lord and the gatekeepers daughter, and was to use my french, a pompous exceedingly self righteous bastard, and with his wife, with her heart wrapped in barbed wire by the church, well, let us just say my mothers entry into the world was not a cause for celebration. The young couple were wed to make it all look right, and then as soon as my mother was born, Gwen was sent to Switzerland for two years to relax, play, and wait out the divorce, my grandfather was quickly exorcised from the family. My mother, Deirdra Yvonne Richard, a beautiful name for such an unwanted child, grew, looked after by the servants, and the story goes, there is certainly a truth to it as it was corroborated by other family members, that my mother, age seven, went to her mothers bedroom and asked her for some money. She was directed to the dresser where she discovered many letters from her father to her that she had never been given. She took enough money to get onto a train and ride it to Lake of the Woods where her father lived. A week later a trunk with her clothes arrived and a note saying, do not come back. Her father not knowing what to do with his young daughter, put her into boarding school, Riverbend School for girls, where she stayed. holidays were for the other girls. I know little of this time, my mother always refused to talk about it, you have no idea what my life was like, end of story. That explained everything. She went to nursing school where she met my father.

My father was born in Long Beach, California where my grandfather had been sent to open an office for Bear Stearns. Six months later, the family moved to Canada where my grandfather became head of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, largest stock exchange in Canada, second only to the one in New York. My father, in his teens, went to work on the exchange boards. Being left handed he could erase numbers with his right hand while writing the new numbers with his left hand, keeping thirty-eight numbers in his head at a time. The number gene ran through the family, I did not get it. I remember camping trips, driving in the station wagon, windows all rolled up, my mother smoking, the always present cloud, a fog through the car, and my father saying something to the effect of, ok, take this, what is 13,385 multiplied by, divided by, square root of, add this, divide that, an interminable listing of numbers doing gymnastics, my siblings tripping over each other, practically jumping into the front seat with the answer, I have got it, no I have got it!!!! And where was I, lost, hoping someone might express a desire to listen to me recite poetry.

But wait, back to my parents and Baffin Island.

Because my father was hired by the Canadian government, a house was provided along with an allowance. The government also provided for an eskimo family, Etwanga, Nukinga, and Rosie to look after my parents. For my father this proved an incredible adventure, learning the language, learning the customs, staying close by Etwanga, in his world, taking in everything. For my mother, she had not the same desire to immerse herself in the Arctic experience. Rather this became an opportunity to finally have her own help. In her letters back to Winnipeg she wrote, You just can not imagine how beautifully Rosie polishes the floors and does the laundry. Her ironing is becoming much improved. Here, I wonder, if Rosie and Nukinga were doing all the housework, well, what exactly did my mother fill her time with?

Etwanga was the head man of the community, interestingly the community always chose an orphan, so there would be no favoritism. And being an orphan, he was also selected to harpoon the whale on the last traditional whaling expedition. A young boy of approximately twelve years of age, he was charged with the responsibility of thrusting the harpoon and it had to go in just at the right moment, a deep plunging of the rod into the heart. He carved ivory, beautiful pieces from walrus tusk, all gifts to my father. they were nothing like the soft curving sculptures so heralded as being a traditional form of eskimo carving. The pieces, singular, carved in detail with inks tattooed into the ivory to create strands of hair, eyes lips and designs for the parkas, were the work of an individual artist, not the work marketed today that was the result of the Canadian government hiring a person, Johnny Dorset, to teach the eskimos how to carve a marketable item.

In cases where a patient needed to be brought in to the hospital, mostly my father could dispense medical assistance by ham radio, Etwanga and my father would take out the dog team and sled. My fathers team consisted of eighteen dogs, dogs that were relied on to pull a heavy sled across broken ice in severe conditions, dogs that were to work and must be counted on for survival. Before traveling, my father and Etwanga would prepare the food. chunks of seal meat, whale blubber, a great stew, cooked, then thrown out onto a table outside where it would freeze immediately, then be broken up like peanut brittle, and shoved into a large pack. Blood and mud mixed with saliva in the mouth, was swirled around then spit out onto the sled rails to provide a smooth surface for gliding across the snow. The women chewed the boots to keep them soft, their teeth all worn down to the gums. One had to be careful around the dogs, always hungry, always ready to pounce on anything that appeared appetizing, Travelling in the harsh weather, one of the men would run ahead and fall down in the snow. The dogs would leap up, rushing forward in the hopes of devouring a good meal.

These and many other stories told repeatedly over campfires, in our tent at night, all of us bundled in our sleeping bags, while other children heard ghost stories on such trips, our father loved nothing more than to tell about life in Pangnirtung.

I was born on June 21 in the year of the dragon, in the Arctic Circle, on the summer solstice, a gloriously sun filled summer day lasting twenty four hours. Whenever we went outdoors, I rode in my mothers parka hood. At one point, my father wanted to hold me and have mom take a photograph. But the temperatures being what they were I cried and loudly. So startled were the Eskimos who rarely if ever heard a baby cry, that as my father told it, I was whisked away for the day by the women, concerned for my welfare. In the meantime, my mother, pregnant again, this time with my brother, she was determined to move back to Winnipeg, where her children would be raised, to her thinking, in more suitable fashion. So back we went, and my brother David was born. I, being mesmerized by the plants on the table could be found regularly on top pushing the plants over, perhaps intent on learning botany. But one day my mother left a bottle of carbon tetrachloride, dry cleaning fluid on the table with the top cap off, and I being an inquisitive young thing, age one year and a couple of months, poured the liquid into my hand, somehow gave it to my brother, perhaps I thought it was a baby bottle, perhaps I thought I was feeding him, all I know is my mother was deep in conversation and suddenly her friend jumped up, and grabbed my brother, who by now was foaming at the mouth with eyes turned inward. He survived but his childhood was difficult, with seemingly insurmountable learning difficulties. He had difficulty in speaking until around ten. But by seventh grade he had determined to be a doctor, and nothing, not even my father, who suggested to him to reduce his expectations, would hold him back.

But here I am moving too far ahead, so lets take a step back in time. From Winnipeg, we moved to Detroit, where my brother, Robert, was born, and then to Cleveland where my sister, Leslie arrived, from which cabbage leaf I could not ascertain. I was quite happy there, a big rambling brown shingle with milk in glass bottles that got pushed through a small door on the outside of the house and into the kitchen, along with the eggs and butter . I loved the large piles of leaves raked in the Fall that we children would jump off a low roof into, the smell of burning leaves in the incinerators of the neighborhood. I remember my brother sticking his tongue to the metal fence, perhaps to lick ice, I do not remember, and my mother having to bring hot water to disengage it. At some point it was time to move, snow birds seeking the sun, to California and a place called Downey. If you look at the magazines from that era, California was beckoning with advertisements luring the unsuspecting to the golden hills as they so euphemistically called it. In our front year stood three tall scraggly palm trees with what looked to be pom poms on top, hardly a thrilling entry into California. By sixth grade, smog had become so bad that we had alert days, when sirens shrieked, and the schools would release children for the afternoon. For six months out of the year, the mountains went on vacation, twenty miles away they were rarely visible.

My first date happened to be with a teacher from the rival school across town who saw me playing tennis. Someone thought I was worthy of a date. My mother did not quite see it that way. Although she reluctantly let me go, with an admonishment to be home by nine in the evening, he arrived to pick me up at seven, somehow we managed to return in time, because I was allowed to go out with him again, and this time my mother was ready. Another two hour date, and my mother with broom in hand, went after him with it. Embarrassing yes, and the end of my dating until I left home for college

So what happened. college in and out not once, but a number of times. By twenty-six, I was bartending at a fern bar in the Polk Street area of San Francisco, the owner, an ex Mr. Universe gone to paunch, sagging jowls and fat fingers with rings too tight. He had tightly curled hair, wore blousing rayon shirts, open at the collar with the long gold chains. He was Greek. He knew I was completely naive and would never steal, right on both counts. Quickly I learned to make drinks, liked to talk, and was soon on speed bar Saturday nights. Six months later, in walked Stuart, and asked me on a date. We had not gone on it yet when the next morning he spotted me walking down the street, asked if I wanted to join him for a meal on Folsom Street in the city, we talked about what we wanted in future and three weeks later were married by Madeline in Reno, Nevada. He owned, along with his brother, a bagel bakery, and life became all about baking, making, proofing, standing by the oven, settling, turning boards, packaging the account orders, and delivering, seven days a week nine hours a day. One day, Stuart threw a case of fruit juice and that was it. He had had enough. Next day our ad in the Wall Street Journal, caught the attention of a woman in New York with her boyfriend and they flew out. It was sold a day later asking price.

THERE IS MORE TO COME