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That’s how old my maternal Grandmother,  Decima Gould Elmendorf, would  have been today.  She died in 1978 at  92 1/2…..so she didn’t fare too badly.   What a wonderful Grandmother she was.   She taught me to sew and crochet.   I did neither as well as she, but had many hours of pleasure practicing those skills when I was a younger woman.   For much of my life, she lived further away, but in the 1960s, she and Grandpa rented an apartment in Coeymans, so I got to see her often. We drank Constant Comment tea with our conversations every week.   Noel is the only one of my children who got to know her., a blessing for both of them.

Grandma was born in South Africa, living there with her own grandparents after her mother moved to New York City.   When she was five,  Decima sailed alone from South Africa to England (she remembered decades later seeing the White Cliffs of Dover) and then on to NY City.  Her mother had remarried, so she once again had a family of her own.

Here is a photo of her with those grands, circa 1890.  She was five, so it must have been near to the time of her memorable voyage.

Happy birthday, Grandmother!