Introducing June's Parents

Filling in with some background information during a letter-writing hiatus from October 6 to November 9, 1949, as June recuperates at the hospital from a ruptured appendix…

June was the daughter of a happy marriage between a Southerner and a Northerner – something that wasn’t all that common back in the 1920s!

Maud Elizabeth Clem.

Her mother was Maud Elizabeth Clem, born in 1902 and descended from the Clem, Rosser, and Zirkle families of Virginia.  Maud grew up in Luray, Virginia, located in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains and home of Luray Caverns.  In fact, Maud’s father claimed to be the electrician who put the first electric lights in the famous caverns.

June’s father was Theodore Carl Anderson, born in Pigeon Cove, Massachusetts in 1901.  Both of his parents (June’s grandparents) were teenage immigrants to America.  His father, Carl Anderson, came from Sweden and his mother, Anna Nilssen, from Denmark.  They had seven children who were raised on the poultry farm they established in Deep River, Connecticut.  Theodore attended Brown University and took a job with the phone company (American Telephone & Telegraph).



Theodore Carl Anderson
at Brown University.

It was the phone company job that brought Theodore to Virginia while still a young man.  Even though he was a Yankee, he was warmly received in small town Virginia.  In addition to his phone company work, he played his trumpet at town events and as accompaniment to silent films at the local theater.  He was young and good looking and attracted the attention of the local girls.  It was Maud who won his heart.

They married in 1923 and moved to New York City a short time later – another phone company transfer.  Maud loved this experience of the big city, but they only lived there for a short time.  By 1925, they were designing the house they wanted in Patchogue, Long Island.  June was born in the new family house in Patchogue on January 25, 1929, their first child.

(On Friday, an introduction to Art’s parents…)

Countdown:  Correspondence resumes in 27 days.

© 2010 Lee Price