Female Supremacy Articles - Page 27

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My grandfather had owned a gas station on Main Street in Racine, Wisconsin, while my grandmother was busy raising the children and playing the organ at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. She hadn’t been very involved in the business and it certainly wasn’t a business where one expected to find women in 1946. Because of his heart condition, my grandfather didn’t have any life insurance, but his business was insured. So when he died as my grandmother liked to tell it the insurance men came to her house, suggested she sell it and the gas station, and move with her children into the Catholic orphanage across town. She told them to get the hell off her porch and never come back. She kept the station and managed the day- to-day operations until she sold it more than thirty years later.

She raised five children, put them all through college, and still found time to play the organ at Mass every weekday and five times on Sunday. While she clearly missed things about being married and having a father for her children she never really dated or considered marrying again. She would sometimes say she never found the right fellow, but her daughters believe that she simply liked being the boss.