Rosemary Dickman's life

Rosemary Dickman was born on Saturday October 21, 1916 at 12:20 a.m. at 6220 Aspen Avenue in College Hill, Cincinnati, Ohio. (transcribed by her daughter, Kathleen McKinney)

Her parents were John Harry Dickman and Rose Brunner Dickman.

Rosemary had colic for three months and kept her mother up most nights. Colic is inherited since Rosemary’s first child, Kathleen also had it as did her daughter. This was during the war when Rosemary was staying with her parents at Westower in Cincinnati. She didn’t know what to do so she put her finger in the baby’s mouth and then felt ashamed that she had done that. Her mother Rose came in and turned the baby over on to her stomach and patted her on her back and was able to stop her crying.

Rosemary received many presents from people when she was born. One that she remembered was a gold harp on a chain that was given to her by a woman named Arabella Ruberry. Rosemary loved the name and loved the necklace so much that she sucked on it all the time until the chain finally broke. She said there was a picture of her when she was five with the harp on a blue ribbon around her neck.

Her baby book noted that she wore her first short dress at five months. That was unusual then since babies wore long dresses for a long time. Her mother called Rosemary her little sunbeam. She evidently laughed a lot. But Rosemary recalls knowing very well how to frown as well even though she was known for her smile. People used to tell her that her smile lit up a room.

She called herself Mae Mae Dick Dick. She evidently repeated words a lot since there were other ones she did similar things with. Her brother Brunner tried to get her to say things right. He didn’t like baby talk. Her name was very hard to say though for her and for others. Her younger brother Johnny, used to call her Roastmary. When she was older and took care of a little Jewish girl, the little girl would stand up in her crib and call Rosenberry! She couldn’t pronounce an “l” very well so she said things like “yook at the yake” for “look at the lake” since they lived near Lake Erie. She wanted to read very badly and like to pretend to read books. She read a book, “Yound the ying they go” for “round the ring they go.”

She loved dressing up which showed at an early age since by nine months she was hanging strings and ribbons around her neck whenever she found one. She had a life long love of costumes. As a child, she dressed up a lot and sometimes would over dress for events. She especially liked anything colorful. Some of the costumes that she had dressed up in and danced in she kept all her life.

Her brother Brunner was very important to her in an almost parent like way even though they were only four years apart. He wrote letters to her through out the year that she was away at college and told her what was going on at home. She supposes that her parents were too busy to write. They were not always agreeable though. They argued a lot all throughout their childhood and adulthood. Even into their 70s and 80s they argued. He was convinced that she should be interested in his ideas.
He was a Boy Scout and liked to go camping.
They used to play cowboys and Indians with neighbor children. There were a lot of children in the neighborhood so there was always someone to play with. This was on Marlowe’s Avenue in Cleveland, which is where they moved to when she was a year old.

Her mother wanted her to be as natural as possible so she often dressed her in overalls which were much more practical than frilly dresses. She climbed trees a lot. Her mother said she was more of a boy than Brunner was. She was more athletic than he was. She was always ready to go outside even though she loved reading. Although Brunner loved to camp, he also loved to read. He was more introverted. When children wanted him to come outside and play he often said no, since he wanted to stay inside and read.
They were both small children physically although Brunner was always very slight of build and Rosemary more husky. She thought she was perhaps, oh, five pounds heavier than someone else her age.

Mrs. Fiore, an Italian woman lived next door. Her daughter Eleanor was very slim and still is. When Mrs. Fiore would see Rosemary, she would pinch her bottom and say, oh, so nice and chonky! Rosemary and Eleanor corresponded all their lives or at least exchanged Christmas cards.

Rosemary and Brunner were both short but she never thought of herself as short. She thought of herself as no different than others even though they always put her in the front in group photos. She did turn out short as were her parents.

Her brother Paul was born when she was five. He died when he was six months old. It didn’t bother her since she hadn’t gotten close to him. He had cerebral meningitis so even if he had survived he would have had mental problems.

She was very interested in when she would get to go to school. Every time she saw a big red brick building she would announce to others that it was HER school. She started school when she was only 4 ½ so she was quite a bit younger than other children. Later on when she had trouble with math she used her age as an excuse. She was always slow with numbers.

John Harry junior was born when she was 10. He was a beautiful baby. Even though she had wished on every star and on every wishbone for a red haired baby sister, she was OK to find out that he was not. When her father came home from the hospital and told her that she had a baby brother she was fine with it.

Another friend of hers was Janet Bailey who later became Janet Tyler, an actress.
One time their street was being paved and there were lots of piles of gravel around with rather large rocks. She and her friend saw a strange creature come out of a house. She had a very strange hat on, red hair and freckles all over her body. They had never seen anything like that so they threw stones at her. That was Laura (Lolly) Dunstan. She ran home crying and of course her mother came and talked to Rosemary’s mother. She was punished by sitting in a chair in the corner for a long time. Not long before she had been spanked hard for something else and her mother swore she would never spank her again. She sat in the little chair in the corner for a long time.

One other time before that she had heard the word Wop some place so she called Eleanor Fiore and Wop. Eleanor told her mother who told Rosemary’s mother. She got a very hard spanking. After the spanking, her mother asked her if she knew why she was being punished and she did not know. Her mother felt very badly and swore she would never spank her again. She took Rosemary over to the Fiore’s house and showed her red bottom to Mrs. Fiore. They both hugged each other and cried and became good friends.
She loved going over to the Fiore’s house. Mr. Fiore used to give her Italian nougat, Torrone that came in little cardboard boxes. [note from Kathleen: now I know why she kept all those little Italian nougat boxes.] Mr. Fiore used to call her almond eyes. Mrs. Fiore used to bring in a tray of red apples cut and arranged beautifully for them to eat.
At her house, they knew that they could help themselves to anything in the kitchen. The sugar bowl was down low and her mother always knew when Brunner had been in the kitchen with his friends making sassafras or peppermint tea. They collected the sassafras from the Rockefeller estate, which was close to where they lived.

She’s not sure how they got in since there were guards but she thought that the guards didn’t mind as long as the boys behaved. One time they were trying to hit a bee with a stick and the guard stopped them and chased them off. The guards were Italian since there were many Italians in Cleveland. He said, don’t kill bees – they make honey.
Rosemary wasn’t afraid of bees or really any insects. She guessed that she must have been quite a tomboy and probably shocked other mothers and her teachers as well. They didn’t know what to make of her.

She loved to dance, to dress up and to read. She climbed trees and dreamt of being a ballet dancer when she didn’t know what one was since she had never seen a ballet. She did see a Spanish dance and loved their costumes. She had a chiffon scarf with poppies on it and a long black skirt that had been her Grandma Dickman’s She used to dress up in it with something else for a top and dance with the scarf. There is a photo of her in the outfit. She danced in the living room a lot. She danced to “three o’clock in the morning” and the “Roses of Picardy”. Her father had an extensive collection of records and when she and Brunner would come home from school they would play the records on their Victrola. Their father always bought good music. He loved attending shows of all kinds. They usually had records with the music on sale in the lobby afterwards and he always bought them. He had good musical taste. He took them to a lot of show at the Cleveland Auditorium.

That is where she saw her first opera – Eda. She loved it. He also attended lots of travel lectures. Her father was always ready to go to shows. He loved the theater and was very interested in it, good music and opera. Each summer they would go to Cincinnati to visit his mother and would go to the Opera at the Zoo. Yes, that sounds strange but that is where it was.

Her father was very well read and owned many books. He was a pushover for traveling salesmen who would sell him a set of encyclopedias even though they already owned a set. Their living room bookshelves had a complete set of Dickens, all of Mark Twain’s books and the Harvard Classics. There was a framed picture of Mark Twain above the bookcases that used to hold his law books.

Her father had many unique sayings. A couple of them were “Ever since God made little green apples” and “ye Gods and little fishes”. He really disliked swearing and anything that was crude or coarse.

He had black hair, which Rosemary inherited although she said hers wasn’t black, it was dark brown since after it was washed, in the sun it had some golden and sometimes red highlights.

Her father was 5’6” and thin when he was young. After he got married, he gained weight which he blamed on Rose’s cooking since she was used to cooking for a large family. He didn’t mind having the extra weight, probably because he was short. He started smoking cigars – it was the thing to do then for a young man. He smoked pipes for a while but preferred cigars and the best Havannas that he could afford.

He was afraid that Rosemary would have his nose, which was very large. Due to his darkness and large nose, he was very Semitic looking. Many people thought he was Jewish and Rose was Catholic. They thought that was very strange. Rosemary thought this was because the postman brought a newspaper to him that was Jewish from some of his real estate clients. Also, real estate seemed to be a profession that many Jewish people went into. Her mother got a Catholic newspaper in the mail. (note from Kathleen: Evidently the postmen didn’t think there was anything wrong in a little gossip.)

She felt a lot of social prejudice all of her life. When they lived in Cleveland, they moved to a larger house in a nicer neighborhood and real estate signs went up after they moved into the neighborhood. She thought it might have been part of the reason that they moved to Cincinnati. Brunner also looked Jewish.

Her mother, Rose, had medium brown hair and brown eyes. She had been the darkest of the Brunner children. People often asked her mother when she was small if she was her little girl because she looked so different from the rest of her brothers and sisters. Rosemary’s brother Johnny was probably blond when he was quite small with curly hair and blue eyes.

Rose loved all kinds of color as well as flowers. She was a qualified judge of flower arranging. However, she resented people being so rigid about rules so she lost a lot of enthusiasm for judging arrangements later on. She had a great ability to find flowers and leaves and arrange them as she walked along. She knew her herbs really well probably since she learned it from her family. She knew what herbs would help for burns, what feverfew was for and so forth. She learned more all her life. Most herbs she didn’t use herself medicinally. She loved wild roses and similar simple flowers. One of her favorite roses was Dainty Bess. Rosemary loved the same kinds of flowers too – simple flower forms. Rose loved iris, she painted them and many other flowers and many roses. She did lots for other people and gave them away.

Her mother, Rose was 5’2”. Rosemary measured 5’1 ¾ inches. Rose loved to refinish furniture. She knew different woods really well. And knew what furniture was made from. She loved natural things. She liked walnut because it was sturdy and easy to care for. She often found things in the houses that her husband Dick had purchased and would refinish them. When he purchased the Marlow’s Avenue house there was a lot of furniture left there.
Rosemary got all the regular childhood diseases.

Her mother had a very heavy bone structure. Rose was a very light dancer but when she got older and lived with her daughter in law, Mary Ellen, it was very difficult for Mary Ellen to lift her when she started having problems and needed help. She got her bone structure from her mother, who was very heavy. In later years she was paralyzed and they had to use straps to help her out of bed.

Rose laughed a lot. Honesty was very important to her. She couldn’t tell a lie. She used to play with Rosemary and made clothes for her dolls. They weren’t fancy but they were nice. She saved scraps of material always. She made a couple of patchwork quilts and some braided rugs. She remodeled clothing and was very good at it. She usually couldn’t buy material because it was too expensive. McCall’s magazine had patterns in it. Rose used them to make clothes for Rosemary. Rose’s children were very important to her. Brunner was born in 1912, Rosemary in 1916 and Johnny in 1927. She didn’t have any miscarriages but she had problems with pregnancies. Rose had a hysterectomy in the 1930s sometime. Rosemary was a very heavy baby and evidently caused her problems. Rose painted china and was always proud of it and signed them. She was proud of her heritage and proud of her father. She was very innocent and never snobbish. She didn’t like fancy things. She was very simple in her likes. She wrote verses all her life and they were very simple and almost child-like. She told a lovely story of how when she was in night high school, she went on a hike with some of her classmates. They never called each other by their first names but rather mister and miss. Rose did not go on to college but she took many classes during her life. She loved her home. It was always a very comfortable house but not fancy. Rosemary’s father Dick liked things more formal but Rose always wanted it more like a farmhouse. They lived in Georgian Hall for six years. Her father had many different jobs. Her mother put up with many pets around the house since she and Brunner were always bringing ones home. Rosemary had a bunny. It used to hop down the hall. In the evening they used to listen to the radio, to Fred and Gracie Allen and Amos and Andy. Rosemary had a cat that she used to put out the living room window when it wanted to go outside. She always went to the window when she wanted out and even taught her kittens to go out the window. They had dogs but only for a short time. They used to follow her brother Johnny.

Her mother wasn’t a great reader but she loved poetry and especially ones by Williams, a former teacher of hers.
Her mother had many best friends. They were friends all their lives. One of her friends was Emma Becker Methven. The family was Episcopalian. She was widowed at a young age. Her daughter Marilyn became Kathleen’s godmother years later. Another friend of hers was Agnes. When she died in Georgetown, Rosemary noticed that it aged her mother. She was good friends with her sister Elizabeth. They wrote to each other and kept in touch all the time.
Rose took care of Emma Methven’s kids a lot. They thought of them as the five little Peppers since they didn’t have any money. She knows that they got a lot of clothes from the church. Rose mended a lot of the children’s clothes. The Dickman family gave the Methven’s any of their old furniture. They had a big house. Rosemary remembered going over there for supper and they all had bean soup and it was very thin. But despite their lack of money they all had a lot of fun. She remembered that the girls could not afford to buy curlers for their hair so they used to use rags instead. Rosemary loved Marilyn. She was a good friend. She remembers that her mother was a housewife all the time she was growing up except for one time that she tried to make some money. It was sometime in the late 1930s. She tried to sell something and was not very successful. Her mother was a plain cook. She made very good soups and stews but was not the greatest baker. She did make good pies especially lemon and made very nice jellies. She used to make laundry soap by saving bacon grease. She was very frugal and never wasted anything.

One year, she made a coat for Rosemary out of one of her dad’s old coats. She took it apart, washed it, turned the fabric inside out and put it back together. Rosemary’s dresses were made from her mother’s old dresses. She had one dress that had cost $30 in the 1920s. Her mother often washed things that shouldn’t have been washed ruining some of them. Rosemary doesn’t remember ever disliking any of the clothes that her mother made for her.

Her mother was a very shy child and teenager. She came out of herself by caring for others. She cared for many young children. Rosemary remembers having many other children around when she was little and used to “adopt” them especially the girls as a sister. She used to read all her books to them including her friends. She figures that she probably bored them.

Her mother made a type of “health” bread during the depression that had a lot of things in it. It was very good. Her mother was very good at putting thing together and could fix anything. (Kathleen’s note: This trait seems to have been passed on.) Rosemary’s father was not very good at that sort of thing. One example of her creativeness was the year at Easter time, she took grape baskets and decorated them with cut up green paper. They showed them to their neighbors they were so pretty. Rosemary’s father got a lot of chocolate eggs to put in them. Rosemary learned how to sew from her mother at a very young age. She also taught her how to embroider but she doesn’t think that she did a very good job of it. She had stamped quilt blocks that they bought at the 10-cent store. Rosemary had some Kewpie dolls that she used to make clothes for. If she could get a dime she would buy a little china doll. She thought that her Uncle Paul (Rose’s brother) was wealthy since he would always give her a dime. All the neighborhood girls used to get together and play.

The boys including her brother Brunner, used to put up a tent outside and sleep out there. Rosemary loved to sleep outside too. Most of the other kids in the neighbor hood weren’t allowed to do that. She thought it was interesting that both of her girls like camping and fishing.

When they moved from Cleveland to Cincinnati they had to leave a lot behind that they could not take with them. Rosemary loved her dolls but she didn’t play with them very much. One Christmas she wanted a Bylow baby so badly but she got a Dream baby instead. She gave it to Jennifer, her youngest daughter many years later. Rosemary mentioned another doll she had that she didn’t have any clothes for and said she needed to make her some clothing. (Kathleen has that doll now. She has clothes and has been restored.)

Several weeks before the end of Rosemary’s life in 2006, her daughters Kathleen and Jennifer asked her some questions. The questions and answers follow.

1. What are you most thankful for?
The two of you. You are smart, good, my heavens, I’m blessed. I’m lucky that I have been able to enjoy life and apples and pears and colored leaves. You are fortunate to be able to do that also.
2. What is the most beautiful thing you ever saw?
A newborn baby.
3. What was your happiest moment?
Right now – being here with the two of you. You are both healthy, beautiful, good people. Not sneaky – you know what I mean. I don’t like girls that are devious. I ‘m happy that the two of you get along very well. I hope you always will. The Brunner girls fought over so much that Aunt Marie Brunner (who never married) gave things to Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul rather than give them to her sisters. She had two beautiful statutes from Bohemia that she gave away. I suppose they were pretty valuable. Uncle Harry got the dining room chairs because he didn’t fuss.
4. What is the funniest thing you remember?
My daddy – He played as a clown at my birthday parties.
5. What was your most romantic moment?
Going to the ballet Ruse de Monte Carlo. Your daddy bought tickets to all five performances and we sat in different places each time. He took me to Netherland Plaza for dancing a lot. It was expensive and a very fancy place. We would each get a gin fizz.