CLARA JONES: ~ABOUT HER~---document-links---pictures---related pages---site navigation
We called her Clara Jones, but everybody knew that she was Clara Virginia Jones. She was a friend of Alma’s at Oberlin. The family story is that she was Alma's roommate, but I don't see mentions of her in Alma's letters as a roommate, and I do see in her yearbook entry (shown below) that they were both on the basketball team, and that Clara was the captain. I also see that she made Latin her special study at Oberlin.
She embarked on a teaching career after college. Apparently she had also learned German, because AG says:
The reason that Clara taught Latin was that she switched from German during WWI to keep a teaching job!
She also taught Spanish, so that makes three languages that Clara knew. We're not sure exactly where she taught. Possibilities include New Rochelle NY and Evanston IL.
She never married.
There was a room at Fernbank that I identified as Clara's room. This room was larger than the cubicle bedrooms and it was off of the living room. I think of it as quite large, but it was probably large only in comparison to the cubicles. When I started talking to people about this, it turned out that this was originally Will's room.
Following Clara's retirement, she lived at the Hotel Wellington in New York City and worked as a Traveler’s Aid, using her Spanish and her German. For some reason we saw more of the German than we did of the Spanish. I still associate Stille Nacht (Silent Night) with Clara. She would spend Christmas with us in Wayland - one of those people who felt like family even though they weren’t blood relations. We used to enjoy playing Russian Bank, a rather complicated two-person card game, with her.
She spent the winter of 1958-1959, after Christmas with us, on Maui in Hawaii with Alma and with Lenette Atkinson and her husband.
Betsy went to visit Clara in New York when Betsy was in junior high. That puts it in the early 1960s. Betsy remembers that Clara had trouble with arthritis, and would take a hot bath in the morning to help with that. One day they were out walking around New York. Betsy looked up and saw the sign for My Fair Lady - they were passing the theater where it was playing. And then Clara grabbed Betsy's arm and pulled her into the theater. Surprise! Clara had tickets for it. Betsy later learned that our mother had paid for them - $7 per ticket.
After Clara retired from her post-retirement Traveler's Aid career, she moved to Arizona for her health. We kept in touch, and she came back east to visit at least once. She died at the age of 93 on November 19, 1974. How I learned of it was that AG reported that her Christmas card to Clara had been returned marked Deceased.
Clara's ashes were mailed from Arizona to my father's (Roger's) office at 28 State Street in Boston. My mother put them on a shelf in the back of her bedroom closet at the Scraggy Neck house. Twelve years later, my mother put her mother's ashes there, too. After my mother's own death in 2012, Clara's and Grandma's ashes went to a closet in Betsy's house. And then, finally, on June 19, 2023, both sets of ashes were buried at Scraggy. Clara's are to the right of a fern that may have come from Fernbank, near the gap in the stone wall that is the entrance to the big garden. Roger (my brother, not my father) knew that there was a fern from Fernbank, probably this one, and Betsy recognized this fern as a royal fern, a variety of fern that had been at Fernbank, so if Clara's ashes aren't near a Fernbank fern, they're near a Fernbank type fern. And why would we have a royal fern if it didn't come from Fernbank?
My mother's ashes are buried in that area, too, to the right of an azalea that she had rescued from certain death. It took us only about 2 1/2 years to get them buried.
She embarked on a teaching career after college. Apparently she had also learned German, because AG says:
The reason that Clara taught Latin was that she switched from German during WWI to keep a teaching job!
She also taught Spanish, so that makes three languages that Clara knew. We're not sure exactly where she taught. Possibilities include New Rochelle NY and Evanston IL.
She never married.
There was a room at Fernbank that I identified as Clara's room. This room was larger than the cubicle bedrooms and it was off of the living room. I think of it as quite large, but it was probably large only in comparison to the cubicles. When I started talking to people about this, it turned out that this was originally Will's room.
Following Clara's retirement, she lived at the Hotel Wellington in New York City and worked as a Traveler’s Aid, using her Spanish and her German. For some reason we saw more of the German than we did of the Spanish. I still associate Stille Nacht (Silent Night) with Clara. She would spend Christmas with us in Wayland - one of those people who felt like family even though they weren’t blood relations. We used to enjoy playing Russian Bank, a rather complicated two-person card game, with her.
She spent the winter of 1958-1959, after Christmas with us, on Maui in Hawaii with Alma and with Lenette Atkinson and her husband.
Betsy went to visit Clara in New York when Betsy was in junior high. That puts it in the early 1960s. Betsy remembers that Clara had trouble with arthritis, and would take a hot bath in the morning to help with that. One day they were out walking around New York. Betsy looked up and saw the sign for My Fair Lady - they were passing the theater where it was playing. And then Clara grabbed Betsy's arm and pulled her into the theater. Surprise! Clara had tickets for it. Betsy later learned that our mother had paid for them - $7 per ticket.
After Clara retired from her post-retirement Traveler's Aid career, she moved to Arizona for her health. We kept in touch, and she came back east to visit at least once. She died at the age of 93 on November 19, 1974. How I learned of it was that AG reported that her Christmas card to Clara had been returned marked Deceased.
Clara's ashes were mailed from Arizona to my father's (Roger's) office at 28 State Street in Boston. My mother put them on a shelf in the back of her bedroom closet at the Scraggy Neck house. Twelve years later, my mother put her mother's ashes there, too. After my mother's own death in 2012, Clara's and Grandma's ashes went to a closet in Betsy's house. And then, finally, on June 19, 2023, both sets of ashes were buried at Scraggy. Clara's are to the right of a fern that may have come from Fernbank, near the gap in the stone wall that is the entrance to the big garden. Roger (my brother, not my father) knew that there was a fern from Fernbank, probably this one, and Betsy recognized this fern as a royal fern, a variety of fern that had been at Fernbank, so if Clara's ashes aren't near a Fernbank fern, they're near a Fernbank type fern. And why would we have a royal fern if it didn't come from Fernbank?
My mother's ashes are buried in that area, too, to the right of an azalea that she had rescued from certain death. It took us only about 2 1/2 years to get them buried.
CLARA JONES: about-her---~DOCUMENT LINKS~---pictures---related pages---site navigation
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- 1958-11-18 ATLANTA CONSTITUTION ITEM ABOUT EVA AND ALMA
- 1958-12-25 LETTER FROM ALMA TO EVA
- 1958-12-28 POSTCARD FROM ALMA TO EVA
CLARA JONES: about-her---document-links---~PICTURES~---related pages---site navigation
CLARA JONES: about-her---document-links--pictures---~RELATED PAGES~---site navigation
CLARA JONES: about-her---document-links---pictures---related pages---~SITE NAVIGATION~