FREDDA REED: ~ABOUT HER~---document-links---pictures---related pages---site navigation
Fredda was the friend with whom Aunt Alma went to Boston in 1953 to see the newsreel of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.
Her full name was Fredda Doris Reed. Unlike with Clara, we didn't know her middle name; I got it from a Mount Holyoke website. I believe she was the head of the botany department there after Alma retired. She didn't spend Christmas with us, so she didn't feel to me like a member of the family the way Clara did. As I remember it, Fredda's room at Fernbank was the cubicle on the left after the dining room. Yellowy green paint.
She came to Mount Holyoke in 1928. Among the letters from Alma on the Mount Holyoke website, I found this written in 1930 during Alma's 1929-1931 time in India:
https://mtholyoke.com/dalbino/letters/text/alma11.html
I am so glad you enjoy Fredda Reed; she is a choice person - I was much impressed last year. She is the Real Thing.
Later in life, Fredda was going blind due to cataracts. This was back before cataract surgery was easy outpatient surgery. (Easy for me to say, when I'm avoiding cataract surgery as long as I can.) My mother said that once when she was talking to Fredda, Fredda said she could get cataract surgery, but she didn't have anybody to drive her, and it wasn't worth the bother to work out how to get it done. (Or something like that. This is a decades-old memory.) My mother said, "I'll take you there. You should do it!" And (in my mother's telling of the story) this made Fredda decide to do it, and she got somebody else to drive her to the hospital. The morning after the surgery, she telephoned my mother from the hospital and told her that she had just looked at the knot in the tablecloth in DaVinci's painting of The Last Supper.
Fredda died in 1988, and I found her obituary on newspaper.com, but I don't remember ever hearing anything about it. I need to get some of the information from that obituary into this page.
Her full name was Fredda Doris Reed. Unlike with Clara, we didn't know her middle name; I got it from a Mount Holyoke website. I believe she was the head of the botany department there after Alma retired. She didn't spend Christmas with us, so she didn't feel to me like a member of the family the way Clara did. As I remember it, Fredda's room at Fernbank was the cubicle on the left after the dining room. Yellowy green paint.
She came to Mount Holyoke in 1928. Among the letters from Alma on the Mount Holyoke website, I found this written in 1930 during Alma's 1929-1931 time in India:
https://mtholyoke.com/dalbino/letters/text/alma11.html
I am so glad you enjoy Fredda Reed; she is a choice person - I was much impressed last year. She is the Real Thing.
Later in life, Fredda was going blind due to cataracts. This was back before cataract surgery was easy outpatient surgery. (Easy for me to say, when I'm avoiding cataract surgery as long as I can.) My mother said that once when she was talking to Fredda, Fredda said she could get cataract surgery, but she didn't have anybody to drive her, and it wasn't worth the bother to work out how to get it done. (Or something like that. This is a decades-old memory.) My mother said, "I'll take you there. You should do it!" And (in my mother's telling of the story) this made Fredda decide to do it, and she got somebody else to drive her to the hospital. The morning after the surgery, she telephoned my mother from the hospital and told her that she had just looked at the knot in the tablecloth in DaVinci's painting of The Last Supper.
Fredda died in 1988, and I found her obituary on newspaper.com, but I don't remember ever hearing anything about it. I need to get some of the information from that obituary into this page.
FREDDA REED: about-her---~DOCUMENT LINKS~---pictures---related pages---site navigation
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- 1958-07 FERNBANK NEWS BY ALMA
- 1958-12-25 LETTER FROM ALMA TO EVA
- 1958-12-28 POSTCARD FROM ALMA TO EVA
FREDDA REED: about-her---document-links---~PICTURES~---related pages---site navigation
Fredda in 1929
Fredda's obituary picture
FREDDA REED: about-her---document-links--pictures---~RELATED PAGES~---site navigation
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