Important Contributors
My thanks for help in compiling and writing our family history go first and especially to my mother, Helen Stan ford Grimes. At lunch time as Mother, Phil, Doug and I sat around the table in the dining room of the Melville Avenue house in Palo Alto, she relived her childhood in San Francisco and enhanced our own childhood with her never to be forgotten tales of the “olden days.” Later, when I was grown and lived elsewhere, in many letters to me Mother wrote of my grandmother’s life and her struggles and successes. I have quoted liberally from these letters to bring empirical knowledge to Clara’s story.
Referring to Clara’s tightly reigned emotions in crit ical situations Mother says, “…only in Mom’s diaries could these be expressed.” Those diaries of Grandma’s have never been found. The single diary we have is the one she wrote during her ten months in Europe and later gave to me. I have quoted large parts of this diary in a chapter of this book, but in her record, unfortunately, she seldom wrote of her thoughts and feelings. She relates where she has been and with whom. She does, however write of her love for Paris. She was enraptured with the city.
I am also grateful to both my brothers, Phil and Doug. They set me straight on some things I wasn’t sure of and some things about which I was wrong. It was through our many reminiscences together, too, that they contributed to my recall of our growing-up years. I particularly thank them for writing their own life stories after graduation from high school. It is in their own words that my brothers bring to life the men that the two little boys who traveled with me through childhood became.
In a case of serendipity my inheritance of Maud Stanford Parson’s personal papers, when she died, brought about an important contribution to this family history. Among her papers were four yellow sheets of small writing, headed “My Life.” I have used this material as she wrote it, for it describes her early life with her father, my grandfather, Jerome Stanford. She includes in her story Jerome’s marriage to Clara Douglass, his third wife, who became “Grandma” to me. Maud briefly mentions her own marriage and later divorce.
My daughter, Carol Martha Drown, wrote a beautiful, poignant piece on remembering times with her beloved grandmother, Helen Stanford Grimes. It was published in a newspaper column she was writing at the time. I am including this in our family history. Carol also contributed suggestions and some proof reading of the manuscript.
My daughter, Laura Scandalis Cross, likewise, wrote a warm and sensitive impression of her well loved Grandma Helen as a contribution to this family history.
Michelle Carol Drown, my second granddaughter after graduating from college worked as proof-reader for a newspaper and became my official proof reader for this manuscript. She has been a great aid in preparing the material for duplication.
My third granddaughter, Jessica Laura Cross, contributed the title page which she designed on her family’s computer.
A family member, to whom I am in debt for stories of the Warneke-Grimes history is Dad’s sister, my aunt Hazel Grimes Wheeler. She told of Granddad Warneke, the farm that was so much a part of her childhood and of her own life growing up in Ironton, Ohio. She also revealed some of her early adulthood that illustrates the times in which she lived and reveals the warm and dynamic personality that is our Aunt Hazel.
Another to whom I am grateful is my second cousin, Alice Mae Potter, for her own memories and for the many stories that had been personally passed down to her from older family members of the Warneke family. She provided me with a wealth of material about “Granddad’s” farm and the people who lived there through the years.
My first cousin, Carolyn Grimes Gondert, daughter of my uncle Earl Edwin Grimes, enlarged the picture of Grandma Grimes’s character with memories of a childhood enriched with this grandma’s loving, gracious and generous personality.
Edwin Earl Grimes, Uncle Earl’s son, also described his love for Grandma Grimes and told me how important she was to him during his boyhood. Dad, Peter Warneke Grimes, with his shared memories of his boyhood in Ironton, made real to me that little river town in Ohio long before I ever saw it. His loving memories of “Granddad” and the farm and of his mother and the house in which he grew up and, oh yes, the pump in the backyard–all enriched my life.
For the detail of the Stanford lineage I give credit to Arthur Willis who wrote, Comprising Descendants of Abner Stanford the Revolutionary Soldier, printed by The Fukuin Printing Co., Ltd., Yokohama, 1905. (Stanford University Library has a copy.) The material came into my hands by way of Grandpa’s son, Clark, who gave a copy of the prepared genealogical history to my mother.