Margaret Lee Harry

Margaret Lee Harry was my Grandfather Harry’s sister. She was small in stature, perhaps five feet tall, but large in heart. She was unique. The actresses portraying the old ladies in Jimmy Stewart's "Arsenic and Old Lace", created a visual image of Aunt Margaret fussing aroung the house. However as a young woman she was ahead of her time.

Aunt Margaret’s brothers attended the University of North Carolina. She graduated from Massachusets General's nursing school in Boston, Massachusetts. She became a Red Cross nurse. In retrospect that must have required great strength of character and independence. Young women of this time period were just moving into careers of service. She began her nursing career riding a horse traveling in the rural parts of North Carolina in the early 1910’s. Once a bear frightened her horse and threw her off. The horse left her and returned to the barn. She spent the night in a tree.




It must have taken a great deal of spunk to attempt to educate the superstitious and distrustful rural folk in the mountains of North Carolina. Her job was to tell proud people that they needed to change practices that had existed for years. She had to persuade families to immunize their children. These people were uneducated and feared shots would harm their children. She had to educate folks about the importance of sanitary conditions for plumbing & outhouses. Asking men to relocate the outhouse because “a woman” thought it would be better must have been a tedious process. But she slowly gained their trust and admiration and made a difference.

Margaret Lee was very generous to these people. She arranged for a number of children to have cleft lips surgically repaired. She even paid for some to have the surgery. She helped others attend school and college. A practice she extended to family when she paid a lady in Woodbury to make most of mothers clothes while she was in college.

I have a magazine article that speaks of Lucinda, a poor mountain girl left to raise her baby sister after her mother died. Local people had a “silver tea” to start a fund to buy Lucinda a cow. Aunt Margaret taught her how to recognize and treat various infant illnesses. Margaret made frequent visits to the home to check on them. After three years of that responsibility, at the age of thirteen, Aunt Margaret took Lucinda to the Children of the Hills school at Tamassee, a school supported by DAR chapters. The baby was turned over to her grandmother’s care.

Aunt Margaret was in New Orleans when my mother was born. Her signature is on the birth announcement in mother’s baby book. She gave her a hand embroidered dress and cap as a baby present. She gave her a Korean embroidered dress which was one of her “first short clothes”. She must have been equally generous through the years to Margaret & Henry and all. I have a little thank you note from my Mom thanking Aunt Margaret for a silver baby cup she gave me when I was born. (I gave the cup to Julie.) I will try to scan the note here.


During the missile crisis (Cuba/Russia - 1961), my Grandfather built a “fall out shelter”. When I look back on it now, the room was really just a feeble excuse for a basement room. It wouldn’t have provided any real protection during a nuclear attack. There was a national hysteria after missiles were discovered in Cuba. The fear of nuclear attack seemed real because Fort Benning was about an hour away. If Benning had been targeted, the nuclear blast would not have impacted us. Radiation dust would have settled according to wind patterns, etc and I doubt that we would have had a very different outcome based on a stay in the shelter. But at least he didn’t sit back and bite his fingernails. He took action.

Eventually Granddaddy extended the side porch and added a room above the fall out shelter for Aunt Margaret to live in after she retired. It is interesting that she choose to live with Granddaddy Harry. She had been away from North Carolina for many years. I don’t know if she considered returning there after she retired. Her parents were gone. Her brothers had a successful textile mill and might have helped her with finances. Aunt Margaret had a lot of pride. I know they were a close family. Aunt Margaret and Granddaddy were both buried with their parents in Grover.

I loved her very corny & funny stories she told me, my sisters, and my cousins. One story that always got giggles was “Wishy, Washy, Wishy, Washy…”. The punch line involved underwear which always got a giggle. Unfortunately today’s children might think the joke was lame. Too bad. It was a good time and children were children.

I loved her & would drive out just to visit her & to listen to her stories. I wish I had recorded her stories; I would love to hear her voice. People talk differently today. She had a gentle “little old lady quality” that reflected a different time. It is something I remember, but can’t put into words.

There were times though that I went to visit my Grandfather and I didn’t take the time to walk back to visit for a moment.

Aunt Margaret gave me a lovey portrait of her in her red cross uniform. The picture was used in a magazine article about her Red Cross work during a flood in Ohio. There are other items (her diploma, the Red Cross article) she wanted me to keep. I think she wanted to be sure she was remembered. Unless the items are in mother’s family history files, the items were lost or thrown away when the family relocated to Spartanburg.

Aunt Margaret worked so hard to be helpful when she moved to Granddaddy’s. She originally moved there as a transition when she retired, but never left. At times she may have been too helpful for Till. Granddaddy Harry had remarried well before she moved in. There seemed to be a competition for his affection between Till & Aunt Margaret. It wasn’t easy on either of them. Granddaddy was caught in the middle. But there wasn’t really any other place for her to live. She became a bit of a recluse. Trying to be pleasant, but not quite feeling she belonged. Perhaps not feeling needed anymore.
Picture of the Lake at Granddaddy's house


I don’t remember when Aunt Margaret stopped driving. I don’t think I even noticed. Probably her car just got too old to operate and she was too old to drive. She never replaced it.

Aunt Margaret probably started the “regifting” trend. She had a small retirement and was frugal with her savings. Her gifts were a handkerchief, a slip, a bottle of perfume or sweet powder someone had given her. One Christmas she gave me a ring and Gay a hairbrush. I was oblivious to the disparity in value. I was in high school; Gay was in elementary school.

Gay quite naturally felt slighted; her feelings were hurt. Peggy, our cousin, and Gay were best friends. They must have talked about this together. Some time later they laughed about the hairbrush. My reaction was to come to Aunt Margarets defense; theirs was to critise me. They felt I was "favored" and that means the other person is not. It is how children (and we were children) think. Maybe I was, but I think Aunt Margaret appreciated my interest in her, her life, and her contribution. Everyone wants to be remembered.

I accepted her gifts were a sweet way to share with us. After all the sweet things she had done through the years, it hurt to hear them laugh about her. I dearly loved her.

One of my favorite gifts was a Hummel figurine of a little boy playing doctor. He had operated on a doll head. Aunt Margaret went into great detail about the friend who purchased it for her while traveling to Germany. She was truly touched they remembered her in such a special way & I was touched she gave it to me.


Because I loved it so much I purchased another Hummel with my hard earned babysitting money. Gaye threw a pillow at me & I skillfully ducked. The pillow missed me, but broke the head on the little doctor & the handle off the basket of the other Hummel. Both were super-glued back. Now I love the figurines even more since they remind me of my sister as well as Aunt Margaret. Amazing how “devastating” events with lots of tears can become sweet in retrospect. But sisters (and brothers) can grow to appreciate one another, not just because everything goes right, but because of the mistakes we make. There were lots of times we chased each other, laughing and giggling, as we ran through the house. Sometimes we might overdo it and end up unhappy. But other times we ran until exhausted and we were still happy. I might not remember those times without this incident or another like it. I still have the Hummel’s, but I also have the memories.

When Aunt Margaret Lee was quite old she had to be in a nursing home. My Aunt Margaret, mother’s sister, rode with her in an ambulance from Columbus Georgia and delivered her to Spartanburg on Gaye’s wedding day. There was already stress with the wedding. Aunt Margaret had been stressed with Margaret Lee’s care for a while & didn’t appreciate that Mother would be doing her part for the next two years. It might have been nice if she had waited one more day, but we humans don’t always do all the right things each and every time. What was important was that she had cared for Margaret Lee. The wedding went on and the world didn’t stop.

Mother visited Margaret Lee every day (literally) to be sure she was well cared for, to pick up her laundry and to feed her evening meal. I believe she was there for two years before her death.