Our Nonnie

     Great-aunt Nonnie was a prominent figure in my early childhood. She was a trim tiny woman with porcelain skin and soft gray hair that she unpinned only at night. Mild in manner and serene, she was nonetheless a little dynamo - cooking, baking, cleaning and caring for family as well as countless relatives and friends that frequented her Grand Rapids home. Even while sitting on the front porch swing, her fingers were forever busy, peeling apples or stringing green beans and her neat shirtwaist dresses were always covered with an apron. Nonnie's good home baked bread was simply an essential weekly staple but it was and is, the standard by which I judge any white bread (as her home was the epitome of old-fashioned but fascinating charm.) When I knew Nonnie, she was a grandmother in her sixties but of course, I thought she was old.

     Florence Barry Phillips, our Nonnie and my grandmother's older sister, was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan; her father was from England and her mother was second-generation Irish. At age twenty-one, she married the equally mild-mannered Fred Follet Stoffer,  son of a successful farmer from a neighboring county, who worked in a local hardware store. Florence and Fred had five children, the youngest of which were energetic twin boys. Various other people lived in the home at different times: among them boarders, a blind grandfather, Florence's own sister and a niece, so obviously the couple were congenial and generous. 

     My mother once said she couldn't understand what Nonnie saw in plain, simple, unambitious Fred, but I think she chose well, especially after I was given the print below - our Gibson girl and her handsome dapper man!

b. 28 March 1889
d . 28 March 1980