For someone who did not exactly have it easy, Mimi miraculously maintained a near-constant pleasant disposition, and was selfless in her support/excitement for others. During my PhD thesis seminar, I have a vivid memory of seeing Mimi’s gleeful smile standing out in the crowd. When I told Mimi that Sara and I were engaged to be married, Mimi’s excitement was unparalleled. She shrieked in excitement in what can only be described as complete jubilation.
After each summer, winter, and spring break during my time at Colby, Mimi used to send me back to school with a box of her famous homemade chocolate chip cookies! Shortly after Sara and I started dating, I told Mimi that she loved the cookies. Mimi was likely worried about my prospects of maintaining Sara as my girlfriend. Sure enough, on my next trip back to Colby she supplied me with twooverflowing boxes of cookies and notified me that one was “to be shared with Sara”
When I was ~10 years old, I maneuvered a rubber band around the spray hose on the sink, so the next person to turn it on would get sprayed with a face full of water. This “trick” that I thought was hilarious ending up taking Mimi as it’s next victim. Rather than be furious, which would have been understandable, Mimi found it hilarious! She proceeded to tell me “not to turn the hose on her” for the next 20+ years. I will miss that.
The story, as told to Cindy and Peter by Mimi (supported by ticket stubs and notes from both Mimi and Willy) is as follows.
Willy attended a meeting with the Controlled Thermonuclear Research Advisory Committee in Los Alamos, New Mexico in early August, 1966. His train ticket shows that he travelled from Pasadena through Lamy to Santa Fe on August 4th and 5th and back on August 6th and 7th.
I don’t remember when Mimi first talked about skiing, but I was very young. She had great stories to tell about her adventures studying and traveling in Europe on the GI Bill after her time in the WAC in New Guinea. Chamonix and Zermatt were her favorites but she skied in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Italy. On occasion, she would start in one country and ski down in the alps into a different country and have to take the train back across the border. As I discovered later, she became quite an accomplished skier.
Mimi’s and Nina’s dog, Gusto, was named for Gustavus Adolphus the Great (Gustavus Adolphus Magnus) who was King of Sweden from 1611 through 1632. He (Gustavus Adolphus, not Gusto) founded Sweden as a major power during the 30 Years War and was known as The Lion of the North and Defender of the Faith for his defense of Protestant countries.
Mimi was a regular part of our family’s Saturday trips to the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Participants were usually Nina, Mimi, Peter, Joan, and Margaret.
This is the story of how Mimi and Nina arrived in New York City and relocated in Tarrytown, as told by Mimi to Cindy and Peter.