Just as a race usually winds up with a little canter after the finish line is crossed, let us wind up this last week of 1964 with a gentle interlude as an old era ends and a new one begins. Yes, the time has come for Hope to step aside and leave the Household in the hands of the younger generation.
Not that there is any emergency or commotion. For once let us enjoy a transition that is natural and pleasant. The years that I have been at the helm have been long and arduous, and rewarding. But the years have taken their toll of strength and enthusiasm, and it is well for some one else to take the responsibility.
I started in the summer of 1926, with scant warning and preparation, after the previous editor, Faith Felgar, died unexpectedly. At that time I was a young mother with a lapful of babies, just like many of the readers. How few who were with us then are probably among us now! There were three little ones at our house then, seven, five and four years. Three years later there was another, whom we referred to in the column as the "Postscript," or "Tag-along." Now those four children are all in homes of their own and there are 15 grandchildren, ranging in age from 24 years down to 3 months.
That's quite a range. The war was partly responsible. It happened like this: Only Daughter, our oldest, married straight out of college, and had her three children before the sons ever married. First Son started college the year after Daughter finished, and went into the Army immediately thereafter. Second Son finished college the next year and went into the Navy. When the war was over, both came back and got their Master's degrees before they married. By that time Third Son started college, broke off in the middle of his Army service during the Korean conflict (though he happened to be sent to Germany), and then he came back and finished school before he married. So Daughter's oldest child is now out of school and embarked on her career in New York City, Daughter's other two, and the eight children of Sons One and Two are scattered through college, high school and grades; while Third Son has four little pre-school girls.
If children and grandchildren keep one young, we would be young for a long time. But the death, without warning, of Husband in 1959 and of Daughter in 1962 took much of the zest out of life.
Of course many quiet pleasures remain, and many blessings. And bereavement, with all its weight of sorrow, does enlighten life, so that sympathies are tenderer and judgments gentler.
But for the leader of the Household you need some one to carry on with more relish and ebullience and cheer than Hope can bring to the job any more. You need the stimulation of keeping up with the times, examining new developments in our way of life. So, with appreciation of what the column has meant to me these many years, and with gratitude to all of you for helping make it what it is, I am bowing out. But for the next few days, till the Old Year becomes the New, let us reminisce together a bit. -- Sincerely, Hope Needham.