Jean Edmunds was born 100 years ago today, 13 December, in far Northern Maine.
Jean attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts. After graduating, she learned that the Chinese Ambassador, T.V. Soong, and his wife were seeking a Wellesley grad as live-in governess.
The Chinese said of T.V.’s sisters, the famous Soong Sisters: “One loved money, one loved power, and one loved China.” One married a wealthy New York banker. One married Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Chinese Nationalist forces supported by the U.S. The third sister, Ching-ling, married Sun Yat-sen, leader of the 1911 Revolution and first President of the Chinese Republic. (Later Soong Ching-ling leadership positions in the People’s Republic.)
World War II was in full swing. General Joe Stilwell visited often. Jean went out with Stillwell’s top aide, a Hawaiian-born Chinese, who eventually proposed to her. They didn’t marry, but stayed good friends. (In the diary she railed about white Americas’ prejudice against such a marriage.)
The newlyweds moved to Manhattan, where he wrote for Time and they saw lots of theater. Jean loved the city life, but when she became pregnant, they moved to a suburb.
For years, Jean played the female lead in all the amateur theatricals. At parties, she played the piano and sang, while everyone gathered around to sing with her, including the dog. Commercial artists sometimes used her as a model. Mostly she devoted herself to her husband and their children. Much later, those children wished for her that she had pursued her own career, but were grateful for the full-time attention of such a talented and intelligent person.
The
first years, they lived on a winding country lane where they
were surprised to learn that most
neighbors were Communists. (At
the height of McCarthyism, a
top U.S. Communist Party
leader
lived across the street.)
The
neighbors thought
it odd that Jean
wanted to start a Cub Scout den, which
she did, including
two boys of color. When
all the
town’s dens
got together, some of the adults sniffed at seeing
two nonwhite boys in her
den.
Jean and Warren stayed married until her death from cancer in 1994. By then, life was wildly different from what she’d known in her Maine childhood. But she’d weathered the changes, staying imaginative and caring.
How I wish we could put 100 candles on a cake and eat it with her! Even a Zoom-style party couldn’t dim the brightness of the first eyes I remember.
- 30 -
[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 13 December 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website (where I do not select the headlines) and KRWG’s website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]
[The column sparks mixed feelings in me. Its subject doesn’t. But putting that kind of personal stuff in a newspaper column does. So I won’t add much.
The Soong Sisters, and now-forgotten T.V., are an interesting study. Mother hated Sterling Seagrave’s book on them, The Soong Dynasty, because she loved Madame Soong. However, history judges them harshly, except perhaps Soong Ching-ling. Here’s an account of a newer book on the "infamous" sisters, which I haven’t yet read. When I lived in Taiwan, forty
[I mention my grandparents' concern about Mother marrying Father, a Jew from Brooklyn. It's a story they told me much later. As a kid, I experienced a stern but loving Grandfather and a soft and loving Grandmother, who doted on us. I believe they like Father fine; they sure seemed to, from this kid's vantage point. However, I think they worried about how we'd all be treated by others in the U.S. Note that the film, Gentleman's Agreement came out in 1949, and that the book was a best seller in 1947. Both explored anti-Semitism through the eyes of a protagonist who pretends to be Jewish in order to write a magazine article on the subject, and finds the consequences pretty unpleasant.]
[My parents had no clue that “the Colony” on Mt. Airy, in Croton-on-Hudson, probably had more Communists and leftists per capita than anywhere in the country. (Croton was notably artsy: I played in some ruined barns where Isadora Duncan had danced, and in the movie Reds, it's where John Reed and his wife go to live.) Mother, used to Fort Fairfield, was astonished when the family across the street never came over to welcome the new neighbors. One winter morning she decided she would go and introduce herself to them. She may not have known that they were Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Bittelman and that he was a high official in the Communist Party U.S.A. The only sense they could make of this WASP lady appearing at their house was probably that she was spying on them, so Mrs. Bittelman sat with my mother on the outdoor porch, in freezing winter weather, until my mother decided sitting longer probably wouldn’t be good for her infant, Peter. It didn’t help that early one morning my father spotted a car parked by our mailbox on the country lane. (It was called Memory Lane, had fewer than a dozen houses on it and no street numbers, and dead-ended in the words.) Suspicious, he went out and found two men. When they got out of the car, he recognized one, from the Marines. The guy now worked for the FBI, Bittelman had had a big party that night, so they were there observing, and writing down license-plate numbers. My father told him to come in and have coffee afterward, which probably looked a little suspicious to some of our neighbors.]
[I recall seeing my mother starring in amateur productions of The Warrior’s Husband, playing the Amazon Queen (and wearing a long, blonde wig), and Dial M for Murder. I’m told that at the cast party after the latter, I was not very friendly to the actor who played the man who tries to murder my mother’s character, but whom she manages to stab with a pair of scissors. I was old enough to know it was a play, but I’d just seen him try to strangle Mother! I’m also told that at some production I yelled out “That’s my mother!” during the play. After one of my own first acting roles, Mother claimed that she had yelled out, “That’s my son!” but I didn’t hear it. I did not yet exist at the time of one production, or was too young to be taken to watch: in Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, ten people are lured to an island and killed, one by one, in retribution for situations where they killed someone in a way the law couldn't reach. Each guest knows the killer must be one of the other guests; but guests keep disappearing, in ways tracking a nursery rhyme. The last two guests are a governess (there because two of her charges drowned, perhaps because of her negligence) and a veteran of World War II (whose speeding sportscar, if I recall correctly, had run down a child). They have been falling in love, but now each is sure the other is the killer. How I should have loved to see Father and Mother play the two leading roles!]
[Particularly in the larger house we moved to when I was 12, Mother singing with many cocktail-party guests singing along is a pretty common memory. At one point, an Afghan dog appeared at the house. She took him to the animal shelter, thinking to adopt, but when she learned that a nice young man who worked there had wanted to adopt the dog, she switched plans such that the dog lived with her until the young man was ready to take the dog. He took the dog; but some months later, apparently, he had abused it badly, and it returned to the shelter. They informed my mother, so Czar came to live with her. When she played the piano, he came and sat by it and howled. Singing along. After awhile, uncertain whether perhaps Czar was howling in pain, she tried putting him outside when she practiced piano, but he came as close as possible to the front door and howled. This became a huge hit at cocktail parties, of course. Czar would come sit by the piano and sing along with everyone. One night a famous concert pianist was at the party. After watching Mother and Czar, he asked politely, "Do you suppose he would do that if I played?" Mother laughed and said that Czar sang when anyone played. "Do you mind if I try?" the pianist asked. He sat down and played. Czar sat quietly and respectfully, watching him.]
[Apparently Mother shared a birthday with George Schultz, former cabinet member under several U.S. presidents. This morning I read an op-ed by him in the Washingon Post, published on his 100th birthday. One of his main points was how essential trust is, whether in families, diplomacy, or most any other endeavor. I agree. He notes that a good leader trusts his people, and thereby engenders their trust in him.]
