&hearts Happy Mother's Day, Hannah Steele Pettit, Marjorie Meinel

Elaine Meinel Supkis

My grandmother, Hannah Steele Pettit and my mother, Marjorie Pettit Meinel, both looked to the stars with hope and love. I wish to celebrate these scientist pioneers who were also mothers. They did it all. They raised children inside and around some of the greatest observatories on earth.

Yerkes Observatory Virtual Tour. My grandmother was one of the very first women to get a science degree at a men's university. She broke the ice. Men were very excited and disturbed by her presence. She was very beautiful so they were doubly troubled by her.

Her first claim to fame was a dare at the University of Chicago. She was told, women were too fragile for the hustle and bustle of a men's university. She said she was as strong as any man. So they dared her to prove her physical strength.

So, wearing bloomers and cap, she swam the length of Lake Geneva. This made international news. Her husband was so proud of this feat, he had it mentioned in her obituary when she died many years later.

Wikipedia:

Edison Pettit (September 22, 1889 – May 6, 1962) was an American astronomer.
He was born in Peru, Nebraska. He taught astronomy at Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas from 1914 to 1918. He married Hannah Steele, who was an assistant at Yerkes Observatory, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1920.
Shortly after he became a staff member at Mount Wilson Observatory. He initially specialized in solar astronomy and built his own thermocouples. He also made visual observations of Mars and Jupiter. Even after his retirement he continued to make spectrographs for various observatories in the machine shop in his home.
Craters on the Moon and on Mars are named after him.

My grandmother met my grandfather at Yerkes Observatory. Many years later, my father became the director of Yerkes Observatory. I was born there, too. My grandmother had two girls. She took them everywhere with her and they grew up running around Mt. Wilson in California. My mother decided she would marry an astronomer and they would fly into space together to explore the universe.

When she met my dad, he belonged to the rocket club in Pasadena. My father showed my mother a picture of a rocket he drew. "I am going to fly to Mars on this," he said. My mother drew in curtains and a double bed. "I'm going with you," she said.

They got married, my father went to Germany to pick up some rockets and they had fun at night and every year and three months, for nearly nine years, out came a baby.

I was baby number #4, the cursed "middle child." On top of being the middle child, I was bequeathed the gift of being normal sized which meant I was the family dwarf since my grandmother, aunt, mother and all my siblings were over six feet tall.

But my mother and grandmother stood tall because they pursued their dreams and they stooped down to have children. If neither of them did this, I wouldn't exist and that would kind of be unsettling. I guess I could have popped into this world via some other agency, maybe born as another creature entirely or perhaps born into another planetary system, geeze, that is always interesting to think about.

But I was born to my mother or rather, she decided to put up with the trouble and worry of having me. I'm certain she wondered about this. Worry her, I certainly did. It is no fun having a child who attracts lighting. We would sometimes stay in the observatory dome during storms, the lightning sounding it like a huge drum!

The main thing is, my mother's gifts weren't merely the gigantic one of giving me life by giving me literally a part of her own flesh, she gave me a whole universe, a world without end, she gave me the tools to see far, further than humans saw ever before.

She also gave me freedom. Perhaps this was because it had to be, I strove for it from the earliest days. She allowed me to become strong, to have adventures, to fight, to raise any animal I wanted, she even let me keep a skunk, a gila monster, she drew the line at tarantulas, but we had horses and ducks and goats and cats, dogs, birds, chickens, pheasants, she let me even keep lizards under my bed!

She gave me whatever music I wanted. I played the piano thanks to her, the organ, cello, violin and harpsichord. She played the organ for our Lutheran Church for years and years. She loves Bach, of course. And she gave me and my siblings the gift of this music. And opera. All the things I treasure, she gave to me, herself, from my earliest infancy onwards.

I can't even begin to thank her for it. It is impossible. So instead, I had my own children. She said, "Revenge at last!" when my first child was born.

Heh. She was right. Even as I had to give my own daughter and son the gift of freedom and adventures, it made me tear my hair out with worry! And I appreciated how much my own mother suffered while she tried to look calm about it all.

&hearts This is also my mother's birthday. Happy birthday, mom! Happy mother's day! Happy grandmother and great grandmother's day, too! &hearts

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Comments

[sin]

Happy Mothers Day, Elaine!!!

[ducky]

Happy Mother's Day !!! Thanks for more great posts and I enjoy the addition of the news summaries :-)

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

You are all welcome.

My kids took me to the Emperor Restaurant. I had conch and assorted dead sea animals. My son joked that conches in Japanese RPG games are hard to kill thanks to their hard shells. :)

[D.F. Facti]

very interesting and thoughtful of you to post.