My dear Mom, Mary Egloff Tarby, died March 14, four days before her 89th birthday. In her memory, let’s revisit a tribute I paid to her on Mother’s Day 15 years ago. When I discovered this clipping among her post-mortem possessions, I saw she’d scrawled a quick message next to the headline: “I treasured this, Russ!”
I treasured you, Mom!
During the 1930s as America wallowed in the grip of the Great Depression, 6-year-old Mary Lou Egloff trudged up the Vine Street Road hill every day on her way to school. In that one-room schoolhouse, she learned to read.
The power of words impressed her. Stories of faraway places and fantastic fiction revealed new worlds and new ways of living that offered respite, however fleeting, from the ongoing struggles facing her family in Liverpool. She embraced reading with a passion that would last a lifetime. And it was a passion she would eventually pass on to her own children, including me.
Her own mother and father nurtured her love of reading. Her mom, Christine Christensen Egloff, read nursery stories and poetry to her five kids, stories and poems such as “The Barefoot Boy,” “October’s Bright Blue Weather” and “Woodman, Spare that Tree!”
“And our father [Matt Egloff] was an avid reader,” recalled my aunt Dorothy, mom’s older sister. “He always told us to remember the name of the author of any book we enjoyed and look for more by him.”
Mary Lou read the books she was assigned in school, but they were never enough.
She liked several series of books like Nancy Drew and Mary Stewart mysteries. She found a new Bobbsey Twins book under the Christmas tree every December. She read her brothers’ books, too, Zane Grey westerns, Franklin Dixon’s The Hardy Boys and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels.
As she matured, so did her reading. Non-fiction became attractive, and she read of Charles Lindbergh’s historic flight in “Over the Ocean to Paris.” As the draft notices began arriving in the mail, she explored the roots of World War II by reading John Gunther’s “Inside Europe” and “Inside Asia.” Historical novels became a special fascination, and she read everything she could about Scotland and England in the 15th and 16th centuries.
“She haunted the Liverpool Library that was then located at the Gleason Mansion on Second Street,” Aunt Dorothy recalled. “Adasha Gray, the librarian, saved books for her as they were released and received in the library.”
In 1951, she married Russ Tarby, an Auburn boy whose brothers had established a thriving bar-and-grill on First Street in Liverpool after the war.
Although she soon had children of her own with all the work such responsibilities entail, she always made time for reading.
Magazines filled the mailbox: Life, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, McCall’s, Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, TV Guide and — of course — Reader’s Digest.
Sure, the whole family might sit for hours in front of the television screen some evenings, but mom always had a book in hand as well, while dinner cooked on the stove within eyesight. She was the first multitasker I ever knew!
As a journalist, I dabble in non-fiction, so I most clearly remember her reading biographies and books about World War II such as William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” When Massachusetts Sen. Jack Kennedy ran for president in 1960, she purchased his “Profiles in Courage” and later Robert Kennedy’s Mafia exposé, “The Enemy Within.”
She enjoyed the war novels of Herman Wouk, such as his best-seller, “The Caine Mutiny.”
My sister, Laurie, recalls “all the Kennedy books and two big books of poems she had. She’s read poem to me from there, and I loved them: Whitman, Sandburg, Emily Dickinson. I myself read a lot when I was between 8 and 11 years old, and any word I didn’t know, I’d ask Mom, and I learned a lot from her that way. I just always picture her reading. She reads good authors, it seems, authors whose books get made into good movies.”
My brother, James, has similar memories.
“From my childhood I remember that the biggest story by far was Watergate,” he said. “Mom devoured ‘All the President’s Men” and ‘The Final Days’ by Bernstein & Woodward. She liked ‘trash,’ too. She’s rip through a Harold Robbins paperback in one afternoon.”
Now in her seventh decade, Mom still reads voraciously
“Recently, Mom sent me ‘Seabiscuit’ by Laura Hillenbrand,” James said. “She raved about how much she enjoyed it and I enjoyed it, too. Mom has been reading The New Yorker forever, and for 15 years she annually renews my subscription as a Christmas gift! This led me to discover Roger Angell, the peerless baseball author and my personal; favorite writer. And don’t forget the greatest story ever told — I’m sure Mom’s Bible is well thumbed through.”
Writers toil alone, filling blank sheets of paper and blank computer screens with messages and metaphors. The solitary effort only becomes complete when the words reach their audience: the reader.
My mother is a reader. My dad was a talker and sometimes a writer, and he inspired me to tackle the typewriter. But Mom’s obsession with the written word inspires me to engage my readers.
What’s more valuable that a parent can give a child but a purpose in life, a reason to do what you do? Mom’s passion for reading begat my passion for writing.
And the circle is complete.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. And thanks for reading.
Contact the columnist at [email protected].
