An Obituary for Caroline Joy Davis Jennings (aka my mom)
In the days since my mother passed away, I realize that I probably know her best. I don’t know everything, and others know parts of her story that I don’t, but as her youngest, I knew her last even though it has been over four years since I last saw her.
My mother was born April 2, 1928 in the farming community of Caro, Michigan. Her parents were Howard Davis and Joy Davis. Both were Davis’s but not related. Howard was from a farming family from outside of Flint, Michigan. Joy was the daughter of a banker from Stanton, Michigan (near Lansing). Howard and Joy met at Central Michigan Normal School (now Central Michigan University) where both studied education. Howard was working as an administrator for the Caro schools. She was the second child, her sister and competitor Mildred was older. Mildred and Caroline were joined by six more siblings: William (her beloved brother), Dorothy (also a school teacher), Mary (not a school teacher but her daughters were and her husband), Barbara, Evelyn (a school teacher), and John.
In the midst of the Depression, Howard left the family. (For another woman who was also his student.) Joy and her children moved to the small town of Otisville, Michigan outside of Flint. Howard worked in the auto industry in Flint before settling in Ohio where he had a heating and cooling business. Davis Heating and Cooling is still in operation today, owned by her half-brother Paul. Howard is buried in Belpre, Ohio on the bluffs of the Ohio River, overlooking West Virginia.
Life was not easy for the Davis family during the Depression. Sometimes the family only had beans to eat. Joy worked as an elementary school teacher. (She also played organ at the church.) My mother’s brother Bill had to move to Ohio to live with their father. As I understood it, one of the male teachers or administrators had made some inappropriate advances towards one of his sisters, and Bill had intervened. In time, Bill would also go into the heating and cooling business in Marion, Ohio, though his business closed after a tragic accident. For the last few years he has had cancer. A couple of years ago he was talking to my mom on the phone and said, “You know I am going to die.” She replied, “We are all going to die someday.” At the time they were both in their late 80s, so really they had already lived longer than average. Uncle Bill died in September 2019 at the age of 90.
Some relatives had a restaurant, and my mom worked there some growing up. In her senior year of high school, the family home burned down. My mother had to jump from a second story window. Her maternal grandfather had bought the house for his daughter and her family. After he had to close his bank before the depression, he worked as a gardener in Alma, Michigan. My grandmother had just received her paycheck, which someone had stolen in the chaos. Caroline and her siblings were split up and went to live with different local families. At least no one was seriously hurt.
After graduation from Otisville High School, she went to Central Michigan College to follow in her parent’s footsteps as a teacher. In the registration line, she met another student, James (Jim) Davis. Jim was still no relation, and from Grand Blanc, Michigan, though he was originally born in Battle Creek, Michigan. Jim had served in the navy as a pharmacist mate in the Pacific and was in college studying business on the GI Bill. They were soon married and living in family housing that had been quickly put up for all of the new families in the start of the post-war Baby Boom. Their first daughter Susan was born there and so was their second daughter Carol. Caroline did not continue her studies.
When Jim graduated with his bachelor’s degree in business, they moved to Ohio by her brother. That is where Peggy (their third daughter) was born. They were not there long, and the family moved to Midland, Michigan where Jim’s parents had moved during the war. He worked for the C&O railroad in an office job. I have seen a newspaper photo of him in a jacket and tie. I don’t know why, but Jim left the railroad and started delivering milk for the dairy. (The family of cartoonist Cathy Guisewite of “Cathy” fame was one of his customers.) He left the dairy for reasons I do know, and were his fault, and landed at the post office as a rural mail carrier, which he would do until he retired.
The family added their first son James (Jim) in these years. The girls were roughly a year apart. Jim was three years younger than Peggy. At first the family lived in a rural area outside of Midland and the girls attended a one room schoolhouse. At some point, they moved in town to a house on Haley Street in Midland. (Maybe there were more…I was not around yet.) My siblings all went to Parkdale Elementary, Northeast Intermediate, and the four oldest went to Midland High. Four years after Jim was born, a second son Timothy (Tim) joined the family.
When Tim was old enough to go to school, Caroline returned to Central Michigan to finish her degree. It was 28 miles each way, and she carpooled with other students. One of those would be one of my high school math teachers, Lanny Waite. His son would be one of my students when I was an assistant theater director at the high school. After graduation, her first teaching job was teaching eighth grade at Mills school. After a couple of years she started teaching third grade at Siebert Elementary in Midland, which is where she spent the rest of her career.
As a teacher, mom preferred to work with the students who struggled rather than the talented and gifted students other teachers preferred. Some parents asked for her specifically because she had a reputation for being patient and able to help these students. She also took care of the geraniums around the school. She was also left-handed, so she taught handwriting to all of the left-handed students. It is ironic that someone who taught handwriting for many years has a son with horrible handwriting. My second daughter Iyana is also a lefty. I wish that my mom had had a chance to teach her.
During these years, my parents were among the founding families for Aldersgate Methodist Church in Midland. Both had been raised Methodist. After she retired, she taught Sunday school and was responsible for setting up the alter cloth and flowers each week. Responsibilities she continued until she could no longer drive.
It must have been in early 1967 that she discovered that baby six was on the way, eleven years after the birth of her last child. She was not happy. She told me once about arranging my dad’s vasectomy after that. (At least she had him go to the doctor and did not do it at home.) It was not an easy pregnancy. She almost lost me, as my sister Carol once told me years later. She returned to teaching after I was born.
The year 1968 was a chaotic one for the world generally and in my family in particular. My father was an alcoholic. In hindsight, we believe that he suffered from post-traumatic stress. While he did not serve in a combat role, he worked in military hospitals on Guam and Iwo Jima. He had joined the navy when he was 17. He was sensitive and not prepared to witness what he saw and he never talked about. His father was also a functioning alcoholic, so there is the genetic link too.
Though my mother probably did not think of herself as a feminist, she was and certainly raised me that way by example. She had loved two men who were unreliable in her father and my father. A year after I was born, she divorced my dad. By then, all of my older siblings had moved out. Tim was only 12, but the divorce and everything that was going on in society in the late 1960s hit him hard. He was sent away to school. The two of us moved to a small house on Kentucky Street in Midland. A couple of years later we moved to another small house.
During these years, my mother worked on a master’s degree (which she never finished), and she also taught summer school. Money was tight, but she made it work. Most important for her, she was independent and relying on only herself. That was my role model. A mother who took care of me, who also worked, and provided. In that time, divorce at least in our conservative community was rare.
This time was also her first chance to have fun. Her childhood and teen years had not allowed for much social activity. College had not been fun either since she had dropped out to start a family. My mom took ballroom dance classes. She used to have a couple of trophies from that. She did events with “Parents without Partners.” She did the things she wanted to do. I think she would have preferred to not have me around, but she never left me home alone or anything. I was just not the center of attention. For her it was about finding herself.
The irony here is that my siblings, especially my sister Susan, thought that I had it great as an essentially only child. She thought I got all the love and attention. What she did not see was that there was not that much love or attention. My Dad was unreliable and inconsistent. He was not a mean drunk, but he would forget him promises or spend his paycheck at the bar or give it to a friend. My mother had had to raise her younger siblings, and having raised five children, she did not have the patience to deal with her irresponsible husband. Me she had no choice about, but I always felt I was in the way and not appreciated. My sister Carol understood this years later and regretted that she had not realized at the time and done more for me. She did though later in my teens, and I miss her so much. Of all us, Carol was the most like our mother, and she suffered for that.
I have early memories of a neighborhood babysitter before we moved. Then I have memories of two different pre-schools, where I spent my first 1.5 years of kindergarten. I think I started to pick up some inappropriate language, so she moved me to public school to finish my second year of kindergarten. As a third grade teacher, mom had noticed that older third graders did better academically. I have a September birthday, so I could start first grade as a young four year old or an older six year old. That is why she had me repeat kindergarten, though I wear it as a badge of honor that I am one of the few people who had to repeat kindergarten. I overcame this obstacle on my way to earning a PhD and three master’s degrees.
When I was in first grade, so 1973–1974, mom started dating someone she met through Parents without Partners. He was an engineer at Dow Chemical (the main employer in Midland). He had a big house on acres of land with a pool. He wooed her. She thought she would finally have a life where she would not have to worry about material things anymore and could have parties and a good time. She was partially right. His name was Walter (Walt) Jennings. His wife had been a school teacher who had died of cancer. His four children were all grown up with the youngest finishing his engineering degree at Michigan Technological University. Walt had been with the army in World War II, so both of my Mom’s husbands were veterans.
They married in the spring of 1974 and honeymooned in South Carolina. I went to stay with my sister Peggy and her husband for the week. In Midland, spring break was always the last week of March. Many years this did not overlap with Easter, but it did this year. Every kid knows that Easter is one of the top candy holidays. My Easter was saved by the basket that my beloved brother Tim and his wife Laurie gave me. I miss him so much, and I always will.
I don’t think it took long for my mom to figure out she was tricked. Walt was a loner, an only child and an engineer who did not have friends. He was not interested in parties or going out. He had wanted a wife to replace his first wife who would cook, clean, and take care of him and the house. This was not what my mom was looking for.
At least it was a nice house, and she liked his children. She did get to go on trips. He liked camping and fishing, and she liked to be able to see new places. Every spring break we would head south so that she could find spring. Usually this was in Kentucky or Tennessee. A couple of years it was the Florida panhandle. Around 1980 they went to Hawaii as part of a class at the local community college. I went to stay with my sister Carol and her family in Chicago for a month. I started visiting Carol on my own at least once a year if not more often. With her and her husband and her children Joy and Danny I saw what a family was like that was centered on love.
One spring break we went to visit my step-sister Mary and her family in Albany. I convinced my parents to take me to New York City. We saw a Wednesday matinee of Evita. Walt fell asleep. We went up the Empire State Building, and I have pictures from there of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
At home, we did have season tickets for both musicals and plays at the Center for the Arts. This exposure set the stage for my interest in theater in high school and beyond. In my first high school play, my mom made my costumes. She had to sew clothes growing up and again when my sisters were little.
On one spring break my mother almost got me killed. We were in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and my parents had observed that cars stopped for pedestrians. Mom told me to mail some postcards and that I should just cross the street. She screamed when the car almost hit me. I don’t think she meant it to happen, and no harm, no foul, but I used to bring that story up.
The summer of 1980 my parents took me to Michigan Tech’s summer youth program. The first year I took a week long class in computer programming (Fortran 77 was still new in those days). We used punch cards. Michigan Tech is in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The most beautiful part of the state. I would come back the next year for a second Fortran class, the year after that for BASIC programming on the Apple II and creative writing, and the fourth year for a second BASIC class, though that year I got sick and ended up in the hospital for most of the week. After the first year my mom came without Walt. She would spend her days traveling around the area and drawing.
She took a variety of art classes. She learned to make wire trees. I remember macramé owls. She did quite a bit of soapstone carving. Most of all she liked colored pencils and watercolors. Her masterpiece was a large painting with all of the houses where she had lived. My sister Susan is supposed to get that. I have some small pieces that she sent me over the years. My oldest daughter inherited her grandmother’s artistic talents. Mom used to have a drawing of a cat that Aspen did when she was little that was hung outside the door to her apartment.
One of my mother’s gifts to me was self-motivation. She never expressed much interest in what classes I took or how I performed in them. One of her few pieces of advice came in ninth grade. I wanted to be a writer, and she suggested I do something that made money like be a lawyer. I listened to her and throughout high school I focused on that career path. I was a three-year varsity debater. I qualified for multiple awards for debate, speech, theater, and international relations. I don’t know if she realized all that I did. She saw the newspaper article that I was the first student to qualify for all of the state tournaments in debate, public speaking, and theater in one year. I did these things because they were important to me. I know that she did not come my National Honor’s Society induction. She did not come to the presentations of my special class on the creative process for which I had written a one-act play. It was not important to her, and her approval was something that I realized I was never going to get. Unfortunately, my sisters never learned that lesson. I don’t know if they ever will, and my heart goes out to them.
My mom did not talk about it much, but I don’t think she received much praise growing up. It was a large family with large problems. Her older sister was competitive. When she heard that my mom was going into education, she switched from nursing to education to earn their father’s approval. I imagine that she was the caregiver for her siblings while her mom worked. I think by the time I cam along she felt she had already raised her six siblings and my five siblings. We never talked about it. I can pretend that she did it on purpose to make me stronger and self-sufficient, but I think it was more just a lack of interest and concern.
My oldest brother Jim was always the golden child. The firstborn son. I may have had more one-on-one time, but Jim was always going to be best in my mother’s eyes. This was not entirely a bad thing, as his wives were never going to meet her approval. My wives she was more accepting of, and she appreciated how my wife Tena cared for our children when they were little.
When my nieces and nephews were young, my mom was not a typical grandmother who spoils her grandchildren. First, she was still teaching, so she spent hours every day with children. She liked her students though. Even the students she did not have herself bet when to her school were praised for any success or accolade, much more than I ever was. Maybe she would have liked me more if I had gone to Siebert, but we did not live on the right side of town.
My mother taught me at an early age to not be codependent. In junior high school she would drop me off at school on her way to work. In the afternoon, I would walk to my paternal grand parents’ house and my mom would pick me up from there. This was a great gift for me as it allowed me to get to know my grandmother Orpha better. I am much of who I am today from the time I spent with Grandma. She too died at 92. One day as my mom was dropping me off she told me that if it wasn’t for me, she would leave her husband. I knew enough to not say anything, but in my head I was thinking, if I had a vote we would leave. I knew we stayed because though she was unhappy in many ways, she valued the financial stability. I took away from this the lesson to not accept the gift of guilt from others.
Holidays were another legacy I have from my mother. Being a creative type, she threw me some great birthday parties when I was younger. I remember a pirate theme in particular. In general though she tended to forget birthdays, something she experienced in her own family. One year she even told my wife that she had bought me a card, but she never mailed it. Holidays were challenging. She worked full-time (really more than that as anyone who is a teacher knows), and when the holidays came she was tired. She felt that people expected big parties and events, and she was not good at asking for help. Inevitably she would have a blow-up about how everyone wanted a big dinner but no one would help. Yet it was never clear how to help her, or where the expectations were coming from. I still don’t do well around holidays…I keep waiting for the explosion.
Mother was not happy with me when my first year of college I changed my career plans from law to being a professor. Really it was her fault for being an educator and inspiring me to go into the family business.
In the spring of 1988 my brother Tim died in a car accident, leaving his wife Laurie and daughter Louise. I was in my sophomore year of college. In many ways Tim was the black sheep of the family, but he was loving and never mean. He and his family lived next door to my mom. In the aftermath of his death, she finally made up her mind to get a divorce. When I came home that December for Christmas, she and I talked about her plans. She wanted to go to North Caroline (Ashville) for a few months and then come back to find a place to live and start the legal process. I advised her to get divorced first and move into a new place first. I regret that she never made it to North Carolina.
She retired after that school year and moved into a small house. She was busier in retirement than she had been when she was teaching. She volunteered as a teacher’s aide at the school by her house. She was an art docent at the Center for the Arts. She taught a writing class for seniors. She volunteered at her church. She bought a minivan with a seat that would convert to a bed so she could travel. She enjoyed her independence and freedom to do what she wanted to do.
In 2000, my work brought me back to Flint, and we were about an hour away from my mom. Most weekends my wife Tena and I would visit and help clean the basement and do other errands that needed to be done. Often Tena and our two oldest children would also come during the week as well if there were things that needed to be done. As mom was getting older and less mobile, I encouraged her to move to a senior citizen’s apartment or to move in with us where she would be closer to her sisters as well or to move to an apartment in the Flint area. Each time I almost had her convinced, my brother Jim would come for a visit and talk about how he wanted to move back to Midland from Maine, and mom would decide she needed to stay in her house so that Jim would have a place to live and he could take care of her.
During these years my mom attended my niece Michaelle’s wedding in the Detroit area with my sister Peggy. They were visiting with my other sister Susan, and mom was not feeling well. She went to urgent care that sent her to the hospital for high blood pressure. It was the weekend, and the hospital was not going to do anything for her until Monday, so I drove down to pick her up to take her the hospital in her hometown. I remember the impact of walking onto the ward and seeing her in that hospital bed. They were able to get her blood pressure under control.
In January 2008, my family and I moved to Chicago for work. We could not visit as often as we had in the past. My niece Louise did more and more for my Mom. We still encouraged her to come live with us. We brought her with us to Florida one Christmas holiday. Eventually she did move to a senior’s apartment.
Moving to Riverside was one of the best decisions of her life. I think it extended her life by many years, and it certainly increased the quality of life. She was active in a variety of ways in her community. She was the librarian. She went to the writing classes that earlier in her retirement she had taught. She had more friends and social activities than anytime in her life. She was often out in the common areas doing puzzles. The last time I visited her with four of my children they did a puzzle with her. We also walked to the river where she threw a ball into the river and watched the current carry it away. I think it was then that I told her I wanted to give her a Viking funeral…put her on a boat in the river and set it on fire.
Shortly after that we moved to Arizona then to Florida and then to Maryland. Mom never met her seventeenth grandchild (and my tenth). (Her obituary left out my niece Marie who died as an infant.) Over the last year she did enjoy meeting my niece Louise’s granddaughter. Louise and her daughters Valerie, Clarissa, and Caroline have been important parts of my Mom’s life these last few years, and I am grateful for them and sad that my brother never got to see the woman his daughter became or meet his granddaughters. He lives on in them.
On May 19, 2020, I called my Mom to ask her how she was managing the storms and flooding. Her apartment building is named Riverside for a reason. Midland made the national news when two dams flooded. Water reached the lower level of her building forcing an evacuation. She was in the news video with my brother leaving the building. (Eventually brother Jim followed through on his desire to move back to Midland.)
With the building damaged by the flood, she had to move to a new place. My Mom was always independent, and Louise was able to find her a new apartment in an assisted living center. I talked to her once since then. She called me and seemed surprise to get me. Anytime I called back, she did not take my call. I went old school on her and sent her letters.
A few weeks ago she ended up in the hospital for a few days. We were worried that she was going to need more care than she could get where she was living. Fortunately they allowed her to come back. Louise’s oldest daughter works there and would check on her before and after her shifts. Saturday morning Val checked in on her and she was fine. Not long after she was not responsive. Her heart gave out. She died the way that she wanted. Peacefully and independent. Up until the end I invited her to come stay with us. I wanted to make sure she felt wanted.
My favorite musical is Hamilton, and one the messages of the story is who lives, who dies, and who tells your story. My mother will always live on in family, her students, and friends. She never wanted to be the center of attention and preferred to serve behind the scenes. I hope she felt the appreciation that so many had for her. I hope this story does her justice.
Most of all I respect her ability to change and grow. She did not let the tragedies of her childhood hold her back. She did not let the choices of her husband limit her. I think she achieved much happiness in her later years and never stopped learning and growing even as her joints ached and her heart no longer did its job.
Even though we did not have a chance to talk much anymore, and even though we knew she was living on borrowed time, it is still hard to know that the option to even send her a letter is gone. I would send her a copy of my books when I published them. Two years ago at Christmas we talked about how one of her friends had borrowed my book on how to become a professor and read it twice. Her friend’s husband and son were both professors, and she told me mom I got it right. I hope that she was okay that after all the years since she told me to not become a writer that I did it anyway.
Her name lives on in a granddaughter and great granddaughter. My daughter Elika has her middle name. I hope that the name will continue to be passed down to future generations. Her ashes will be interred at Memorial Gardens. Before I was born, my parents had bought four plots there. My Dad and brother are there and my brother Jim’s first wife Thelma. Mom will be in the mausoleum, so not far away. It is not far from where we lived after she re-married and on the road between Midland and Mount Pleasant where she went to college.
Rest well mom…I hope my children grow up to have as long and full lives like you did and carry o your legacy of service to others.
