Mary Boyer Surr Wolfe (Polly)

Photo of Polly – Dan Spier, Redlands, 1950

 

When Polly was born, I had the mumps.  We considered Polly, who was born on Jack’s birthday, Jack’s birthday present.  Daddy threw Jack’s 7^th birthday party.  I looked longingly through the curtains at the bottom of the stairs as Daddy served Jack’s guests a bought chocolate cake.

I was very proud about our coming baby.  When I crowed about it at school, Mrs. McLaren, the dragon kindergarten teacher and neighbor said that she hoped I didn’t mind not being the baby of the family anymore.  When I told Mother this, she said it was a silly thing to say.  I agreed with her wholeheartedly, probably for different reasons; I wanted to be the oldest kid in the family, not the baby.

In those days, women were kept in hospital for three weeks to recover from childbirth.  After I had been declared non-contagious Daddy took me to Saint Bernadine’s Hospital where he was to visit Mother and Polly.  Children were not allowed in the maternity ward.  I sat downstairs in an enclosed courtyard waiting room - open up to the hospital's roof.  Two black-garbed wimple-wearing nuns came up to me and conversed.  I proudly bragged that Mother had had a baby girl and we were going to call her Mary.  Mother told me later that she could hear me clear up in the third-floor maternity area.

We all rejoiced when Polly and Mother came home.  Nancy and Jack each were allowed to hold Polly while they sat safely in the middle of the sofa.  I wanted to hold Polly.  One night I sneaked downstairs to Polly’s room.  I watched her sleeping in the crib and stroked her soft cheek.  I folded down the crib wall and picked her up.  Nobody had told me that babies need their heads supported.  Polly objected loudly at her dangling head.  I was frightened at her cries.  Mother rushed into the room and grabbed Polly.  I went up to bed, sad and ashamed.  The next day, after many safety instructions I was allowed to sit in the middle of the sofa to hold Polly.  She was warm and soft and smelled very sweet; I liked holding her.

Polly grew to be a charming, chubby toddler.  She was just enough younger than all of us that she was a cherished mascot.  The internecine warfare of the older siblings swirled around her, leaving her intact.  She had then, as she has always had, a warm and sunny nature.

Nancy and Suzanne Curtis organized a circus at the Brigham’s house, home of my bad friend, Penny, and her older brother Tony (who later got a fractured skull by falling out the second story window).  The Brighams lived north on Valencia across the moderately busy 28^th Street.  Nancy and Suzanne taught the Curtis children, the Brigham children, and Jack and me to do very fancy acrobatics.  The circus was set for 7:00 pm on a spring evening.  Jack, Nancy and I left the house right after dinner to set up the circus.  Mother put Polly to bed a little early in her Dr. Denton pajamas (pjs with feet and a buttoned panel at the back).  Her intention was to let Polly, who always slept well, sleep through the performance in her own bed.  The parents came to the Brigham’s, paid their two penny admittance, and sat on the folding chairs.  When the circus was well underway a sleepy Polly appeared in the Brigham’s yard.  She had climbed out the bedroom window, at least four feet from the ground, walked half a block, crossed 28^th street, and come to the circus!  She had, of course heard of our big doings and had no intention of being left out.  She spent the rest of the circus sitting on Mother’s lap and watching.  We were all very proud that Polly was clever enough to get there and that she wanted to see our circus so badly.

Before Polly was out of diapers we took a trip east to see Grandma Stiles in Wisconsin.  The children were delighted to find that we could play outside in the warm rain in our bathing suits; this was not the case in the cold California rains.  Mother told us she had sailed paper boats in the street gutters as a child and showed us how to do that.

On the trip home, at the desert border between Arizona and California, our car was stopped at the Border Inspection Station.  These stations were established to protect California’s crops, especially citrus crops, from invasive insects.  People wanted to bring the oranges they had bought in Arizona into California.  I believe that our family – loath to waste - had an occasional orange-eating picnic orgy before hitting the Border Station.  Sometimes the border guards, knowing the evil that lurks in the hearts of men, were as officious as they thought real policemen were.  The guards looked in several suitcases in the car’s trunk.  A guard asked Daddy what was in the final suitcase.  Daddy replied truthfully “dirty diapers”.  The skeptical guard asked Daddy to open the suitcase.  Daddy, whose word was important to him, did.  The guard was disgusted and waved our car on.  Daddy chortled all the way home.  This may be the only time in history that dirty diapers gave a father such pleasure.  This was the age before disposables.

On another trip to Wisconsin, when Polly was 5, she had a cherished teddy with a music box in it that sang her to sleep each night.  The music was Old King Cole.  After we had traveled half a day from our Colorado motel we discovered that the teddy, an essential member of the family, had been left behind.  Daddy phoned the motel and drove back to retrieve the bear.  We traveled on to Wisconsin where our large, warm-lapped Grandma lived.

Polly continued to grow, charming and competent.  She was a fund of precocious and profound sayings.  Our English cousins came to stay with us after the war, when Polly was about 3.  Ros and Gordon lived with us for about a year.  The almost adult English cousins pacified the rowdy dynamics of the Surr children.  The day Ros and Gordon came to our house they brought a house gift.  Mother put it on a high bookshelf, saying “Let’s just put this out of harm’s way.”  As we introduced ourselves to our English cousins, Polly said, “Hi, I’m Polly.  I’m also known as Harm.”

When Polly was about 5 we moved eight miles from 2850 Valencia Avenue in San Bernardino to 6 East Sunset Drive, South, in Redlands.  Daddy had owned the property since before the war, but every year waited for construction costs to diminish, to build his dream house on it.  He loved the property for its spectacular view of his beloved mountains.  We sometimes went to inspect the site on family outings.  At the time there were no houses between our property and Dr. White’s large Spanish-style house.  In the sagebrush behind that house stood what looked to be a real Indian teepee.  The teepee magnetically drew Nancy, Jack and me to it.  Mother, carrying Polly, followed, to keep us in sight.  We peered cautiously into the teepee.  Suddenly three screaming children emerged from the White’s house and chased us throwing rocks, even at Mother and Polly.  Of course we ran.  The older White children, Nelson and Roberta later became friends of ours - Roberta was even, for a while, my best friend/enemy.  We never again encroached on their property uninvited.

The move from San Bernardino was difficult for me.  I had just established my place in Woodrow Wilson School’s fourth grade social world.  I felt very much alone and very much a stranger In Redlands.  Polly and I shared the same room.  Polly’s part of the room was a nook at the back of the larger part that was mine.  Although I had come from sharing a room with Jack, I grew very possessive of my things, which were attractive to the five-year-old Polly.  Ultimately I made a path with taped lines directly to her nook and bossily told her that she was not to cross those lines.  This, reasonably, didn’t sit well with Polly, who, after all had the smaller portion of the large room and her part held the jointly owned closet.  This is the first conflict I remember with Polly.

I grew very involved with my life at Kingsbury Elementary School and in the sixth grade at McKinley Elementary.  When she started school, Polly went to Smiley, a brand-new elementary school, and later to the brand-new Cope Junior High School.  Our parents had friends with children her age, and she became very close with them.

The summer that I became a senior in high school, our family took a trip to Mt. Robson, a Canadian Rocky in British Columbia.  Jack and I got a rise out of Polly talking about wolves.  Cruelly, we took it farther and talked about wolves biting horse’s rumps.  Polly was then a great horse lover.  We stayed in a house for a night or two at the foot of Mount Robson and then packed up on horses to Berg Lake at the top of Mt. Robson.  Three young people came along to help.  Calvin was the horse wrangler, a cocky, arrogant cowboy of about Jack’s age.  There were two girls to cook and help with the animals.  Though I had been going steady with Charlie back in Redlands, I found Calvin very attractive.  One afternoon he took me for a long ride in the hills and meadows around Berg Lake.  He kissed me while we were on horseback, which I thought was wonderful.   We went up into a beautiful high meadow, with streamlets and wildflowers and stopped to look.  A herd of caribou ran by.  I had never seen caribou.  Their run was so smooth they could have carried cups of tea without spilling.  When we returned to the cabin I thought I might be in love.  However, the next day Calvin took Polly for a wonderful ride.  He kissed her on horseback.  She was smitten.  My nose was seriously out of joint.  I finally realized my little sister was growing up.

In High School, Polly was a very popular student.  She was elected a cheerleader, something Daddy, possibly because of difficulties with cheerleaders in his own youth, made fun of.  At RHS being elected a cheerleader was the apogee of popularity.  I had friends at RHS, but we were only second string.  In my heart of hearts I envied Polly her popularity and more, the warmth of her friendships.

When I went to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College for two years, I lost touch with my busy little sister.  I fell in love, and when I was kicked out of R-MWC, returned briefly to Redlands to learn to be a secretary.  I returned to Virginia to be near Ox, whom I eventually married.

Polly fixed my hair beautifully for my wedding.  After the ceremony in our living room, performed by Daddy’s friend Jesse Curtis, on the last day that he could marry people before becoming a federal judge, Ox and I flew off to make our lives in the army.  We were sent, after a month in Washington State and the rest of the year in Monterey, California, to London, England, for three years.  While we lived in London Polly came for a visit.  I think she was taking a summer abroad during college.  One of her exciting adventures was riding around Europe on the back of some guy’s motorcycle.

Polly attended Beloit College, where mother had finished undergraduate work.  There she met Mike Wolfe, an extrovert who I’m sure had the campus well organized with Polly’s help.

While we were in London, Jack was married to lovely Rauna in Helsinki, Betsy was born, and Polly married her wild and wonderful classmate, Mike Wolfe.   

I couldn’t afford to fly to California for Polly and Mike’s wedding.  I made the first trans-Atlantic telephone call of my life to the Surr house.  The reception was in full swing and I felt very very far away as I told my love and joy for them to the newlyweds.

We returned to the U.S. with much culture shock.  Polly and Mike lived a short train ride away from our Indianapolis home.  I went on the train with Betsy to see them.  While we lived in Indianapolis I started to miscarry a child, according to the Indianapolis doctor.  I went home with Betsy to Redlands to spend some time resting.  Polly was visiting as well.  I remember one night we made my first and last beer float.  Polly was a great emotional support to me in this difficult time.  The Redlands doctor, who did a D&C on me, assured me that I hadn’t been pregnant.

The year that Ox was in Vietnam, two things happened with the Wolves.  As a treat the Surr parents took Polly and Mike and me to Los Angeles to dinner and to the musical Hair.  We had good seats on the aisle.  When the cast danced, naked, into the aisles and invited members of the audience to dance with them, one of them asked mother to be his partner.  She declined with grace but great embarrassment.  Daddy was doubly embarrassed by this.  We were agog to see this juxtaposition of staid Surr parents and lively naked young people.  The show was energetic - a cultural turning point and to Polly and Mike and me a personal turning point.

Christmas of that year Mother and Daddy drove Betsy and me from Redlands to the Polly and Mike’s in Arizona, where Mike was working on his Ph.D.  The Wolfe children were well dressed for Christmas.  Mike’s mother, Ruth, helped make the Christmas dinner and I listened when she told Polly how to make giblet gravy.  The turkey was baking, the potatoes were being mashed, and I think I was helping set the table and make the salad. Ruth joined Mother and Dad in the living room.  Suddenly Ruth shrieked when Tommy, darling in the Christmas suit Polly had made for him, got the suit and himself sooty by poking his head and shoulders up the chimney to look for Santa Claus.  On the drive home Betsy played with a wonderful compound pen of many colored tips.  I had not seen it before and as Betsy clicked the colored tips in and out, asked her suspiciously, where she had gotten it.  She replied that it had been a prize for reading at school and I believed her, as this was not uncommon in her kindergarten career.  Years later Betsy and Tommy compared notes on the fate of Tommy’s pen and I realized the truth of the matter.

Polly and Mike gave us refuge time after time on our travels across country to new assignments.  Our children became dear friends.  The Wolves had first Sarah, a year younger than Betsy, then Tommy, then Julie.  All three children were, partly because their grandpa Saul was a swimming coach, and also because they were natural athletes, great swimmers.  Sarah was bouncy, Tommy irrepressible and Julie, a happy and serious child.

I think that it was when we were traveling from Ft. Leavenworth to Washington, D.C. that we visited the Wolves in Michigan.  I remember attending swim meets and how carefully the Wolfe parents timed their children’s swim times.  The pools were festive with strings of triangular flags flying over them.  Polly and Mike took us to their small cabin on a lake, where Mike happily gave us boat rides.  While we were at the lake, the Wolves took us to a country and western bar with a powerful beer smell, dancing and country and western music.  I hadn’t expected such a place in Michigan.  While Michael taught, Polly became a splendid potter.  She had a studio above the garage, and made turned pots with graceful necks and well-fitting lids.

When we were at West Point, we visited the Wolves in Plattsburg, New York.  A life-sized wooden painted cow cut-out then lurked on their front lawn until they could sneak her onto the next friend’s lawn.  Polly and Mike took us up to Montreal, a beautiful city.  This was the only time I was ever in eastern Canada.

The Wolves moved back to Indianapolis for Mike to become Executive Director of a Kappa Delta Pi, a college education fraternity.  Polly took advantage of the time and place to win a Ph.D. at Perdue.  After, she taught at Ball State University, a huge commute, then later, at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis.

Mike came downstairs one morning at 6:00 a.m. to find Polly unconscious.  Polly had suffered a cerebral aneurysm.  After surgery, everyone worried about how her mental function would be affected.  On awakening, Polly gave her family comfort by jiggling the finger with the oxygen-sensing light up and down and intoning, “This little light of mine; I’m going to let it shine!”, showing that her sense of humor was intact, and her speech, and her perception.  She became a poster child for Traumatic Brain Injury when she was filmed teaching her college class at Ball State.

After Mike retired, Polly and Mike moved to our area.  They bought a beautiful house on Lake Monticello.  The house, on a spit into the lake, gave Polly joy with views from every side.  Mike entertained himself lobbing acorns at the pestilent squirrels, playing golf, and best of all, messing around with a pontoon boat.  The house became a hub of extended family parties, with room for Polly to house her children and their families.  The boat rides were a favorite of all.  This pleasure in living on the lake was broken when Tommy, who had been an Olympic class swimmer, and who had later had an artificial heart valve inserted, fell ill.  His heart was failing and he was put on the list for a heart replacement.  Polly and Mike went to Colorado to be with him in hospital and were there when he died.  The cruelty of losing a child, beloved, and known and loved as an adult, broke their hearts.

They sold the house at Lake Monticello to buy smaller houses in Arizona and in Northern Virginia to be near their adult daughters and grandchildren.  After a few years commuting between children in Arizona and Haymarket, the Wolves bought a house on a golf course in Glenmore near Charlottesville.  I cannot tell you what pleasure the Wolves presence in our old commonwealth has given both old Burtons.

Polly has, at times turned her hand to sculpture and to poetry.  This poem by Polly (under the name Michaelangelina) beautifully describes the process of making things.

It was my third or fourth choice, the Rock –

But it might have a nice color, a nice grain.

So there it sat intimidating.

Beginnings . . . . An impossible idea, and yet. . .

Smooth and chop.

It won't fit the original metaphor, I'm sure.

Go with the medium, chop, smooth.

The rock is winning.

Finally, one place emerges,

Begins to flow into another.

The metaphor, so long submerged to rockness,

Begins its slow birth

I give up.

One place does not make a whole.

Sometimes I see it so clearly, and then it takes flight

      with the chips.

Work, work, work.

But where am I going?

Millimeter by millimeter, the metaphor, the flowing, 

     the rock,

Emerges as my creation.