The Grande Dame of Mt. Washington
Jeanie Brehl

'Didgie" was my grandmother's name. Her nephew, Danny, stuttered it out for "Virginia" one day and it stuck for a lifetime.

Her real name was "Virginia Murphy Buchart Miller." Her two daughters dutifully named their first born daughters "Virginia." I was one of the two" Virginias" nicknamed "Jeanie." It never made sense to me to be called that, but in the Grande dame's family you could make your own rules.

Didgie's guidelines for living were taught to me as a young child.

• There is no color but green for home décor.
• Pray to St. Anthony for lost keys, dogs, cats or gloves.
• Every home should contain Holy Water for blessing children with fevers. Holy Water from the shrine at Lourdes should be reserved for more serious illness as Lourdes Holy Water was like the high octane, premium of holy waters.
• All babies and young children take a "sun bath" for at least 20 minutes a day.
• Stop having a bored look when adult visitors came to call on her even if the Pinky Lee show was immediately turned off. "People can read you like a book; it is unseemly. Be more animated and smile."
• Get your throat blessed on St. Blaze's feast day so you won't choke on a fish bone or get sore throats. Multiple layers of scarves also prevented sore throats in the wintertime.
• Never smile in a formal picture as it looks common. Not smiling is aristocratic.
• To keep from having my father's "McDonald" nose I should pinch my nostrils closed when reading or watching television.
• If all prayer is failing, then pray to St. Jude for lost causes or read the prayer to Our Lady of Perpetual Help. My mother prayed to Our Lady of Perpetual Help in church on Sundays while raising us. I do not know if she needed help with my three brothers and me or her mother.

Didgie's husband, Oscar, died in the great flu epidemic of 1918 in Louisville, Kentucky where she was born and raised. He was only 28 and my mother, Frances, only 8 months old. Didgie was 27 and sick with the influenza but survived. An old obituary stated that due to "the contagion of the influenza" there would be no funeral or service at the cemetery.

My grandmother returned to her childhood home with my mother. It was a great Victorian home called " Windsor Place" in Louisville's Cherokee Park area. Her Mama and Papa lived there along with her famous architect uncles, the Murphy Brothers, who designed the original Churchill Downs and many churches, and businesses in Louisville.

Papa was the Louisville city tax assessor for 30 years and a popular man around town despite his job. His sister, Nora, a school teacher lived there with Mama and a cast of help. My mother remembers her Uncle Pete sending her stuffed monkey up the dumb waiter to her. Childish laughter rang from the third floor as she sent her favorite monkey back down to her uncle.

Didgie remarried when my mother was six years old and moved to Mt. Sterling. It was a small town of six thousand with a pecking system that was hard to crack. Her husband, "Daddy John," operated a small town department store with "women's and children's apparel" plus carpet and linoleum. People came from far and wide to have "Mr. John" fit their children for school shoes with 'enough room to grow.' They would marvel at his accurate predictions of childhood growth in Buster Brown shoes. Daddy John was a kind man without a cross bone in his body. He once kept an embezzling employee saying to her "I know that you will never do this again." And she didn't.

Didgie frequently informed guests that her aunt was a Mother Superior of the Ursiline order of nuns in Minnesota and her great uncle Daniel Francis Murphy a former Archbishop in Australia. She owned his gold handled walking stick. Her bragging fell with a thud on Baptist ears in Mt. Washington. The ladies arched their eyebrows at each other in a secret code that did not bode well for Didgie.

Didgie had a doorbell buzzer installed on the floor at the head of the table in the dining room. She impatiently pressed her foot on it quite often causing a dissonant, spine- chilling noise in the kitchen to summon Fannie or Annie Laurie in their black uniforms with white aprons to tend to her guest needs and pass a dish again. She frequently served lunch to her friends in this formal dining room with a large oil portrait of my aunt dressed all in white, not smiling, regal pose hovering in a gold frame like an apparition over the silver punch bowl from Windsor Place.

She confided in me "to get invitations in Mt. Washington all you have to do is hang a sandwich out the window." Even though I was a child, I knew the ladies of Mt. Washington would be as mad as wet hens if they heard that comment.

When dining out with Didgie, we all held our breath as she took her first sip of coffee. If it didn't come close to burning the roof of her mouth, she would declare the coffee "too damn cold." Waiters might be summoned several times to keep bringing her yet warmer coffee. If the coffee was the right temperature on the first sip, we exhaled a massive breath of relief.

Didgie was a beautiful bride and in later years a distinguished looking genteel lady with white hair, and mischievous deep blue eyes, who wore silk print dresses bought in Lexington on the sly(not at Daddy John's store). She wore dark glasses in the house and carried reading glasses on a chain around her neck, or perched on top of her head.

She often watched her soaps in the afternoons where she claimed to doze off in "As the World Turns" and wake up in "Another World." She spoke of the characters like they were real people on the phone to her lady friends.

"Now why did Tom run off with Betty? Mary is such a nice girl; it just doesn't make sense!" Overhearing these conversations I tried to figure out who the floozies were in our town.

She loved her dogs Hedi Lamar, Friend and later Puppy. She believed they should run free, a notion not shared by her next door neighbor who complained regularly. Hedi and Friend chased cars on North Maple nipping at tires until each died a horrible death of strychnine poisoning. The attorney next door was suspected as mysterious pet deaths paralleled his moves about town.

Didgie was inconsolable at her pet's death beds nearly collapsing on to the floor. Being branded as a pet killer was as evil as it could get in Mt. Washington. The ladies talked on the phone and hanged his reputation. She had founded the Human Society in town and so had a wide support group for her grief. .

Didgie and Daddy John owned one of the first televisions in town. They liked the news with John Cameron Swayze who advertised the Timex that "takes a lickin' but keeps on tickin'," "The Lawrence Welk Show," "What's my Line?" and "Playhouse 90." Didgie brought her husband bourbon and soda in a sweating sterling silver julep cup on a silver tray with store bought cookies for supper in front of the TV almost every night. Daddy John would say,

"Thank you, Virginia, it looks delicious" every time.

She had no idea how to cook and didn't want to heat up leftovers. Any grandchildren staying over scrounged for peanut butter and jelly that they made themselves.

The Murphy's in Louisville had been a musical family and Didgie loved to play her baby Grand piano. She played church hymns and Stephen Foster songs. Her favorite was "Beautiful Dreamer." On her stereo she played Irish songs from her "Holiday in Dublin" album. "Danny Boy" always made her quiet and tearful. She loved to sing along with:

"Show me the way to go home. I'm tired and I want to go to bed. I had a little drink about an hour ago and it went right to my head.

Where ever I may roam on land or sea or foam you can always hear me singing this song. Show me the way to go home." This song made her laugh every time and we grandchildren sang it along with her. .

Sometimes, we drove to see my Aunt Anne and her family in Illinois. We said an assortment of traveler's prayers mostly to St. Joseph and St. Christopher for safety and the rosary too. I never felt so safe as traveling snuggled in the car with my Mom, Didgie and Daddy John praying our way to Peoria.

Didgie, my Aunt Anne, and my mother amused themselves by creating nicknames for their friends. The lady next door said, "Woo, Woo" when she stepped out into the heat of the summer to tend her porch flower boxes. She was always called "Woo, Woo." Other friends were called "Oh Law," "Thankkk Youuuu," "Bless His Heart," and "The Great Lady" to mention only a few. The three of them would laugh themselves nearly into breathless hysterics with happy tears flowing down their cheeks over a good story or when a new nickname was created.

Didgie's greatest love was for her young, handsome, deceased husband, Oscar. He, of course, had the advantage of being young, handsome, and deceased forever. When she spoke of him, it was with a combination of sadness and adoration. She loved him best and time did not erode that love. She never spoke his name in front of Daddy John.

Christmas was a tough time for Didgie. She kept her living room very dark when listening to the Christmas Perry Como Show where Perry always sang "Ave Marie," and "Oh Holy Night." If you dared to glimpse her way, you saw tears streaming down her face as she thought of Oscar, Momma and Poppa. At Christmas, Daddy John usually gave her a gift like six pair of nylons from his store. She acted thrilled to receive just the right personal gift. I wondered, if she didn't, what gift Oscar would have chosen

She bought her grandchildren special gifts. I was given a spinet piano with a muting practice pedal which I was highly encouraged to use by my whole family. It was hard to deny that she had been the source of money for the crate of Rhesus monkeys my brother, Dan, ordered from a zoological supply house. How was he to know that they couldn't survive a Kentucky winter and must winter over in his room? Since she did things to help us out quietly, I guess I will never know if she helped my brother pay for his first car or did he earn the money as my father and I were led to believe

Didgie was one of the original scrap bookers as she kept beautiful books of mementos with newspaper clippings and verses and sonnets of poetry written on the pages in a delicate feminine hand. She cut out magazine pictures of dreamy, romantic couples placing them near invitations or announcements.

An aspiring writer, she often read her stories to her grandchildren. Many were hilarious remembrances of her childhood. In the quiet afternoons and evenings she created her stories and typed them out on her Underwood typewriter. She sent many stories to publishers and received many rejection notices which she kept to herself. It was a day of mourning for us, when we learned that one rejection letter put her over the edge and she gathered up her works and burnt the only copies in a tall metal trash can in her room. My mother said we were never to speak of this incident in front of Didgie.

After Daddy John died, Didgie needed someone to live with her as her health failed. Hattie became her companion, friend and employee. Hattie's son, a drug addict, reportedly stole the Archbishop's gold handled cane which probably ended up in a pawn shop.

Didgie's dining room was changed into her bedroom on the first floor as she could no longer climb the stairs. Aunt Anne's regal portrait had long been shipped to her home in Peoria and in its place hung an oil painting of the seaside. Didgie died a peaceful death at 86 in her own bed with her daughters, Frances, and Anne at her side. Her daughters swore that Momma and Poppa were there too.

By then the dining room buzzer, now under her bed, instead of the dining room table was no doubt hooked up to heaven. I hope St. Peter didn't keep her waiting too long at Heaven's Gate.