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Nellie Blanche (Pickett) Shields (1905 - 1988)

Nellie Blanche Shields formerly Pickett
Born in Roger Mills County, OKmap
Daughter of [father unknown] and [mother unknown]
[sibling(s) unknown]
Wife of — married [date unknown] [location unknown]
Descendants descendants
Mother of
Died at age 82 in Los Gatos, Santa Clara County, CAmap
Problems/Questions Profile manager: Darrell Shields private message [send private message]
Profile last modified
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Contents

Biography

A WORD OR FIVE ABOUT MY MOTHER NELLIE BLANCHE PICKETT By James Russell Shields

I was about 35 years old before I realized that my mother was a feminist. She never marched or picketed, she was not the sort of activist that you read about in the newspaper or saw on the evening TV news. She promoted the feminist cause with her intelligence, hard work, and faith. She voted in every election that came along and she voted for her candidate or issue. Most of the time she voted the same way my father voted, but not because he controlled her vote. They discussed the issues and it was easy to tell when they did not agree. I am sure that she influenced his vote at least as much as he influenced her vote. She taught my brother and me to be self-sufficient, which is code for knowing how to do our own laundry, mop a floor when it needs it, and fix a meal when it is time to eat.

Mom went back to teaching school after we moved to Tulare, California. Returning to teaching also meant going back to college to get a BA in Elementary Education by means of many summer school sessions and extension courses from Fresno State University. She got that degree in August of 1955, the same year that my brother Charles graduated from Cal Poly and I graduated from Arroyo Grande High School. Mother and I attended college together that summer: She took her last course to complete her degree and I took my first college course. Mother was active in the Episcopal Church and in her Teacher's Union. By the time that she retired from teaching at Oceano, she was teaching the children of some of her first students there. She had to take an early retirement (age 62) due to problems with her eyesight, being legally blind the last 10 or 15 years of her life.

In the period between her retirement in 1967 (my Dad retired at the same time) and my Dad's death in 1973, Mom became very active in Eastern Star and went through all of the chairs. She got a lot of pleasure out of that activity.

A year or so after Dad died she sold the house in Oceano and moved to a retirement community in Los Gatos, CA because of the complications of her sight problems. From there she was able to travel as well as pursue her desire to paint and work on other artistic projects. She told me once when I was visiting her there that she was so happy to be able to paint and sketch because she felt that she was living out her mother's dream of being an artist. It was her mother, afterall, that had shown her the beauty of a lone flower standing up to the prairie wind, or the majesty of a hawk soaring above the land in that same wind.[1]

Sources

Footnotes

  1. Entered by Darrell Shields.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Darrell Shields for starting this profile. Click the Changes tab for the details of contributions by Darrell and others.





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