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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 15, 1963)
ANOTHER IN A SERIES ON THE CONTENDERS FOR '64 The Women in Barry By FLORA RHETA SCHREIBER ( The Goldwaters: Joanne (left I, sons Barry, Jr., and Michael, Mrs. Goldwater, and dauyhter Peggy. WHEN A MAN suddenly finds him self being considered as a presi dential possibility his whole world and the world of his family undergo a great change. His family and his friends see him in a new light. This is true even when, like Barry Goldwater, he has been a U. S. Senator and an internationally known public figure for many years. In this political climate, the tightly knit Cold water family suddenly feels a hush of consterna tion and expectation. Margaret Johnson Gold water, the Senator's attractive and gracious wife, remarked to a friend, "I married a nice shop keeper and now look at him!" "It all seems overpowering," Joanne Goldwater Ross, the eldest of the four Goldwater children, told me. "Mother is frightened. But I have no worries about her. I know that if she is ever called upon to be the First Lady, she will be just tremendous." Then, talking of Josephine Williams Gold- water, the Senator's 88-year-old mother, Joanne added, "Grandma seems to stand off, looking on. She separates Barry Goldwater, the political fig ure, from her son. She never talks of him simply as 'my son' or, in talking to me, as 'your father.' Instead, she talks of him as Barry. Often she says quietly, 'He's such a great man.' " The Senator's mother has always enjoyed a closeness with her son. He was her first-born, and she set high standards for him. "My private values," Goldwater told me, "were learned largely at the knee of my mother. This wonderful woman filled my mind with ideas and ideals which I, in turn, have tried to pass on to my own children." The archtype of the pioneer woman, Jo Gold water set patriotism as one of those ideals. Reg ularly each evening she would drive Barry, his brother Boh, and his sister Carolyn to the Gov ernment school for Indians on the outskirts of Phoenix, Ariz., for the flag-lowering ceremony. The Indians never took the Hag down until the Goldwaters got there. As her children were growing up, she and they established a keen fellowship. She played base ball, rode horseback, golfed with them, and taught them how to shoot. They even roughed it together on frequent camping trips. On these expeditions, the Goldwater young sters often were joined by the neighborhood chil dren, who called Jo Goldwater "Mun" just as her own children did. The nickname was Barry's in vention. As a baby, he had confused the house keeper's name, which w;-s Angie, with Mumsie, a name by which Baron, his father, often ad- Two pretty Midwestern girls went West: Jo hardy at 88, became Barry's mother; Peggy Johnson, Fnm.ll MVrkllf. Drcrmber IS. 196.1
