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