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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 15, 1963)
-rrjTtjjMfc -mm im "-"'to Family Weekly 'December 15, 1963 Goldwater's Life dressed his wife. Mumsie plus Angie became Mungie and then Mini. The Goldwater children could be prankish. Once, all three of them joined a parade in their underwear. And there was the occasion when Barry chose evening-prayer time to experiment with his miniature cannon and hit the steeple of the Methodist Church across, the street from the Goldwater home. When such things happened, Mun could turn disciplinarian. She would let Barry choose between going to bed without sup per and a whipping. Harry Rosenzweig, a boy hood friend of Barry's, recalls that "Barry al ways chose the whipping because he had a tre mendous appetite!" Jo Goldwater, blonde, slender, always beauti fully dressed in the latest New York fashions, was not one to submerge her life in her children; she had a vigorous life of her own. She smoked and drove an automobile before most other women. She was first woman's golf champion of Phoenix and later Southwest Champion. She read serious books and was a gracious hostess. In Waco, Nebr., she had been the only girl on her home-town baseball team and was known as the Blue Racer. An intensely vital woman with a blunt, no-nonsense attitude, her energy was the more remarkable because it represented a sec ond lease on life. Six Months to Live A trained nurse, she, was working at Cook County Hospital in Chicago when doctors told her that she had tuberculosis and had no more than six months to live. She wrote her parents back home: "I'm going to travel out West to Arizona with a patient whose health requires that climate. A nurse never has any trouble find ing a job, and I may decide to stay out there." Her ticket and her money ran out in Ashfork, Ariz., 200 miles short of her destination, Phoe- nix. She used railroad jargon she had learned from her brother, who was a railroad teleg rapher, to persuade the agent at Ashfork to let her ride the caboose to Phoenix. In Phoenix, she lived at first in a tent colony for "lungers." It wasn't long, however, before she was asked to work as a special-duty nurse at St Joseph's Hospital. Her own illness seems miraculously to have been forgotten. On New Year's Day, 1907, her health bloom ing, she married the town's most eligible bache lor, sophisticated, debonair Baron Goldwater, who ran the finest dry-goods store in the area. He had invited his fiancee to come to the store and select her trousseau. But, resolutely inde pendent, she protested that, until she was Mrs. Goldwater, she would pay her own bills and buy where she chose! Through the years, she and her husband shared a happy, giving life together. Then, on the morn ing of March 6, 1029, he died suddenly at the age of 63. Baron hadn't told her he suffered from angina pectoris, and his death came as a com pletely unexpected blow. Mrs. Goldwater had been golfing that morn ing, when suddenly she told her caddy to put her clubs back in the locker room and she hurried home with dark forebodings. There she found her husband writhing in pain. He died before the doctor could arrive. Barry, who was then a freshman, quit college and entered the family business. He lived at home with Mun while Bob and Carolyn stayed away at school. During these lonely years after Baron was gone, the closeness between mother and son deepened and grew. This closeness, however, never has been a sen timental one. As Col. J. Hunter Drum, a family friend, says: "There is a pleasant kidding between Jo Gold water and the Senator. She could always do ev erything her boys could do. She wanted their re spect but not deference. The result is a healthy camaraderie between them." Today, she maintains her rigorous independ ence by living in her own home rather than with her children. She still takes part in family clam bakes, goes on trips with her children and grand children, and she travels East once a year. When Barry married, he chose a woman who was both like his mother and different from her. Both women are forthright and determined. But as daughter Joanne puts it, "Grandma, whom I call Jo-Jo, is rugged. Mother is gentle. You might sum it up by saying Jo-Jo prefers a camping trip; Mother is happier at a resort." Margaret Johnson, whose father was president of the Warner Gear Company and later execu tive vice president of Borg-Warner, grew up in a family that was prominent in the business and social life of Muncie, Ind. She was groomed for a gracious, quiet life. After becoming Mrs. Barry Goldwater, however, she molded herself in the more rugged tradition of the Goldwater family. Out of their dissimilarities, they fashioned a marriage of such harmony that friends call it "a sustained romance." She Likes Big-City Excitement Camping in the desert had no allure for Peggy Goldwater, but she learned to do it to please her husband and her children Joanne 27; Barry, Jr., 25; Mike, 23; and Peggy, 19. As Harry Rosenzweig says: "Peggy is happiest when she and her husband can go off to New York, check in at the Essex House, see the plays, go to the 21 Club, and gen erally live it up by themselves." "There are not many women," the Senator told me, "who would put up with the life I've led. We were married in 1934. In 1940 I made a trip down the Colorado River; Peggy didn't (Continued on page 6) Williams, a Strong-willed "invalid" who's still F i- a gentle, artistic heiress, SY CM became his wife res Family Wvekly. Drrnnlirr IS. 1963 $
