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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
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a gentle, artistic heiress, SY CM became his wife
res
Family Wvekly. Drrnnlirr IS. 1963 $