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New Bloomfield woman writes about life for future generations

By Katherine Cummins The Fulton Sun

Published: Sunday, July 26, 2009 12:27 PM CDT

Dorothy Tighe has been writing and telling stories for almost as long as she can remember.

From school essays and short stories to monthly magazine columns and plays, nothing makes her quite as happy as writing.

"I always liked to write from the time I was in school," Tighe said. "I just like to tell stories. I always did. I entertained my kids and baby-sat the neighbor's kids telling stories."

Most of her writing, including 10 years as a columnist for "Senior Times" and "Mid-Missouri Mature Living" magazines, has been autobiographical, drawing on her experiences growing up during the Depression with six brothers and two sisters.

"We moved around a lot - from St. Louis to Florissant, to Bridgeton, back to St. Louis - and that gives you a lot of material," Tighe said. "I have a wealth of information I can draw on."

As she puts her old columns together to form a memoir to be published for her 80th birthday in February 2010, Tighe said she has had a good time revisiting those years yet again.

"We're editing now, and it's fun. My brothers keep asking me, 'Do you remember the time ...'" Tighe said, as she prepared to share one of her favorites. "We lived in St. Louis and one day the lady next door to us - who did a lot of baking - told my mother she was going to teach her how to make bread because she had so many children.

"The way the whole day turned out, it was hilarious; but I won't tell you - you have to read it."

She described growing up during the Depression as much different than what most children experience today.

"We knew if you wanted anything, you had to work for it," Tighe said. "We couldn't wait to work, even if it was only a dollar a day."

In a short sampler of memories she wrote to celebrate her 70th birthday, Tighe described the winter of 1939, during which the entire family was quarantined due to illness, as particularly hard.

"During the time we had the sickness, we could not go to school or church. Glennon (Tighe's older brother) and I (the only ones who were not sick) were quarantined along with the rest of the family," Tighe wrote. "The health department put a sign on our front door. No one could leave or enter except a nurse or doctor.

"If we needed medicine for anyone, Glennon and I would go out the back door and jump fences to get to a drug store where no one would recognize us."

Despite the illness, Tighe wrote that she and her brother - and some generous neighbors - made sure that Christmas still was a happy one. Tighe secretly sewed doll clothes for her younger sisters' old dolls and the two squirreled away change from groceries to buy coloring books.

"The day before Christmas we answered our front door over and over again. Box after box of groceries or toys came all day long," Tighe wrote, noting she and her brother were nine and 11 at the time. "Glennon and I took out the toys and hid them under Dad's big old roll top desk. We put the groceries away and took care of the sick patients."

"Early Christmas morning we put up an old artificial tree and decorated it... Then we brought out all the toys and put names on them. Every one of us eight kids got at least two presents each," the story continued. "Christmas morning dawned and the family seemed to be feeling so much better as one by one they came into the Christmas room to discover the magic of the holy holiday."


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