Mom Mom

The road now leads onward and I know not where
I feel in my heart that you will be there
Whenever a storm comes, whatever our fears
The journey goes on as your love ever nears

-- "Never-Ending Road" by Loreena McKennitt

Were Mom Mom still living, today would have been her 81st birthday.  To remember her best, this post was written by my Dad...

My Mom was born in Baltimore, July 1931.  Not sure of their exact address.  She grew up an only child of Milton & Grace Campen during the Depression years of the thirties.  A picture of Mom at around 1939 or 1940 with her Grandmother, Grace Siegle seems to show Grace Siegle's love of her only grandchild.

 
Mom went to school at Immaculate Conception then later at the school located at the corner of Charles & 28th streets in Baltimore.

 

Before finishing school, she met Dad a few years after WWII.  They married and started their family in 1948.  At this time they moved in with Bob Cole, Grace and mom's parents at 4905 Brookwood Road in Brooklyn, south Baltimore.

In 1956, Dad & Mom built a house in Arden on the Severn, right on the Severn River.  In June 1963, they decided to buy a dairy farm in Carroll County.

The boys did the farm work and of course milked the 26 cows.  Mom kept track of all the cows' records, as to when they were ready for artificial insemination.  Besides keeping the boys from killing each other, she kept the farm life humming as Dad still worked full time at Bethlehem Steel.  Most of us boys got all of our sense of humor from Mom, her best gift to us.  Dad didn't have one.  Mom's love for her seven children grew immensely when we got older and had kids of our own.  Her grandkids were a source of great appreciation of life.

Cancer caught up with Mom at age 48 and she passed away too early at age 53.