by Jerilee Wei

Created on: May 23, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

I sew because of a woman I never met. Sarah died in rural Missouri in 1919, thirty years before I was born. Sarah had always helped her husband support their family of four children by taking in sewing, mending and ironing jobs. Three years before her death from tuberculosis, Sarah's husband deserted the family. A resilient woman, with few options, she returned to work full time, teaching school by day. However, at night after the children were asleep, she continued to sew in order provide a decent life for her children. She taught her oldest daughter, Daisy, at an early age to sew, quilt, and mend. Sarah left a sewing legacy for her soon-to-be-orphaned children with these lessons.

Before Sarah died, she made eleven year old Daisy, promise to take care of her younger brothers. She also made her swear to ensure that they got good educations. Sarah's death marked a separation of her children, as no relative wanted more than one extra mouth to feed. An unkindly aunt took Daisy in, not out of love, but because she saw Daisy capable of providing extra income for her own household. With the money that Daisy earned in sewing jobs after school, the aunt bought new clothes, shoes, a fox stole and a phonograph.

Daisy loved school and was an excellent student. She wanted to follow her mother's example and become a teacher. At the age of fourteen, her aunt announced that she would no longer be returning to school after summer, because the aunt had secured a job for Daisy at a nearby garment factory.

At the same time, Daisy's five year old and seven year old brothers were only partially being schooled. The relatives who took them in needed their help on the extended family farms. Back then, child labor laws weren't the norm and literacy wasnt always a priority. These situations, were in direct violation of the promises Daisy had made to her dying mother.

Clever and resourceful, Daisy sprang into action - she secretly got additional sewing jobs and saved up a modest amount of money. The plan was, that she was going to run away to California, make a lot of money and send for her brothers. They were all going to get an education, once they were reunited.

On a long and twisted road, the runaway only made it as far as Phoenix, Arizona. There, the fifteen year old pretended to be eighteen. She lived in a rooming house, working as a carhop full time, seamstress part time, and studying for the day she could return to school. By the time she was eighteen, she had saved up enough money

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