The Generations of my Grandmother

By Gary Topping–

As a historian, I have never found the concept of a “generation” particularly useful, for two contradictory reasons.  For one thing, it threatens to lock one into the world view of a specific time and place, from which one cannot escape as the world changes.  On the other hand, it is too vague: how long is a “generation”?  Today I want to describe the long life of my paternal grandmother as an example of the many changes—the many “generations”—to which she had to adapt in order to keep living a happy and meaningful life.

My grandmother, Amy Wilkins Topping, lived from 1875 to 1971—quite a span!  This means, if you can wrap your mind around it, that she lived under the administrations of every president from Ulysses Grant to Richard Nixon!  What would that mean, in terms of the changes she lived through?

The first of her “generations” was that of the Gilded Age.  The photograph I am including depicts my grandparents in 1898 on the occasion of their wedding in Coquille, Oregon.  My grandfather, a newly minted lawyer and budding politician, had come up the river from the seaport of Bandon to meet and marry his fiancée and take her on to Salem, the state capital, where he was to serve his one and only term representing Coos County in the state legislature.  They appear as the perfect Gilded Age couple right out of the pages of Henry James or Edith Wharton.  My grandfather was famous as a meticulous dresser (a trait he was unable to pass on to this grandson), so the couple continued to look this good—though in appropriately evolving styles—throughout his legal and political careers until his death in 1943.

Her second “generation” was that of the Progressive Era.  Throughout American history until about the time of my grandmother’s birth, the appropriate role of government was generally considered to be promotion of business and economic development.  From then on into the early twentieth century, the so-called “Progressives” promoted the idea that, in the interests of the common people, government could with equal legitimacy be employed to regulate business and to carry out public works in the public interest.  My grandfather was one of those Progressives, a so-called Bull Moose Republican (a supporter of Theodore Roosevelt).  During his four consecutive terms as mayor of Bandon on the eve of and during World War I, he advocated paving of the muddy streets, installation of street lights, and the creation of the town’s first culinary water system and its first hydroelectric power system, all of which he insisted on retaining as public, not private, enterprises.  Although women commonly took a backseat in the politics of that time, my grandmother and other American women took advantage of the Nineteenth Amendment and voted for the first time in the national election of 1920.

Her next “generation” was the Roaring Twenties.  It was also known as the Automobile Age and the Jazz Age, and she participated in both.  Before that time, the wooded and brushy terrain along that part of the Oregon coast make land transportation all but impossible.  Consequently, most people got around by means of steamboats plying the Coquille River and steamships up and down the coast.  Shortly before World War I, though, road construction had proceeded to a point where people could begin using automobiles.  My grandfather, who was absolutely car-crazy, took his family to Portland in 1914 and purchased one of the first cars to have been brought to Coos County, a Mitchell Six touring car.  It was a newsworthy enough event that the Portland Sunday Oregonian on August 2 ran a photo of the Topping family in their new car.  It depicts my grandparents in the front and their three restless little kids in a back seat that looks big enough to hold a political convention.  For some reason, my grandparents selected a model with a convertible top—a strange choice, given the paucity of warm, sunny days on the coast (I used to joke that summer in Coos County consisted of about three days in late August).

Also in the Twenties, the Toppings leased a huge dance pavilion, the Silver Spray Gardens, from the city and ran it as a family business.  My dad and aunt both performed with the band, my grandfather was the general manager, and my grandmother sold tickets and helped usher dancers on and off the floor between each musical number (one paid for each dance individually—a nickel a shot).

During the economic shock of the Great Depression, the Toppings actually seem to have fared well enough: certain professions like medicine and law are pretty much necessary whatever the economic situation.  September 26, 1936, though, was a day of tragedy for almost everyone in Bandon.  After an extraordinarily dry summer, a wildfire swept through town and destroyed all but about four buildings.  The Toppings lost their large Victorian house, they lost the Silver Spray Gardens, and my grandfather lost his entire law office with its extensive library.  (If my grandmother were alive today, she would well understand climate change.)  Fortunately, they had fire insurance which helped them build back, but they did so at a much smaller scale.

My grandmother was also part of the World War II generation, but that generation carried another huge devastation for her when my grandfather died in 1943.  My grandmother was unable to maintain their home, so she found lodging in a very modest little house that I think the city had hurriedly hammered together for victims of the fire.  Her younger brother Ernest, a lifelong bachelor, moved in with her to help support her.  It was in that little house that I most remember her when we would drive down from Coos Bay for Sunday dinners.

My grandmother, then, lived through several “generations.”  Her adaptability, though, did have its limits.  Despite having a car-crazy husband (or perhaps because of it), she never learned to drive, depending on either him or Ernest for her transportation.  (Curiously, my mother never learned to drive either.)  I don’t believe that she ever owned a television set, but then she and I always had better things to talk about than “Laugh-in” or Walter Cronkite.  Some things aren’t as essential to the good life as we like to think them.  And she did have a good life.

*Gary Topping is a writer and historian living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is the retired archivist for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City and has written many books and articles. Signature Books recently published his latest work titled D. Michael Quinn: Mormon Historian.