Get Out and Vote--for Dear Aunt Cissie’s Sake

In her later years when she came to visit, Aunt Cissie always sat in an orange wingback chair to the right of the bookcase. She placed her feet together pointing perfectly straight and held her purse in her lap with her hands folded on top of it. She always wore a small hat carefully placed on the crown of her head.

She was an aunt of my dandy college chum, Margaret, who was at Mount St. Mary’s College with me. Maggie was a nursing and science student. She lived with her family in Fullerton, and that led to our friendship. There were a number of USC boys who wanted to take Maggie out, but when they heard she lived in Fullerton--an hour and a half drive away--their pursuit of the lovely Maggie sometimes stumbled.

I asked Maggie if she would like to spend the weekends with me and my parents. We lived in Beverly Hills and while it was not across the street from the campus, it was not the jump that Orange County seemed to be. She accepted and we became close friends.

After we were graduated from the Mount, we both married. My husband, Doug, and I moved to La Habra Heights, about two rows of avocado trees away from Orange County. Maggie and Ed Erickson moved to Fullerton and the four of us saw each other at least once a week. It doesn’t happen every time that your friend’s husband and yours really like each other, but Doug and Ed did.

Ed and Maggie would take Aunt Cissie someplace every Sunday, often to our house. Several times, I asked her if I might take her purse for her but she always said, “No, thank you,” and clutched it tighter.

Aunt Cissie deserved to have things her way.

Maggie’s parents were from England, and her mother died when the seven children in the family ranged from mid-teen years to a little girl pushing a doll buggy.

Aunt Cissie came over from England and did yeoman duty getting that houseful of kids raised. Cissie never married. I don’t suppose she had the time.

When the oldest boy was 18, the children’s father died. Aunt Cissie became the leader of the pack. It must have been an assignment that took all the strength, ingenuity and raw courage she could muster. But she did it. And all the kids marched through college and were a credit to the country.

Cissie was a strong American. Maggie told me she often talked to the kids about how lucky they were to be American.

She voted in every local, state and federal election. When World World II engulfed the world, she talked her way into a job in a defense plant near Fullerton.

At some point during the filling out of the forms for her war effort, someone discovered Cissie was not a United States citizen. It never had entered her mind. When her sister’s children needed her, she had been on the next boat.

She was infuriated. She had voted always and was a staunch defender of the Bill of Rights. And she had steered all seven kids into being good citizens. One of the boys lost his life in World War II.

So when she was in her middle years, she went to classes to prepare for taking the citizenship test. She knew considerably more about the workings of the democracy than the callow young man who taught the class. But the day finally came when Aunt Cissie became an American citizen.

Now, we are in the midst of one of the wildest years we have seen in politics in the United States. The President is no longer the recipient of the Desert Storm euphoria and people remain disenchanted with his domestic activity.

Clinton doesn’t seem very well grounded and his wife infuriated all the cookie bakers--one of whom I’ve always been, even when I worked seven long days a week in the midst of a campaign.

Ross Perot has always had an aura of mystery, and he can sure sell snake oil without telling us the ingredients.

The danger is that a lot of people won’t vote for anyone. And too many people have given their lives through the years for the right to vote for us to kick it away. It’s hard to decide what to do, but please do vote. Let’s just say that this one’s for Aunt Cissie.