The Story...
After two marriages, the last one leaving me with a last name that I did not want to keep, I knew that choosing a name that was right – and that I would never again change in my lifetime – was an important part of moving on.
My grandmother has provided a large part of the inspiration for the perseverance that I have needed in my life. When I was a child, my father’s mother was a very important influence. Although my family did not travel at that time, each spring and fall we would pile in the family car and trek the 50 miles to visit Frederick, Maryland where my grandmother had grown up. We would spend the day traveling around Frederick as Nanny would point out the homes owned by her aunts and uncles, her grandparents, and the schools she had attended in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Then, we would visit the local cemetery where the Morgan family rests. She would talk about each of their personalities and quirks. Her brother (my godfather) - the last of the Morgans - rests there.
Nanny was the softest person I knew. I loved her dearly. I was married and a mother myself when she passed away. It was not until then that I began to learn of the rest of her story. Her adult life had been filled with danger and poverty - puncutated by the stress of taking care of five daughters and a son during the Great Depression, doing her best to keep each of them safe while others around them sought to do them harm. And still - she showed us all a soft, sweet, “grandmotherly” person that no one would ever suspect had known the struggles she had faced. Nanny was the strongest, softest person I have ever known. When I asked my father how he felt about taking her maiden name as my own, he thought about it for just a minute... smiled and said, “Nanny would love that.”
This is my Morgan Heritage!