Happy Birthday
Jan. 3rd, 2008 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drpaisleyMy mother, Nancy Lois Malody Murray Harmony, turns 75 today. I hope to have half her energy and enthusiasm should I make it that far.
After we moved to Lawrence, Kansas in 1968, we spent most of my junior high/high school years as a one-income family: hers. She worked as a "secretary" in the Chemistry Department by day (working for Ralph Adams, a pioneer in the study of dopamine in the 1970s [side note: thanks to her, Dragonet and I got to meet Linus Pauling when he visited campus once]), and every night she trundled home her IBM Selectric and pounded out grant proposals, dissertations and anything else people would pay her to type.* It can't have been easy, but she kept the three of us kids fed and clothed, if not in the manner we might have preferred.
In 1984, she married Marlin Harmony, the Chairman of the Chemistry Department, and embarked on a well-deserved reasonably happily ever after. Since their retirement, they have traveled the world (this spring it was a flight to Tahiti, then a cruise around the islands of the area).
After her grandchildren, her greatest devotion is to KU sports, and the basketball team specifically. She is known to them all as "The Brownie Lady," for the treats she bakes for the team to take on each road game. She was once approached by USA Today about having a feature done on her, but she declined, not wanting to distract the team heading into the NCAA Tournament that year.
So Happy Birthday, Mom, and many more. Thanks for everything.
Love, your only oldest son.
*To the best of my knowledge, she didn't type things like letters to Penthouse Forum, and I don't want to know if she did.
After we moved to Lawrence, Kansas in 1968, we spent most of my junior high/high school years as a one-income family: hers. She worked as a "secretary" in the Chemistry Department by day (working for Ralph Adams, a pioneer in the study of dopamine in the 1970s [side note: thanks to her, Dragonet and I got to meet Linus Pauling when he visited campus once]), and every night she trundled home her IBM Selectric and pounded out grant proposals, dissertations and anything else people would pay her to type.* It can't have been easy, but she kept the three of us kids fed and clothed, if not in the manner we might have preferred.
In 1984, she married Marlin Harmony, the Chairman of the Chemistry Department, and embarked on a well-deserved reasonably happily ever after. Since their retirement, they have traveled the world (this spring it was a flight to Tahiti, then a cruise around the islands of the area).
After her grandchildren, her greatest devotion is to KU sports, and the basketball team specifically. She is known to them all as "The Brownie Lady," for the treats she bakes for the team to take on each road game. She was once approached by USA Today about having a feature done on her, but she declined, not wanting to distract the team heading into the NCAA Tournament that year.
So Happy Birthday, Mom, and many more. Thanks for everything.
Love, your only oldest son.
*To the best of my knowledge, she didn't type things like letters to Penthouse Forum, and I don't want to know if she did.