Nettie Waychoff Meek
Presented by her granddaughter
Carol Ann O'Connor
The first thing you noticed about Nettie was the fine-spun silky white hair, braided and twisted into a neat low bun. She kept it clean and neat with the simple and economical combination of her favorite Ivory soap followed by a vinegar or lemon juice rinse. In later years, she wore her hair stylishly short and wavy, but it always remained thick, silky, and soft.
Next, you noticed her clear blue eyes, frank and honest, yet softened with kindness and compassion. Despite her kindness, she was not a “pushover,” for she believed in proper manners and discipline. The diaries that chronicled her life through the years witness to the dilemma of how to discipline her six small grandchildren effectively while loving and encouraging them as her heart guided her to do. She was beyond middle age when she first began to accept the responsibility of providing relief childcare for her daughter-in-law. She was very creative in finding places to bed them all down at nap time—sometimes the smaller ones slept in pulled out dresser drawers, or on ledges in a deep, wide closet, or sometimes on the dining room table. As we grew and often slept overnight at her home, a set of bunk beds was added to the small dark bedroom off the living room right next to a windowed cabinet holding a brain-shaped coral that spooked the youthful imagination; then, a couch/bed was added in the living room directly under the print of Jesus and his angels in Paradise. We were spooked in one room, but soothed in the other. In writing of one of the smaller boys during this period, she elaborated part of the dilemma of keeping up with the constant needs of an energetic, feisty little one. “Now, he is just a dear, normal, little baby,” she reminds herself, “good as gold, but carries problems that are limitless, that a young mother takes as a matter of course, but that just wears a Grandma out!” In a slightly later entry, she writes of the difficulty of getting five little people to take a nap at the same time, but ends the entry with, “Ha! The sweet little things. I love them beyond words and my greater glory is my grandchildren.”
Although she was busy with household chores including tending to the cleanliness of her husband’s home-based medical office, she took plenty of time to interact with her grandchildren. If we visited on the weekend, she often took us to the nearby Baptist church where we enjoyed milk and graham cracker snacks during Sunday School lessons. Sometimes she took us for long walks in the neighborhood or uptown for bubble gum or ice cream cone treats. We might visit one of the libraries full of musty treasures, or—greatest delight of all—we would go to the Rose Garden and town beach situated on the shore of Lake Erie. Often on warm, sunny days when she was too busy with her own chores, she would send us out armed with fat needles fitted with long strands of thread to create our own leis from catalpa flowers littering the neighborhood sidewalks. At other times, she produced empty scrapbook pages, scissors, paste, and an overflowing box she called her “hodgepodge”—all to inspire the creative response of little hands and eager young minds. Some women might have
omitted from the hodgepodge the ornate Victorian greeting cards, thinking of their eventual monetary value as antiques. For Nettie, their greatest value was reflected in the smiling eyes of her grandchildren as they busily cut and pasted. On special occasions, she allowed us to rummage and play in the most fascinating part of her home—the attic! There, we dressed ourselves in the finery of antique clothing, “fished” in the make-believe stream near the painted wooden decoy ducks, or were transported to other worlds and cultures as we perused the large collection of old National Geographic magazines.
Beyond giving us ideas for play, she also gave us responsibilities such as sweeping the porch or going to the small local store for groceries. If we made mistakes, she consoled us, stood up for us, and showed us it was possible to rectify an error. I recall that several of us children had gone to town once to buy a gift for our mother with our own money. We found a musical jewel box that cost more than we really should have spent, but we loved our mother, didn’t we? Several stores later, we found a
better and less expensive jewel box. Crestfallen, we returned to Nettie with our weepy story. She immediately accompanied us back to the first store to explain the predicament of these naive little tykes on their first solo shopping experience. Not only did we receive a refund that enabled us to purchase the preferred item, but we learned a little something about the desirability of comparison shopping before the final decision and also that, with goodwill, difficulties could be negotiated.
For all the apparent simplicity of her nature, there were some surprising contrasts in Nettie’s psychological profile. She was a committed Christian to the core, her life a model of gentleness, love, and selflessness; yet, she believed in reincarnation. Of the pictures hanging in her home, she had three favorites: one of Jesus surrounded by angels dancing in Paradise; another of an angel hovering watchfully over two children walking down a path together; and the third, a trompe l’oeil depiction, entitled “Vanity,” of a woman seated at a vanity that could also be interpreted as a picture of a skull.
Nettie was a highly intuitive individual who always delighted in a quirky ability that puzzled family and friends. Even though in later years her eyesight was not keen, regularly she could walk out the door and, within moments, spy and pick dozens of four-leaf clovers when those about her could see none.

Nettie’s intuition was matched by a deep spirituality that gave her a profound appreciation for the wonders of God’s natural creation and for the needed balance such an appreciation would bestow on our lives. A theme that runs through much of her writing is that of the solace afforded by nature which she considered the place to search for “soul sympathy or for mind satisfaction.” She writes: “A lover of nature who stands in the sunlight of this grand world of ours, looking about him
at the birds and trees and flowers, and wondering at the perfect beauty of the hills and woods, thrills always with true joy and thanksgiving to God when at last he turns his eyes from earthly things and gazes long into the heavens. For everything around him, from the leaf moving in the wind to the stone half-buried in the earth, whispers that God is real. And in the night as we stand alone and look at the moon moving in its accustomed way, as we see the stars twinkling in the dark distance, our souls go out to that Divine Being for sympathy and we turn away in peace. Nature thrills the soul and we turn to God; God gives it rest.”
When she was younger and her fingers were not yet bent by arthritis, she tended a lovely flower garden in her small backyard in order to delight all the senses. Later, she contented herself with watching the birds cavort in that same yard, taking special enjoyment in the activity of the smaller birds such as the wren and goldfinch. For years she kept a canary as a caged pet, her favorite of all birds because of its beautiful song. On more than one occasion she took the time to write a message to one of her overwhelmed college grandchildren to remind of the importance of getting out to refresh the lungs and the soul, to observe the freedom of the birds in flight, to laugh at the squirrel’s antics, and generally to sweep out the cobwebs that overwork so easily deposits.
Evidence of Nettie’s bravery and her joy in living a full life fascinated me when I was young. Not only had she enjoyed riding horses as a girl, but in her teens or twenties she was also a successful huntress according to an impressive photograph showing her in a long dress and scarf holding a large rifle in one hand and several dangling rabbits in the other. I was also duly impressed
to see her, with bare hands, dispatch a huge, poisoned rat out her basement window. Yet, she allowed unresolved fear to dissuade her from learning to drive. On her first major foray at the wheel, her car stopped dead on the railroad tracks. She was so shaken by the incident that she preferred to depend on her own feet or the driving skills of others thereafter. For the most part, however, she took her cues for living from the writing of Shakespeare, who she felt was “the greatest of great writers.” In one of her critical essays, she quotes Shakespeare’s passage, “Courage and comfort! All shall go well.” Then she states. “... if we have this courage and comfort, if we strive for the right, we can repeat with him these glorious words: ‘ “God shall be my hope, My stay, my guide, and lantern to my feet.’”
By the time the grandchildren were old enough to begin to understand Nettie’s personality, we saw her as a quiet, dependable presence whose main interest was to encourage and support her family to the exclusion of much else beyond her own life-long writing projects. Early in her life, she wrote, “We must fill a place for there is a place for each of us, just as surely as there was a place for the man who first planted the seed of the true religion or who first recalled to his soul the forgotten facts of the God of heaven.” The place she chose for herself was the normal “woman’s place” of her generation, a place to love and care for all those about her.
Her diary entries through the years are predominantly a chronicle of the activities, events, and honors in the lives of all the other family members. Nonetheless, a little research reveals the social and organizational involvements and recognitions of her earlier years. As Salutatorian of her High School class of 1907, she presented a public address at graduation. The 1912 Waynesburg College (PA) yearbook, The Athenian, lists Nettie as the secretary of her Junior Class. She is pictured as an attractive brunette, the Associate Editor of Literature, one of twelve members of The Athenian editorial staff. Although only six members matriculated in her Freshman Class, numbers and influence increased so significantly in the next two years that her class instituted the first Junior Prom and produced the first yearbook that the College ever produced. She appeared as one of thirty-three members on the rolls of the YWCA.
Diary entries of the 1940s provide evidence that she acted as secretary for several organizations and gave speeches on varying topics for women’s clubs such as the Sorosis. For years at regular club meetings she enjoyed participating in the game of Bridge along with her husband, who was noted as an expert Bridge player. For twenty-five years Nettie was a member of the Eastern Star.
Prominent among the other recollections of this beloved grandmother is the sight of her sitting at her large, dark oak desk against the dining room wall diligently writing or, perhaps, editing her previous work. In the few notes that she left concerning her own writing, Nettie stated that “[her] English teacher thought that [she] had genius.” Nettie loved to write, practiced the art most of her life, and was proud of her work, yet for the most part she did not make her work public. According to Nettie’s account, in early adulthood she had submitted a story she had written about a college incident in response to an ad soliciting stories from new writers. The story was rejected, but she discovered later that the very same incident she described had appeared publicly. This apparent theft of her intellectual and creative property disturbed her so deeply that she never again actively sought recognition for her writing. Although most of her extant writings date from her early college days and shortly afterward, some stories were written “as early as December 20, 1905” and showed unusual skill and maturity. Her teachers did, indeed, praise her technical capability and both critical and analytical faculties. Her Senior English professor appraised a critical analysis she wrote with these words: “I am exceedingly well-pleased with this criticism. It has more critical study in it, I believe, than has ever come under my observation through such means as this!”
Nettie’s studies had a thorough grounding in the classical literature. As you read her stories, you find her writings, in some ways, are reminiscent of those by Louisa May Alcott, full of warmth and wisdom, piety and a philosophical bent. She recognizes the melancholy and sadness that can infuse a life, especially as it is lived within certain frameworks, but she always works her way through and beyond it, reaching toward light and joy, redemption and blessing, even when it is yet only bittersweet. Many of her earlier works are filled with the Victorian romanticism and idealism representative of the period in which she was born. She was skilled at describing place and conveying details of her characters’ personality, thought, and emotion.
Often, the stories include a subtle, eye-twinkling humor, a gentle, unexpected humor that was characteristic of her own life and personality. Her diary entries are peppered with current jokes that particularly entertained her or with precocious and surprising comments of her grandchildren. Of her size-nine feet, this diminutive lady would laugh, “I have a good understanding!” Regarding an incident in which she fell and nearly broke her nose, she noted that the septum of her previously crooked nose had only split a little. She marveled that, as a result, she could breathe better than she had in years; furthermore, she was glad that her glasses hadn’t broken and hurt her eyes, “Always something to be thankful for.” Because of the frequency of her falls in later life, Nettie was lucky to have the peculiar penchant of falling in slow motion, crumpling down upon herself a little like an accordion slowly closing. I once witnessed her fall down a long, steep flight of stairs that she was scrubbing in her home. She slumped slowly from one step to the next, rolling over and over as she tumbled down to the bottom. Although she sported some very sore bruises, not a single bone was broken or out of place. She once remarked that she fell “softly like a ball.”
Nettie’s gratitude and overarching optimism and appreciation for life are hallmarks that flood our memories of her. She wrote: “It is a blessing to live upon this green earth, incomparable with anything except heaven itself, which is only more advanced living.” In her late life, she flew on an airplane for the first time, accompanying her husband to a medical meeting in Washington, DC. She was nervous, skeptical, and fearful, so it was a triumph just to find the courage for the trip. When she returned, however, she brimmed over with excitement and pure wonder at the totality of what her life had encompassed. She felt deeply blessed to have been born in a century in which she was able to observe such tremendous progress in the world. From the horse-and-buggy era into which she was born, to train travel, to automobiles, to airplanes, to the first orbiters about the earth, to successful manned spacecraft, she had seen it all and, finally, had taken her own personal flight above the earth. She had found the courage of which Shakespeare wrote and allowed God to be her hope, her stay, and her guide.
In October of 1962, looking back on her life, Nettie wrote: “My soul has sung quietly all the long years within my heart, though others did not see or hear. But my English teacher, bless her old heart, told mamma that I was an inspired writer.” “I had such a wonderful father and mother, son and daughter, and grandchildren galore. What more can a person want? I will be satisfied with my life, come to die. The only thing I regret is being away from my loved ones. My life, I take it in all, to be about as perfect as it could have been. I have worked hard, and now I rest hard and am unbelievably satisfied.” Would that we could all say as much.