Today is the 74th anniversary of the death of my aunt, Gloria Blanche Montgomery. She was born 9 June 1945 in Caldwell, Idaho at Memorial Park Hospital, the tenth child of my grandparents, Lawrence and Blanche (Wilson) Montgomery, though technically the eighth to whom my grandmother gave birth, as aunts Flo and Irene were born of Grandpa’s first marriage.
Gloria was three years younger than Dad. We have one portrait of just the two of them together, as well as a handful of other photos of Gloria, but I have yet to scan that those in. I’ll be sure to add them to my scanning project. Gloria does appear as the youngest child in the Montgomery family portrait I always found so intriguing when I was little. Among other things, Grandma is wearing an amazing hat.
Front row: Deanna, Blanche, Gloria, Lawrence, Bill
Gloria was enumerated in the 1950 census at 201 Freeport in Caldwell. Living there at the time were Grandpa (48 and a carpenter engaged in “building – commercial construction”), Grandma (41), and 8 of the Montgomery children: Morris, 16; Marvin, 14; William, 12; Deanna, 10; Alwin E. (Gene), 9; Theodore, 8; Gloria, 4; and Linda, born in January 1950.
Soon after this April 1950 census enumeration Gloria became ill (her death certificate indicates she had been ill for only four months, though her obituary indicated her illness began in May), and she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. At one point she was taken to a hospital in Portland for treatment, but on 8 December 1950, at St. Alphonsus Hospital in Boise, Gloria passed away. I often wondered whether more could have been done for Gloria if more advanced treatments had been available, but having seen her death certificate and the the more specific diagnosis of glioblastoma, it’s possible the end result might have been the same. According to The Brain Tumor Charity, even now only 25% of patients diagnosed with glioblastoma survive more than one year, and only 5% survive more than five years.
Gloria’s obituary appeared in The Idaho Statesman on 10 December 1950. It noted her funeral was to be held the following day, and that she would be buried in Caldwell’s Canyon Hill Cemetery. She was buried in what is familiarly known as the “Babyland” section of Canyon Hill Cemetery. It was apparently a number of years before the family could afford a grave for Gloria, but by the time I was little it seemed the grave had always been there. We lived only one alfalfa field over from the cemetery and used to roam through it often, and we never failed to remember Gloria and all our other lost loved ones on Memorial Day with a Mason jar full of irises and peonies.
