What’d she write about? She told me of visits with friends, the comings and goings of her children and grandchildren, and celebrities like Andy Rooney when they spoke in Tyler, and she sent clippings from the Dallas Morning News. In one letter from 1987, typed on “Saturday night, 9:30,” she wrote, “Dear Van, After The Golden Girls, there is nothing on Sat. nite TV that I look forward to. I howl over The Golden Girls – Reminds me of the way Daddy used to laugh over Jack Benny.”
On June 19, 1988, she reflected on her marriage to Uncle Bill, a lawyer with whom she had three children, my cousins Bill, Linda and Jared. She wrote, “Last night I had Linda’s family come for dinner; it would have been have been Bill’s and my 50th wedding anniversary. Though he is gone, I gave thanks for good years – he was a fine man – loved country, Mother and apple pie.”
What really got Aunt Charlotte revved up was Wall Street, in her role as my personal one-woman CNBC. While Mom and Aunt Charlotte were both stock market buffs, Aunt Charlotte was the hard-core wheeler-dealer. In the pre-computer era, she created her own stock-price charts by hand, an astonishing feat for a woman with crippled fingers. She peppered her stockbroker with questions, and could snap on the radio to KRLD-AM in Dallas at exactly the right instant to catch the noon stock report.
Attending my Princeton graduation in 1980, Aunt Charlotte hustled as fast as her orthopedic shoes could carry her to a lecture by Professor Burton Malkiel, to get his autograph on her well-thumbed copy of his investment guide, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, a book that greatly influenced her market strategies.
In a letter on January 18, 1985, she wrote, “I did good things recently in the market. I first sold Diamond Shamrock on the afternoon the impending merger with Occidental was announced – I got 20 ¼ and made a bit of profit; on Monday when the merger fell through it went down to 3. Then this week I sold my Delta Air at 45 ¼, which as close to the high – now with all the fare price competition it is down to 41 today. I had bought Delta at 30 ½. I bought Pitney Bowes at 36 ½ and think it will go up some. I follow Ann Brown in Forbes and she hits a good many things right; on her comment I chose PB. It has been as low as 33 ½ in the past few weeks.”
Article comments