[Nd-talk] FW: Helen Dobbins Brown--A Mom To Remember

Wed May 1 15:28:25 UTC 2019

From: The Blind History Lady <theblindhistorylady at gmail.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, May 1, 2019 9:12 AM
To: mota1252 at gmail.com
Subject: Helen Dobbins Brown--A Mom To Remember

May and Mothers Day 

. 

Happy Spring to my Blind History Lady fans;

May is a month full of so many things to celebrate. This May I want to acknowledge Mother’s Day. This mother is one I have been researching for more than six years. She did not leave a big paper trail. What she did leave is a family who loves her still and are willing to share her story. She was a blind mother who gave all for her family and gave us a song she wrote and published to remember her by.

(From the cover of the sheet music)

Springtime

Words and Music by

Helen Dobbins Brown

Published by

Helen Dobbins Brown

Marshfield, MO

Copywrite 1937

Price 25 cents

Tis Springtime, sweet Springtime there’s joy ev’ry where;

The birds with their war-blings are teeming the air.

The flowers are blooming, in vale and on hill.

While hearts with dreams of rapture thrill.

O Springtime, tis springtime, with in ev’ry heart;

When love is awakened by Cupid’s true dart;

And yielding to kisses and armes that entwine,

Is rapt in ecstasy divine.

When Springtime is faded and summer is gone,

And Autumn has followed, the winter passed on;

Then lonely we linger, and wait but in vain,

For springtime flow’rs and songs again. 

This was written by Helen Dobbins-Brown when her youngest was 17 and she was 57. 

Helen Elizabeth Dobbins, born in 1880, attended the Iowa College for the Blind and then  Oberlin College. She married a sighted man who fell in love with her voice before he even seen her. Sounds like a fairy tale and Helen may have even agreed that in many ways her life was a fairy tale. But, as all good fairy tales, there needs to be struggles to overcome before the happy ending. Helen had struggles in spades.

Helen married Eugene Brown, the man who had to find the woman that the beautiful voice belonged to. In nine years, the couple had eight children, Helen being over thirty when her first child was born. For a time, they homesteaded land in South Dakota, living in a sod house.  A short stay in Montana and then they moved on. There were no complaints from Helen. 

Although the South Dakota prairie had few close neighbors, she kept in touch with family and friends. Her blind school chums had a circulating braille letter. One would start the letter in braille, mail it to the next blind friend on the list who read the letter, wrote one of their own, sent both letters to the next friend on the list. The round robin would come back to the original friend, who read all the rest, took his original letter out, inserted a new one and sent the whole bunch on the way to the next. 

Soon the Brown’s moved near Marshfield Missouri to farm land where they had to once again, build a home, barns and wooden walkways to minimize the mud and farm animal droppings from their shoes. This all took time. Helen cared for her many children, cooked, washed clothes, cared for the chickens, gathered eggs, tended a garden, put up produce for the winter, milked and kept up the house. 

A farm wife back then was said not to be employed. REALLY!

Just as their house was almost finished, Eugene passed away in 1926, leaving Helen with eight children to raise. They continued on as they knew Gene would have wanted. Not once did she think of giving up her land or sending any of her children off to live with relatives or become live in help for neighboring farmers as many families with both sighted parents were forced to do as the depression grew in the country. Helen had paid off the land and homestead. They grew their own food and could live modestly and happy. 

The depression effected Helen along with her neighbors.  Helen re-invented her land to support the family. She built cabins along the road boarding their farm for travelers heading west for a better life. The road now was called route 66. She built a gas station. Inside the station she sold ice cream. During the migration west, Helen and the kids made a comfortable living. 

The farm got electricity before the depression, another expense. But it was necessary to operate the radio and hear the news. When the new talking book player came to Missouri, Helen was glad to get hers and enjoy the many books now on record that were not in braille. 

The Brown home was filled with music. They had a piano that Helen loved to play and sing along with. The children enjoyed when Mom played. They often sang along with her the old favorites, hymns and popular music. She sang in the choir of her Methodist church. Sadly, although her children did appreciate music, none of them turned out to be musicians.

All of her children finished high school. Several joined the military in the mid 1930’s before the second world war. At least one son made the military his career.   Some became nurses, all lived very successful lives, thanks to their mom. Each child loved Mom and appreciated all that she had done for them. When it was time to leave the nest, each knew that Mom wanted them to spread their wings just as the birds in the spring. Helen did not expect any of her children to sacrifice themselves to stay with their “blind” mom. 

After the children left the home, Helen remained on the farm for almost two decades by herself. She still grew her garden and canned for the winter. One of her daughters came out once a week on the Greyhound to bring groceries from town. 

As she grew older, her closest daughter asked Helen to come live with her and her daughter in Springfield. Finally, Helen did move into Springfield with her daughter. She found an organization of other blind persons where she attended monthly meetings. Through the meetings she met good friends who also enjoyed music and would get together to play and sing with each other. 

This brief sketch of Helen highlights just the love of family that she had to her parents, her husband and children. I hope you also get the impression that Helen’s love was an example and lesson that was learned and passed on generation to generation. Although she has been gone more than fifty years, her descendants remember her warmly today. 

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