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Reflections on Mary Ellen Brownlee Youle
by May Helen Brownlee Shaw
Born, Oct. 4, 1918 as one of the six grubby little Brownlees that grew up south of Pretty Prairie, Kansas. She was undoubtedly the most volatile of the lot and fortunately, also the one most quickly to regain normal equilibrium. My earliest recollection of her was an occasion when the question posed was: who would fetch a small pail of water from the pump outside the door. She volunteered with the greatest enthusiasm, grabbed the pail (a small, round dinner bucket used in those days to carry school lunches) and loudly complained on her way out the door, "I have to get water a frousand times a day."
With that kind of pizzazz one would expect good results throughout the school years, and indeed, she was an outstanding student, participating throughout her high school years in scholarship contests at county and state level and winning frequently at both levels. She was also a debater, participated in all sports available to girls in those days--basketball, tennis--played the violin in the orchestra, participated in HS vocal music.
As a member of the home team, she gathered eggs, fed chickens and calves as the occasion required, milked cows, hauled wheat by horse and wagon, herded the cows, in short, performed all the chores that went with growing up on the plains of Kansas during the drought and depression of the thirties. She was a good seamstress, made her own clothes, was a moderate to lousy housekeeper due to an inherited gene which defied reformation.
She attended college at Southwestern (Winfield, KS) earning her own expenses for the most part, and there met Robert D. Youle whom she married, in 1941. She graduated and taught one year in Western Kansas before joining Bob in New York where he finished his last year of law school at Columbia. Bob became a Supply Officer in the Navy and they spent some time at Beaufort, NC. Eventually he was assigned aboard ship and was, I think, present during the kamikaze attacks at Okinawa among other things. Following discharge, he practiced law for two years in NYC during which time the family lived in Brooklyn where Harriet , having achieved the ripe age of two, managed the household with finesse and aplomb. they moved to KC where Bob practiced law for many years.
Harriet was born on May 5, 1945 at Hutchinson; Mary on June 15, 1949 in Kansas City.
Mary died June 16, 1949. |
