Extracted from an interview of Helen Holland in 1995 about "Aunt Naomi"

 

Aunt Naomi... made hats and then they wore hats... with all kinds of decorations on them -- plumes and every thing else you know. She made hats that's how she made her money and dresses... so she made enough money to take a trip and so she went to Washington D. C. -- by herself. And she went to the White House -- sight-seeing, you know, and on the outside of the White House, someone had written their name and address. So she took it down and wrote him a letter when she got back home. His name was Muller (Müller?). And they corresponded for awhile, and then he proposed to her through the mail and invited her to come back to... to Washington, to marry him. And so, as the story goes, she always put her hair up in rollers every night and so she was... in this sleeper -- on a train -- she had her hair up in rollers. So when the train pulled into Washington, all those that were asleep kept asleep, `cause the train wasn't going anywhere else that night. So he went to meet the train, and she didn't get off, and so he asked then, if she was on the train... and if it was likely that she was still asleep. So he went in there and there she was still asleep with these rollers in her hair. And as the stories goes, he told her that he almost turned around and left, she looked so horrible -- a freak, you know. And of course, they had not seen each other until this time. They only had pictures and had written each other. But she married him... they bought a home... they went to Minneapolis, Minnesota and that's were they lived -- so when the war broke out -- World War I broke out... I guess he was taken into the war and then he disappeared... so Mr. Müller left my aunt... the war started and he left... and she didn't know what happened... she never did know... And she just guessed that he went back on the German side instead of fighting on the American side... because he was German. And so... their name was Müller, not Miller... (Bob [her son] changed his name to Miller [later] in my era...) but he was never heard from again and so here she was in Minneapolis, Minnesota -- she never came back to Arkansas!

 

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