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Sharing Memories With Bertha Perron
photo provided Holding her third great-great granddaughter, Bertha Perron celebrates family and yet another generation in the Champlain Valley. |
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photo provided Coming from Canada to start a new life and a family, Bertha's mother and father, seen here with Bertha and her seven siblings, settled in Monkton to farm.
Front row: (l-r) Sister-Dorothy, Mom- Mary Perron, Dad- Wilbert Perron and a young Bertha.
Back Row (L-r) Brothers, Phillio, Adreon, Eddie, Sister- MaryJane, and brothers Roland and Victor. |
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Tuesday January 11, 2011
By Cookie Steponaitis
With a spring in her step and a gleam in her eye, Bertha Perron is not only ready to share memories, but prepared to make some more of her own. Bertha was born February 23, 1923 in Williston, Vermont and her family has lived in the Monkton, Williston and Vergennes area all of their lives. Some of her most vivid early memories involve walking one mile to the one room school in Williston and her first grade teacher Miss Kendru. “She really loved kids,” recollected Bertha. “My siblings and I all spoke French and very little English. Our parents came from Quebec and at home we spoke only French. So, in school it took us longer to find the right words and Miss Kendru always took time with us and helped us make English a fun new language to learn.”
Living on the family farm with a total of seven children, the word of the day was work. “We all had chores,” Bertha shared. “I must admit, I was a bit of a tomboy and I could work as well as some of my brothers, so I had chores both in and out of the house. I took care of the chickens, collected eggs and teased until I was taught how to milk the cows. My sisters and I tended the huge family garden and in the summer we raked hay as our brothers mowed it with the team of horses. It was a good way of life, but I must tell you we all worked all the time. It was a family farm and we all worked it.” Early in the interview Bertha quickly identified education as the key to success in today’s world and hoped that the youth took it seriously. “Over the years, it became increasingly important to have ways to learn new skills. As things kept changing rapidly, schooling became more and more needed. I really think teens today need to take advantage of every schooling opportunity they can. It will make all the difference.”
While the world around her changed quickly the constants in her life of work, family, farming and faith did not. Bertha used to occasionally go with her father on the milk route and was with him one afternoon when they came had the chance to stop and visit with another farmer and his son. As time went on conversations became more lengthy and, “One thing just led to another,” grinned Bertha and in 1944 she married her husband Arsene Perron. The couple was married for forty- four years until Arsene’s death in 1989 and they had three boys and one girl. Bertha has a never ending assortment of treasured photos of her own three boys, one girl, seven grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren adorning her walls. With each photo there is a story or two and if you lift the glass cover, underneath is a treasure trove of additional photos all labeled with pertinent details and information about each child in the picture. While one son has moved to Tennessee and one grandchild is in New Hampshire, Bertha delights in sharing that all are local and call either Chittenden or Addison County home.
Drawing the conversation back to her early life on the farm, Bertha picked the Christmas Season as one of her favorite times of year and one full of family traditions. “You have to understand,” Bertha paused, “that as a farm, holiday preparation started well ahead of the events. We would butcher pigs, make meat pies, Blood Pudding and attend Christmas parties at the school and at other homes. Each child in the one room school had a verse and a part in the Christmas skit and as we got older what we said and the parts we played increased. In addition to extra work at home, we would also bring in extra cut wood for the stoves at school and in the house at the farm. It was a fun time of year, but a very busy one as well.”
While she talks to her remaining sister on the phone a lot and regularly sees a great deal of her family, Bertha showed a wonder at where the years have gone and how much life has changed. “As we look at these photos,” she shared with this reporter, “I am conscious of the fact that there is only my sister and I left out of the seven of us and the generations of my family have and keep increasing. It just seems time has gone in a snap and the photos make it all come back.”
Whether sharing photos of her family, stories of her past or some of her exquisite crochet projects and embroidery, Bertha Perron is grounded in her love of family, her sense of work, and her slightly mischievous sharing of the fact that her skills as a tomboy are equal to those of a homemaker and mother. Reaching out to current generations with a message about education and a suggestion to “…hold family dear,” Bertha is approaching her eighty-eighth birthday with the same drive and vigor that she began her life on the farm in Monkton. Ready to show any of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren how to crochet, embroider, or if necessary how to milk a cow, Bertha is simply ready for life and whatever else comes down the path for her family she loves so dearly.
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