For My Father: the Story of My Life (1910-2000)

Rating:
Summary: A review written by one of the author's grandchildren
Review: As one of the author's eight adult grandchildren, I feel compelled to submit a comment here. For those of us who knew her, this book (and the upcoming Volume 2) gives us insight into who she really was and what social, professional and political forces shaped her life.

For those who weren't lucky enough to have known her, the book is a sweeping look at societal and political changes over the last century. She talks about her family's Model T Ford and her first computer. She talks about being a woman with ideas at the beginning of the century and at the end. She talks about meeting Eleanor Roosevelt, being a socialist in the time of McCarthy, campaigning for Jesse Jackson, and protesting the war in Iraq.

The back of the book jacket says:

Twists and turns in family and professional life during the Twentieth Century are described by an author who is in her mid-nineties.

The author had a varied view of the shifting world during nine decades of the Twentieth Century. Her conventional life as an Army daughter ended abruptly in 1922 when her father died. She lived in Washington DC with her widowed mother, with the exception of years at college in the US and abroad.

Her professional life as a staff member at the Library of Congress ended when an irregular relationship evolved into pregnancy. She and the child and the child's father joined forces in southern Maryland, on an abandoned farm where all their neighbors were black. During the following 17 years, the author was the family breadwinner, with three children, a situation that at one time led the family to near destitution. She recovered, and gradually moved up the Civil Service career ladder to positions of responsibility, at last as a translator for the US Patent Office. In subsequent years, she became interested in ancient history and traveled extensively, gathering material for a book on the Later Roman Empire. Other historical works followed, as well as historical novels.

In her varied career, the author gained insights into the difficulties of uneducated single mothers, and of rural blacks. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement, going to Mississippi during the "Freedom Summer" as a member of a biracial team. For My Father offers thumbnail sketches of a variety of public figures, all the way from Buffalo Bill to Alfred North Whitehead, Norman Thomas, Walter Reuther, and Jesse Jackson.

Justine Randers-Pehrson passed away in September 2004, at the age of 94.