910 Monroe Evanston 60202
20
January 1992
Dear Family:
The day after Tracey's wedding last fall, Caitlin and I visited Melvin and
Margaret Biggs at their home in New Hampshire.
In addition to enjoying
their warm hospitality, we had the unique
opportunity to look through "Grandpa's scrapbook." The latter is a treasure
trove of family memorabilia,
put together over the years by
J. Quincy and Zona Biggs,
parents of Portia (Holly's mother) and Anita (mother of Jack,
Steve, Dave, Nancy, and Chris),
as well as Melvin.
The enclosed photo is from
that scrapbook. Caitlin and
I were very impressed when we
first saw it, and I guess Mel
and Margaret detected our interest. Without a word to or from
us, Margaret
undertook to have the photo reproduced and sent to Caitlin,
along with the new
negative. This pleasant
surprise arrived here a couple of weeks ago.
I decided to have some more copies
made, and sent to Anita's
children and grandchildren.
She has been dead
for nearly 37 years
now; as you probably recall, she lies next to the Old Man in
Tallahassee. But the memory
of her is still strong with me, and I suspect with every one else who knew her.
I believe that it is important, especially for her grandchildren, to know something of her. What follows
is by no means a complete
biography, but simply a few facts about her
life, with a focus on
her academic achievements and on the time of this photo
(late 1921, just after her fifteenth birthday).
Mary Anita Biggs was
born on 3 October 1906, in
Buffalo, Missouri (Portia
had been born in 1904). Buffalo
was (and is) a small town
in the southwestern part of the state,
fifty or so miles
from Rocky Comfort, the home village of her parents, John
Quincy Biggs and Nancy Arizona Davidson (both are buried in
Rocky). J.Q. was a minister
in the Disciples of Christ Church;
I presume he was a pastor in Buffalo in 1906.
The Biggs family moved from church to church
every few years, all over the United States. I don't
know the exact chronology, but I do know that Anita spent many of her grammar
school and junior high years in Spokane, Washington
and Moscow, Idaho. She was an outstanding student, and skipped a couple of grades along
the way.
In the summer of
1919, the family moved from Moscow to Fort Worth,
Texas. They drove all the way,
a big adventure in the days
before reliable motor cars
or interstate highways (or
even paved roads:). That fall, Anita
entered Fort Worth
High School, probably as a sophomore, a month before her thirteenth birthday:
Anita
graduated from Fort Worth
High in January 1922. The enclosed
photo is her senior class or graduation picture, presumably
taken a couple of months before
graduation. It appeared
in the Fort Worth
daily newspaper, along with a story
about her extraordinary academic achievements.
As I recall,
she set two separate Fort Worth
High records: the youngest
graduate ever, and
the highest overall grade
average ever---99.54%:
Shortly
thereafter, the Biggs family
of five (Melvin was born
in Fort Worth in 1920) moved
again, to Topeka, Kansas. Anita
entered Washburn College,
Topeka's municipal school,
from which she graduated in
1925 at the ripe
old age of 18: She majored
in Mathematics and minored
in French. I don't
know whether she set any academic records at Washburn, or even
whether Washburn had a Phi Beta Kappa
chapter.
Anita
never pursued any higher degrees, but she certainly had a lifelong zest for learn~-. I can recall her and the Old Man taking courses at FSU in Tallahassee in the
early 1950s, just a year or so before
her death. I remember their Spanish class
especially, where they received the only As out of twenty or twenty-five students. She also spent untold
hours trying to help each of her
children fathom the murky depths of Latin conjugations, declensions, etc.
Anita had great musical talent, especially with the
piano. Grandma (her mother) sometimes alleged that she gave up a budding career as a concert pianist to
marry the Old Man. I'm sure that this is a gross exaggeration, but she did play very well,
and patiently tried
to teach all five of us to do the same. The latter was a frustrating experience for both her and the
child. She had mild success with Nancy, who stuck with the piano for a year or two. When she saw that
the piano was a lost cause, she encouraged other musical instruments (trumpet, sax, drums, etc.), again without notable
success. During our years in New Jersey, one of her great pleasures was trekking into New
York City once a
month for a symphony concert.
In summer 1925, the Biggs family moved to Zanesville,
Ohio for another church. Portia and
Anita, now college graduates, were still with their parents. Anita taught high
school in Kirkersville, a village west of
Zanesville, for the 1925-26 school year, at a salary of $1,800. She
never told her students that some of
the Ohio farm boys in
her class were older than she was: I believe that Portia was also teaching school at this time.
Sometime in late 1926 or 1927, Portia and Anita left Zanesville for the excitement of New
York City. There, among other jobs,
Anita played the piano in a silent movie theater and taught piano to children. She met the Old Man in New York, at a time when he was a struggling young lawyer
with a large Wall Street firm. They
were married on 27 July 1929; Portia and
Walter Hahn had married a couple of months before. Both weddings were small, performed by J. Quincy Biggs
in Tonawanda, New York (near
Buffalo), where J.Q. then had a church.
At
this point, I'll leave the Anita Biggs Ream story. There's so much more to be told; I haven't even mentioned her special
warm, sweet personality. I hope each of her grandchildren will continue
to learn more about this extraordinary person---while there still are a few of
us old fogies around to tell you about her:
Thanks again to Margaret for her thoughtfulness and efforts in making this photo
available. If you would like more copies, perhaps of a different size, don't forget that I have the negative.