Written by Suzanne Gage Faught
My grandmother was a fourth-generation Austinite and graduate of Palm School, who grew up in her mother’s family home after the early death of her father. The family compound included the two-story stone Reissig Store, numerous outbuildings and a “Sunday House”, as well as the frame home with a wrap-around porch, all still standing on the corner of Third and Red River, now known as Moonshine Bar and Grill.
Lillian began working as a “saleslady” at Walter Tips Wholesale Hardware on the corner of Second and Colorado. Although her family felt she was destined to be a spinster (after all, she was 26 years old and unmarried!), she meets my grandfather, Thomas Boyd, the bookkeeper at Walter Tips, and they married in October, 1929.
During the Depression that followed the Stock Market Crash, my grandparents did everything possible to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. My grandfather kept his position at Walter Tips and, despite many reductions in pay, Calcasieu Lumber Company allowed him to pay as little as $5.00 a month to keep their small frame home in Travis Heights.
Lillian did her part by sewing clothes for the family on an old Singer sewing machine. Years later, she would sew many items in my mom’s bridal trousseau and costumes for her grandchildren taking dance and acrobat classes at the Austin Athletic Club. Lillian’s daughter, Janet, didn’t take to sewing…she would bring her Home Economics sewing project home each day for my grandmother to rip out Janet’s stitching and help her sew it correctly.
In the early 1970s, when Lillian’s eldest granddaughter, Suzanne, was going through some of her keepsakes, she found Lillian’s 8th-grade graduation program from Palm School showing that Lillian had played a piano duet. Several months later, Suzanne and her then-boyfriend were going through some of his grandmother’s keepsakes and they came across the exact, same graduation program! Soon after, Lillian came to San Antonio to visit her childhood friend, Lessie Vinson…what a reunion those two ladies had, all due to a 1916 graduation program that they each had kept for more than 50 years.
Lillian lived in her 1929 Travis Heights home until 1984 when she moved to San Antonio to be near her daughter, passing away in January, 1992.
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