6 - Esta Bream 1897-1983

Granddaughter Karen:  Your great grandmother Betty Bream was my favorite grandparent, though a complicated person. One of my fondest memories is from right after we moved to Newport News, Virginia in April 1964.  Mom-mom stayed with us a while to help us get settled in the new house. 

My older sister, Marilyn, and I were to have the entire second floor of the house to ourselves (a bedroom, bathroom, study, den, and unfinished area above the garage.) But it was unpainted and needed other finishing touches. So Marilyn (age 13), me (12), and Mom-mom (67) painted it pink, and Mom-mom was just a stitch.

I cannot remember anything in particular, just laughing, playing music and dancing around, and being so delighted that I’d discovered that my grandmother was so cool. To this day, when I smell fresh acrylic paint, I travel back to those few days and smile.

I believe her to have been a good person, and I enjoyed visiting her several times when I was in my early 20s. But she could also be vain and proud, very attentive to appearances and—according to my mother—a critical and difficult mother. (See Phyllis’ section above.) Notice, for example, that I don't have any notes from my mother about her mother's life. She left us only notes about her father.

Esta was born in Biglerville, Pennsylvania, and grew up on a farm in Adams County, Pennsylvania. 

She earned a degree from a Pennsylvania teacher’s college at Shippensburg, and taught elementary school nearly her entire life, I believe. She loved teaching. 

I loved everything about the home she kept at 1808 High Street in Camp Hill--the smell of her bathroom (Camay soap), the ceramic tiles in her bathroom (wild bird images), and the smell of her morning cup of Postum.  

 

She and Pop-pop spent a lot of time at Sanibel Island, Florida in their later years. She took up a type of art that seems to have been lost—making lovely floral pictures by with glued seashells. I remember—but don’t have a copy—a newspaper article about an exhibit she had in Camp Hill. This photo is something similar—not something she made.

 

During her later years, she drank iced tea continuously, heavily sweetened with saccharine. She died of bladder cancer at the age of 86, shortly after saccharine was removed from the market based on its association with bladder cancer.

Parents: Joe and Sarah Bream
Husband: Donald James
Daughter: Phyllis James

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