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By Rita McInerney
Beulah Grace West marked her 100th birthday with
members of her family and her parish. Father Leo Herbert, pastor of St.
Catherine of Siena in Kennesaw, presented her with two dozen long-stemmed roses
at the 11 o’clock Mass May 7th; the choir sang “Happy
Birthday” during the offering and her favorite hymns, including “Ave
Maria” and “How Great Thou Art,” throughout the Sunday Liturgy.
Afterward, parishioners joined Mrs. West and her proud and loving
family at a reception in the hall of the activities building. The centenarian,
elegant in a wide-brimmed navy straw hat and light print dress, happily
accepted congratulations from children and adults.
The contemporary church of St. Catherine, large enough to seat
1,100 people, is light-years away from the small adobe chapel in Goldwin, New
Mexico where she was baptized after her birth May 6, 1889, the sixth child of
Emil and Anna Lambert. The Lamberts went to the territory from St. Louis when
her father, a mining engineer, found work building a smelter.
The family lived in the last house before the Navajo reservation,
a mere 30 miles away. Often, Indians going to and fro would knock at their door
and ask for food. There was hardly anyone or anything in the vast landscape and
there certainly weren’t many Catholics. A priest came to the adobe chapel
once a year.
When she was about seven, the Lamberts moved back to St. Louis at
the urging of her paternal grandfather, who believed the children should be
raised in a more civilized atmosphere than a rough mining town.
The long train ride to St. Louis from New Mexico was the first of
many journeys, in times of joy and sorrow, that would take her to Colorado,
Texas, California, Virginia and finally Georgia. Her roles were as an
adventurous teenager, wife, mother, widow, cook, a Rosie the Riveter, and
finally beloved grandmother.
She remembers her growing years in St. Louis, the years in a
convent school, then business school preparing for her first job as a
stenographer. There was the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, a celebration
that brought visiting relatives for her to show around the exhibition grounds.
One of the memories of that distant summer was seeing Geronimo,
the Apache warrior who terrorized the settlers in Arizona in the 1880s. Now a
subdued celebrity who frequently appeared at exhibitions, she remembers seeing
him “caged and tied with a rope life a monkey.”
She met her husband Dick West, while living in LaJunta, Colo. They
worked on the Texas pipeline. She remembers chasing antelope on horseback,
helping build their adobe home, fighting prairie fires. For fun, they thought
nothing of driving an open buggy 40 miles in a snowstorm to go to a dance. She
loved to square dance, they would move the furniture back against the walls and
have “such a good time.”
Years later, 1929, son Gary was born. Not long after that Dick
West took a job in a welding shop in Kilgore so the family could settle down in
a permanent home.
Thanksgiving Day, 1935, she became a widow. Dick West died of
burns after an explosion at work. A non-Catholic, he had always attended Mass
with her. People, she remembers, often called him “very devout.” He
converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. God answered her prayers for his
conversion in a way she hadn’t anticipated.
Mother and son moved to California. She wanted to bury her husband
near his family. Besides, she had heard chances for woman to make a living were
better there. She found a job as a cook-technician in an Oceanside hospital.
The nurses would watch the cookpots for her on Sunday while she ran “all
the way to church and back” before serving the midday meal.
A nephew she helped to raise needed her. She moved to Carlsbad to
help him raise an infant son after his wife died in childbirth. Later, when a
restaurant venture with a friend in Los Angeles didn’t work out she
returned to Carlsbad and toiled as a restaurant cook until World War II stirred
her to join the war effort.
She loved being a Rosie the Riveter at Consolidated Aircraft. Her
face lights when she mentions how much her supervisor appreciated her skill.
“He used to say if he had ten more like me he wouldn’t need anyone
else.” Her job was to hang wings and do electrical installations on the
B24s and PB2Y4 aircraft rolling along the assembly line.
Before she bought a home in Carlsbad she and Gary lived in a small
cottage converted from a real estate office. It was big enough, though, for her
to take in roomers. Two young sailors came into the Church while staying with
her. A Marine bride from the Bronx who roomed with her remains a friend.
In 1967 she sold her home in Carlsbad and joined her son Gary, a
Navy career officer, his wife Jewell and their four children, in Virginia
Beach. The family moved to Kennesaw about 16 years ago and have been members of
St. Catherine of Siena since it began.
The serenity of her life now is reflected in the master bedroom
she occupies in the West home. There she spends hours surrounded by memories of
other times. A shrine to Mary is in a corner by her bureau, a large picture of
the old adobe chapel in New Mexico where she was baptized is on the wall.
Photographs of her family are everywhere. On the back of the door is a colorful
poster of one of her heroes, Joe Montana and the 49ers.
She gets about with a walker because of an old knee injury and
arthritis; keeps her room tidy and does small kitchen chores. She answers the
telephone, watches soap operas, beats the others at her favorite card game,
Michigan rummy.
She thanks God for her wonderful life and her family.
“I’ve always been healthy and I’ve had love and care from my
son, daughter and grandchildren. They all, in fact, spoil me.”
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