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They Named A Hurricane After Her
Nana Ruled with the Force of a Storm
Hurricane Nana slammed into Belize with 75 miles-per-hour winds on September 3, 2020. What? My Grandmother is a hurricane?
Sadly, the announcer mispronounced her name: She wasn’t “Nana” like banana as he said. She was “Nana” like mama.
So famous did Hurricane Nana become that a Facebook page exists in her honor. There’s even a picture of her with her glasses (and a mask). You can check out Nana’s Facebook page here. Nana, who was partially blind, had many pairs of glasses: 2 pairs of distance glasses, several pairs of reading glasses, a magnifying glass, sun glasses (which she called “dark glasses”), and extra-dark sun glasses.
It fits all too well. Indeed, Nana was often a tropical storm if not a hurricane. Not in speed or physical force but certainly in terms of the force and power she had over her family, including those who married into the family.
A difficult and opinionated woman, she disliked more people more than she liked. Nana had no use for Jews, Episcopalians, Catholics, anyone not born in the US, anyone whose skin color wasn’t white, Democrats, people who were divorced, those who had too much education, those who had too much money, those who didn’t have enough money, married women who worked. She was violently opposed to my Mother’s decision to return to teaching school after I was born. However, it had a positive outcome for Nana as it meant I spent even more time with her which she liked.
She disliked people not in her family. I spent much of my childhood with her and don’t remember anyone outside the family being in her house with the exception of a best friend from her childhood days in Red Cloud, Nebraska.
Her dislikes included everything from her husband to my Father’s family to Eleanor Roosevelt’s column “If You Ask Me” that appeared in McCall’s magazine which she read with her magnifying glass. She opposed women going to college despite my Mother having graduated from the University of Denver with a degree in French and admitted to Mortar Board, an honor society for women. When I was a senior in high school, she tried to talk me out of going to college, suggesting I should go to “finishing school.” (Schools that teach social graces and…
