Emma Jean Bensenhaver
July 4, 1933, to July 4, 1951
On July 4,1933, I was born in a small house in Moorefield, West Virginia. Dr. Love, a small Scottish man delivered me. My parents were Harness and Lettie Bensenhaver. I weighed three pounds, and they placed me in an oven to help me survive. I tell people now that I’m well baked. I had one brother, Ervin Lee, who was 15 months older. He was born on April 1, 1932. My second brother, James Russell, was born on February 4, 1935. My mom’s parents, Seymour and Laura Weese lived on a farm in Grant County. My dad’s father, John, was deceased. His mom, Levina, was married to her second hus-band, Chief Simon. He is the one who took me to the Methodist Church when I was in grade school. They lived in South Moorefield and Grandma had a small store there.
When I was a few months old, Mom noticed that it looked like I had something in my left eye. She took me to the local doctors, but they couldn’t help, and it was growing down over my eye. They took me to Cumberland, Maryland, and the doctors there said it was a blood vessel tumor. They gave my parents two choices. One was surgery and the other was a new treatment using radium needles to burn it off. They told my parents that either way, they could not save my eyesight and there was just a 50% chance of sav-ing the eye. My parents chose the radium, which was a series of treatments where they bound my whole head. Mom said I would cry and was afraid of men, but I soon got over that. I believe my parents made the right decision because I didn’t even wear glasses un-til I was in my early twenties, when Dr. Dale Hall in Parkersburg prescribed my first pair. I believe it was a miracle, even though I have had a scar over my eye all my life to remind me to be thankful that I have two good eyes. I also started using eyebrow pencils.
When I was 2½ years old, Ervin and I were on the little porch and there was a small picket gate to keep us from going into the yard. Ervin climbed over and was in the yard, so I thought, “I can do that,” but I got stuck on top and got one more battle scar.
I was six years old when I started school, and this school has all 12 grades. One day I decided I could climb to the top of the swing pole. I did, and I fell all the way down and bit the end of my tongue. One of the older boys knew me and took me home in his car. Mom told me there was blood all over me and the car. It took my tongue a long time to heal because they couldn’t use stitches. I had two more battle scars, my tongue and one under my chin.
While in grade school I was never chosen to play on any ball teams. I had to find oth-er activities to do during recess. I liked to do all kinds of tricks on the bars. When I went home, I always headed for the big tree in the front yard which had a perfect limb for all my tricks. Dad could see me from the restaurant and warned me to stop because he was afraid that I would get hurt. I thought he knew I might break the limb and ruin the tree. So, one day I headed for the tree, and something was wrong. It was very messy and slip-pery. Dad had put chicken poop all over the tree. I think I would rather have had a whipping. That was the end of my acrobatics.
When my brother and I were young, we liked to run around this new two-story house that Dad had built when we were younger. On one side it was muddy, and Russ fell, and Ervin and I took him upstairs to the bathroom to clean him before Mom saw him. We put him in the tub and ran the water. Mom got there just in time.
We had a good place to play when we were growing up. In the field above our house were tall weeds and brush. We could play cowboys and Indians or war. I had a nurse’s kit with candy pills. After the high school was built it was just above it, we had a good sidewalk for bicycles or roller skates.
When Dad had his restaurant built beside our house it had a large room used as a dance hall with three of the walls painted with huge nature murals. These murals were painted by a local artist, Turk Bean, who owed Dad money, and this was how he paid his debt. Many people enjoyed those for many years. The room was later changed to a pool hall. The high school students enjoyed the pool hall, and Mom and Dad’s hot dogs and hamburgers.
Mom made home-made pies for the restaurant. She also liked to bake her own bread for the family and those large, raised donuts which took all day to make.
I attended a church camp with my minister and two other girls in north central West Virginia. I was eleven years old and had stomach pain on the trip over the mountains to the camp. My minister took me to a local doctor, and he said I had an appendicitis at-tack. He told them to keep me on a special diet and I was not to use stairs. I was kept in a large house, and they had to carry me up and down the stairs. I wasn’t able to be a part of all the activities, but I still enjoyed my week. That summer I had several attacks, and I told my parents if I needed surgery, I wanted to have it done before school started in September. They took me to Harrisburg, Virginia, to a hospital where they took out my appendix and tonsils. They told me they had a library, but they only brought me old magazines to read. I was there one week, and when I got home, Mom kept me in bed a couple more weeks. She fed me mashed potatoes and prunes. I was anxious to go to the new school just above us when it started in September. I was in seventh grade. I have al-ways liked school, and I got good grades.
Dad and another businessman built and operated for several years the first drive-in theater in West Virginia. We had small jobs in the evening and enjoyed many good mov-ies.
Dad and Mom made and served the first frozen custard in the area. It was made from fresh fruit in season.
The following stories are some memories of my family.
My dad gave me some flower seeds to plant. I planted and kept them watered but had no flowers. They were supposed to be four o’clock flowers, but Dad had given me rabbit pellets.
Mom warned a man not to come in the restaurant to sleep in a booth after drinking too many beers, so one day she decided to trim his long-handled mustache. She only trimmed one side, but that stopped him from sleeping in the booth.
Dad played pool with Jim Flinn, Dale’s first cousin, and Jim liked to tease Ervin. So, Ervin decided to play a trick on Jim. He filled a box of valentine candy with rabbit pel-lets, which Jim was giving to his wife.
Russ and I liked to get in our porch swing and turn it around several times and then it would unwind really fast and make an exciting ride. The only problem was that Mom said it was too close to a window.
We always had a nice Christmas when we were growing up. Daddy always had a live Christmas tree for us, and we would put lights and store decorations plus home made ones on the tree. Daddy would get us toys and Mom made sure we had some nice new clothes. Mom also prepared a wonderful meal with many favorite dishes. She also liked to make chocolate fudge and for dessert we would have hickory nut cake with chocolate icing or fresh coconut cake with white icing. We also had strawberry or cherry Jello with the cake.
All three of us were in the 4-H club. We had projects to do during the year. I chose cooking and baking. I don’t know what my brothers chose. There were some students who raised animals for their projects. For several years we attended the 4-H camp which was held in the county 4-H campground not too far from Moorefield. The camp was very rustic with two long buildings where the boys and girls slept. There was another build-ing where delicious meals were prepared and served. The students brought their own bedding and those who had gardens donated fresh vegetables. We enjoyed all the activi-ties and the campfires we had every night. We always looked forward to spending one week each summer at camp where we also met new friends.
When the new high school was being built above our home, one of the workers rented a bedroom in our house and shared meals with us. He was a carpenter and also his name was Mr. Carpenter, and he was a very nice, clean man. But Russ and I always no-ticed he had a strange odor, and Rus thought it came from the strong coffee he made in his room. But sometimes we noticed this strange odor in other times and places. We would look at each other and ask, “Do you smell Mr. Carpenter?” This became a joke between us.
When I was growing up our family had many pets, such as dogs and cats. But so many of them got run over because we lived by a main highway. My favorite pet was a skunk named Jimmy. We got him when he was very small, and Mom helped me feed him with an eyedropper. As he got older, he lived under the house, but would come out when I called his name. He liked Mom’s corn pudding, and he would sleep around my neck when I was sunbathing. Dad took him to a vet for surgery, and shortly after that he went out one night and was run over. I tell people God gave me Dale to replace my pet skunk.
I met Dale when I was 15 years old and in the 10th grade. His family had moved from Parkersburg, West Virginia to manage a chicken farm seven miles north of Moorefield. I thought this was one of the prettiest places in the valley. You would have to travel on a very narrow road with a rock cliff on one side and a stream of water on the other side to get to the big farmhouse at the foot of a mountain.
We had moved to a nice brick home just north of Moorefield with a few cabins on four acres of land. Dad rented the property where we had lived the past 12 years. He soon changed one of the cabins into a small store and gas station.
Dale was tall, dark, and handsome, and we soon became friends. Later we became high school sweethearts and spent a lot of time together in and out of school. We were both in the band. I played a snare drum, and Dale played a large tuba. Our small band had an invitation to march in the Apple Blossom Festival in Winchester, Virginia. We went and I was the only snare drummer, and our friend played the big bass drum. We marched for several hours, and the drummers had to play the whole time. I was too tired to walk back to see the emcee, Van Johnson.
One day Dad was taking me down to the chicken farm to visit Dale. He took me as far as the electric fence. I had to crawl under it and walk to the house. I knocked on the door, and Toomey, Dale’s brother answered the door. This was the first time I had met him, and he looked like Clark Gable. He said he was the only one there. I looked back, and Dad was headed home. Toomey finally told me that Dale was upstairs on the bed, and I ran halfway up and looked back and asked, “Is he dressed?” Toomey said, “Yes, he’s just resting.” I found out Toomey liked to tease.
Toomey and his wife, Eleanor, and two children, Ray and Nancie, lived in the nice apartment in one end of a large chicken house. Nancie was just a baby, but Ray remem-bered living there.
I have another memory of being in the farmhouse on a cold winter’s night. Toomey was getting his family ready to go back to their apartment. He was wrapping Nancie in a blanket, and I said I would go out too if I was wrapped like that. Dale and Toomey looked at each other and before I knew what happened I was wrapped up in the blanket I was sitting on.
I had another interesting experience in the farmhouse. Dale and I both liked mashed potatoes, so one night after his dad and mom went upstairs, we decided we were going to make mashed potatoes from scratch. In the middle of this project, there was a rat in the kitchen and Dale got the gun, but he told his parents before he shot the rat. We still en-joyed our mashed potatoes.
One evening, Toomey, Eleanor, Dale, and I went to a movie in Cumberland, Mary-land. When we returned, I had made some coconut cupcakes for a treat. That’s when I found out Toomey did not like coconut since he had spent some time on islands in the South Pacific during World War II.
One evening Dale was visiting me at my home. It started to snow and continued for several hours until it became too dangerous to drive. Dale spent the night with our fami-ly. The next morning Mom made pancakes and asked Dale how many he wanted. He said three, so Mom baked them and gave them to him. He looked at them and they were very small like Mom made for us. Dale’s dad made one pancake the size of a plate. We all laughed because he was expecting three large pancakes.
The end of the summer when I was 17 years old, I had my first trip to Parkersburg, West Virginia with Dale and his mother. While there I met his sister Madeline and her husband, Bill Sawyer, and two sons, Rick and David. Dale had worked all that summer on the farm and had saved money so we could buy our rings on this trip. We bought them but didn’t tell anyone and I didn’t wear the engagement ring. We would be in our senior year in the fall.
I always made good grades in school but had some problems with chemistry. When I read it to Dale and he explained it to me, we both made good grades in that class. I read many of our schoolbooks to him.
We attended our Junior/Senior Prom that year. I wore a long aqua colored dress and Dale wore a suit. We enjoyed being with our classmates for the party.
We decided we would be married before graduation because my mom said I had to finish school first. On the evening of May 17, 1951, we went to the Methodist church where I had attended since grade school. I wore a short white dress with a corsage, neck-lace, and earrings. Dale wore a blue suit and tie. Both of our mothers were there, with Rev. Dryfield and his son Bill, who played the piano. After the short ceremony, before the minister could say anything, Dale asked, “May I kiss my bride?” We went from there to our graduation ceremony. Following that, we went back to my house where Dad sur-prised us with a small wedding cake and a friend who took a couple of photos.
We finally started on our wedding trip across the West Virginia mountains to a little cabin in the woods we had reserved. It was very late when we arrived there and the next morning we headed for Parkersburg and stayed in a small motel on route 50 just outside of town.
The next day we visited Toomey and family, who had moved from the farm back to Parkersburg. The farm apartment was waiting for us. While in town we bought our first groceries at the A&P store. We also visited Madeline and family and attended Rick’s fifth birthday party. We were there for several days and enjoyed the family and our trip.
We were also anxious to get back to our home on the farm. Dale’s parents had given us a nice green Formica table and chairs. They had also given Dale a home study course from the New York Institute of Photography. His dream was to be a photographer in Vi-enna, West Virginia.
I really liked living on the farm and hiking in the woods and up the mountain. We also liked to play in the clear little stream of water. Living there was like having a little bit of Heaven on earth.
Thank you, God, for bringing Dale and me together and for our wonderful future with You as our Guide and Guardian.
