My Nana was born Lillian Alice Dobbins in 1946 in Lenoir, North Carolina but anyone who met her would call her “Lynn” a name she adopted that has become her singular identity. She is someone who has played an influential role in my life and that I have always admired because of her kind spirit. My Nana was and continues to be my first best friend, showing me how to respect other people and go out of my way to show kindness to others. She and I have always been kindred spirits and through this interview I was able to see even more similarities between us as well as gain insight on the changes she saw around her as she grew older.
Throughout the course of her life, the changes my Nana witnessed and spoke about most were the changes in the conditions that women live and work in. Growing up on a small farm with three other siblings left my Nana with few options for entertainment outside of a few toys and her siblings. According to my Nana, she “was outside most of the time” where she played games such as hopscotch or marbles with her siblings. My Nana spent time helping her mother in the garden working with flowers and taking the food her mother made to sick and disabled people.
Both of these pastimes resulted in qualities in my Nana that I share as well-a love for flowers and gardening and a passion for community service. When my Nana was sixteen her mother died, leaving her a teenage daughter living alone with her distant, alcoholic father. One day my Nana returned from school to find her father packing away their belongings and told her he was moving to Ohio for a job. This left a sixteen year old Lynn to “fend for herself, finding a home with her sister Lucille. ” She took one box of important personal items that she cherished strongly in her memory.
After graduating from high school she attended one year of college before dropping out to get a job and begin save money. Her first job was a waitress but she soon found work in retail as a manager and owner of two different consignment shops. My Nana enjoys working with people and has continued to work with the public, managing a twenty-five person insurance company and achieving a profession as a licensed massage therapist. Although my Nana does not technically have a degree she has enjoyed the many jobs she has worked at, saying they each helped her “grow intellectually and personally”.
Throughout the conversation that this interview started, my Nana made it clear to me that one of the biggest struggles she dealt with throughout her life stemmed from the mistreatment and disrespect women faced. At eighteen because she was no longer a high school student my Nana had to leave her sister’s home, leaving her with nowhere to turn but to Allen Hennessee. Allen was also the youngest of four siblings and came from a middle class family in Lenoir. He asked Lynn to marry him at eighteen after only a few dates and she said yes, although in her own words it was “nothing like true love. My Nana had watched both of her sisters marry men solely to gain stability for themselves and their children, so when given the opportunity to secure a home and husband for herself, “saying yes was the smartest thing to do”. Married at eighteen, pregnant by nineteen, and a mother by twenty my Nana had relied on Allen for everything because “he was the breadwinner of the home”, making his living as a successful car salesman in Lenoir. They remained married for eight years until Allen left twenty-five year old Lynn with their then five year old daughter, my mother Pamela.
Allen left Lynn with no money, leaving her to find work as a waitress. This was her first job and the “first place where she felt disrespect based on being a woman”. Harassed often by her managers and unruly customers, my Nana remembers her time there as her “least favorite work environment” although she did not deny that at times her gender came to her advantage. Because my Nana had no one she could reach out to about the insults she faced at work daily she decided to use it to her advantage.
Being the only job my Nana had ever had, she felt as though she had no choice but to make the best of the situation. She and the other waitresses would get together before work and hem their skirts, wear higher heels and watch patrons empty their pockets, adopting an attitude of “If you can’t beat them, join them. ” My Nana was twenty five, living as a single mother with practically no real life skills of her own. Losing both of her parents at the age of sixteen left my Nana without a place to really grow up and learn responsibility in.
Being a working woman during the 1970’s led young Lynn to wild scenes- “late night discos and explosive relationships”. Describing the style she reared my mother in, my Nana said “Rearing a child was something I had no desire to do, but even more importantly no clue how to do”. Without any sort of parental guidance Lynn was lost when it came to raising her daughter, leading her to form a “similarly (though not as hopelessly) distant relationship with Pam. ” In the late 1970’s a former fellow waitress from the restaurant where she worked asked Lynn to join her at a local consignment shop.
Starting as an associate, Lynn worked her way up to becoming a “buyer” meaning she selected the clothes that seemed fashionable and likely to sell. She did this for multiple stores, working “whatever hours she could to make sure she kept food on the table”. Working in retail with the public became something my Nana enjoyed, a joy she felt came from the food deliveries she used to make for her mother when she was younger. Working at multiple clothing shops in town had its benefits for Nana, one of which was the opportunity to meet new people.
My Nana was working at one of these shops when she met an older man and his wife who “had an eye for peculiar cardigans” who became regular customers of Lynn’s. One day while shopping, the man told my Nana about a job he had available at his insurance company as a manager and asked her to come work for him because of her bright spirit and friendly personality. By the 1980’s my Nana was managing an insurance company and started learning how to use a computer- both of which are feats that she “never would have expected at twenty with a baby and no clue what I was doing”.
After ten years at the insurance company my Nana felt compelled to get her license as a massage therapist, working at various salons throughout Lenoir, Granite, and Hickory North Carolina. She did this until she started work at her current job, where she drives orthodontic material orders to be picked up and dropped off at offices. My Nana went from a married young mother to the single, hard-working Nana that taught me so much about helping those less fortunate than we are.
She has seen her favorite changes in society mostly through the treatment of women, saying that she feels women now are being “recognized more and appreciated for their knowledge, ability, and contributions”. My Nana was born and raised in the same town where I was born and raised; she worked her way through difficult situations, similar to difficulties my mother faced as well. I have always been close to my Nana; she is someone I look too for emotional support and spiritual guidance.
My Nana worked hard to achieve the success that she has, and while she acknowledged that the women’s rights movements “helped pave the way for her” she has never been someone to wait for a hand out because she has never felt “society had dealt me a tough hand or gave me anything either”. Sitting down with prepared questions in a formal tone with my Nana was an experience I will not soon forget, nor take for granted. We have always been completely honest and upfront with each other, and I feel that much of my respect I hold for her is in the mature way she spoke and treated me from a young age.
She encouraged me to discover life and overcome obstacles through hands on experience, standing close by for anything I could possibly need. I am so blessed to be the generation of a daughter that was raised with the wisdom of two strong, independent females present throughout my entire life. Setting the example without even knowing, my Nana is someone that earned her rights as an American woman during a time that the world was not in her favor. Without her dedication to her strong work ethic and continuance to better herself through difficult times, I imagine my life wouldn’t be as overflowing with opportunity and support.
