Elizabeth Halloran Bright
A Photo Album of my Mother’s Life - The Adult Child’s Version
My mother Elizabeth was born on August 12, 1925, the first pancake of what they called “The Greatest Generation.”
She died 21 years ago on December 29, 2004. I was 46.
My mother’s death prompted me to start a blog.1 Who knew?
She wouldn’t have know what “a blog” was, and she wouldn’t have read it. She was a New Yorker and Sunday Times crossword loyalist.
Nevertheless, my first blogging week, I made a virtual photo album of my Mama memories. I’ve returned many times since to stare at these pictures, as I start to approach her final years myself. I keep seeing Elizabeth differently.
I never knew my mother as a “friend” or someone I would talk to, woman-to-woman, eye-to-eye. I was her little girl, always, whether beloved or scorned.
Especially after her death, I would hear from her library patrons, students from her high school classrooms, young people she mentored, who raved how wonderful she was to them, how supportive, how they could “tell her anything.”
What? I was bewildered. It wasn’t that Mama didn’t love me— rather, it was a traditional filial relationship: obedience, duty, the younger reflecting the elder. She didn’t confide in me, except by emotional accident, via the surrounding fireworks—and the same could be said the other way.
After her death, I was even more intrigued to contemplate her as a single woman, not-a-mother, trying to imagine what thoughts were going on behind her pensive or hard-thinking gaze— and the occasional laugh too. She was more radical than me. First to go to college, first to marry “outside the faith,” first to divorce, first to be a single mom, first to emigrate, more than once. I can’t get over her leaps.
I know I’m a “copy” of my mom, and yet I wish I had known her.
Below are some of my favorite photographs of my mother and her family. I feel a little presumptuous writing the descriptions, because truthfully, these are my childhood memories at work. I barely knew a thing. If you are familiar with any of these locations or characters, please let me know . . . I will eat it up.
SUSIE’S CHRISTENING
Washington, DC
1958:
My parents lived in Virginia and DC breifly when they returned from India, where they’d lived in Bangalore for a few years, as linguists. She said they were the best years of her life, in India. She preferred her saris to Western skirts. The the only friends they had in DC were Indian as well. Linguists adrift.
THE FIRST DAUGHTER
Fargo, ND
August 13, 1925:
Elizabeth was my grandmother Agnes’ second child and her first daughter. They were hopeful in these days, before the Depression. Agnes was still healthy, my great-grandmother still had her farm, and my grandfather Jack had a job with John Deere as a salesman. When I saw this baby book, it made me feel good that my mom was so warmly welcomed in the world. Her mother loved her very much.
Walhalla, North Dakata
WWI Years:
Agnes Williams, my maternal grandmother, photographed on the “street” in busy downtown Walhalla. Such an unusual candid photo for the time, I wish I knew who took it.
My mom asked me, when she died, if I would go back to North Dakota and sprinkle some of her ashes on the land where her grandmother owned a farm, before the banks did one of their famous foreclosures at the time.
NAZIMOVA
Hollywood, CA
1919:
My mother’s mother, Agnes Esther Williams, was the first piano player at the first Nickelodeon in Fargo, North Dakota.
She was an early Hollywood movie fanatic, and dreamed of going to California to be an actress or marry a movie star. I have a hilarious letter from one of her fellow movie-crazy girlfriends, which she saved in a scrapbook. Her friend warned her that the men in Hollywood were completely scurrilous and not to be trusted. She spoke in euphemisms to the effect that they were all gay.
Anyway, in her position as Nickelodeon player, Agnes wrote all the stars to ask for an autographed photo, and nearly all of them complied. Her collection is astounding.
This is one of my favorites, because Nazimova was such a diva, and her signature is as big as her legend.
CALIFORNIA OR BUST
Siskyou Mountains, CA
1920:
My mother wrote on this photo: “Your great-great Uncle Bill Halloran in the Siskyou Mountains, October 1920, on way from Walhalla to Calif. He died of heart disease when he was 22.”
My mother’s entire family came out to California, one by one, looking for work. In the 40s, the shipyards at Hunter’s Point in San Francisco hired a lot of Irish American laborers, who were persona non grata everywhere else. That was the big push out from Minnesota for the last of them.
BABY JO IN A TREE
North Dakota
1927:
They just stuck her up there for the photo op. My mom’s name was Elizabeth JoAnn, and often she was called Betty Jo, or just Jo.
AREN’T WE WINSOME?
Twin Cities, MN
1930:
Aunt Molly and Betty Jo as little ones.
My mom cut off her family for most of her adult life, and never spoke of the reason.
But in her later years, Molly chased her down, and they became closer than ever. She was devastated when Molly died a couple years before she did. Mama’s heart got a lot worse, and she never recovered.
She said Molly was the only one who knew what they had lived through. They lost their mother after her last birth, and they lost their father (by his absence) when they were very young. My mom at 12 was the oldest at home when their mother died in her bed, and the little kids were crying, hungry. They collected rice off the streets, that were thrown in sacks from a relief truck.
You know, that street in Minneapolis is still a ghetto. There’s still a relief truck.
However in this pic, they are wearing clean freshly ironed church clothes and Molly looks ready to get into some kind of trouble, which I’m sure was the case.
HALLORAN CHILDREN
Minneapolis, MN
1935:
My uncle Bud is the tallest in the back, standing next to Betty Jo.
Molly is making the face on the left, next to Frannie, and baby Pid is in front. This is probably a year or two before their mother died.
BUD AND ME: AIN’T IT AWFUL?
Minnesota Lakes
1940s:
My mother’s first word, as a baby, was calling her brother’s name: Bud. She told me she worshipped him when they were young.
When I was born in 1958, they were estranged— I don’t know why— and I never met him. He had eight children.
In this picture, I can see how close the two oldest were, and it makes me sad to think they had such a falling out. He was the only one besides her who remembered their mother before she died. Who remembered the relative good times before their dad was out of the picture.
The back of the photo reads: “Is this Lake Minnesota? No, it’s Lake Shetek, where the Nelsons went every summer.”
DINKIETOWN
Minneapolis, MN
1948:
I’ve always been intrigued with this photo. I don’t know anything about it, and my mom only told me it was taken on a crazy day trip she went with friends, where they all ended up rolling down a hill. My mom seemed to have the most non-stop party life when she was in high school and undergraduate school. When she came out to California, it wasn’t the same.
She was the first in the family to go to college, on a scholarship. It was a big deal; she was the “brain.” Her scholarship was to a small Catholic girls university, called St. Teresa’s, I think. It’s not around anymore.
Anyway, after her freshman year, Elizabeth could tell the education she was getting was for a MRS degree, if that. She wanted to go to the University of Minnesota, where there were “real” professors and learning. When the Dean of St Teresa’s, a nun, heard of Betty Jo’s plans, she called her into her office and said, “Elizabeth JoAnn, you must not leave— if you move to Dinkytown you will go STRAIGHT TO HELL.”
So off she went.
THE SISTERS
Oakland, CA
1949:
From left to right: Frannie, Betty Jo, Pid, and Molly. My mother was very earnest about seeing her sisters get married, from the letters I’ve found in her storage. That cracks me up, considering the skeptical view she took of marriage just a couple years later, which would endure.
My aunt Molly was gay and actually ran a gay bar in Albany on Solano, that I knew nothing about for decades, until my older-gay-lover told me all about it. Molly went by the name Shawn among her friends. She had a completely separate life from her blood family. Elizabeth and Molly had a long kiss-and-make-up talk about it in their 70s, I was relieved to find out. That is one of the few “adult” things she ever told me, that confidence.
My mother really didn’t cultivate friends, but to the extent that she liked people, it was strictly gay men. Only. In the closet, of course, until the world changed. I think she and Molly knew a lot about their lives in an undiscussed sort of way.
WATCH THIS WOMAN
Florence, Italy
April 1953:
I’m surprised to see any photo of my father Bill cleanshaven. This is a comic portrait, but it’s nice to have one that’s not so perfectly posed.
Plus, they’re both so beautiful.
ROME TRIO
Baths of Caracalla
April 1953:
Bill in uniform, Elizabeth in the middle, and Herb Benario, who
was in the same unit with my dad in Germany. A quietly gay man, as all my dad’s friends were at the time. My parents were the darling heterosexual pets in a homosexual classists’ milieu.
Herb later became a professor of Latin at the University of Georgia. They visited Rome on one of their army leaves to see the sights.
CAPRI
1953:
This was one of my father’s favorite photos of my mom. When I grew up thinking of Europe, this is how I imagined walking around, in a giant hat.
A few years ago, I worked briefly at a fine-art, limited edition publisher, Arion Press. Art books, printed on a letterpress. As I went through the previous editor’s correspondence, catching up on the press history, I noticed that he often saluted new acquaintances he wanted to impress, by saying, “Just back from Capri!” Or, “I’m off to Capri!” — when he wanted a little delay.
I love it, and if I ever say that to you in a letter, you should know that I’m lying.
LIBBY AND LION
The Rasthaus
August 1953:
My dad called my mother “Libby.” This is a petting zoo that surely doesn’t exist anymore, at what was a roadhouse near Kassel, where he was stationed during the Korean War. He did “army intelligence,” listening/translating surreptitiously to Czech and Russian transmissions in East Germany. He said that it was the most boring thing in the world and that army intelligence is an oxymoron.
When I showed my young daughter this picture, she reacted the same way I did when I was a kid: Green with jealousy that I had never been this familiar with a lioness.
FRANNIE AND BETTY JO IN COLOGNE
Cologne, Germany
August 1953:
My mother’s younger sister Frannie came over to Germany to visit my mother while my dad was in the Army. My mom was so lonely there, that it must have meant a great deal to her to have Frannie make the trip.
My aunt died very young, and I really miss her. She was feminine and playful, and I remember being in awe when she would paint my fingernails pink. She was fluent in sign language, one of the first people who studied to work in education for the deaf, at San Francisco State.
She had three boys, and always said that I, a girl, was such a treat to have around.
BANGALORE LINGUSITICS CONFERENCE
Chidambaram, Madras State
December 1955:
My father in bow tie, and my mom are on the left, in the foreground. They are seated with Gordon Fairbanks, Ron Goodison, and Ron Asher. Not another woman in sight.
DR. LIVINGSTON AND LITTLE NELL
Lal Bagh, Bangalore
1956:
This is priceless, of course. The Westerners in India. I never saw my mom in pigtails again.
Photo taken by Satyanarayana Rao.
BANGALORE
1956:
The back of the photo reads, “With Cariapa’s Ayah.”
My partner Jon drew a large illustration of my mother in this sari. She loved it so much.
SUSIE IN ELIZABETH’S SARI
Palo Alto, CA
1980:
In her saris, with my hair pulled back, I think I could be mistaken for my mom when she was young. But I never had a 19” waist
PRESIDIO
San Francisco, CA
1960:
I loved it when my mom would dress up to go to San Francisco. This was one of the last years she wore a suit. She sewed both our outfits.
GOING TO BALLET CLASS
Berkeley, CA
1963:
McGee Street. My first memories are here; I don’t remember the years before when my parents were married. I was four. I loved my ballet class and my mom was so proud of me. The studio was the first classroom I can remember.
This might be my favorite photo of the two of us. It’s how I remember her dressing, casually, happy outside. Total Berkeley.
YEAR OF THE BIG WORLD
Pleasanton, CA
1964:
My mom started teaching German and English at Amador Valley High school when we lived here. This is when I started to have comprehension of the world outside “mama and me.” I remember JFK being shot in 1963, and how my mom was inconsolable. —The first political event I was aware of. Then, my babysitter Julie slashed her wrists upon learning that John Lennon was married. The Beatles had come to America. All bets were off.
JOB HUNT
Sierra Madre, CA
1967:
I took this photo of my mom with our Brownie camera. She duplicated it dozens of times to use in job applications. She had the hardest time finding a library job, it drove her crazy. She came home from subsitute English teaching in Pasadena high schools one day, and said, “That’s it. Some girl took her bra off in class today and ran around the room screaming at the top of her lungs.”
Elizabeth loved library school; she went to Immaculate Heart College in Hollywood. Just as she was graduating, the Library association governing body rescinded their “accreditation” of Immaculate Heart, because the nuns were so militantly feminist and determined to stop the war in Vietnam.
Guess who spear-headed their dis-accreditation? Bing Crosby, the famous crooner and Catholic! His family had donated to the school for many years, and he was mad as a wet hen about Sister Corita and her colleagues.
My mother’s suddenly-unfit degree was a shock, and she got fed up with the US. That’s why we moved to Canada.
UNCLE SWITHIN AND ELIZABETH
Sierra Madre, CA
1968:
The nicest place we ever lived was an annexed apartment of a grand old home on Alegria Avenue, owned by the Koyamatsu family. One time Mr. Koyamatsu lowered our rent from $80 to $75 a month. They were so fond of my mother, and this was the year she started library school.
This was our porch. There was a huge yard with avocado, orange, lemon, persimmon, tangerine and macademia nut trees. I climbed on all of them. This was our baby kitten, whom we named ‘Swithin” after the character “Uncle Swithin” on The Forsythe Saga, which was airing on PBS for the first time. We were addicted to it. It was one of the first British evening television dramas that American viewers “binged” on.
PARLIAMENT BUILDING
Edmonton, Alberta
1972:
I was in junior high when we moved to Canada for my mom’s first professional library job. It was 40 below zero for a solid month. I was in shock. At these very same parliament buildings, my new friends and I would go after school and burn American flags, protesting the test bombs at Amchitka Island, and the Vietnam war.
The schoolkids beat me up the first week for being a Yankee. But I proved my loyalty; it all stopped on Week 2. My Canadian friends became the best friends I ever had as a kid.
PANORAMIC WAY
Berkeley, CA
1976:
My aunt Molly had a beautiful house in the north hills of Berkeley. Panoramic Way. She used a dumbwaiter device to cable groceries up the hill from the car to the front door, it was such a steep cliff.
This is my mom, after she returned to California from Canada and asked my dad to raise me during my high school years. She loved this little dog Percy, who belonged to Mary Stone, the woman my Aunt Molly lived with for many years.
TALLER THAN MY MOM
Paso Robles, CA
1977:
When first saw this photo I realized I was taller than my mother. It’s a moment, isn’t it? This photo was taken by a woman named Mary in Paso Robles, one of Mom’s few friends, whom she respected so much. Mary was one of the original intellectual West Coast bohemians, beautiful with long white hair. You imagined her being up in Big Sur with Weston and Miller.
VACATION
Holyrood Castle, Edinburgh
1977:
My mother rarely took a vacation, and when she did, it was always an out-of-the-blue surprise. She’d just disappear. She would tell me about it, when she came back.
I have always wondered what she did on this trip she took to Ireland, Scotland and England. She looks so happy, and I don’t often see her smile so easily. She told me she asked a tourist to snap her picture.
I GREW UP IN THIS CAR
Somewhere in the Rockies:
May 12 1978:
When my mom decided to move back to Minnesota from California, she drove over the Rockies in January in our 1963 VW.
We moved more than a dozen times in my childhood, and this car was my “hometown.” The one constant space. It was pistachio green, and we could fit all our belongings in it, including the black and white TV set under my feed. I wrote my name in the corner, under the passenger visor, and I hope no one ever erased it.
MINNEAPOLIS
Sept. 1979:
My mom said she wanted to move back to Minnesota to be close to her grandmother’s grave. When she moved to the Cities, she prepared a headstone for her own mother’s grave, that had remained unmarked since she died in 1937.
I traveled to Minneapolis on a book tour many years later and went to the cemetary in St. Paul. where I had a map from mom to find the burial ground. I spent hours and hours trying to find the gravesite without success.
GRADUATION DAY
Santa Cruz, CA
1981:
Kresge College, U.C. Santa Cruz. I got my BA in Community Studies and my mom came out for the ceremony. She was so nonplussed that I sat with what must have been a group of about 12 dykes, with haircuts that make ours seem like flowing locks.
She was incredibly proud of my college career; it was such a point of honor to her. But I was never half the student she was.
BETTY JO, SUSIE, & MOLLY
Yuba River, CA
1980s:
My mom and I went up to see my Aunt Molly’s hunting lodge on the Yuba River. We couldn’t believe that she had finally left Berkeley for the Gold Country. My aunt Molly has had so many outrageous enterprises. She opened the first gay bar in Albany in the 1960s. She took my cousin Ty, for his birthday, to see the premiere of Space Odyssey 2001, and then to hear Janis Joplin sing at the Fillmore. She once sent me a tape of Huey Newton giving a hellfire speech at U.C. Berkeley.
ZUNI CAFE, MOTHER’S DAY
San Francisco, CA
1996:
When I lived in San Francisco in the 80s and 90s, I would go to the Zuni Cafe on Market Street every Mother’s Day. When my daughter Aretha was four, my mom came to visit, and Jon, Honey Lee, and I took her to the brunch.
My mother would never dress up “girly” like Aretha does, but she lived vicariously through her style.
You know, we are all posing that way, with our toe out, without any direction. Just simultaneous.
ELIZABETH AND KIM ANNO
San Francisco, CA
1990:
This is the kitchen I shared with Honey Lee Cottrell for many years in the 1980s. My friend Kim Anno is visiting here with Elizabeth, one of my few adult friends who ever met my mom. Elizabeth loved her so much. Kim is a painter, and when my mom moved to the nursing home, she put Kim’s paintings all over her room.
IRON RANGE INTERPRETIVE CENTER
Chisholm, MN
2000:
This is my mother’s office at what is now called the Iron Range interpretive center. She loved creating a library there more than any other job she ever had. The area is home to immigrants from a hundred countires, about 70 languages, the home of the co-op movement, and the birthplace of the American Communist Party, not to mention Bob Dylan. It was a mining town (still is, but not much left) with a one of the most protracted, decades-long labor-management-struggle-to-the-death you have ever heard of. A real gold mine for a librarian.
FINGERTIPS
Hibbing, MN
2002:
A photocopy of Mama’s fingertips turning the page. She sent this to me and said, “It is my favorite portrait of myself.”
She had not shared something like that with me before. As if she knew I was old enough, finally old enough to get it.
I sure do.
In Case You Missed It
That blog, on Typepad, is being shut down this September 2025 by what’s left of the Typepad corporation, and that occasion led me to “rescue” my old work, including this photo album. That’s the timing.
Well Done I don’t always read to the end on substack but this was worth it . Thanks
Wow!!! Susie, I love all of this.