Dad did very well not to worry, his mother's family, the Minters were very good at worrying. As far back as can be traced by genealogy, this branch of Dad's family had emotional concerns, and worry was no stranger to Dad and his family as he grew up. There was one period in Dad's life when he was depressed, during the time he was attending the University of Georgia in the late 1940s. I don't know how Dad overcame this period but perhaps his naturally cheerful personality pushed the blues away. When I was a child and later when I worked with Dad, he was never depressed, always thought carefully about most things, and maintained a positive outlook his entire life.
I think Dad did worry about us, his four daughters. He did what he could to raise us to be the equal with men, he didn't accept that we wouldn't be responsible for our lives and he showed me and at least 2 other sisters how to change the oil in the our cars, and how to change a flat tire. Did I want to learn how to change the oil or a flat tire, no way, I desparately wanted to avoid this learning experience, but Dad looked at me so seriously that I was shamed into learning these responsibilities. Dad was going to take time to show me things and I could tell I'd better go learn, and now I am glad I have this charge in my life and it is something that I can do to be responsible for my car...but I always leaned on Dad...he was always just there at work, or a phone call away and give me advice.
Dad always told me he wasn't worried about me in any situation in my life, he thought I could take care of myself rather well. I really didn't care for this attitude of Dad's, I'm not self-reliant and rather timid of life, but Dad was not normally concerned about me and didn't worry too much. Except for two times, once when I was working at Cedar Point in Ohio in 1982 and again in 1990 when I was living in Ann Arbor getting my library degree.
At Cedar Point in the summer of 1982 I can't exactly recall the circumstances, but I was mad at Dad for not understanding how I could joke with the young men at work and not think anything about it. Dad got so angry with me on the telephone one night on ths subject, that in return, I yelled at him for not understanding who I was and I hung up on my father! This telephone incident so upset my father that he stayed up until 3am the next morning writing me a 10+ page letter. Naturally when I received the letter a few days later I was ashamed for making Dad worry about how I was conducting myself as a young woman and still, I was very angry at Dad for writing the letter, that I read it very fast and put it away for years. Dad's words were that I might be misleading men I worked with concerning who I was, that I might not be a good girl kind of gist. Dad was always harranging me growing up, "Why can't you be more ladylike, like my mother," and I would usually suffer this observation in silence and sometimes yell back at Dad that my name was Sarah Ruth not Eva Ruth!
The other time Dad was concerned, or worried about me was when in 1990 I lived in Ann Arbor in a house with 5 men. We each had our own rooms with locks on the door but Dad was very unhappy that I shared a house with 5 men. I eventually found another place to live and Dad was very satisfied that the number of men in the new house was 1 to 7 women.
Barring unladylike language Dad largely didn't worry about me. He thought of all his daughters that my sister Jennifer lived most like him, in that she had moved 500 miles away from her family and made her own home in another State, just as he had. When I got my first library job in Ionia in 1991, and it was 120 miles away from Imlay City, Dad's words of advice to me were "make the most of the town, Ionia," and make it my own. I stayed there 4 years and then got the job in Flint only 30 miles away from Imlay City. Fortunately for me, Dad loved me and my sisters so much, that he wasn't greatly disappointed at my close return home.
