My mother was born into dirt, poverty, and hunger on a tenant farm in east central Nebraska in April 1932. She was the third child–fourth, including her brother Gordon, who died before she was born–of her parents, Lottie and Harry, young Illinoisans drawn west a decade earlier by the promise of a farm.

By 1933, however, everyone–her parents and older siblings Nina and Robert–were living a nightmare. Drought, dust, and desperation were everywhere; hunger, too. "We ate flour pancakes most days," she once explained when asked why she rarely talked about her early life in Nebraska.

"If it was summer," she continued, "we'd have garden vegetables, usually cabbage, with our pancakes. If it was Sunday, we'd kill an old hen to boil."

A couple of years and another brother later, they lost the ren

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