Strong opinions are in the genes

Hard to believe, but if my mother were alive today she would have turned 103 this month.

Instead, she made it to 75, dying in the spring of 1994.

She was born in Ohio, out of wedlock as they used to say back in 1918.

That could have been a curse.

But it wasn’t.

She was adopted as an infant by Edward M. and Carrie Jay Haynes, my grandparents.

In their 40s at the time, Edward and Carrie had not been able to have children. The adoption must have seemed like a marvelous gift to them at the time.

It was certainly a gift to my mother.

Her parents doted on her. They were prosperous in a small town way, and they shared their good fortune with their daughter, treasuring her.

In recent years, I’ve come to believe that the adoption was an in-family affair, a way for an aunt and uncle to help out a young couple and come to the rescue of a small child while also transforming their own lives.

The Haynes family was a horse family. Although Edward’s older brother, Elwood Haynes, was an automotive pioneer, horses were a part of the bloodline.

As a young man, little more than a boy really, Edward had made the trek down from Indiana to what was then Indian Territory, before Oklahoma became a state, to trade for ponies he could bring back home and raise.

And race.

My mother used to tell a story about my grandfather disobeying his father, the perpetually stern Judge Jacob M. Haynes, and taking a horse to race at Montpelier. The horse and my grandfather won, but the celebration was cut short when Judge Haynes learned he had been disobeyed.

Horses were a part of the household, and racing was part of the magic.

At one point, when she was a very young woman, my mother was the owner of Stellite, a high-performance harness racer in the era of Dan Patch. I once asked the late Jerry Landess, Jay County’s harness racing legend, about Stellite. He grew wistful at the memory.

But horses are traded, and Stellite moved on to new owners more serious about investing in his racing career.

Still, decades later, my mother would show me old black and white photographs of the finest horse she ever owned.

Somewhere along the way, the horses were left behind.

My mother went off to college in California and had adventures of her own.

I remember coming back home from a matinee at the Hines after seeing a movie about Crazy Horse. The stalwart warrior had been played by the actor Victor Mature. I thought the movie was great. My mother was not impressed.

“I went out with him, once,” she said.

It took me a minute to realize she meant Victor Mature, not Crazy Horse.

After college, she came back home and married my father. They had met when she was about 2 and he was 9 and had to hold her on his lap at some church gathering.

And then what? Well, the usual in those days: Four kids, not counting a miscarriage or so, raising a family and doing what was expected of her.

She also did what was not expected of her.

During the 1950s, she was the key leader of the Portland-Wayne Township School Board, moving it through post-World War II transformation. That was followed by a stint as president of the Indiana School Boards Association. I think she was the association’s first woman president.

In the meantime, she was writing columns — without a byline — for The Graphic, the weekly my parents launched in 1949. It would be interesting to know how many of those “Jay Bird Chatter” columns were hers.

With her kids grown, she stayed active. After moving to Richmond, she was deeply involved in issues involving both the arts and the environment.

What would she think of the world and the community at 103?

I think she’d be frustrated about the delays in responding to climate change. I think she’d be thrilled by the developments at Arts Place. I think she’d be delighted by the quality of education offered by Jay Schools and would be impatient about making improvements.

One thing is certain, she would have opinions and be ready to share them.

It’s in the genes.