About
Our grandmother was a remarkable human. She was loved by all who knew her and she loved and cared for everyone she knew.
Beatrice Mildred (Hanson) Tryon was born November 21, 1917 and she passed on February 20, 2011. For 68 of her 93 years of life, she wrote daily in her diary. Very few days were ever missed. And while her entries were not verbose, they provide us remarkable insight to her personal world and her views of the world in which she lived.
Before Grandma B died, my mother, June R. Tryon, took on the monumental effort of creating a large print version of Grandma B’s diary, nearly 25,000 diary entries. She spent many hours sitting at a Macintosh notebook computer typing in entry after entry. As you review the images below you can get a sense for the difficulty of this work. This wonderful work also left us with a digital version of the diary, enabling the GrandmothersDiary.com project.
When the retyping of the diary was complete, Mom explained why she took on this task in a note she wrote at that time:
Completing Mom Tryon’s diary has been a labor of love.
The idea started as a result of Mom expressing how nice it would be if she could re read her diaries which she started in 1943. Because of her vision that task would be very difficult, if not impossible to do.
The early diaries were 5-year diaries, small in format, leather bound, with a strap and key. Each page had a small space for an entry to be written each year for 5 years. Needless to say, after all those years, many of the entries were blurred and distorted.
But, it seemed like such a worthy task that the project began.
I had decided to use 18-point type and arrange each year in a separate 3-ring notebook. Each completed notebook had the year placed on the outside spine so that it would be clearly visible to Mom. Additionally, I decided to reduce the type size and make a copy of each year for Mom’s son Jim. Two more copies were made for our two sons, Steven and Daniel. And an additional copy we kept for ourselves.
My copies have been arranged numerically in four 4-inch binders with tabs to indicate the year. An impressive document to say the least. (Approximately 2015 pages).
As the project moved along, we would take the completed years to Mom. They got a lot of attention since her friends, and relatives were always curious to check specific dates to see what she may have written on those days. The diaries, even without the large print addition, had always been a source of accurate information about births, deaths, worldly events, local news and family happenings. People would often come to her to have her check out some information they knew would have been accurately recorded in her diary.
Over time, the historic record cannot be ignored. For it offers vast information about people, places, and the growing and changing world in which she lived.
Throughout the document, Bea’s optimistic and positive outlook is evident. She loved her husband, her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. She loved her relatives and like her own mother, took great pride in knowing her family history. She loved her neighbors and cared about them. She offered her talents and gifts to the world in which she lived, and her diaries reflect the faith she had throughout her entire life.
Unfortunately, the 18-point yearly records were not completed before her passing in the winter of 2011. I regret that I did not push harder to complete the project before her death. I know she enjoyed reading all the years that were completed for her as there are references throughout the later diary years to indicate how much she liked re reading the years that had been especially typed for her poor vision. She would often write, “It is like reliving my life all over again.” For that I am so thankful for I know how much the diary project pleased her.
After her death, it would have been easy to stop the retyping. But whenever I reflected on that, I felt compelled to carry on. I am sure she would have wanted me to complete the project. Furthermore, I wanted Jim, and our family to see the whole picture. To understand the roots of their upbringing, and know this person they called mom, grandma, or great grandma. So the completed work is here before us.
Her last entry, December 28, 2010 was “Jim home”, a reference to his being out of town and her need to know he was now nearby. It was almost as if she was waiting for his return to begin the process we all realized would shortly be her last days with us.
Since her last entry was December 28, Vernon will add some entries to the 2011 diary using notes he took until her passing.
Living in a day of computer technology (A far cry from the beginning of the diary) our son Steven has built a website called grandmothersdiary.com On that site, you too can read or browse the diary years at your leisure.
We hope you enjoy reading and searching through Grandmother’s Diary!
We invite and encourage family and friends to add comments to any of the diary posts on this website! Please add additional details, remembrances, and context to help us all learn more about the people and times described in Bea’s diary! Thank you!
Please note that all posts are manually moderated to prevent spam. Your comments will not appear immediately. Thank you for understanding.
If you have questions about our family or this website, please reach out to us! We would also like to hear from anyone using this content as part of an education curriculum—so that we are aware and because we’d like to know how it has been used and if it has been helpful.
Thank you!
— Steven J. Tryon, Grandson of Bea, Son of June & Vernon
June and Vernon Tryon, the daughter-in-law and son of Beatrice Mildred (Hanson) Tryon, each wrote about the diary published on this website. These words were included with printed versions of the diary that were offered as Christmas gifts to other members of the family.
Foreword
— Vernon Arthur Tryon, Son
As children so often do, I gave my mother a Christmas present that was obviously picked out and bought by someone else. It was Christmas 1942. I was six, and Mom was 26. The present was a five-year diary; a small book of blank four by five inch pages scarcely an inch thick, with four lines for each day covering five consecutive years. Thus, my mother began a daily ritual, which continues to this day, Christmas 1999.
Mom’s diary is a record of the small and large daily doings, comings, and goings on our part of the Tryon family in the last three-fifths of the twentieth century—the second millennium—and still writing. It is an account of daily life in rural northern New York State, beginning in the uncertain and oppressive days of World War II.
What began as the record of one household eventually became a record of three, as I went off to college and my brother, Jim, to the Air Force, and we married and established our own homes and had children. Mom kept track of many of our experiences, and her grandchildrens, along with her own.
The diary is a factual notation of what happened day by day throughout the stages in the life of Beatrice Tryon—daughter, sister, wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, friend, neighbor, church woman, youth group leader, caretaker.
Emotions are generally not reported. Mom is nothing if not practical and pragmatic. Emotions are taken for granted. There were plenty of emotions which can be presumed by reading between the lines—lines recording the death in France during the war of a brother-in-law, the deaths of parents and younger brother, the admission of her husband to a nursing home with Alzheimer’s disease in their sixty-second year of marriage, and all the typical trials that come with life. But there are plenty of uplifting moments with their special emotions—births of children, and grandchildren, new homes and activities, marriages, healing, good neighborliness, family reunions, and visits and letters exchanged. Yes, there is emotion, but it remains private.
In the closing days of 1999, my wife, June, undertook the task of transcribing Mom’s diaries so they could be saved and shared in the family. It also allowed the text to be enlarged so Mom could continue to read her notations in spite of severely failing eyesight. She continues to keep her diary, although she has changed to a larger, one-year book, which accommodates a bolder pen that she is able to see.
Answering June’s questions, as she worked to read the diary, has caused me to recall many of my own life’s experiences and people I encountered on my journey. It has made me realize that this diary is also the story of the formative years of my life and my brother’s, and reading it brings one as close as possible to walking in another’s footsteps.
I hope that my mother’s grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and future generations yet unborn will read her diary, appreciate her life and contributions to our family, and treasure the foundation which Mom and others helped lay for them.
Introduction
— June Ruth (Gehm) Tryon, Daughter-In-Law
Mom Tryon’s first diary contains an introduction written by the manufacturer. It reads:
Memory is elusive—capture it. The mind is a wonderful machine. It need but be just refreshed and incidents can again be revived in their former clarity. A line each day, whether it be of the weather or of more important substances, will in time to come bring back those vague memories, worth remembering, to almost actual reality.
Since the diary is a 5-year diary, it goes on to say:
Five years of your life, in written form, will be your reward for keeping this book faithfully and accurately. You will record your daily habits, your thoughts, and events of importance. As you round out this chronicle of your doings, you will be able to check back a year from the time you are writing, and see at a glance your activities of a year ago. As you go along, you will be able to turn aside the veil of forgetfulness, and see the events of two, three, and even four years ago. You will find amusing recollections that will bring chuckles—possibly business affairs whose record will prove valuable, and certainly little precious memories that you will want to keep in permanent form which this book provides.
When I read the preceding statement for the first time, it seemed to me that it would also be an appropriate introduction for these transcriptions. I include it here for your reflection. Bea also kept significant family events in a “Memorandum” section in the back of each diary.
It has truly been a joy, beyond all measure, for me to transcribe Mom Tryon’s diaries and be a part of this project. It is my hope that they will fulfill a worthy purpose for Bea, (or for the reader). I appreciate Mom’s request to preserve family history, and her confidence in my ability to begin the task.
Additional Information
Beatrice and Merrill operated a dairy farm in Philadelphia, NY. Additional information about that farm—which is frequently referenced in Grandma B’s diary entries—is available on WalkaboutChronicles.com.
