Page 23 - Always Virginia

Always Virginia 11

Joe—who was also over six feet tall—had a special regard looking
after their youngest sibling, Bartholomew, III, who was sickly as a
boy and shorter at five-feet-ten. Bartholomew III’s, wife, the stylish
St, Louis beauty with Gibson Girl hair, Mary Pearl Lawler Day,
recalled how in the early years of their marriage, Bart nearly died
from one incidence of what may have been hemorrhagic purpura.
She said the attending physician told her, “You’ll be a widow
by morning.” She recalled in an interview recorded by her grandson
Jack Fritscher on May 8, 1972, and included in this book: “Daddy
[Bartholomew III] used to say we were descended from Irish kings,
because he one time had that blood disease only royalty gets...where
the blood just comes out of your pores. Daddy was in the hospital
for six weeks and they cured him by giving him horse serum and
he was never sick again.”
She always referred to her husband as “Daddy” and he called
her “Mom.” She never liked his nickname “Batty” which his birth
family called him to distinguish yet one more “Bartholomew”
from his grandfather, father, and cousins. Even so, she named
her own firstborn, John Bartholomew. She herself preferred to be
called “Mary” or “Mrs. Day,” even though some old-timers, and
her son-in-law Jim Chumley, sometimes called her “Pearl,” a name
she disliked, while her grandchildren always called her “Nanny.”
In self-fashioning their family clan, Mr. and Mrs. Bartholomew
Day, Junior, gave pride of place to their firstborn, John Tyrrell
Day, Junior, Virginia Day Fritscher’s uncle, who was profiled by
Conger and Hull:

One of Calhoun County’s most distinguished citizens
is John T. Day, Junior, who has been officially connected
with the county for twenty-four years, eight years as county
clerk and sixteen years as judge of the county court. He is
also one of the county’s leading orchardists and farmers
and has been very successful in all of his affairs. He was
born on the 2nd of November, 1872, on a farm formerly
owned by his uncle, but now owned by himself, and