The Christmas Doll

(This memory was shared by Delores Clymens, Marvel’s baby sister.)

Marvel, my sister, came home for Christmas vacation from nurses training, and she did not have a gift for me.  She decided she would make a rag doll but didn’t know how she would keep it a secret from me, since she needed to use the sewing machine and work on the doll during the day with me watching her.  So she started sewing the doll and decided to tell me she was making the doll for the orphans.  I felt very sad as I thought she was making it for me.  Donald, Lorne, and Robert, my brothers, also started teasing me about the doll being made for the orphans.  Marvel was a very good seamstress and she took some fur buttons off of an old coat of our mother’s and made a fur coat and hat for the doll.  She made shoes from black oil cloth and made two dresses of different materials.  The little doll had blond curls made from yarn.  It was so perfectly sewn together.  She was my big sister and to think it wasn’t for me!  Christmas night the family opened their presents and to my surprise, the beautiful doll that I had watched Marvel make for the orphans was mine!  I believe I was around six or seven years old.  I still have the doll and it means a lot to me.  The doll is over seventy years old and still looks good, as you can see in the photo.  Delores Carol Hahn Clymens. 

Delores with Elmer. This would have been the summer after Delores received the precious doll gift.