To My Mom

On this Mother's Day I would like to take a moment to remember one of the most lovely women I know, my mother Berneil Dorothy Riley Thornton. Mom is no longer with us. She passed away from cancer in 1997. She was only 74. She was much too young to leave and I was much too young to lose a mother. But the 7 decades she was on this earth, she lived quite a bit, saw quite a bit and experiended quite a bit. I could never encapsulate her life in a few short paragraphs but I did want to share a few details of the life of Berniel Riley and also share a few photos. The photos were recovered from slides and recently digitized along with all of the family movies. I apologize for the poor quality, I could not figure out how to take the photos off of the dvd presentation so I ended up having to shoot the images with a camera off of the computer screen. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. Mom looks pretty young in these pictures, and so beautiful! When you are the youngest of 8 children(which I was) your memories of your mother are from her 40's, 50's and 60's. It's nice to be able to look back and see what a vibrant, attractive woman she was. My mother was born in rural Iowa and moved to Sioux City when she was a young girl. Her mother was Maude May and her father was Earl. She had one sister Celeste and from what she told us, her mother also gave birth to twin boys who did not survive very long. If there was one thing about my relationship with my mother that I regret, it is that I did not ask her more about her childhood and her life. I would have liked to have known more. She was a very private person and never offered up a lot of information but I wish I had tried harder! My mother went to grade school through high school in Sioux City. She attended college in St. Louis and at the University of Iowa. She graduated from Iowa, I think with a home economics degree but if I am wrong, I hope someone will set the record straight. I do remember she worked in a lab so maybe her degree had something to do with the sciences. Somewhere in her late teens, early twenties my mother also served in the Marine Corps. I remember reading an article that was cut out of the Sioux City Journal which noted that Berneil was one of the first women from the Sioux City area to reach a specific rank in the Marine Corps. (Again, if one of my siblings can provide me more details, I will update that information). She was quite an accomplished individual. My mother met my father on a golf course in Sioux City and the rest, as they say, is history. They married, my father finished law school and they embarked on a family life together that would see them bring 8 children into the world. God Bless any mother who not only goes through the labor and delivery process for 8 children but who then has to raise 8 children! Berneil was also a teacher and worked many years outside of the house as a school teacher all while raising 8 kids. Many women simply could not do it today. It takes a very special person and Berneil Riley was very special. The things I remember most about my mother were her patience, her beautiful blue eyes, her love of shopping(my fondest memories are of shopping with my mother) her thriftiness(that's a bit of an understatement) her love for her children, and her willingness to do anything for them including cleaning up after them and doing their laundry to still making them breakfast when they were in high school. My mother was always very active. She would always have us biking, playing tennis, walking, swimming...she was always on the go. She did love her sleep. This is a trait many of us have inherited in the Thornton family. Not all but many of us love our sleep!! You don't think of Berneil being hip but I do remember her introducing us to yoga in the 70's. She never really did yoga but she was willing to try it out. I thought that was cool. She also was an extremely strong woman who never let anyone take advantage of her and always spoke up for herself and her family. I always remember that my father would let my mother negotiate all new car purchases because she would always, always get the best deal. I could go on and on but suffice it to say, Berneil Dorothy Riley Thornton was quite a woman. My only other regret in life is that she never got to see my children and they never got to meet their grandma but I hope to keep her memory alive in their lives through pictures, family movies and stories about my mom. Mom, Happy Mother's Day. I miss you a lot!