My Birthday - "Little Sister Snow"

Excerpts taken from "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman" by Lucile Ellingwood Morrow, Feburary 7th, 1946

Lucile Ellingwood Morrow was born on February 18, 1891, in Rocky Ford, Colorado.

"February has an unusual number of days of peculiar interest, most of them birthdays; Lincoln, Washington, Dickens. and the poets Lowell and Longfellow were born in February;  then there is St. Valentine's Day, though not a birthday, it was named for a Catholic saint and is given over to that kind of sentiment that we all enjoy but which must not be taken all too seriously.

I, too, am happy to find my birthday falls within such illustrious company of notables; My Mother used to call me "Little Sister Snow" because I was born in a blizzard." 


Note:   From Lucile's book, "Father was .snowbound in a sheep camp in the mountains of Colorado shortly after I was born, when he came across a magazine article about the opening of the University of Chicago, its creed of freedom from 'barriers of race, religion or sex, founded upon the theory that scholarship should be based not upon "Who are you?" but rather "What can you do?"  And he vowed that every child he had should attend that school." 
The story goes that Lucile's father had taken extra seasonal work as a sheepherder in the spring after his teaching job was comptlete.  The men were stranded in the mountains of Colorado with the sheep and spent days in a camp waiting for the blizzard to pass.  The mountain camp walls were lined/papered with all kinds of paper - magazines, newspapers, etc.   Mr. Ellingwood, not being one to sit idle, read every "wall" or "newspaper" in the camphouse. 
During that time, he read an article about a new university founded by John D. Rockefeller that promised to provide an equal education for "all." 
Only two of his children survived to adulthood, but both Ellingwood children were enrolled at The University of Chicago and Lucile graduated from the famous institution in 1917 - a class made up of three men and three women - true equality in those days.