Isabelle (intended for Mother's Day, but, well...)

So today I am going to talk about Isabelle Louise Kratz Driscoll Parker -- otherwise known as Bobby's mother.  I would have done this earlier in the month, but my life has been a three ring circus since April, just recently coming to a head, and I couldn't seem to sit in peace long enough to form a single thought to blog about.

I've definitely noticed you don't have to be a Bobby fan for long to realize most people aren't very happy with Isabelle and how she mothered Bobby.  In most people's minds, she ranks alongside Walt Disney on the list of "Who did Bobby the dirtiest." There are alot of people who say they heard from this person who talked to that person, and therefore came to the conclusion she was a horrible stage mom, an emotionally abusive mother,  a money grabber who took advantage of Bobby's fame, a naive woman for having not identified Bobby's addiction earlier, and, oh!  How dare she not bring his body home from Hart Island in short order?  And to get remarried and not be buried next to Clet and her son's cenotaph?!

It's kind of endless.  And by the way, there might be something to alot of the accusations.  But I tend to be one of those people who says, if we don't know for sure (and we have few remaining primary sources that quote her or even knew her well), let's have grace and assume there was another side to her story.  Here's what's important:  Bobby loved her.  Even if, suppose, he spent alot of time frustrated with her and felt as an adult that there were ways in which she let him down, she was his mother -- and I've read enough about Bobby to know he was a loyal, loving friend.  I've every reason to believe he was the same way with his family.  That's about all I need to know in order to give Isabelle's memory a fair chance.

Here is a picture I found of her recently!  She was a young woman here.  I've always felt that Bobby favored her a good deal more than he favored his dad, except for the nose.  They certainly share the same bold eyes and full lips.  On either side are pictures of Bobby I feel resemble her the most here:

Isabelle died back in 1981, and aside from granting the interview in 1972 to Florence Epstein revealing what had happened to her son, we've never heard alot from her or about her.  I do hate that she was estranged from her grandchildren for whatever the reason.  I'm sure there was a story with a couple of sides behind this too, but out of respect for Bobby's children first and foremost, I think we should leave this topic alone.

Here are the pearls of first-hand knowledge we DO have.  Let's string them together and see what kind of necklace we end up with:

• We know she was a schoolteacher, and later worked for UCLA as a librarian part-time.
• By her own admission, she was a woman who liked to stay busy.
• Florence Epstein described her as jovial.
• She was born in 1904, and didn't have Bobby until 1937, so she was an older mom.  Not really by today's standards, but back then, thirty-three wasn't considered a spring chicken, especially in regards to having babies.  Knowing me and how I like to ask questions about everything, of course I've wondered, did she mean to wait so long?  Was it a struggle for her to get/stay pregnant, and that's why not only was Bobby born later, he was her only child?  This we are never told.
• According to her and assuming she was truthful in her interview, which we've no reason to doubt, Bobby gifted her during his adult years with a pair of gold earrings and a beautiful bedroom chair, "just because."
• She had lost a sister on the mission field to natives who killed her and the party she was with.  Another brother was a Baptist minister.
• Her father, Lemuel Kratz, had been a lawyer, and he died when she was only around eighteen.  Her mother, Susan Grace, remarried a man named Mahlon Hollingsworth -- all this courtesy of ancestry.com.  I know how to do my research when I need to!
• Speaking of her mother, the poor woman died in a car crash on her way to visit Bobby and Isabelle just before the release of Song of the South.  Can you imagine how hard it must have been for Bobby to continue to smile for the cameras during all that promotional work he and Luana did?
• She, herself, remarried a man named Nate Parker around three years after Cletus died.
• She is buried in her second husband's family plot, in the same cemetery as Cletus and Bobby's cenotaph (and not sure why she isn't close to them, but as you can guess, this is another reason she's given a good amount of heck).  Here is an image of that:

Something to keep in mind, though, is that some people are not big death planners, and if Isabelle hadn't taken care of her arrangements before she died, it might not have been her choice to be buried in the Parker lot, away from Bobby's cenotaph.  Her second husband, if still living, might have decided that for her.  Another obstacle may have been that by that time, there were no more plots available next to Clet.  I know my dad would have loved to have been buried close to his parents in the cemetery where our family rests, but the section they were buried in had been filled up by the time my dad passed.

Anyway, back to the facts listed above.  First of all, her claims about her sister are sadly true.  Mildred Kratz was killed on the mission field in the 20's, according to a local Cedar Rapids paper I found on newspapers.com. Isabelle had at least one more sister -- Gladys -- and a brother, Ronald, who was a Baptist pastor and died pretty young.  This, again, courtesy of ancestry.com and local papers.  

Time Out Moment:  I always try to give disclaimers about where I find things, but I can almost promise you that in every instance, I just do web searches using the right terms and pull stuff up.  Anyone can do it, so if you ever doubt information I give on here, please know that's how I found it and feel free to check behind me.  Some stuff is bound to be incorrect some of the time, but I try hard to be factual!  I unfortunately don't own much exclusive Bobby content from primary sources, so not able to verify that everything I find online is always 100% correct, but I do my best!  I try to verify things I learn in at least two places.

Anyway... in the interview Bobby did for Fred D. Brown, he said his mother worked to put herself through college to teach school, so she seems like she might have been a strong, resilient lady.  She was her own working woman for quite a few years before she met and married Clet.  But the fact that she remarried at an older age MIGHT tell us she was also a romantic who loved married life.

She was strict enough to set limits for Bobby, as we've read in many accounts.  She still gave him chores and had him save his money, and she gave him curfews on school nights and the weekends, according to Barbara Berch Jamison's article "The Dangerous Years."

Bobby was mentioned a couple times as having kept alot of pets, however; and in some of girlfriend Patricia Nolan's letters, she asks him if she can read any of the passages to his mom -- which indicates that maybe she was fond of the older woman and didn't mind sharing her affection for Bobby with her.  So a soft side of Isabelle must have existed.  

Now I'm going to mention what we have all probably thought about, and that is... if Isabelle found out Bobby had died just a year prior, wouldn't it have been simple enough for her to arrange for him to be brought up and reburied in the place where she memorialized him next to his father?  It should have been far easier to locate him then than it would have been later, and what mother wouldn't walk through hell barefoot to bring her baby home from a place like Hart Island?  Well... here's what I got to thinking about the other day when I asked myself the same question:

I want to tread lightly here, because I want us to think of Bobby as the person he was... not what became of him in death and after.  But we also can't ignore that there could have been logistical problems in transporting a body that had been underground a year.  I don't think I have to be specific here, I'm sure everyone understands.  And if we don't even want to imagine the complications that could have gone into that, then what must it have been like for Isabelle to have been faced with them?  What details might she have had to learn in order to discuss his identification?  How haunting might it have been for her to have to realize she would not, could not see him to tell him goodbye because of what death and the passing of time had rendered?  Maybe she felt she could hang onto her sanity much better -- be able to put one foot in front of the other without shattering to pieces -- if she let him lay where he was and be remembered who he used to be.  We can never begin to "armchair critic" our way into a situation like this.

So I hope you've enjoyed seeing these pictures, learning a little about Isabelle if you didn't already know this stuff, and maybe thinking of things in a different light.  Mrs. Driscoll was just as imperfect as the next mother -- and who knows, maybe the worst of the awful rumors about her were true.  But she was still Bobby's mother, and if nothing else, we can be grateful that she gave him to the world, even if just for a little while.