52 Ancestors In 52 Weeks: Nickname

22 November 2016

Dear Keith,
Friends together for over 50 years, your mama and I had many girlhood and teenage adventures and misadventures. We were the original Laverne and Shirley. Yep, that was us.

Did you ever wonder how your mom got the longstanding nickname of “Cleo”? Did you know she pinned it on herself? Let me tell you about how that came about…

In 1963, we were just entering adolescence. The neighborhood gang of guys and gals would go to the movies every week. James Bond movies were tops on our list. There were also movies that our parents said we could not go to…too adult…like the movie “Tom Jones” was on the forbidden list. Also on the list was Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Liz and Dick had provided the world with a paparazzi view of the whole love affair scandal. So our parents axed that one off the list.

That summer with that movie and Liz Taylor in mind, your mom stated that she was just as attractive as Cleopatra…that Cleo had nothing on her…why, just look around at her loyal followers. So, Cathy became Cleo. She insisted that was her name, and it stuck. Fondly, I called her by that name for the rest of her life as did others. (By the way, back in those days, kids often had nicknames with quite different birth names. One never knew someone’s real name until their graduation picture appeared in their senior yearbook.)

In sharing memories with you of your mom, I want you to realize that she was someone beyond being your mom. She was a crazy teenaged girl who loved her friends. She was a woman who cherished her friends forever. Then after growing up, she became a mother who was eternally proud of her three children. And so, I remember my best friend Cleo.

Love always,
MaryAnne

Note: Cathy Irene Covert and I were best buds who always stayed in contact and visited one another even after I moved to Pennsylvania at the age of 15. We told stories together…we laughed over our antics and misadventures. We talked about the day we would be old ladies, sitting on the porch in rockers retelling those stories. That day never came…I know Cleo is waiting in heaven so we can finally do that.