Her brother died of appendicitis when she was six, another baby was stillborn, and Grace became the oldest child of Joseph Knowles McSpadden and Eleanor Porter McSpadden. They lived in the small Texas Hill Country town of Clifton. As an adult, Grace wrote reflections on her childhood. Reading them now, I am struck by how many themes would be repeated from one generation to the next.
“Daddy was a Texan all the way: He was outspoken, individual, had strong feelings, a hot temper which he lost quickly and got over quickly, moving from loud denunciations to equally loud declamations about how he loved Mother or us, whichever was the object of his wrath. He was most affectionate and loved to have us around him. He was sensitive and his feelings were easily hurt. He was an avid Bible reader and was outspoken about injustices and discrepancies in the Word and in life. He was given to saying, ‘I want to ask the Lord about…’ and then giving some instance of something he wanted to have explained.”
At first, the family were comfortably well off. “He was on the way up as a successful business man; made rather good money. We had a Baldwin baby grand piano, Mother had a real pearl necklace and a fine diamond ring. We had built our own home, which was attractive and well-furnished. But things went bad and he lost the zip and punch.”
Joe lost more than punch. Amid the Great Depression, he spent the little money the family had on a losing run for county judge. In the wake of that loss, Grace’s brother Tom later told me, Eleanor sold the diamond ring (and a lot more) to move the family to Austin. This made it possible for each of the children (by then also including Josephine and Joe Jr.) to go to the university, while Eleanor ran a boarding house.
“Daddy loved Mother and admired her. He was hard to live with, I’m sure, and I have seen him hurt Mother a great deal. She had a wonderfully patient and sweet and enduring nature and most of the time would put up with his outbreaks and vituperations,” Grace wrote. Uncle Tom told me that one day, when the family were all at home and the parents had been arguing, Eleanor walked out the front door, saying, “I can’t take this anymore.” A good while later, she came back. “I can take it,” she told her children. “I come from good stock.”
Eleanor, wrote Grace, was “wonderfully skillful in making a meal out of practically nothing. I can remember once in Clifton before we moved when there was no money and nothing much to eat in the house. We wondered what kind of lunch we would come home to find at noon. We found delicious pan omelet with chili. I never shall forget the feeling of ‘marveling’ that I had for her.
“Mother came from a family dedicated to learning and proud of its educated sons and daughters. Every one of them pursued higher education [this in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s}, and each was constantly aware of the need to make the best of himself through constant improvement of mind, body and spirit. Mother’s sister, my Aunt Pearl, was vigilant in seeing that we read the right things and said the right things and acted the right way; Mother was only a little less so. We always had the feeling we could do anything we set our minds to.”
It didn’t always go quite that smoothly. At the University of Texas, Grace majored in English and journalism. She was religion editor of the Daily Texan. She was inducted, together with Claudia Taylor (later Lady Bird), into the journalism honorary society. But she had had some readjusting to do, in the wake of the family’s move. She reflected on this when, just after graduation in 1935, she went to a leadership session at Geneva Glen Camp in Colorado, where she wrote:
“When I graduated from a small town high school I felt, as I think most high school graduates do, that I knew a great deal about everything. Because the school was small I had had an active part in most every event or activity the school offered. I think I must have tried my hand at everything!
“Yet this ability to do a great many things even on this small scale had the unfortunate effect of developing in me a feeling that I could do most anything I wanted to and, through this ability to do a lot, ‘get by’ with other things. This attitude prevailed until I had completed the first semester of my university work. When my grades came in my pride went plop! Because of my financial conditions I was unable to pledge a sorority and, since our family had just moved into the university town, I was almost wholly lost. Here I was doing nothing and I had thought I was able to do and know everything.”
Her disappointment in herself jolted her. “After a summer away from home, and after I had had my first college love experience, I began to see more clearly what had been wrong with my attitude and to resolve to make it healthier. And now, after four years and four summers of college, church work, study, reading, friendships and self-study, I feel that I am nearer finding my place in life than I have been since I left high school.”
Still, she added, “I know so little, yet I have the most burning desire to learn more. I realize that I am very emotional, and because I feel such a need for friends, I have to be doubly careful in physical control. With this greater self-realization and equipped with a stronger and deeper faith in myself, which has come chiefly through reading, religious experiences and friendships, I feel much more sure of my life. And even though I cannot see my way clear to obtaining the work in religious journalism which I want to go into, I am keeping my eye on my goal.”