Eighty-five years ago today, Gertrude Marguerite Bates was born in Morristown, New Jersey. Called “Bunny” by the family, a tradition accorded the youngest child, she was known to kith and kin by that name her entire life, since she never had younger siblings.
She didn’t have a particular interest in cars, but she drove them from the time she was eligible for a license, and Philip Foster often lent her his Model A Ford during their courtship. Their firstborn arrived in 1944, and showed an immediate and unexpected attraction to wheeled vehicles, including the 1935 Ford sedan, which he called “Mommycar” and the Model A, dubbed the “Little Truck” because Dad had installed a pickup box to make it useful in his woodworking business. The war was on, and she, a horticulturalist, grew Belladonna and other medicinal plants for the armed forces while his wood shop built test models of radar antennas. She started to write a book on herbs, but put it aside when her son began escaping his basinette.
The three of us moved to Connecticut in the summer of 1946; my sister arrived in December. We had a small farm at Falls Village, with room to grow seed crops and create a show garden which she enjoyed showing visitors. The next year her journalistic engery found an outlet in The Herb Grower, a small quarterly they would publish for the next forty years. Dad bought a printing press and other publishing machinery, and production of the magazine became a family affair. Her book was finally published the year I graduated from college. Her articles on herbs also appeared in magazines such as House Beautiful, Flower and Garden, The Herbarist, and occasionally in the New York Times, something her son has never achieved.
In April 1954, quite out of character, Dad bought her a three-year-old red Nash Rambler convertible. She was very fond of it, passing it on to her children when they learned to drive. Her last car was a Volkswagen Beetle, purchased new in 1965. She drove it until the onset of Alzheimer’s took her off the road in 1991. My daughter Harriet is presently in the process of restoring it.
In 1975, Gertrude “Bunny” Foster was honored by her colleagues in the Herb Society of America with the Helen deConway Little Medal of Honor for her years of growing, researching and writing about herbs. After her passing in November 1997, HSA’s Connecticut Unit established the Gertrude B. Foster Award for Excellence in Herbal Literature in her memory.
She loved her grandchildren, teaching them important life skills as they grew older. We don’t have too many pictures of our whole family, since someone was usually behind the camera operating the shutter. This one, taken by visitors at Cape Cod in 1954, shows my sister Rosemary in the middle and me at lower right. At left are Dad’s friend Ralph Musser and his daughter Nancy. The Chevy wagon is Ralph’s; he worked for GM’s Turnstedt hardware division.
Fosters value their heirlooms. Many things from this picture are still in the family. The desk, the chair, the lamp and the cuckoo clock are here with us, the hutch cabinet, which we called “Welsh dresser,” is with my niece in Colorodo. And we still have the Nash, too.
