I'm going to talk about something very painful to me. I've had the need to write about this for a long time. And the tears are aleady flowing.
It's about my mom. Doris Oleana Munniks. She died on November 30, 1989.
Every Womens Day jabs at me to tell her story.
She was, without doubt, one of the first modern day feminist. Born in a hollow in the back country of Appalachia. West by God Virginia. As was I.
In the build up to the war, my future Dad joined up like many Appalachian men not so much to go fight "krouts", but just a chance to get the hell outta there and create a future that didn't involve working the coal mines and living in company towns. In New York, on his way to Europe, he crowded himself and his guitar into small cubicle that, for a dollar, he could make a 45 vinyl record to mail home. He sang a song on it that included a question, "will you marry me".
I still have that record. It is one of my most cherished possessions. My Dad was soon after sent back stateside due to severe appendicitis.
She married my Dad very young. In fact, my Dad actually had to officially adopt her for the marriage to be legal. This was after all pre ww two very rural America. Dirt poor. No electricity or running water.
Hank Williams Sr was king.
When the war broke out she went to work for the war industries. Sylvania Electric to be precise. There her ambition and drive blossomed. She took up car racing and could keep with the best of them on West Virginia's version of Thunder Road. My Dad told me before he died that the both of them were one of the first members of a not yet named club that became NASCAR. And yes, my whole family was heavily involved in the moonshine trade.
My Dad eventually escaped the mines, first by switching to truck driver and the later to long distance driver. Which is how we found Los Angeles.
There she pushed the envelope even more. She brought with her skills learned on race tracks "back home" as West Virginia was forever referred to.
Jalopys, stock cars, sports cars, all at a time when women were not even allowed in the pits. Nothing frightened her.
In California, she got a job as a meter maid with the Alhambra Police Department driving a three wheeled Harly 45. She took classes at East L.A. college and soon rose in rank and ability. She also returned to car racing.
First doing powder puff derbies in older stock cars and racing jalopys on the figure 8 tracks of Long Beach Raceway, Ascot, and Willow Springs.
Riverside Raceway introduced her to fancy race cars like MGTCs, Triumphs,
Morgans, and at one point, a Mercedes 300 SL Gulwing.
Whenever she raced at Ascot I was always left in the capable hands of Dick Lane. Actually, I sat on his lap as he bellowed "Whoaaa nelly" as my mom careened around the track. Good times.
Tragedy eventually came, not on the track, but while working as an investigator for the P.D.
She was rear-ended by a then Federal Postal Truck and severely injured with what was then called "whiplash", an injury largely unheard of today due to the advent of headrests.
The fact she was driving a city car, on assignment in a downtown L.A. courtroom testifying for the county in a state case made for a very unique case. I still don't know how her lawyer did it, but to the day she died, she received a little check from each jurisdiction. A medical retirement followed.
It took two years before the neck brace could be put away.
She tried her hand at art and did the county fair circuit for a while, but it couldn't contain her energy. She worked as a private eye for a spell and then switched to riding shotgun for Brinks. Her and my Dad were separated for years and at some point divorced, the details of which were kept from me.
But eventually she met and married a Dutch H1b named Karl Munnuks an engineer who worked for Ampex and led a happy life. By this time I married and soon produced two fine boys of my own.
At 43, she provided her new husband a boy, born on my birthday! After years of Farrells ice cream parlor birthdays ( the Zoo was free on your bday), the combined party eventually ended.
Her years of stay at home mom routine got to her. She had to be unbound.
She applied for a position with Southern California Power, hoping to finish her working career at a desk job. Despite all her qualifications they turned her down. She saw it as age discrimination and took them to court. Same lawyer, same result, a huge win. The power company was forced to hire her.
In spite, they put her in the motor pool, changing transmissions and tires taller than she was on six ton trucks. They thought sure she would see it their way. For almost two years she resisted and emboldened other women working there to the point they through in the towel and relented, offering her a desk job.
She quit the next day.
A month later she was working as a Federal Marshal, a position she would hold entil her death.
She didn't want a memorial service. I spread her ashes at sea. Per her request.
She was an amazing woman.
I miss her greatly.
Thanks for reading her long delayed eulogy.