Pauline Hawksworth says she has no regrets.

Pauline Hawksworth

“I’ve had a pretty good life, an interesting life,” says Pauline. “I was very happy from the time I got married.”


At age 15 Pauline married a young man she met stationed at the U.S. Air Base in her hometown of Pueblo, Colorado. “I told mother I’d run away and get married if she wouldn’t let me,” says Pauline, still spicy at 82. Pauline lived with her parents after her husband Harold was shipped overseas. “I missed him like crazy but I knew when I married him I’d be faced with that,” says Pauline.

Pauline was born in 1927 and remembers growing up poor during the Great Depression. After her steelworker father was laid off from his job he delivered handbills for 50 cents a day. He also worked at a dairy farm outside of Pueblo to work off the family’s dairy bill. She remembers their refrigerator being repossessed. She also recalls the government dumping food, supposedly to keep food prices from plummeting. When her mother and uncle caught wind of the plan to bury peaches at the city dump, they went and dug them up. “The next day mother was canning peaches,” recalls Pauline. Later, when potatoes were dumped her father went and collected those. “There was a shortage of everything – sugar, flour, gasoline. We had ration cards. You were allowed so much of all of these,” says Pauline. During the war Pauline and her brother would collect used gum wrappers and other bits of tin foil and aluminum because the government would pay to recycle those materials.

Pauline found school boring and so she quit after she married Harold and went to work as a hat checker at the United Service Organization. The USO entertained servicemen by organizing dances, helping them with letter writing, and serving home-cooked meals. Although she didn’t care for school Pauline was an avid reader and she’d often ride the streetcar or bus to the public library where she’d check out books. She also bought books with babysitting money.

After the war Harold went to work for the Telephone Company in Pueblo to support his family. He was transferred to Denver in 1959 and then to Grand Junction in 1973. By then Pauline and Harold were parents of three girls – Linda, Patty and Robin.

Pauline worked for a year in a doctor’s office until family pressure – from her parents, her husband and her kids, who were in grade school at the time, convinced her to quit the job. Her daughter Patty hated going to a babysitter after school and would tell her mother how she missed coming home to the smell of cookies baking. So, although she loved her job, Pauline left it to become a stay-at-home mother.

Pauline and Harold were charter members of Redlands Methodist Church. Their grandson, Steven Christopher Perrott, now 35, was the first child baptized in the church. Harold passed away 10 years ago. Pauline moved to The Commons Assisted Living Community a year ago because she says she didn’t want her daughters – with families of their own -- to take on the role of caregiver.

"I like it very much,” says Pauline. “I don’t have to worry about planning meals. They clean my apartment. If I don’t make it to lunch or dinner, they’ll check up on you.” Every Thursday Pauline and her daughter Patty go shopping and out for lunch. “It’s our day,” says Patty.

By: Sharon Sullivan