The Girls — New Voodou

Kathryn and Marion Nolan on a visit to Butte

The current celebration of Women's History Month and International Women's Day on March 8 has me remembering all the wonderful women who hired and encouraged me early in my career. And, of course, the exceptional women who been my friends and colleagues across the years— what a list of successful and supportive women. What would I have done without them?

I am reminded too of my great aunts who modeled working world success and independence long before I was born. Marion and Kathryn, "the girls" as we called them, left their home and family in Butte, Montana to move to Los Angeles in 1928. A radical relocation in those days and yet they remained living and working in the city for more than 40 years.

The Nolan sisters, Marion and Kay, Helen and my grandmother Della were born in Salt Lake City, and raised in Butte. Their father John was a plumber who moved his family in pursuit of better work. He had relocated from Providence, Rhode Island with his wife Mary to Utah where work was plentiful during the construction of the Latter-day Saints Temple, which was dedicated in 1893. While demand for skilled workmen declined in Salt Lake after the completion of the Temple and several adjacent buildings, Butte was booming.

The sisters and their brother Jack grew up in Butte and were educated in the city's public schools, all of them completing commercial courses that gave them solid skills. Upon graduation they went to work in the offices and shops of the bustling city. They were a close and lively household, until family life began to change when Helen married in 1915 and Della in 1921. The greatest change of all came with the death of their mother Mary in 1924.

Exactly when did Marion and Kay decide that it was time to leave home? They would have had to save enough money to pay for travel and support themselves until they found work in a place where they had no connections. There were some relatives, possibly maternal aunts, in Southern California but they lived east of the city in orchard country. Nonetheless by early 1928 they were prepared to move. By the fall they rented an apartment in Los Angeles, and found work, Marion as a bookkeeper and Kay as a stenographer.

It must have been a shock to find themselves in sunny, relatively verdant southern California after living in Butte with its active mines, mills and smelters that could turn even a bright day gray. Their first apartment was on Westlake Avenue not far from MacArthur Park. Over the years they lived in several other apartments in the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood, walking to shopping and church and taking advantage of the Red Car transit system for work. In the 1920's the Pacific Electric Railway Company operated the largest electric railway system in the world. Marion and Kay could have taken the Red Cars out to see the old aunts near San Bernadino and down to Balboa Island for vacations.

The sisters regularly returned to Butte to visit family and friends. In family photos they are often wearing beautiful fur coats, which they might not have needed in Los Angeles, but surely impressed the folks in Butte. Sometime in the 30's my grandmother and my young mother took the train to visit the girls. Marion and Kay showed off their new hometown taking them to Hollywood studios, westside beaches and even to Palos Verdes, where my grandmother wanted to buy a property. My grandfather back in Butte nixed the deal, saying the land would fall into ocean. This year's rains have finally proven him right.

In 1957 they invited my recently widowed grandmother to come live with them. Within a short time, they settled her on the Murphy bed in the living room and helped her find a secretarial job—her first since her marriage 35 years before. When my family moved to California that same year, we visited all three Nolan girls often. They were quick-witted good company, teasing one another and telling stories. Even after my grandmother moved to Ventura to live with us, we would often drive to Los Angeles on Sunday afternoons to visit, taking them out to a neighborhood restaurant or enjoying Marion's "savory chicken stew".

The Nolan sisters in Butte in 1961—Kay, Helen’s granddaughter Patti, Helen, Marion and Della

After retiring they continued to live in their cozy one-bedroom apartment at 516 South St. Andrew's Place until Kathryn's health failed. Marion lovingly nursed her sister until Kay died in 1971. Marion took her back to Butte to be buried in Holy Cross Cemetery not far from the graves of their parents and bought a companion headstone with room for her own name.

Helen, the eldest sister, widowed since 1960, was living alone in her longtime home in Butte. She invited Marion to live with her. Once again, Marion nursed her sister through her final illness and in 1974 buried her next to her husband Albert Pettibone at Holy Cross. Marion was there to attend my grandmother's funeral when we brought her body back to Butte to buried next to my grandfather Tom Liss in 1976. Marion continued to live in the home on Silver Street for another decade until she too needed skilled nursing care and moved to the Butte Park Royal. She died in 1988, at age 94 having cared for herself and her sisters for 60 years always doing so with equal parts affection and sensible decisions.

I am proud to be her namesake, Nancy Marion, and hope to be as good model of familial love and strength as she was.