I is for In-the-News

It wasn’t unusual that Gail Martin’s name showed up in the newspaper fairly often. In some cases, she submitted public relations pieces to the paper to promote the farmer’s market. She became savvy about PR during our 4-H days.

Other times the papers featured Mom because she did interesting things. Now maybe a program about vintage aprons wouldn’t find space in the New York Times or the Chicago Daily Tribune, but the local papers, The El Dorado Times and The Andover Journal-Advocate, were glad to fill their pages with local tidbits like this.

This clipping highlights a folksy program that Mom presented many times to women’s groups and senior audiences. She read her essay “My Mother’s Apron” and talked about styles of aprons over the years.

She displayed the vintage aprons on a clothesline around the room.

My sister, Cindy, and Mom collected quite a variety of aprons from yard sales. They displayed these on a clothesline for the talks. She encouraged members of the audience to participate in an apron fashion show, selecting one they liked from the clothesline and modeling it for the audience while Mom told about it.

Gail Martin’s program on vintage aprons – newspaper clipping.

You can read her essay, “My Mother’s Apron,” on the Our Echo website. There’s even an audio clip there so you can hear it in Mom’s own voice.