Happy Birthday Mimi!

Me and my grandparents, 1973, Sea Island, Ga.

Mimi and I making biscuits, 1975, Lyme, New Hampshire. She took care of me for a week or two when my sister was born. Did my smock not rock?

My grandparents at our first house in Auburn, 1978.


Four generations: Mimi, my Aunt Claudia, cousin Laura and her three children, Ryan, Kaitlyn and Evan, 2005. This was taken on a super hot August day in EdwinWarner Park in Nashville (hence a couple of unhappy kiddos).



Today my sole grandparent turns 86. She will never read this blog entry or any words that appear on a computer screen, but that's okay. She doesn't like a lot of attention or sentiment anyway. That's just Mimi.

My grandmother was born Elizabeth Ann, known as Betty, in 1922 in Dearborn, Michigan. She was the first born to a Swedish immigrant named John Eric Noreen and his French Canadian wife Isabelle Elizabeth Chartier. Mimi's father worked for one the Big Four auto companies.

My mother's and my first name are also Elizabeth -- a name that has has been carried on for more than a century. Mimi met my late grandfather, John Charles Wheeler, during the war in Detroit where she worked as a bank teller and he, an architect designing war planes. They moved back to his home land of Middle Tennessee and lived in Nashville since 1945, where my mother, named after Mimi and nicknamed Libby, aunts Claudia and Joan and I were born (and all in the same hospital, the now non-existent St. Thomas).

My grandfather, Boss, as we called him, started his own architecture firm in Nashville in 1953 called J.C. Wheeler and Associates. Their most prominent work was the 28-story First American Skyscraper, now known as Regions Center, was completed in 1969. It's not anything like the skyscrapers that line downtown Nashville today, but 40 years ago it was one of the tallest in the city - amazing to consider seeing how modest it looks by today's standards.

Mimi has four grandchildren, three great-grands and a beloved Scottish Terrier who has been known to be given homemade waffles and syrup for breakfast. Mimi lives independently in a house my grandfather designed and built for the family in the early 1950s where she has beautiful gardens and picture windows, perfect for bird and animal watching on a huge hilly lot in the neighborhood of Oak Hill.

She is a fantastic cook, still very active in her church, First Presbyterian on Franklin Road, and a life-long lover of visual art and oil painting specifically. As a child she fostered this appreciation in me, along with playing guitar (she gave me my first at around age 9) and this gesture of generosity and encouragement is one I will always be extremely grateful for as it has positively impacted many aspects of my adult life, including my chosen field and favorite past times.

Happy Birthday my dear Mimi!