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drastic
     difference in temperature between the South and Erie, with the clear implication that the South was to blame. Doctors, however,
     generally attribute lobar pneumonia either to chronic smoking or to a systemic infection, and Hubert was a heavy smoker.
    During Hubert’s illness all the children save Ann were farmed out to their father’s sisters in south Erie; Mrs. Boyd would
     take care of her husband and she would do it on her own. The children rarely visited. Marion came home once and found her
     father had been moved from his cold bedroom into her room. The windows were open to allow the wind off the lake to blow through—the
     idea, current in the medical community of the time, was to “freeze out” the pneumonia. Marion sat in a chair at the top of
     the steps, shivered with the cold, and cried.
    Icy temperatures and bitter winds were insufficient to cure the pneumonia and Hubert Boyd died January 19, 1930. He was thirty-seven,
     and was buried on John’s third birthday.
    When Marion was in her mideighties, she said her father’s death was not as painful as it might appear. In most families the
     father is home every night. But her father was “gone all the time.” She said that for months after the funeral she thought,
     “Oh, Dad’s on a trip.” But she was a teenager when her father died and her recollection was softened by the passage of seventy
     years. John was too young to understand the concept of travel and returning home. Even if he could, there had to have been
     a moment when the painful realization sank in that he would grow up without a father, that he was therefore different from
     other children.
    Hubert Boyd had only $10,000 in life insurance and most of that was used to pay off the mortgage. Elsie faced the insurmountable
     task of supporting and rearing five children. Ann and John were little more than infants, so whatever work she found would
     have to enableher to stay at home. But the Great Depression was spreading across America and even a bustling port city such as Erie was
     beginning to feel the effects.
    She had still another burden, a self-imposed burden. As the wife of a salesman for the HammerMill, Elsie had enjoyed a certain
     lifestyle and a certain community standing. She wanted to maintain both. This meant people in Erie must think she did not
     really need to work.
    She began baking cakes and selling them to neighbors. None of the children remembers the price, but in the early 30s she could
     have made only a few cents on each cake. She made various sorts but became famous around Erie for her devil’s food cake and,
     at Christmas, her date-and-nut cake. One Christmas she had orders for eighty cakes, and for several weeks the house turned
     into a bakery. For so many cakes to come from such a small oven in such a short period of time necessitated split-second timing
     from dawn to dusk. Elsie Boyd did not allow the children to help. They were ordered to stay out of the kitchen.
    Mrs. Boyd also began selling Christmas cards and stationery, and found a third job conducting telephone solicitations for
     advertisements that went inside program booklets for banquets. She did this from the house on Lincoln Street and tended to
     the children between calls.
    Marion remembers that when her mother solicited ads from the home telephone, her voice was deep and commanding, “strong, persuasive,
     and in control.” Mrs. Boyd wanted people in Erie to know that even though her husband was dead, nothing had changed. The Boyd
     family of Lincoln Avenue was doing quite well, thank you.
    But events were gathering, momentous events, beyond even the ability of the redoubtable Elsie Boyd to control.
    Elsie settled into a curious dichotomy in raising her children. On the one hand she allowed them almost free reign, especially
     around the house. The postman once reported to Mrs. Boyd that John was running naked through the backyard and playing in the
     sprinkler. At the dinner table,