I Have Had My Doll Donna for Seventy-six Years

On a chair in my bedroom sits my doll, Donna. I was four years old (in 1939) and my sister was two and a half when we got the dolls. Composition heads, hands and feet; cloth stuffed bodies; pink dresses and bonnets. They were the, most beautiful things we had ever seen.

The fact that Donna is still around is attributed to two things. First, Mommie, in an attempt to keep the precious dolls safe, hung them on the wall and allowed us limited play time. That time we used creatively. Our baby brother born a month before we got the dolls frequently was in need of a shirt or a diaper. The dolls were comfortable in those shirts and diapers.

In 1953 the fourteen year dolls had been stored away, safe from the attention of adolescent girls. I do not remember where Ivy stored hers, but mine was stashed away in the cedar chest which held extra quilts and unused clothing. Hence her survival.

A fire destroyed the house and most of the furnishings. One surviving item was the cedar chest, pushed out an open window, badly charred, but intact. Donna was intact. Albeit her composition face, hands and feet were cracked from the heat. But she lived even with her scars. In her dress and bonnet, the second since that fire in 1953, she sits proudly on the chair in the bedroom.