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Note: She lived with grinding poverty from about the age of ten until into her forties. She spent much of the Great Depression as a single parent or coping with an alcoholic husband. Worked hard to support her two daughters, often going without food herself to feed others. Was once arrested for making bathtub gin during prohibition. A neighbor on the floor below (a competitor) had informed on her. Her parents and many sisters all helped support each other through some terrible times and became fiercely loyal to each other. She remained generous to her own detriment throughout her life. As her Grandson, forty years later, I still marvel at how powerful, selfless, and unconditional her love was. - William Mahan
EXCERPTS FROM FAMILY HISTORY
BASED ON INTERVIEWS WITH
MARIA VALLIERE, DELIENNE VALLIERE, LOUIS VALLIERE,
JEAN VALLIERE & DORIS MARTEL BY WILLIAM MAHAN 1908: "...Another neighbor, the Macombe�s, unwittingly supplied raw materials to one of Maria�s (10 yrs old) money making enterprise. " I used to be good at creative sewing. I would sell doll hats to the other kids for a penny or for a couple of pins. I needed feathers to make the hats and the Macombes had a chicken yard. I was friendly with their daughter and we would both go into the coop area and scare the life out of the chickens. In their flutter they�d loose enough feathers for me to make all the hats I wanted. Her parents would come out wondering what was wrong with the chickens and we�d simply say �nothing�, because by then there was nothing wrong with them"...
1909: "At sixteen Doc was already working as a telegrapher for Western Union. Maria thought her brother was a genius. He had to be to understand all that electrical equipment that filled his room. There were copper coils, wires , head sets, vacuum tubes, and a spark gap telegraph key. He had assembled it all into a �wireless� radio station which sat atop a single table set aside for that purpose. The room looked like something out of one of those Tom Swift books he gave her. "Tom Swift and His Bunch of Unfathomable Wires" she thought.
She knocked at his door but all she heard was a constant "tic-a-tap-tap, tic-a-tap-tic". She opened the door slowly and looked in. He sat at the wireless table facing the wall. There were two tightly wound copper coils to his left and an electrical box in front of him. In his left hand was a screw driver and under his right hand was the spark gap telegraph key he was clattering away at. A pair of ear phones hugged the crown of his head.
He had neither seen nor heard her enter the room so when he stop banging away at the key, she tapped him on the shoulder. Startled, he jerked the screw driver across the copper coils. A white arc of light knocked him out of his chair, and he landed on the floor looking up at his bug eyed little sister.
He yelled at her for not knocking before entering his room. Her eyes filled up and she bowed her head. He saw her lips move but couldn�t make out the words and then realized he was still wearing the head phones. He realized he couldn�t have heard her even if she had knocked the door down. He began to feel like a heel. He apologized and promised to teach her the Morse code. This seemed to cheer her up and when he asked her to help him turn the table around so it faced the door, she eagerly joined in.
It was during one of these lessons that the delivery boy from the laundry showed up. Doc�s room was on the first floor and the door was open. He couldn�t help but look in when he heard the clatter. He was Albert Martel and he was smitten by the gadgetry and Doc invited him to come over on the weekend to join in on the lessons he was giving Maria.
Before long they had rigged up another wireless four streets away in Albert�s room. Doc was converted immediately from genius to wise genius when he read the first test message from Albert. It read: "How is Maria?"
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