Christina (Beardsley) McGaughey

Ancestors

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I was born on October 3, 1954 in Brooklyn Heights, Kings County, New York to Conrad Ten Eyke Beardsley and Lillemor Widholm Beardsley. My mother, at the time of my birth, was a Green Card holder awaiting her citizenship. My mother was born in Jonkopping, Sweden on April 17, 1919. She first came to the United States during WWII as the private secretary to the Swedish ambassador. After the war she returned to Sweden, but was persuaded by her mother that her future lay in America. She returned to the United States and was living in New York City when she met my father at an afternoon tea dance held by their church. They married in August 1952 in East Hampton, New York. They were living on Hicks Street in Brooklyn when my brother and I were born. My father purchased the house on Hicks Street because it was very cheap, and spent several years rescuing it from probable collapse. My mother said that the kitchen side of the house was 18 inches lower than the other side when they moved in. She stood in the kitchen, pregnant with my brother, looking at a level while my father jacked up the house in the basement. The house has since been restored to its 1840 glory and is part of historic Brooklyn Heights. My father was a mining engineer by profession and his work took him to Bluefield, WVA in 1960 where we lived on Oakhurst Avenue. My father re-wired and re-plumed that house while working for the Denver Equipment Company. In 1962, my father decided to strike out on his own as a land-developer in Heber Springs, Arkansas. He had worked at the bauxite mines in Bauxite, Arkansas before and during the first part of WWII. He had purchased land on the proposed shoreline of a Corps of Engineers flood control lake on the Little Red River while he was serving in the US Navy. We arrived in Heber Springs as much hated "D... Yankees" and my mother was a "GD foreigner". Life as the only non-southern people in an Ozark town was somewhat unpleasant for my brother and me, as well as my parents. My sister had it a bit easier since she started kindergarten there. Instead of land development, we became restaurateurs. My mother had never really cooked before that, but she was given a copy of the Home Economics Teacher's Cookbook for Meat by the one couple in town who were friendly to us. The rest is history. Because of my mother's personality, she went on to have a long-running Wednesday noon cooking show on the Little Rock Channel 11 station. The parade of characters that passed through our restaurant was truly wonderful, from the famous and nearly famous to the salt of the earth. My mother gave up her television show in 1971 but kept receiving fan mail until about 9 months before her death in 2015. I joined the United States Navy as a Supply Corps Officer in 1977 swearing that I would never return to Heber Springs. I was able to use all the knowledge and skills that I learned in the restaurant to my advantage in the Navy, especially when I was stationed as a Food Services Officer. I met my husband on my first ship, the USS Orion, and we decided to get married three days later - 38 years later, we hope that it will work out. This was somewhat of a problem since it was against Navy Regulations for a husband and wife to be stationed together. Because the Orion was homeported on the island of Sardinia, Italy, and because we were the two most senior lieutenants in two different departments, the commanding officer decided that he would allow us to get married and one of us - that would have been me - not be transferred. We were not allowed to be in the same space alone with the door closed while we were on board ship, we were allowed to sit next to each other during meals. We were together on the Orion for two years until the Supply Officer billet at the shore station came up for replacement. I got transferred to the Support Office for the next two years while my husband remained on the ship. After retiring and spending 23 years in Bremerton, Washington, we moved back to Heber Springs, Arkansas to be close to my brother and renovated the house my father built to meet our needs. I had discovered that Heber Springs was a pretty good place to live, after all.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Christina Beardsley at registration.