My early years: 1927-1944
With each new stirring, we never know
the impact on us as we grow.
I was the last of nine children. I was born on May 20, 1927, in Chambersburg, PA. My parents were Adam and Nellie Ausherman Knepper. In birth order we were Robert, Paul, Ruth (Hess), Charles, John, Lewis, Abner, Joseph, and me. With a stretch of five boys before I arrived, a girl must have been a surprise. My parents were both forty-five years old, and my father remarked at my birth, “This one is to take care of us in our old age.” I was named Miriam Naomi Knepper. Of the many nicknames my siblings called me, Mim is the one by which I am still casually known.
My earliest memory is of a family event when I was two years old. My oldest brother Robert and his bride, Mae, had returned from their honeymoon in Florida. My family was all gathered in the dining room of the old farmhouse eagerly listening to the details of their trip. Then the newlyweds started to hand out presents from their luggage for the young ones of the family. I don’t remember what my brothers received, but mine was a doll nicely displayed in its wrappings. I just stood there looking at it in the box. The sight of that twelve-inch doll was so overwhelming for me, a shy two-year-old, that I had to be told to take it out of the box. More important than what the doll wore, which I don’t remember, was the name that came with her, Flossie Flirt.
Sometime later, the visiting evangelist came to our house for dinner. Giving attention to the little girl in the family, he asked me, “What is your dolly’s name?” I brightly said, “Flossie Flirt.” Of course, he laughed but my mother tried to shush me. I did not know why she did that. The name seemed all right to me before; it must have meant something I didn’t know about. Later, I remember I had another doll that my teenaged sister dressed to look like her name, Red Riding Hood.
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