GARY H. DITTO
Long & Foster® Real Estate, Inc.
4650 East West Hwy.
Bethesda, MD 20814
301-215-6834

Bethesda-Gateway Office
301-907-7600

Isadella Ward’s Family Memories - Part 1

by Ilene Sheris

Spring 2000

Interview with Mrs. Ward in her Kensington home two years ago

The lovely white house stands on the corner of two streets in the Town of Kensington. A lively patch of yellow flowers fills the yard out back. Inside, a delicate porcelain figurine of a man and a woman sitting on a porch swing adorns the living room mantle.

Some time ago, I was privileged to spend a morning in this house with Isadella Ward, while she shared some of her stories with me. She had lived in this house, together with a lifetime’s worth of treasured memories and stories, for many decades.

Isadella beamed with pride as she showed me the porcelain figurine on her mantle and told me it was a Christmas gift from her son Dale and his wife Charlotte. She explained that she and her late husband, Dayton, had always loved to swing and sing. The figurine gives her great pleasure because it reminds her of the happy times she shared with Dayton. Isadella recalled Dale having said that he “remembered us singing and swinging.” That her children remember her in this way gives her great joy.

Isadella, a Georgia native, met her husband, Dayton Samuel Ward, while he was a soldier in the Army. He was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, but was sent to Columbus, Georgia, for training exercises. It was there they met. Dayton had been at Fort Riley when the Army received an early piece of motorized equipment—a pickup truck. She recalled that this event created a lot of excitement. The couple was married on April 12, 1933. Dayton’s Army tour ended in 1934.

During the first few years of their marriage, Isadella and Dayton moved around quite a bit. They began their life together in Isadella’s home state of Georgia. It was there that Isadella gave birth to their first child, who died at birth. This was a time of great sadness for the young couple.

Soon thereafter, Isadella and Dayton moved on to Florida, but they didn’t live there for long either. After a short while, they returned to Georgia, where, on September 20, 1935, Isadella gave birth to a daughter, Tonisa [Tony] Anne Ward.

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