Here is a newspaper article about my Great Aunt Mary “Helen” Weigandt Shipman Solomon. An amazing person! I’m so happy my husband was station here and we moved to Warner Robins in 1996. My husband also worked in the 5th MOB. It gave me the opportunity to meet up with her. We even did some oil painting together, a memory I will cherish forever. She is extremely gifted with the paint brush! Now, we are back for good and I get to see her again. She has told me so many wonderful stories about my dad’s side of the family. I will have to make her some of my cowboy cookies and see if the measure up to her standards…haha.
Here’s Why She’s Called ‘Sweetie’
Macon Telegraph (GA), February 15, 2011
WARNER ROBINS, Ga. – Her name is Helen Solomon but most everybody knows her as “Sweetie.”
Her late husband, Col. Joseph Solomon, first started calling her that. Then her three children picked up on it. They would introduce their mom as Sweetie, and the name stuck like a confectioner’s spoon in a bowl of thick icing.
Her coronation had nothing to do with her famous “cowboy cookies,” although there is a sweet tooth behind those apron strings. Sweetie has a secret recipe of oatmeal, chocolate chips and pecans. Her daughters swear it is probably locked in a vault somewhere.
It’s somewhat appropriate I introduce you to this sweet spirit in the days before Valentine’s Day. After all, there’s an ongoing love story here between a 93 year-year-old woman and the world.
She grew up in a German family in Lincoln, Neb., and married Frank Shipman five days after Pearl Harbor on Dec. 12, 1941. A month later he was on his way to fort Dix, N.J. He died in combat 67 years ago this week near the Abby of Monte Cassino in Italy.
Her friends and family in Nebraska encouraged the young widow to volunteer with the local USO. She was working in the cloak room when a handsome soldier from Cleveland, Miss., waltzed across the dance floor. His name was Capt. Joseph Solomon. He would later ask for her hand in marriage.
In 1948, while stationed in Germany, he was responsible for setting up the radar operation for the famous Berlin Airlift. She helped organize clothes and food drives in German neighborhoods.
Their son, Joe, was born in 1949. The stork dropped identical twin daughters Sandy…and…Linda into the nest two years later. In 1953, while the family was living in Montgomery, Ala., there was a massive polio outbreak. Sweetie tried to flee with her three children and head back to Nebraska to stay with her family. But 4-year-old Joe became ill on the plane. When they landed, he was taken to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with polio. It was July 4, 1053, a day Joe would later refer to as his “dependence day.”
Sandy, who was 22 months old, was diagnosed with polio the next day followed by Linda the day after. Sweetie was diagnosed on the fourth day. Joe and Sandy were the most afflicted and spent four months in the hospital. Joe’s right leg was paralyzed, and he wears a brace to this day. Sandy still wears a knee brace and has had numerous operations. Linda and Sweetie had non-paralytic polio, although they both have scoliosis.
Their housekeeper in Montgomery, a black woman named Sadie Bell Parker, was so concerned she bought a bus ticket to Nebraska and bravely stayed in the quarantined hospital room with Joe and Sandy.
She later cared for them when they returned home to Alabama. Parker often went on trips with the family, which wasn’t easy in the days of segregation in the Deep South. It was a special relationship, and the Solomon’s still stay in touch with Parker, who is in her 90s.
In 1956, the Solomon family moved to Warner Robins, where Joseph was appointed commander of the 5th Mob at Robins Air Force Base. Two years later, the Solomon’s were named the National Poster Family by the March of Dimes. Sweetie traveled with her children for speaking engagements all over the country and tutored her children in their schoolwork. They appeared on national radio and television commercials and “The Ed Sullivan Show.” They participated in a fashion show with Marilyn Monroe at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Little Joe served as grand marshal of the Daytona 500. They brushed elbows with Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo), Eartha Kitt, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Hugh O’Brian (Wyatt Earp), Liberace, Howdy Doody and Marcel Marceau. They met Dr. Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine.
The next year, Sweetie was state representative for the March of Dimes and helped establish the office in Macon. She often went door to door to raise funds.
In her heart, she had always wanted to become a nurse. Although she never received a nursing degree, she became a medical caregiver by administering daily physical therapy to Joe and Sandy until they were teenagers.
The family left Warner Robins for a few years and lived in Puerto Rico during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Joseph even had a “red phone” at the house to notify him in the event of an emergency. While in Puerto Rico, he helped build the foundation for the world’s largest and most sensitive radiotelescope at Arecibo.
After the Solomons returned to Warner Robins, Sweetie worked for several years in the office of U.S. Rep Jack Brinkley.
Linda has complied a book of letters her mother wrote over a 27-year period from 1947-74. She plans to have it published and will call it “Dearest Folks.” That’s the greeting with which Sweetie opened every letter.
I asked Sandy about her mother’s nickname. “It’s a perfect match, “she said. “That’s her personality.”
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