By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

Every once in a while, when I’m processing a collection, I run across a person I just want more people to know about. One of those people is Rena Struggles, whose correspondence is part of the Bullard-Lauriat family papers.

Her full name was, amazingly, Cecerina Victoria Struggles, which I think sounds like someone who attended Hogwarts with Harry Potter. Her family apparently called her “Cissy,” but she preferred Rena. She was born in London on June 9, 1885, one of the many children of James and Ida Berger Struggles. At the age of 20, wanting to make her own way in the world, she traveled across the Atlantic to find work in America. She would spend the next 32 years working as a housekeeper and nanny for different families in Massachusetts, including the Lauriats.

After moving back to the U.K. in the late 1930s, Rena corresponded with the Lauriats, particularly the mother Marian. Rena had quite a poetic way of expressing herself. Here’s a taste of her style (she separated her thoughts on the page with dramatic dashes):

Things and people move so much slower here than in America, there is an outward gentleness with an inward strength – in English things and English men – like the slow streams, yet they are deep and strong.

And when Marian was apparently sorting and discarding some of her late husband’s books, Rena wrote:

I know how you all feel, but we must carry on. – it has ever been thus – from the begining [sic] of time – To be strong – brave – great men have lived through the ages – in those that come after them. I don’t believe it makes us cold and hard – no – it gives us a better understanding of Life – only sometimes we learn too late.

Unfortunately, the Struggles family would be indelibly marked, like so many others in London, by the months-long German bombing campaign known as the Blitz. As early as 1938, Rena’s letters had been peppered with references to air raids, gas masks, evacuations, and barrage balloons. By 1940, Londoners were, she said, “well trained,” even the children. Then, on November 18, she wrote a bleak and heart-breaking letter to Marian:

185 Droop [St., the family home] – is no more. Sat. night it was bombed. mother was killed – my sister taken to hospital I know not where yet my youngest brother – and 7 year old son – and his wife – were buried 4 hours – and taken out I believe alright … I feel too bad to cry or write. the message said don’t come home – you have no home to come to … dont tell Patience.

Letter from Rena Struggles informing Marian Lauriat of the death of Ida Struggles and the destruction of the family home, with mourning card

(Patience was Marian’s youngest child, only 12 years old at the time.)

Ida Struggles was killed instantly, along with a neighbor, Ellen Louise Sutton, who was visiting at the time. Rena’s sister, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew survived with minor physical injuries. Ida was buried at Paddington Cemetery six days later, and Rena described the funeral as “hurried,” with no tolling of the bell to mark “the coming of the soul into God’s acre – owing to war … even the cemetry [sic] had been bombed. – stones lying all which ways.” Months later, Rena still hadn’t “cried over mother – or the home. it was too ghastly – I could not.”

Rena herself lived a very long life. She died on June 23, 1981, just two weeks after her 96th birthday. I found an article in the Brighton (U.K.) Evening Argus, published in 1974, that includes the only picture of her I’ve located. She was bed-bound due to a disability, but still worked making clothing for dolls.

Detail from an article about Rena Struggles in the Brighton (U.K.) Evening Argus, 16 October 1974