mestown, New York on August 6, 1911. She spent her first few years in Anaconda, Montana and Wyandotte, Michigan. When Lucy was three and a half her mother, Desiree, was pregnant with her second child and her father, Had, was stricken with typhoid fever. On February 28, 1915, Had died of his illness. This left Lucy without a single recollection of what he was like. Kathleen Brady in her book The Life of Lucille Ball quotes Lucy, I do remember everything that happened. . . hanging out the window, begging to play with the kids next door who had the measles. . . the doctor coming, my mother weeping. I remember a bird that flew in the window, a picture that fell off the wall (Brady, 7). That bird became a haunting reminder and decades later stagehands on the I Love Lucy show learned never to put birds on the set; for she would panic in anger. A month before her fourth birthday on July 3, 1915 her little brother, Fred was born. A few years later Desiree married again. This time to Ed Peterson on September 17, 1918. Ed did not like children and wouldn't allow Lucy or Fred to call him daddy. When Lucy was in first grade, Desiree left Lucy with Eds parents and Fred with her own. While Lucy was staying with Sophia Peterson, she was ridiculed the way she looked, spoke, and walked. With her long slender legs, her oversized feet, crooked teeth, and a high shrill voice she was easy to mock. Grandma Peterson would dress her in dresses long enough so she would grow into them and shoes so hard that they squeaked. Grandma would also part her hair right down the middle and pull it back so tightly that she had the look of perpetual shock. Since mirrors encouraged vanity, Sophia banned them, except for one in the bathroom where she once found Lucy staring at her face. Lucy was then assigned chores as punishment for her self-importance. Money was so scarce that she did not have a pencil in school, a shame so searing that in her forties she hoarded pencils th...
