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Show Lillian invites friends, relatives to celebrate her 90th birthday are still famous among former school children. When she retired, she was honored by former school superintendent Carl Winters. Now Mrs. Bircumshaw spends most of her time at home on Park Avenue where her daughter, Helen Stath-am, Stath-am, takes care of her. She still attends the senior citizens citi-zens dinners on Mondays and Thursdays and was an honored guest at last spring's Ladies Luncheon. The open house celebrating Mrs. Bircumshaw's 90th birthday will be held on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Prospector Square Convention Center. " l by Nan Chalat Most of us can only imagine what Park City must have been like at the turn of the century, but Lillian Bircumshaw remembers remem-bers it vividly. "I was five years old when the whole town burned down in 1898. We had a house just above where the Timberhaus is now and I can remember being put into a wicker baby carriage with the family silver packed in all around me as we escaped the flames," she said. Mrs. Bircumshaw will be celebrating her 90th birthday at an open house this Saturday. She has spent all 90 of those years in Park City and is now, since Blanche Fletcher's death, our oldest native. "Blanche and I were pals," she said with a tear in her eye. "I really miss her." When Lillian Bircumshaw's Bircum-shaw's parents arrived in Park City it was little more than a ramshackle mining camp. Her father, Robert Beatty, was from Ireland and had somehow found his way to Park City. Along the way he met Christine Anne Franklin and he persuaded her to follow him from her home in Montreal to the wilds of Utah. When the young couple first came to Park City they lived in a tent and Mrs. Beatty gave birth to two daughters, one of whom was named Lillian. When Lillian was still a child her father was killed in an accident at the top of Main Street. "Dad was trying to turn a team of horses when they suddenly stampeded and trampled him to death," she recalled. Later, her mother married Johnny Cunningham who she remembers as "a Harvard man." Cunningham worked as a bookkeeper for Ashram General Store. Of her childhood in the rugged mining town Mrs. Bircumshaw said, "We had lots of fun but we had to make it ourselves. We had to walk everywhere and of course at that time we bought ice cream for a nickle a scoop from a horse-drawn cart." As a special treat, the family would take the Rio Grande train to Salt Lake for a visit to Salt Aire but "we did all our shopping right here in Park City." They shopped at Smith and Brim for their meats and at Blythe Fargo for everything else. She remembers that "every other door was a restaurant with good Chinese chefs. Her favorite was Chaudy Chong. Lillian attended the Washington, Wash-ington, Lincoln and Jefferson Jeffer-son Schools and graduated from the Park City High School in 1913. Last June she was honored at the annual high school reunion. It was her 70th! "When we graduated they took us on a trip through the Silver King Mine. I was scared to death," she remembered. Mrs. Bircumshaw also remembered that a favorite pastime in her youth was bobsledding down Woodside. The toboggans were made of barrel staves and blocks of wood and the street was closed to traffic. "We'd start up by St. Mary's and go clear down to where Mt. Air is now. Then we'd have to walk back up to the top." After high school Lillian fell in love with Bert Bircumshaw, who was the drummer in a local band. But Lillian's father didn't approve, so the couple ran away to be married. "I waited on the side of the hill in Deer Valley until Bert came with the surrey and then we were married in Heber." The couple had five children and had to work hard to survive the depression. depres-sion. Bert Bircumshaw supplemented sup-plemented his income from the band with his pay as the town's water master and Lillian started making hot lunches for the school children. Mrs. Bircumshaw is still known to many current residents as the founder of the school lunch program which she directed from 1948 to 1966. She said she and three assistants, Vera Tree, Ester Anderson, and Lois Lefler made 575 lunches a day. "We made the bread dough in washtubs," she remembered. Her peanut butter cookies :' . . . X i '.. "" ' V ; ' ". f " M "t ' ' ' " i ' ' : f ' - , : w-1 i . Lillian Bircumshaw photo by nmci-w |
