A Short Story Of The White Rose James L. Cowles (c) Copyright 2026 by James L. Cowles

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

This beautiful, cool, Easter Sunday stirs my memory of days past. My mother would always take me to Silverman’s Department Store a few weeks before Easter, and purchase me a new Easter outfit.  If you were a Christian, whether Catholic, or Protestant, In the 1950s everyone dressed up on Easter Sunday. Mr. Silverman was Jewish, so he celebrated Passover, but his Highland Park store was right in the middle of the community, surrounded by Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Church of God, and Christian Churches, etc. He was a nice man, loved by everyone, and I know he was always happy to see Easter come. March and early April must have resulted in big sales numbers for him, maybe his best all year.

Like most kids born in the 40s, the 50s were the growth spurt years, so mom would always like for my sports jacket and trousers to be a little bigger than I cared for. I was not the only one, of course, as the phrase, “you’ll grow into it,” was famous throughout the Park, and it was easy to spot when you saw kids sometimes looking like they were wearing hand me downs. Seems I would not only grow into it, but often grow out of it, very quickly. I was not happy with clothes that were either too loose, or too tight, but mom did the best she could with the money she had. After all, most families in the Park were on a fairly tight budget, so I was fortunate to have new Church clothes almost every year.

I preferred a lot of color in my outfits, which generally came from the ties and shirts mom would buy. Mr. Silverman would always help us pick those out, with the intent of matching my new outfit. I enjoyed  dressing up on Sundays and other special occasions.

What I remember most was the special time I spent with mom, especially on Easter morning. She saw to it that I always had an Easter Basket, or a big solid chocolate bunny. It was not as big as a lot of kids got, but it was always full of the right stuff, the candies I liked. What touched me the most, was the first time she cut us three roses to wear to church. Mom grew them herself, and cut them for special occasions like Easter. When she told the story of the white rose, it almost made me cry. She said that when she was A child, everyone wore a rose to church on Easter Sunday, a red one if your parents were living, and a white one when they were dead. That first time she told me the story, I was standing at our front gate, all dressed for Easter service. She had cut three roses, one red, and two whites, and she began putting the red one on my lapel with a straight pin, telling me that it meant my parents were living. She was smiling as she told me. After finishing mine, she began pinning a white rose on her dress, while saying the white rose honored her parents who had long since passed on. She laid the other white rose on top of the fence post, for dad, who was still getting dressed.

I remember that it was the first time I realised that I never had the privilege of knowing any of my grandparents, and it made me very sad. I was the last of four children, and by the time I was born, my grandparents on both sides had already passed. I missed knowing all of them, but my sadness on that Sunday morning was for my mother, as she pinned on her white rose. I remember seeing a tear in her eye.