Born on Friday the thirteenth of December 1893 in Bloomington, Illinois, great, great aunt Vera Irish Ackerman, a feisty girl who often joked darkly about her birthday, fit in harmoniously with the rest of the women in her family. Vera was a short woman, standing only slightly above five feet, whose brunette and eventually gray hair, hazel brown eyes, and light complexion added to her Irish family looks. Never one to succumb to food or drink excess, her figure remained thin throughout her life. The youngest of four children at the end of the nineteenth century, an aspect that significantly attributed to her disposition, Vera displayed herself through a window of both strength and frugality.

At the age of twenty-one, Vera witnessed firsthand the sacrifices required during war as the United States embarked in World War I in 1914. Fifteen years later, America suffered immensely financially during the Great Depression, a time when masses of people possessed barely enough money to just survive; the country did not recover until 1939 when World War II commenced. The economic problems and sacrifices Vera experienced at the beginning of her life led to her habit of saving every penny available and thriftiness when spending.

Early in her adult life, Vera developed a taste for a morning cup of coffee with three sugars and one cream. Brusquely refusing to pay for even the typical and reasonable amount for a convenient restaurant prepared cup, Vera instead insisted upon brewing her own coffee in her shiny silver percolator at home. If she did go out to eat, which was not often since she recognized preparing her own meals as cheaper, she would order the smallest and least expensive item on the menu.

Plastic was developed in 1907 when Vera was fourteen and was considered quite an impressive and valued invention. As was typical of the time period, plastic food containers were cleaned and stored for future use, but, when Vera died, her remaining family members found excessive piles of neatly washed and organized used plastic containers and aluminum pie pans in her kitchen cabinets and in the basement. Though possibly exhibiting symptoms of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, Vera was more than likely just showing her penny-pinching philosophy once again.

Married late in life as the second wife of a man named Ackerman, Vera was considered quite unusual. She knew she was quite capable of living independently, although she continued living with her parents even after she became a still frugal Mrs. Ackerman, and did not feel a need for marriage at a young age unlike most women of her time. When her parents and husband ultimately died, she saw to the upkeep of the house, and as she grew older, she would listen to time tick by on the old grandfather clock given to her mother as a gift by her brother, Percy, as she sat in her favorite small dark-stained wood rocking chair with a yellow seat cushion next to an old horsehair couch across from a brick fireplace in a shadowy living room, dim because parsimony refused to pay sizeable electric bills.

Vera also loved watching her great nieces and nephews play outside from the living room window. Almost every year, the Irish family held a small family reunion at the house in Bloomington. A pear tree had been planted in the side yard of the home, and all the younger generation cousins enjoyed playing in the fruit tree, much to the delight of an elderly Vera.

Vera passed away in her home at the age of seventy-eight in September 1972. Before she died, she made certain that her favorite niece, Nordine, received her huge cherished bedroom mirror. (Nordine also inherited the treasured grandfather clock by sheer luck after drawing her name from a hat, the solution to family arguments over who acquired the clock.) At her wishes, the money she had saved was left to the Moody Bible Institute, and although she also wanted to give the family cemetery lots where her stillborn nephew was buried to the church for use by paupers, the rest of her family collectively rejected the idea. Even through the end of her life, Vera Irish Ackerman shone with a strong light of stubborn frugality and independence.