By Fiona Hurley
 
“The guitar's all very well, John, but you'll never make a living out of it,” said Mimi Smith to her young nephew. Many years later John Lennon had his Auntie's words engraved on a silver plaque for her wall. Although she might not have foreseen his success, she shared his sarcastic sense of humor and was always full of love for the boy she raised.
 
Mimi lived with her husband, George, in a house called “Mendips” in the suburbs of Liverpool. They had no children but she was a devoted Auntie. In 1940, she risked wartime air raids to visit the maternity hospital where her younger sister Julia was about to give birth. She said later: “I knew the moment I first set eyes on John that he was going to be something special.”
 
Alf Lennon was working at sea when his son was born, and was seldom in England during the early years of John's life. Julia Lennon moved in with a new partner, and the 5-year-old John moved to Mendips, where he was to spend most of his childhood. George taught him how to do crosswords and to play the harmonica, while Mimi encouraged him to read and study. Every year, John and Mimi went to a garden party at the Strawberry Field Salvation Army house – later to be immortalized in the song Strawberry Fields Forever.
 
The clever but non-conformist John was not always an easy child. Mimi was taking a walk down Penny Lane when she spotted a group of “common scruffs” having a fight – to her horror, one of the boys turned out to be her nephew. And she could not understand his obsession with Elvis Presley and these other modern musicians! Mimi could be strict and stubborn, but John could disarm her with a joke, and often the two of them ended their arguments by rolling around and laughing together.
 
Tragedy was to strike twice during John's teenage years. His Uncle George died from a hemorrhage, and three years later, his mother Julia was hit by a car and killed. The troubled John failed his exams at secondary school and in the Liverpool College of Art, much to Mimi's distress. She worried about him traveling to Hamburg with his new band, but was later proud of him as he achieved success. Although this didn't stop her from disapproving when he exaggerated his Liverpool accent for the press or appeared naked with Yoko Ono on the cover of their album!
 
As Beatlemania grew, fans began to pester Mimi at Mendips. She sold the house and John bought her a bungalow in Dorset. When the pressure of fame got to John, he came to visit his Auntie and do cartwheels on the beach. She kept a watercolour landscape on the wall, which John had painted at the age of 11. He kept telling her that she should throw it away, and she took it down every time he visited but put it back immediately after he left. She declined his invitation to move with him to New York, but he phoned her at least once a week from America.
 
On December 5th 1980, John told his Auntie Mimi that he was planning a trip back to England. Three days later, he was shot by Mark Chapman. The world had lost one of its most talented artists, but Mimi had lost her beloved nephew. “I don't think of him as dead,” she said in an interview a year later. “If I thought he was dead I don't think I could go on.”
 
Mimi Smith died in December 1991, aged 85. According to the nurse who tended her, her last words were “Hello, John.”
 
Further Reading/Viewing

-All About Mimi
-Interview with Mimi in 1981

Photo: Courtesy of The Beatles Wiki
Published: May 6, 2013