Rockwell Files: When All Else Fails

We recently heard from the grandson of this cover girl. Ted Holton Jr. wrote to tell us that Lucille Marie Holton, who graced our November 8, 1947, issue, recently passed away. He told us how much she’d be missed, and how she’d always been proud to have been a Rockwell model.

This cover went through an interesting development. Photographs of Rockwell working with models show an early version where the girl sits quietly, bent over her schoolbooks, with the corner of a crib in a darkened bedroom seen in the foreground. In the next iteration, the girl sits in a chair beside a crib. A toddler is on his feet, holding onto the bar, with his mouth wide open in a scream we can only imagine. The girl sits with her head in her hands, looking heavenward for patience.

He increased her frustration in this version, which shows her at wit’s end, having tried to calm the infant with bottle, rattle, and stuffed animals. Now, in desperation, she’s reading Hints to the Baby Sitter with a look of someone determined not to be outdone by an infant.

In life, Lucille gained plenty of experience with infants, growing up to be a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, and a great-great-grandmother.

This article is featured in the May/June 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.