Encouragement that Lasts

This branch of rosemary leans into the bloom of an Amaryllis that still grows from a bulb that many years ago bloomed in Mother's room. Rosemary stands for remembrance. The Amaryllis reminds me of perserverance.

So much has filled our days in the months since I last posted here. I have kept records of most of it in my other blogs and journal but this blog is devoted to family journey. The journey recently has been difficult and unprecedented. Global pandemic from a corona virus named Covid-19 and economic crisis continues as efforts begin to put pieces of the puzzle together. Today, over 100,000 people have died from the virus in our country alone, Unemployment claims have climbed beyond 40 million during a period in which schools, restaurants, churches, and all but essential businesses have been closed. Handwashing for 20 seconds often, disinfecting surfaces, wearing masks, and social distancing have become habits, Stay at home mandates have only begun to lift. Our church held its first short gatherings last week for the first time since mid March with many restrictions in place. I have journaled some of this because although it is something none of us will ever forget, writing is healing for me. By the grace of God I am able to continue dealing with the pain of recovery from my back injury and deliberately live in the moments of today, knowing I cannot add anxiety or fear for the future to the load. Simple things help me with that.

I find myself remembering childhood prayers, songs, and friends. Along with other people who mention it on FaceBook - I am choosing to cook simple comfort foods, often from old recipes. I made Mother's Mexican cornbread and chicken and dumplings. I got barley to make her Barley Burger Soup this week. I am thankful for many things, among them all the things my mother passed on to me, including endurance that leaned on faith. I wrote this several years ago and found it this morning.

For Opal

she played the first piano notes I ever heard,

loved all the old Baptist hymns plus

Rustic Dance and I Love You a Bushel and a Peck

took me to piano lessons and made sure I practiced

when I played my piano today, it was a tribute to her

she found the prettiest cloth to make my dresses

smoothing fabric on her bed, laying the tissue patterns, cutting with care

sitting for hours at her Singer

in front of the window where Hawthorne bloomed

pinning and fitting before hand-stitching hems

and teaching me that, too

she brought me yellow roses when I was a young mother of 3 sons

Tyler roses, tight yellow buds in a bunch

in her last years there were petals of yellow sticky notes

to remind me she loved me

I miss her laughter,

the magazine and newspaper clippings she used to send in letters

she had the most beautiful handwriting

I miss the way she loved coffee

the way she smelled of face powder and Tide

I miss sitting by her,

her wrinkled hands clapping with joy or clasped in prayer

clinging by faith until it was by sight

7Teion Parker, Amy Mitcham and 5 others

Making Music

Memories made 72 years ago unfold like a paper fan,  some sharp, some faded. Most likely, nothing is exactly as I remember this special evening, the first time I remember playing a piano for someone besides family or music teacher. Without even looking at the sepia photograph, I remember what I wore - a long pink eyelet dress with a slip underneath. There were ruffles where I remember wearing a pin in the shape of a tiny spoon that was enameled with roses. I look at the picture where my dark hair is parted in the middle. Normally straight as a stick, my mother valiantly tried many ways to give me fluffy curls. Instead of a wrist corsage,favored in later years, I  wore flowers in my hair.

Somewhere in one of my keeping boxes lies a yellowed program announcing the recital of the students of Mrs. Lottie Dee Stephens where my name and the title of the piece I played is listed among  more advanced musicians. I was 7, and had not been taking lessons long. In the years since, I have used my limited piano skills in different ways and different places, including being allowed to play the organ in the oldest Christian church in Jakarta, Indonesia, and playing the piano played by the last Queen of Hawaii. Joe gave me the wonderful gift of a baby grand piano in 1983 which has been shipped along with our household around the world. I am unable to sit down and enjoy playing currently due to my recovery from a back injury. I miss it.

I am thankful to my parents, who could ill afford my music lessons and to my mother for reminding me to practice. I am thankful I grew up in a church that helped me enjoy music and encouraged me to sing from the time I was much younger than I am in this picture. I am thankful for choirs where I have loved joining voices, and for the churches in different places where I have been allowed to help with children's choirs. I have had so much fun with toddler grandchildren, making music and marching.

 Nothing makes me happier than hearing my granddaughters sing,knowing they love music, watching them on their own paths of choirs and recitals.  Now, a grandson joins them. I am listening and loving it!

A Repair Job

This mama kangaroo and her baby were a sewing project for me a long time ago. This week they were again on my to do list. Construction the first time, another mending this time. I spread and laid  out fake fur , layered on patterns, cut and hauled out my Singer to sew, then stuffed.  I embroidered eyes and remember giving a proud sigh of relief that I was able to finish mama and baby before Christmas in 1975, the year Ben was nearing 18 months old. Now, his own children still play with them.  Three year old Oliver brought them to me and told me to "fix it!', pointing to a parted seam or two and spilling stuffing. I told him I would work on it "tomorrow"  and we put Kanga and her Roo in a chair in my room.  But a little while later, I picked them up thinking about all those years ago when my sewing gift made Oliver's Daddy smile. So I  threaded a needle, sat down and repaired broken places.

This stuffed toy is real. Remembering The Velveteen Rabbit and the Skin Horse.


"You did it!" was all the thanks I needed! 

Family Names, Notes, and Dates

My mother's handwriting was beautiful, distinctive.  I always spot it among a stack of  old papers.  As I sorted a file of family records recently, I spotted her writing on 4 pages of yellowed lined tablet paper. They contained names and dates of both hers and Daddy's family. I am sure I found it going through the many boxes of her things, filing it away until I could give it more attention. Each entry could have its own story.

I will make an effort to do just that, but for this post, I want to record the photographs of the pages and make some general observations. While I am recovering from my back injury, I am unable to sit for very long at my laptop.

Today it is important to remember that record keeping was very different in the 2 centuries these dates reference.  Passing information from generation was done by recording births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths in a family Bible, by word of mouth, by writing notes in a tablet much like these. For us now, census and church records and gravestones only supplement online research and helps like Ancestry.com

I see that my mother did her best to record names, date and place of birth, date and place of faith commitments and baptism, sibling names, date of marriages, and date of deaths. Just reading the family names is like poetry to me. I hope I am able to work on developing our family history in a way that will be available to all who wish access. At the least I can make the bits and pieces of information I do have accessible to others.

The center statue is etched in mind as part of my childhood. It stood on the corner of the park where the town library was located and I saw the statue often when I was taken to the library. I did not know then that I would someday marry a descendant of one of those memorialized with their names inscripted on the base. Pasco Parker is Joe's Great Uncle. Now there are 3 more Pasco Parkers:  Joe's youngest brother, Pasco Parker, his grandson Pasco Rowe as well as great grandson Pasco Pico Rowe. The article below describes more about the statue than I ever knew growing up. It has been relocated and joined by the other memorial walls shown.

The Hazel Tilton Park War Memorial, was originally a structure honoring solely those Jacksonville American soldiers lost during World War I. The war concluded November 11, 1918, a day then referred to as Armistice Day and now memorialized as Veteran’s Day.

The task of raising money for the monument was spearheaded by the Jolly Workers Club, an organization of young working women in positions of responsibility around Jacksonville. The club was composed of twenty-four members. In 1924, they contracted for the monument and raised $900 toward that end. The statue, carved by an unknown Italian sculptor and hewn from Italian marble, was completed and delivered. However, it was not erected because another $400 was needed for the inscription of names and erection costs. Unfortunately the Jolly Workers Club disbanded in 1926, and the memorial statue was left abandoned in the lobby of the then Guaranty State Bank.

In 1928, the Jacksonville Progress began a series of wrenching articles aimed at shaming the public and local government to raise the needed funds for the monument’s completion. One essay stated that the lack of completion “…stands as an accuser of tragic neglect on the part of the citizens of Jacksonville.” Finally, the Civic Committee of the Jacksonville Chamber took over the project and the City Council got on board as well. Checks and cash began to flow and eventually the needed funds were finally raised. The statue was erected on a plinth of Colorado marble and stood twelve feet high. The local J. E. Gould Monument Company (founded in 1908) was in charge of erecting the statue and engraving all needed inscriptions.

The main day for the Memorial Statue inauguration was April 15, 1928, a beautiful Sunday, at 3:30 PM in the Jacksonville City Park. Attending were the Boy Scouts, former Jolly Worker Club members, and the Jacksonville Municipal Band, along with a host of interested citizens. Mayor T. E. Acker delivered a short historical address. A local black minister spoke briefly thanking the city for inclusion of five fallen African American soldiers. The grand moment came when Mrs. T. M. Clairborne, the Gold Star mother of Jimmie Walter Clairborne- the first soldier to fall- unveiled the statue.

The statue itself depicts a uniformed soldier holding a Springfield 1903 (30-06) model rifle with fixed bayonet. He wears a hip length coat with artillery belt, a helmet, and puttees to protect the ankles. The state of Texas suffered 892 deaths attributed to World War One. From that number the names of thirty-two Jacksonville men are inscribed on three sides of the statue’s base, all lost in the Great War.

The white marble statue of the Dough Boy endured much over the years from the indignity of being sprayed green during the mid 1950s (by several high school boys who will go unnamed!), to its near destruction from horrific winds in 1990. It was after this that the concept of a new memorial at a different site in the park was contemplated, one that would represent not just Jacksonville but the entirety of Cherokee County in all wars fought where lives were lost.

Therefore, in 1992, the original WWI monument (1928) was transferred to its new location in the Jacksonville City Park and rededicated as the Cherokee County War Memorial. In anticipation of the new memorial and relocation, the WWI statue, which had been partially destroyed by high winds in1990, was repaired. Three large black granite walls were erected on white marble foundations adorned with the names of the Cherokee County fallen in World War I (24), World War II (139), Korea (9), Vietnam (22), and Iraq (1). The major inscription reads: “In Memory of All Cherokee County Veterans Who Served With Honor In The Armed Forces of The United States of America.” Symbols of the services surround the inscription.

It was a grand affair planned by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post 3984. The ceremony took place on Saturday, May 30, at 2:00 PM. A flag ceremony was executed by the National Guard and the national anthem was sung by recent Jacksonville High School - Jacksonville ISD graduate, Jason Harkins. All of this was highlighted by a twenty-one gun salute along with a somber rendition of “Taps”. The Reverend Grady Higgs, pastor of the First Baptist Church Jacksonville Texas, delivered the invocation, while the benediction was given by Reverend Karl Hockenhull of the Sweet Union Baptist Church.

Attending the ceremony and calling aloud each name on the monument, was Cherokee County Judge Craig Caldwell, a Vietnam veteran of the 101st Army Airborne. US Congressman Charles Wilson (1933-2010) delivered the major address. Rep. Wilson was a Naval Academy graduate and twelve term US congressman representing the Texas second congressional district. He is best known as the subject of the book and movie entitled Charlie Wilson’s War. The movie starred Tom Hanks as Charlie and Julia Roberts as his benefactor.

The City Park, where the memorial is located, began as a public square donated by the International Railroad when the town of Jacksonville was first laid out shortly after 1872. In 1882, a train track of the Kansas and Gulf Short Line Railroad cut through the park area and will remain, though eventually unused, for several years following 1928.

Other structures were located in park during those early years. A water tower was built in 1906, and a small fire station and pine-slab jail existed for a short time. Tree planting began in 1882 directed by Captain H. L. Morris. One of these trees, a magnolia, was eventually referred to by locals as “The Tree of Knowledge” because the town elders would gather beneath the tree on benches to discuss important affairs. It is possible that the large magnolia near the front of the new fire station is that same tree. A wooden bandstand erected in 1907, was replaced by native stone during the 1930s by the Worker Progress Administration.

The park represents an important place in the history of Jacksonville and the War Monument is its center. While the monument is made of cold stone it is etched with real names of real people who loved and were loved. Reflecting upon this public stone, we can better understand both the private loss as well as the concept of duty.

History is courtesy of Vanishing Texana Museum.

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There are reminders of my mother, Opal Terrell Teal, everywhere. In these months following my back injury I have had more time than ever for reflection and remembering stories, though the distraction of pain and other health issues has delayed working on recording those stories. Recently, I asked our oldest son if he would like to have the red enamel pan. Only the story that accompanied it would have led anyone to say yes to this chipped and rusted enamelware. Mother told me when she gave it to me: before she was married in 1931 at the age of 18, she sold tins of salve to earn money to buy a set of pans and a coffee pot. This is the remaining piece of that set. I only wish I had asked more questions about her early days of housekeeping and cooking. 

I photographed the pan sitting on another reminder. Mother did needlework, taught by her own mother and grandmother who both crafted many works of needle art - sewing clothes and quilts, crocheting doilies and booties and lace, embroidering linens and collars, even tatting with a little silver shuttle that I still have. Years after I married and had my own children, she maintained her love of crocheting. My sons and grandchildren all have afghans she crocheted. This lovely cream afghan is one she made for me and is edged with fringe. It is on the foot of my bed right now, ready to pull up for a nap. I am still covered with her love.

Magic Dressup Trunk

Maddie, summer 2010

Nora, summer 2019

During Maddie's recent visit with us, we enjoyed so many special times. She spent time and had fun with all of us in this multigenerational household - oldest to youngest!  Maddie is now 13, but when she was a little younger than Nora is now at 5, she came to stay with us and loved dressing up using all her imagination and the dressup collection we kept in the front closet. When they pullled out the dressup trunk a couple of weeks ago, Maddie found an old skirt of mine that she remembered making into an outfit  and modeling for us. The two girls found a hat and ribbon and sunglasses to complete the ensemble and proudly displayed the results.

There is still magic in that trunk!