Her simple grave marker states only the basics: Ada Minnie Harrison Whitten, May 24, 1888—November 19, 1971.
She was always “Grandma” to me. Who among us ever used the formal title, “Grandmother,” when speaking to our grandparent? It was a blessing to have this special woman in my life. She gave me a sense of security and loved me unconditionally.
March is Women’s History Month, when we remember women who have made significant differences. It is easy to recall notable ones whose names and accomplishments are familiar to Americans.
This story is about one unknown to much of the world, but who meant the world to me.
Grandma had two paternal uncles who served in the Confederate Army. She told stories of how the family knew nothing of their fate until after the war ended.
One day, she related, two barefoot, dirty, unshaven, ragged men came walking up the road to the house. To everyone’s joy, they were those uncles.
Before they were permitted into the house, their father took them down to the creek where they bathed with lye soap and burned their old clothes, hoping to get rid of lice.
I was thrilled when Grandma told stories like these.
On her maternal side of the family, she had a great-grandfather and his son who both died in that “War Between Brothers.”
She had six daughters, one of whom had epilepsy and died as a teenager. This girl had such serious mental and physical problems that Grandma would rub her hands and arms every night until she went to sleep.
How this amazing woman had the strength to do that, with all the other required work, remains a mystery. She bought a Singer treadle sewing machine, and her daughters always had nice homemade dresses.
My grandfather was a country preacher who supported himself by raising produce for the market. They were “subsistence farmers,” meaning they grew or made most of the things they needed.
Grandma had a huge garden and canned enough for the winter. They butchered their own hogs, and had a milk cow and lots of chickens. She sold the family’s extra eggs and cream.
I planted my onions and Irish potatoes last week. Those feelings of being in a sanctuary that I experienced in Grandma’s garden are renewed in me each springtime when I work in my own and bring food to our table.
When the milk cow “went dry” and quit producing milk until another calf was born, Grandma would dry eggshells in the oven, grind them into powder, and put some in her bread batter. She knew calcium was needed for children’s healthy growth.
Examples like that influenced my interest in science.
After they had their first two children, Grandpa decided to attend a Bible college in Gunter, Texas. My mother was old enough to stay under a shade tree, caring for her younger sister, while her parents picked cotton so they could earn enough to eat.
The family would drive to the area south of Colbert, where Grandpa started a church. He went back there for many years, and that is how my mother met the man she would marry.
Trucks loaded with a family’s furniture and belongings sometimes arrived late in the day. People knew the preacher and would stop for the night as they were moving toward California and places to the west.
Grandma would fix supper. At daylight the next morning, she would kill and prepare a chicken. Breakfast was fried chicken, gravy, biscuits, and sorghum molasses.
I still have the hatchet Grandma used for those times when she didn’t wring a chicken’s neck.
My grandfather would go way off to preach, leaving Grandma to run the farm and take care of those daughters. He started churches in Louisiana and Arkansas, and one in the “River Bottom” south of Colbert, Oklahoma.
This last group continued to meet in the Pearson Schoolhouse on the River Road until the 1950’s. He baptized people in ponds, water troughs, and even a cattle-dipping vat which was still visible as late as 1980.
During the later days of the Great Depression, both my parentsworkedlonghours.My mother was the ticket agent and cashier at an all-night bus station and café. That meant I stayed almost constantly with my grandparents until I was in the second grade.
Grandma’s ethics, examples of generosity, and compassion rubbed off on me from her examples, more than by any verbal teachings.
During those hard times, hoboes (men without jobs, who rode on boxcars and looked for day labor) would stop and ask for food. On a cold winter night, when Grandpa had gone preaching somewhere, one of those men knocked on the door. Grandma fixed him a hot meal. The next morning, they found that man’s body next to the downwind side of the house. He had died, apparently from freezing. I remember Grandma’s sorrow, and how she said many times, “At least, that poor man didn’t have to die hungry.”
After all these years, I still have my own feelings from that event nearly every time I see someone begging for food.
Until not long before her death, she prepared three meals a day, always with biscuits, cornbread, or yeast rolls. She never had a store-bought loaf of bread that any of us remember.
This quiet, gentle grandmother lived to see grandchildren succeed, some as preachers, teachers, artists, authors, journalists, and great cooks, and all as decent people themselves.
Each of us has some woman, a mother, aunt, grandmother, or teacher, whose influence casts a long shadow. We who are fortunate enough to have had positive role models should reflect on what they gave to us that makes us who we are today.
This would be an honorable way to remember Women’s History Month.