This is my mother’s birth date. She was born the eldest child of her parents out in the sticks of southwest Georgia in 1897. Her parents were very poor, surviving on the cotton crops from their few acres. She was supposed to be a boy to help on the farm, so was named Clyde. She never liked the name, but it never left her. Her mother expected help from a girl, and her father from a boy so both were exacted. She would take one of her little brothers with her when she picked a row of cotton and returned on the next furrow to care for the infant in the basket. Unable to send his children to high school, her father required the eighth grade twice. She made all A’s the first time through. At last, arrangements were made for school in Sparks, Georgia in a church academy. The education was excellent, including Christianity, liberal arts and the development of graces in interpersonal conduct. She developed penmanship. In mathematics/geometry she did well (which served me well later when I needed mentoring). She mastered Latin (which meant I had to take it in high school). She found no future on the farm so followed a brother to Akron, Ohio. She taught school even though she had no college background. She picked up courses at the University of Akron, but left teaching when the school board insisted that she not wear the necklace with the cross in it, and she was put down for her southern accent. The cross was taken as a Catholic symbol, and they did not want that. Mother was a Methodist, and the only valuable gift given to her in her young life was the necklace, now to be forbidden, given to her by her father when she left home. Shy at first, she gave up on her hope to teach in elementary grades.
In the busy rubber factories of Akron, she met the man who became my father a year after their marriage. Not a responsible person, he was rather self-oriented, and insisted his bride take in roomers and boarders. That was the way of it, and she labored for years in caring for others so to feed her children. Father was hospitalized for tuberculosis, lingering and died. We children never knew him. My mother pressed on. I was, for a time, in an orphanage, but she won in court so held on to us. She remarried and they made things work, but the difference between them in culture was significant. He could barely read, and was doubtful of persons who made a living through formal education. I never received an allowance so learned to hustle, selling fruit, caddying for golfers, peddling papers and whatever way I could to make a little money during the Great Depression. My mother was always there encouraging me and interested.
Beyond our wildest dreams, I went off to college, and ultimately completed a PhD. degree. She would send me five dollars now and then, when she could. I wrote her every week, and she knew my appreciation. When retirement came she and my stepfather went back to the old farm she had left decades earlier. Growing older, they needed care. My elder son and his wife went to the farm to take over, and after my stepfather’s death, moved with mother to my town. Mother died at 96 years of age, full of years. She more than paid her dues. The story, if fleshed out, would generate songs of service. She gave me life, a role model, love, self-worth, a sense of responsibility, a desire to achieve something, and gave me some intangibles of what I needed for my own beloved family. I was blessed. I remember her. Thanks, God.
The sacrificial story of my mother gives me pause related to fragmentation of families, found in uncertain discipline, alienation, broken generations, inadequate spiritual formation, and of other matters necessary to fulfillment and fulfilling life in personal currency. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020