Hazel, Billie, Mabel & Flora

On the girl’s brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived. -- Chris Cleaves, "Little Bee"

With the recent loss of my grandmother, I have been trying to write more of my family – things I will want my children and their children to know. And as I have seen with Alzheimer’s, we are not guaranteed that we will always remember. The following is what I know of, and what I want to remember about, my great-grandmothers:

My mother’s grandmothers: Hazel Theodora Zingerman Lane {family roots: Sweden, Denmark, Norway}

Hazel was born in downtown Chicago to Neils and Sophie, Neils' parents having immigrated from Sweden and Denmark and Sophie's parents having immigrated from Norway - all in the 1880s. The name Theodora is a derivative of Theodore, her maternal grandfather’s name. Hazel had one sister, Jeanne and after their mother died, Hazel became the second mother. Hazel played in her high school band {tenor sax and banjo}. She married my great-grandfather in August of 1934 in an outdoor garden ceremony on her uncle's farm and they honeymooned in the Great Smoky Mountains. The two lived in the suburbs of Chicago and had two girls, Karyl and Patricia {my grandmother}, and moved to Knoxville, Tennessee in the early 1940s. Hazel grew up Lutheran, but became Baptist when she married my great-grandfather. She died in 1970 of cancer when my grandmother was only 30 years old. These are the things I think of when I think of Hazel: her wedding dress was made of satin … she always wore gloves when out in public … her china was edged in hunter green with large magnolia blossoms in the center {my mother inherited her china} … she rode the bus to town on Saturdays to do her weekly shopping … she let my mom keep Mexican jumping beans by her bedside table when she would fly to visit in the summers of her childhood … she served relish trays at each holiday dinner … and she was classic to her core. The antique diamond ring that sits on my right hand once belonged to Hazel.

Billie Laurel Barrett Lee {family roots: England, Germany, Native American}

Billie was born on the Oklahoma prairie in a sod house on her parent's homestead, the baby of ten children. When Laura Alice was pregnant with Billie, her father got into a dispute with a neighbor over land, and the man subsequently shot and murdered her father. Billie never knew him, but they named her for him as his name was William. Billie Laurel was a beauty. She and her sister, Gladys, married two brothers, Ralph and Clarence {my great-grandfather} and lived next door to one another in Knoxville, Tennessee. Billie was of the Methodist faith and had six children {Norman – my grandfather, Phyllis, Larry, Marlene & Dennis – and a baby girl, Mary Lou who died shortly after birth} and Gladys had fifteen children ... cousin heaven. In 1945, as Billie was making breakfast, her flannel nightgown caught fire on the kerosene stove. My great-grandfather tried to put the flames out, but she was badly burned. They took the train into town, but infection set in and Billie died. My grandfather was only eleven. When I was in college, my Aunt Phyllis took me to the chapel cemetery in Knoxville where Billie is buried and we left tiny pink roses on her grave. I have also seen her wedding dress, which my Aunt Marlene has kept. I feel as if I know her through the both of them; especially my Aunt P who looks so much like her. A photograph of Billie in her early years wearing a pink flouncy dress is framed in our guest bedroom.

My father’s grandmothers: Mabel Rushin Dickerson Bell {family roots: England, Ireland, Germany}

Mabel was born in the Kilgore Forthouse in Virginia to Helen Victoria and Robert. Her family had been in this niche of southern Virginia for generations by the time Mabel was born. Her mother loved to tell the old family lore of indians and the family forthouse and her father was an alcoholic {the family tale is that when he couldn't find anything else, "he would start in on the vanilla extract"}. Mabel’s hair was raven dark. She married my great-grandfather, Carl, when she was barely sixteen years old as he was a coal miner and boarder in her mother’s boarding house {he was a good bit older than her}. My grandmother said that on Mabel’s wedding night, her {Mabel’s} mother had to push her up the stairs to go and “be with her husband” because she was so scared. My grandmother said she had always felt sorry for her for this, seeing as she was still so young. But the year was 1919, and this was just ‘how it was.’ Mabel was of the Methodist faith and she and Carl had three children, John, Katharyn and Evelyn {my grandmother}. They made their home in Kingsport, Tennessee. When my grandparents got engaged, Mabel came to Atlanta to help my grandmother find her wedding dress, but the week before the wedding she fell and broke her hip and couldn’t attend {the entire wedding party went to the hospital to see her before the ceremony took place}. Mabel died in September of 1982 of dementia. My grandmother flew from Florida many times to stay and help care for her when she was sick. On my wedding day, my ‘something blue’ was a white and blue cross affixed to my bouquet that Mabel crocheted.

Flora Estelle Duke Hagood {family roots: England}

Flora {the name means ‘goddess of spring’} was one of many children born to B.W. and Ellender Jane Duke. She grew up in Alabama, graduating from Disque High School in May 1908, and attended Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee, now Florida State University, making her my only great-grandmother to attend college. She had to choose between Chi Omega and Kappa Delta, and pledged KD. She studied music and had a beautiful voice, and when she was living in Gadsden and singing in the choir, my great-grandfather, Herrin, walked in and saw her up in the choir loft and said, “Lord, is that the girl!” And it must have been. They married in her parent's home in October 1912. Flora used to say that her father cried and moaned half the night proclaiming, "She is marrying that poor preacher and will never have a dime!" They had seven children, Nell, Herrin, Thomas, Scott {my grandfather}, Ann, Jane and Betty. Flora was a Baptist pastor’s wife for many years {my great-grandfather having attended Samford & Southern Seminary} until his Parkinson’s Disease left him completely disabled {he was also twelve years her senior}, and then she helped her boys with the family dairy business, milking the cows and delivering the milk. Education was important to her, and she sent all seven of them off to college – during the Depression & WW II years. She had backbone, let me tell you. She, too, died in September of 1982 after living with Aunt Nell for many years in Alabama. The antique settee that once sat in the living room of Flora’s family home – is now in our bedroom.

~

There are a million questions I’d like to ask these women now. There are a thousand things I’d like to learn from them. But seeing as all four of them passed away before I was born, I have had to rely heavily on my family members’ memories and observations of their lives.

This is what I know for sure: one was born into two immigrant families in the inner city beginning life anew in the home of the free and the brave, one on the western frontier, one within a fort built to protect against indian invasions, and one in the deep south to families who had owned plantations and slaves before 'the war between the states' changed the only life they had ever known – the beginnings of their lives brings to light the stuff of which history books are made … these women survived the loss of their parents – and at very early ages, they survived losing babies, the Depression, poverty and wars, they knew what it was like to go without, they raised siblings because they didn’t have a choice, grew their own vegetables and made their own clothes, they raised children far away from their own families – because that’s the way it was. They knew what it meant to sacrifice. They laughed. They loved their husbands, their families. They celebrated marriages and Christmas, new babies and ... Spring ... because each year, no matter how bleak the winter ... it always came.

They kept the faith, and they passed it on. When I think of these four women ... I think of strength. As I have gotten older, and come to appreciate their individual stories, I have come to realize the greatness of the strength of which I have been grafted into … when life feels difficult and, at times, overwhelming, I remember the stock from which I come from. And I can say that this remembrance has helped me – on more than one occasion – to take the next step forward.