She bypassed a Coke to buy a pair of socksTHE DAILY invited readers to share thoughts on what made their moms special. Stories ranged from routine to unusual. Here are their remembrances.
Patrice Stewart
DAILY Staff Writer
Moms have it tough today, but at least they have washing machines and can buy milk and soap at the store.
"There aren't many mothers still alive that endured the early hardships our mother did," Bobbie Taylor of Moulton said about 92-year-old Ruby Flanagan.
"She had four children born at home in the Depression years and two more after World War II. She cooked for us on a wood stove, washed our clothes on a rub board, made lye soap for our daily use and canned all our food for the winter months."
Flanagan also picked cotton and corn, sewed their clothes on a treadle sewing machine and milked three cows twice daily for milk and butter.
"And she saw to it we were in church every Sunday, even if we had to walk the two miles to town," recalled Taylor.
"The most unselfish memory I have of mother was when she once looked longingly at a Coca-Coca and then said, 'No, that would buy a pair of socks' ".
Because she always gave her all to her family, her children — Bobbie Holland Taylor, Sona Flanagan Phillips, Guin E. Holland and Tommy Holland — try to show their thanks daily by taking care of her. Flanagan has 13 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren and is expecting her first great-great-grandchild.
"Life is comfortable for Mother now," said Taylor. She still lives at home, with help, and works in her yard and garden, canning plenty of vegetables.
An only child
Kelly Petzold wrote from Wisconsin about her mom, Lillian Coggins of Decatur, and said appreciates her even more now that she has children of her own.
Petzold hasn't lived in Decatur for 17 years, since she married a military man in 1986, but her mother has been supportive.
"I am her only child and we miss each other terribly, but she has never once questioned my choice of a husband or our military lifestyle. We have gone as long as two years without seeing each other as we have been stationed in Mississippi, Tennessee, California, Iceland and now in Wisconsin . . . but she never makes me feel guilty for not being there."
Since Coggins, who has worked at C.F. Penn Hamburgers for about 30 years, was a single mom for many years, they didn't have a lot of luxuries, "but we always had love," said Petzold.
"I also never understood the heartbreak of having your child leave home, but now that my own daughter is turning 16 and will be leaving for college in a couple of years, I can somewhat comprehend how difficult it was for her to watch me get in the car with someone she didn't know very well and drive away."
Nine children and a poem
Ollie D. Marshall of Decatur, 67, has reared nine children: Mae Sue Daily of Muscle Shoals, Victor Marshall of Madison, Mitze Dunn of Selma, and Samuel Marshall, Eddie Marshall, Patrick Marshall, Pamela Marshall, Coretta Marshall and Lachelle Marshall, all of Decatur. She also has 15 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Daughter Coretta writes poems, and one about her mother won a contest. She describes her mother as a person "who does so much" that she wanted to wrote:
"She knows everything about me, and she always understands, and whenever I say I can't, she always says I can. She lifts my spirits up when they are down, and she's always right there when no one else is around."
Another section said, "The things in life I had to go through weren't so bad because she already knew. And because she knew, I was spared a lot of pain, and for my children someday I hope to do the same."
'She chose me'
Donna Marie Hill of Somerville wrote that her mother, Jewell Ray of Priceville, is special because "she chose me."
She was adopted 26 years ago. "She took me as hers; she had already adopted one child," said Hill. "She has provided for us, doctored us when we were sick and has stuck by us in good times and bad. She taught me good morals and values and what it's like to have a good life.
"She has been there even when we found our biological mothers, and of course you know, you have to be a strong person to accept that we wanted to find other families," Hill said.
Childhood memories
Jennifer Daniels of Hartselle said her life would be an empty shell without her mother, 57-year-old Yolande Berk of Nashville, and her precious childhood memories. She described her mother as petite but strong and energetic, her mind swimming with errands, her job as a nurse, her daily workout routine and other tasks.
"It wasn't too many moons ago that you and Dad went through the trying years, raising us three kids. Dad worked three jobs in the city while you took care of us as a 1970s housewife. You didn't have a driver license then and were always there," Daniels recalled.
"I can remember all three of us being plopped in the tub to get clean, and then you would serve us popcorn in pastel-colored Tupperware as we sat watching 'The Wizard of Oz.'
"You have sacrificed so much, and look at you now. You have a degree, culture and go to symphonies with Dad. Your house has vaulted ceilings, and you can even drive, too."
Instant aging
Kathy Granger of Decatur said her mother raised five children alone and worked two jobs, but it certainly wasn't easy. She recalled a time when the five were at the table eating and bickering, and their mother got up from the table and went to the bathroom.
She came back and said, "Look what you have done to me," and she had sprayed her hair white. But she got their attention and said she'll never forget the looks on their faces.
"In stores, she would walk up to mannequins and shake their hands and pat them on the head and talk to them, and we would all run in different directions," Granger said. "I could go on and on with stories, but she's pretty special and I just wish I could be as good of a mom as she has been."
Puts herself last
Pamela Heflin said her mother, Jeanette Heflin, "always puts herself last. She stayed home with me and my older sister when we were younger because she felt that being a mother was more important than having a bigger checking account. Of course, we always had everything we needed and most of what we wanted, but we also had a mother at home with us."
In the past year, she watched as her mother dealt with her grandmother's cancer and many hospitalizations before her death. "She made endless calls and traveled to Birmingham trying to find my grandmother the best doctors, even though it was hard with no insurance. . . . It was what needed to be done and she did it," Heflin said.
"My sister and I are grown now with children of our own and they could not ask for a better grandmother. She is always there with hugs and a smile, just like she was when we were children. I can not imagine another mother going out of her way her whole life for the people that she loves the way mine has."
Tested her nerves
Willodean Lile of Decatur is a strong woman who has endured plenty, said daughter Leslie Lile Suggs of Hartselle. "My father passed away when I was only 3, leaving some money, but not enough to pay off a mortgage and raise five kids all under the age of 13," she said.
They were a close-knit family, but as teenagers, we tested her nerves to the limit," said Suggs, who said her mother was so much fun that her friends liked to hang out there, too. "When I had a family of my own, I asked her how she ever put up with us during our rebellious years. She just smiled and said, 'With great difficulty, and a lot of love.' "
Tough times came again when Suggs' sister died tragically at age 40 a few years ago. It hit them all hard, but they were concerned their mother might grieve herself to death. Eventually, she said she had four other kids to think about and grandchildren who needed her. "I often wonder how I would have handled losing one of my kids. I don't know if I could be that tough," said Suggs.
Similar strength
Susan Sartin said her mother, Barbara Anne Engle Blackwell Eaton, has similar strong characteristics. She married at 19 and had four children in 10 years. One child died in an accident in 1975, followed by her husband in 1984. Then a daughter died of cancer in 2000.
"Not many people can go through what she has been through and not be strung out on drugs or stay depressed. She is not," said Sartin. "She gets up every morning and works in her garden. She takes care of the husband she married in 1988 and also helps take care of my three children while my husband and I work. She is an active, all-around great woman who does not let life get her down."
Moms and memories
Several women wrote about memories of their late mothers.
Susan Rogers Basden of Decatur, whose mother, Virginia Neville Rogers, died 12 years ago at age 66, remembers smells and colors.
"My first memories of my mother are her cleaning. My friends' mothers smelled so good, like lotion or perfume; my mother smelled like Clorox. She always had something in her hands, a switch for the children, a cleaning rag, sewing or a pan of beans to shell. . . . She was always busy, but never too busy to hug you or listen to your problems, even when you were grown and married with children of your own."
Basden said her mother "tried to teach me how to cook, and she forced my father to eat blue cornbread when I found the cake coloring. He drew the line at green mashed potatoes, though."
"When I miss her now, I call her four surviving sisters and close my eyes, and it's almost like talking to her for a while," said Basden.
Karen Plemons of Hartselle recalls a sad Mother's Day in 1989, because her mother, Margaret Reed of Marine, Ill., died Friday, May 12, 1989. "She had always been there when I needed her," said Plemons. She came to help when Plemons had her first baby, and she was there to help her through a divorce. "Then when I remarried seven years later, she thought Harold, my husband, hung the moon."
For Letha Montgomery Hardyman of Moulton, this will be a difficult Mother's Day, because it will be the first without her mom, Rheba Eva Hampton Montgomery, who died in September. "Mother was tough, not mean, but she said what she meant and really meant what she said. She always had an opinion and never minded giving it." Her husband died in a car accident, leaving her to raise the four children, and she never remarried or dated but devoted herself to them and, later, her seven grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
Her mother never fully recovered from a stroke, but she kept her wit, Montgomery recalled. One night when she came to swap out sitting duties with her brother and sister, a nurse commented on the nice family that was helping so much. "Mother said, 'Yeah, I got some of the best in-laws in the world!' The nurse looked at me, winked and said, 'Well, what about your kids?' Mother replied, 'Oh, they're OK, too,' and grinned a lopsided grin."
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