MOM'S EULOGY
Born in 1923, Mom was a young girl when the Depression hit, her alcohol-addicted dad abandoned her mom and sister in Ohio, and the little family made-do living with relatives in a tiny far-off Fort Worth duplex.
She brushed fame early. To hear her tell the story, she and friends were roller skating down main street one summer afternoon when a smartly dressed man in a suit approached them with the offer of an ice cream cone at the corner drug store. Like most western towns, this one had the four-cornered center: bank, hardware store, drugstore, and church.
These extremely poor little girls jumped at the chance for an ice cream treat and followed the kind man to the drugstore's ice cream counter. That evening they all told their parents about the treat, gushing with enthusiasm over his generosity and their gratitude. The way she always told it, the next morning the local newspaper carried a banner headline: "John Dillinger's gang robs Fort Worth bank."
Yes, the nice man was one of the bank robbers who got the little girls off the street to protect them in case things went awry. Back in the day when even bank robbers were gentlemen. She lived long enough to enjoy that civilized behavior all the way to TikTok and social media barbarism.
When she was about 16 a boyfriend took her to a Brethren Church revival service and she gave her heart to the Lord. Not growing up in a Christian home and influenced by a father's dereliction and alcoholism, she developed a fiercely independent spirit. She stepped up to her family responsibilities for her mother, who was a small and a bit sickly woman, and her younger sister during those depression years.
She went to college during WWII (she was 18 years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed) and always talked about "when the boys came home." During those war years all the young men were away soldiering and all college campuses were virtually devoid of boys. But then, she'd say with a mischievous grin, "the boys came home." One of those boys was my dad, whom she met at the Christian college campus ministry, Navigators.
When she was in college, as a bright and attractive co-ed, all the girls' sororities tried to recruit her. But her antipathy to alcohol made her spurn all their overtures. Being a social butterfly, though, she yearned for comraderie and went to the dean of students to start a non-alcoholic women's sorority. That landed her on the college blacklist as a troublemaker and the college dinged her resume.
After graduating with her master's degree in health and physical education, she applied for various college teaching positions and that ding became a blessing. When she applied to the fledgling Bob Jones College in Cleveland, Tennessee, the staff there picked up on her teetotaling conviction and willingness to buck the system over the sorority issue. The college picked her up quickly as the first women's health and physical education professor. She was there during the move from Cleveland to Greenville, South Carolina where the college--now university-- still is today.
Dad went to Venezuela, South America with Texas Oil Company but really to earn enough money to buy a farm property there. Always ready for a great adventure, she married him and they outfitted a Studebaker truck to take their honeymoon and possessions down the TransAmerica Highway. But in Texarkana, Arkansas, on an icy winter night crossing a poorly-marked bridge under construction, they hit a barrier, skidded, and came to a stop with one tire hanging over the edge of the bridge a hundred feet to the river below.
As if that weren't enough, Dad got yellow-jaundice (he'd already been in Venezuela for two years) and was in bed for nearly a month. All their married life they both talked about how Mom read the unabridged Josephus to him during those long recovery days. I get the feeling that was one of the most wonderful memories of their early marriage; she rose to duty and made the best of a tragedy. Much has been said of the WWII generation's commitment to duty, fulfilling obligations, and a stiff upper lip to do what has to be done. No victimhood, no entitlement. What a lesson for us today.
Within a handful of years, she had two sons, my older brother, Art, and me, and Dad had procured a 1,000 acre farm in the Venezuelan highlands. The dream was poultry and dairy; since chickens grow fast, he started with chickens. He irritated the local farmers by growing better, healthy, clean chickens and essentially took over the market. They accused our family of witchcraft and voodoo, and of course stealing their business.
In February 1959 a junta, or coup detat, developed and gave license for vengeance. We fled the back door as the gun-toting guerillas came in the front door. After a year trying to get protection for our deeded property, Dad realized it was useless and we returned stateside Easter Sunday, 1961. During those years, Mom struggled with the language and with the social ostracism.
Dad wanted to go back when things settled, which is why rather than going back to the midwest where all their relatives were, we looked at farm properties in a one-day travel arc from Washington, D.C. and found a cheap, worn-out gullied rockpile in Swoope. Dad was 39, had lost virtually everything, and was ready to start over. Mom stuck to him. A couple of months after moving in at Swoope, the local Ku Klux Klan burned a bale of hay in our lane so we would know that the community knew we were communist spies. The Welcome Wagon it was not.
That was 1961, Cold War, McCarthyism. Our farm had been bought and sold three times by three foreign or quasi-foreign families from 1949-1961, each four years, which is the term of missionary and foreign service. The locals came to believe this farm in Swoope was a communist espionage ring. And then we came from Venezuela, the fourth foreign people. That confirmed it. Hence the burning bale. Welcome to Swoope, Lucille the social butterfly. Hang with me; I'm going somewhere with this.
As Dad and Mom struggled to get their feet back under them after the Venezuelan tragedy--which we eventually came to see as a blessing--our family entered a dark time. The eroded, poor farm was an eyesore. Neighbors looked away. Dad wouldn't use chemicals. Another confirmation he couldn't be trusted to play the farm game nicely.
Mom took a teaching position at the new Buffalo Gap High School as women's health and phys ed teacher, which she continued for 20 years. She steered hundreds of young women into an appreciation of badminton, volleyball, basketball, bowling and dance--yes, dance, from square dancing to ballroom. Move, girls, move. Dad took various local positions as an accountant.
In about 1973 Mom's mother, my grandmother, was quite ill and needing attention, so we moved her down to the farm and she moved in a mobile home right outside our yard. By 1984 Grandma needed more attention and Dad had started with his cancer, so she took a medical leave of absence from teaching to care for them. She never went back.
For four years she hung close to home; Grandma passed away in 1985 and Dad in 1988. Mom cared for him to the bitter end, never institutionalizing him, but keeping him home and denying herself the travel and social interaction her spirit craved. When he passed in February, 1988, Mom went into social butterfly compensatory overdrive. At her peak, we counted 22 organizations she volunteered for. She traveled the world, including a solo trip to Indonesia to see Art and Donna at their aviation New Tribes Mission station. Her calendar was so full you couldn't see the daily squares.
When Covid came and the doctor wanted to give her a vaccination and flu shot, she stiffened and said in general terms: "I've never had a flu shot and my generation took Iwo Jima and no covid is going to get me." The last activity to go was Happy Notes, a group of retirees who sang old-fashioned hymns in nursing homes around the area. In her 90s she would pop into our house with a cheery "I'm going to sing to the old folks." That's one reason I've picked three of her favorite hymns to sing today--she loved to sing, and she sang with gusto.
In what has become a wonderful life circle, my wife Teresa took on the roll of primary caregiver for Mom. Teresa was Mom's star athlete in High School, earning the school's first state gymnastics medal. Recently, when Mom didn't want to get out of bed or complained of being tired, Teresa would remember Mom's encouragement: "Now Mom, you know when I felt like I couldn't do the balance beam, you wouldn't let me slack. So I'm not going to let you slack either. You need to get up, move, keep those joints limbered up." Those teacher's words came back to haunt her, in the best of all possible ways.
As I saw her deteriorating in the last few months, I pondered how I would explain the tension I felt, after Dad's passing, as she spent her days away from the farm and I spent mine loving and working the farm. What's amazing is that as I've contemplated her life since her passing, the frustration and even resentment over her "off farm" addiction has been replaced with a deep appreciation for her investment in other people and cosmopolitan interests. She was the life of the party, always ready with a quip or story, and when we took the keys away from her at 97 she shifted her focus from all the off-farm activities to on-farm focus, making sure she was in the middle of all the events we hosted.
She went on my hayride tours. She talked to everyone who visited. If we were going up the rough mountain road, she climbed--or we pushed her--into the truck seat. No way would she miss out on an escapade. She took her Great-grandkids on excursions, so much so that when we put the body in the ground last Monday, Andrew, who is 20, quipped a Momism to the gathered, shovel-laden group: "I always thought it was neat growing up that I could tell all my friends that my GREATgrandma is cooler than your grandma."
No parent is perfect. No relationship is perfect. If we want to focus on irritants, we can always make a list. But in this time of grief and rejoicing, I've received grace for all the unmet expectations and have developed a deep awe, appreciation, and gratitude for the life of conviction, duty, integrity, and yes, dramatic theatrics and extrovertedness, that she bestowed on me. I stand today on the shoulders of her dramatic communication DNA. Love does not keep a record of wrongs; perhaps the ultimate sign of adulthood is when we let go and forgive all the unfilled expectations of our parents and just appreciate them for their guidance, quirks, and encouragement.
When I was a senior in high school I was sure I would receive the Augusta County Outstanding Senior 4-Her award, since I was going to Chicago as a state achievement winner; I didn't get that award. Crushed, I got home that evening to her grand announcement that she had, completely unknown to me, contacted radio commentator icon Paul Harvey at his ABC studio in Chicago and arranged a personal visit while I was there at the national convention as part of Virginia's delegation. I still savor that two-hour one-on-one in-studio visit with the legendary journalist: "Hello Americans, I'm Paul Harvey."
Suddenly not winning that coveted award was eclipsed by her knowing her son and doing what she could to make this 4-H trip much more than about farming; it would now be about the most famous radio personality in the world. That was mom. She brought the world to me. Many evenings at home I sat in rapt attention when, as Buffalo Gap High School debate coach, she and the team would sit around the kitchen table strategizing on arguments and case studies. She never lived in a silo, and I'm eternally grateful for that gift.
Yes, I've decided that you finally become an adult when you realize your adult parents did the best they knew with what they had. For Mom to overcome her difficult early life, tragic loss numerous times, and then throw herself into local volunteerism to feed her dutiful "what can I do?" soul and then, with health failing, ride her stationary bicycle three miles a day, lift barbells, and keep singing--that's a spirit to which we can all aspire.
Mom, we'll miss your leadership, your commitment to Jesus, your duti-bound desire for those you loved and who depended on you. I expect you've already got a line-dancing party going on in heaven. St. Peter, get on your dancing shoes; you ain't seen nothin' like Lucille, mom, grandma, and great-grandma. She's just getting started.
