Mother's Day memories

Mother's Day has come and gone for another year and I am late posting this blog. I thought about it all last week, and even located the photo to post. Then I got busy and am just now writing a tribute to my mother.

Mildred Ruth Smith Wilson was born on October 21, 1914, to Oswald Cole and Bessie Jewel Mayberry Smith. She was their 2nd daughter. Mother attended schools at Curtis, Basin and Elba. She graduated at the top of her class at Elba High School in 1933 and got married that summer to my father, James Lawrence Wilson, a farmer from the Curtis community.

I remember mother talking about her classes at Elba High School. She loved her Latin class. Most of all I think she enjoyed literature. I remember when I was growing up, that we got the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper in the mail and she loved reading the editorials. She would read the funnies to us until we were old enough to read them. I remember that she read to us "Tales of Marco Polo" and that's how I learned about China. (My playmates and I would try to dig a hole to China but we never could get through the center of the earth! Mother said China was half-way around the world.) On Christmas she gave me a book "At the Back of the North Wind" and encouraged me to read it. It was a big book and I thought I'd never finish it.

Mother enjoyed listening to radio programs in the evenings. One of her favorites when I was small was "Dr. I.Q" - a forerunner of game shows. You could send in questions and if they used your entry, you would receive a box of Milky Way candy bars. More than once her questions were used and we enjoyed the candy bars that arrived in the mail.

When I was 12 (almost 13) , and mother was expecting her 6th child, I remember how she loved listening to the Phil Harris and Alice Faye show on Sunday nights. I was not too surprised when our baby sister was born and she named her Alice Faye. Mother also had a sister named Faye. Alice was born on Halloween night, although her birth certificate has October 30 on it.

I remember that mother had a little white wooden chest that she kept the baby clothes in. As they outgrew the clothes, she folded them and put them back in the chest to use for the next baby. In between babies, she sometimes let us dress our dolls with the baby clothes.

Mother went to school during the Depression and there wasn't enough funds for her to go on to college. But she made sure that all of her 7 children would go to college.

She never worked outside the home until I started to Troy State Teachers College in 1953. Then she started to work at Covington Industries sewing factory in Opp as an Inspector. She was working there when she died 10 years later. She and daddy wanted to build a new house and she wanted to work to help furnish the new 2-story brick home.

Mother was an expert seamstress and made all of our clothes, including coats, and our panties when we were little.

She was a hard worker, always laboring at something. I remember that she always took about a 15 minute nap after lunch every day and would get up and get right back to work. She always had a big garden and we helped her plant, hoe and harvest it. How I hated picking and shelling butterbeans; didn't mind peas and beans as much. She never let anything go to waste.

Mother died suddenly of a blood clot on April 28, 1963. We were living in Bremen, GA. We were all in shock. Our mother was never sick! She was a very kind person and people loved her. This was demonstrated the day of her funeral when school closed and the plant where she worked closed so people could attend her funeral. I never saw so many cars going to the church and cemetery. And even now, when I meet someone that she worked with as I did recently, they always tell me things that she said or did and how she always helped others.

On thing I remember was the time she made me a short, white corduroy coat with a flared back and mailed it to me at Troy State. I didn't have a light winter coat but knew there wasn't money to buy one so I just got by with what I had. I opened the package when it arrived and I don't think I've ever received a gift that I appreciated more. She made the coat and when I asked where she got the beautiful fabric, she said a friend had it left over when she made a garment and brought mother the scraps. Someone else gave her some cotton fabric that she used for the lining. My Aunt Barbara made large covered buttons for the coat. I treasured that coat for many years.

After I was married and living away, she wrote to us every week, telling us about what they were doing back home. These letters kept me from getting home sick when in college and when Jim and I were living in Germany for 2 years. I still have a letter that she wrote and put in the mail box the Sunday afternoon before she died later that same afternoon. The letter was in our mail box when we got back home in GA after attending the funeral.

Bill, Ronnie, and James Gilmer with grandparents, Lawrence and Ruth Wilson

Our boys enjoyed visiting mother and daddy at the farm in the summertime. She only had 6 grandchildren when she died; later there were 13 more.

Mother liked to can vegetables, make all kinds of jellies, jams and preserves and later when she got a freezer, would try to fill it during the summer. I didn't inherit her love for doing all of this but some of my sisters did. I like buying my frozen food in the grocery store, or getting fresh veggies at roadside curb markets in the summer, already shelled!

I think that if I could sum up how I remember my mother, it would be "a loving, caring mother who wanted the best for her children". She was a great encourager.