Miss Sally

She burst into this world at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The year was 1918, the first world war had ended, and the armistice was signed that day to make it official.  Years later she would joke that when she was born they declared it a holiday. But on that day the United States was at war with another enemy---an influenza outbreak.  So when her mother sent for her cousin, Dr. Bob Bridges, to deliver her second child as he had her first, he could not leave the influenza patients. So the midwife, known to all and sundry as Black Mariah, delivered her.  Her mother named her after both her grandmothers---Sally for her maternal Sally Parks Sumner Wallace, and Frances for Millie Frances Clemens Miller. She was called Sally by her family. My daddy called her Sal. My friends and the younger women at church called her Miss Sally. I just called her Mama.

To tell you about my mama is hard, because she is a subject I never tire of speaking about. I have endeavored to pare it down to specific anecdotes which I think exemplify her spirit, and these I will share, so that all can know this remarkable woman. She was really something special.

My mama's childhood home was behind what today is the home of Blake and Kathy Wright near the county park.  Like many of my people they were farmers, folks who lived close to the land.  The Depression hit these good citizens the hardest.  My mama often recalled that although they were poor ("Everybody was poor! We didn't know any difference!"),  there was always enough. My Gran was herself a rare provider who had spring, summer, and fall gardens; maintained a stocked cellar full of the summer harvest which she canned over a wood stove in a water bath on the hottest days of summer; sewed perfectly fitting clothes for all her family, as well as a sizable collection of handmade quilts which today belong to me.  I mention this because to know my mama you must know the iron maiden who raised her.  My grandmother lived on in my mother, undeniably the child who resembled and emulated her most.  

Sally was raised on hard work and the King James Bible.  She was taught that honor came next after faith. She accepted these teachings and never abandoned them for ninety-seven years.  She never believed in fly now, pay later and she never heard a good excuse for dishonesty.  She was a straight-shooting, hard-working, virtuous woman and she remains the yardstick by which I measure myself, though always falling short.

In the summer and fall of 1925,  her mother was expecting her third child, my Uncle Reuben.  With Gran unable to go to the fields,  Sally, 7, and her old sister Pearl, 9, were pressed into service.  There was a nine acre patch of cotton which the two little girls were expected to bring in.  The hoes the little girls had were longer than they were tall.  But they shouldered them and began, knowing that unless they finished the row, there would be no cool dipper of water waiting at the other end. Pearl flew through hers, occasionally chopping a half-grown plant. Sally, following, carefully straightened and packed dirt around any plant Pearl mangled,  more worried about accuracy than speed. It would become the hallmark by which she lived her own life, always more concerned with quality than quantity. Her mama had taught her that what was worth doing was worth doing well, and she took it to heart at a young age.  By the time they finished the nine acres, it was time to begin again where they had started. No mind---Sally and Pearl brought in the field on time and by themselves! That year's crop was secured.

It was the beginning of Sally's acceptance of responsibility.  When new little brother Reuben was stricken with polio, it affected the whole family. Though Reuben was a smart, happy child, as he grew, the withered leg and hip failed to grow. When he was small, it made little difference. But by age five it began to catch up to him. So during first grade and for awhile after, it was Sally who carried him. Over a mile to the bus stop on County Park Road and onto the school bus and into City School, Sally toted Reuben on her back. Kind Uncle George Phillips, the blacksmith, carefully constructed a tiny pair of crutches in his shop for his little nephew, and Sally and Reuben both were freed.  Reuben walked with his crutches, unaided, from then on, well into his ninety-second year.

The premature death of her father shortly before her fourteenth birthday left the little family unable to manage their farm. So her mother sold the home place and they moved into one of Sally's grandmother's rent houses on Cedar Hill Drive. (Mabel and Jess White's old house stands today on the site of that new home.) 

As Reuben entered adolescence, Gran knew that Reuben must have training to get a job since he didn't have two good legs. Sally, an excellent student, was, at fifteen, in her junior year of high school. Although she was slated for a diploma, instead she began as an employee of the inaugural Maples Company workforce. With the help of the newly opened Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, Sally sent Reuben first to Auburn, and later to Port Arthur, Texas, where he studied radio technology and acquired the skills to snag an excellent position on the Redstone Arsenal, where he would build transistors for the Saturn rocket.

When I first heard this story, I cried out angrily, "How could Gran sacrifice your education for Reuben? School meant so much to you and you loved it! It wasn't fair!" 

I will remember forever her response. She looked at me levelly and said, "It isn't fair not to have two good legs! Every day of my life I'VE had two good legs to stand on. Besides, I loved my little brother more!"

I looked at her, speechless, tears stinging my eyes at her selflessness. She was dead serious. What a woman. 

After Pearl's marriage at age nineteen, Sally was the family breadwinner.  But she had a fine time anyway, dating many and frequently.  The slim figure in the becoming clothes perfectly tailored by her mama attracted several young men.  She didn't play "hard-to-get"; she WAS hard to get!  Independent to a fault, Sally said no to six young fellows before handsome Homer Lee Morris came to work at the Maples plant.  Within a few months, he had sold his calf he raised to put a diamond on her hand, before leaving for the Army Air Corps.  Sally had found her prince.

After two years of letters, furloughs and visits, Sally took the train to Monroe, LA, to attend Homer's graduation from Officer's Candidate School. She arrived a couple of days in advance as travel was uncertain with troops crowding every train. Sally sat on her suitcase all the way from Ft. Payne to Louisiana.  But by the time she saw Homer receive his wings, she was sporting a wedding band.  The next day the newlyweds took the train north, where they were met at the Ft. Payne depot by my Granddaddy Morris in the 1941 Chevrolet fueled by the combined family's gas ration stamps. It was Christmas Eve, 1944. Their song, "I'll Be Seeing You", was number one on the Hit Parade that day.

For ten months, Sally was an officer's wife, significant in that her allotment check was $200 a month rather than the $100 a non-com's wife received. Sally didn't feel it was hers to spend, reasoning that she had not worked to earn it. She banked every check and when Homer came home she had enough to build them a house, on the acreage my granddaddy deeded them. 

The carpenters put up the foundation, walls, roof and sub-floor of the Cape Cod they had selected. The combined family finished it.  Granddaddy plumbed it; Uncle Glenn Berry (Pearl's husband) wired it; Uncle Raymond Ward, Daddy, and Granddaddy hung sheetrock; Cousin Bub Wallace brought his concrete mixer for steps, porches, and sidewalks. Eva Mae Rounsavall Lewis's dad installed the handsome hardwood floors.

In 1953 Sally and Homer brought their only child home from the hospital. I have a picture on my coffee table of Mama holding me, sitting on the top step of the front porch on that day. I would live in that wonderful house for fifty-nine years total.

Sally's world was complete now with her husband and little girl to care for. She spent her days as a happy wife, mother, and homemaker, and the years rolled by. It sometimes seemed to be a blur of schools, church, Scouts, choir, dance and piano lessons, and band practice. She was a mother that supplied every need and dream. My childhood was idyllic, and not just in retrospect. And she was the main reason, although my daddy was a strong supporting player.

As a young adult, I found her to be my best friend, something I hadn't foreseen in the stormy teen-age years. She taught me to cook and care for a house, but also how to make a home. She taught me happiness was having someone to care for.

She and my daddy gave the old Cape Cod to me upon my marriage in 1978. They were living just up the driveway in the new home he built her in 1972. She remained my best friend and closest neighbor until her death in 2016 at age 97. She left a void that will never be filled.

In the stunned aftermath of her passing, I totally forgot the eulogy I had written in the days leading up to her death. I didn't think of it until several days later. Since it was never read I am concluding this with the words I wrote on that day, so that it will finally be heard.

"My mother is lying in Rosewood Manor Assisted Living, chained to the oxygen machine that is keeping her alive. The thing she feared the most has become our reality. She doesn't know and won't be told that the oxygen levels have already been turned up and we are probably looking at Hospice in the not too distant future. As the closest mother and daughter you will ever find, she is also my BFF as the young folks say.  For the first time in our lives we are separated by more than the driveway, but congestive heart failure is something we can't defeat. 

These are my thoughts:

Without her I would have never known this wondrous world. Without her I would have no hope of the hills of heaven.

In love she bore me; in love she gave me life.
Because of her I know that life and love are synonyms.

She has given me my Great-great grandmother Wallace's quilt, 'Cornwallis Surrendered', and my Great-grandmother Morris' Goofus glass. She has given me an endless stream of gifts for my own delight and enjoyment. But none of these are greater than the glory of  her faith, the challenge of her courage and the loveliness of her smile.

If I learn at last to do justly, have mercy and walk humbly with my God, it is by perfect example she has taught me. 

Whatever I am that I ought not be is a departure from the path on which she set my childish feet. Whatever I am that I ought to be is a clear and shining reflection of her faith.

Blessed is she to me above all women.
Blessed am I to be a part of her.


My mother died on the days these words were written. Now she lives with me forever."

And now you know Sally Miller Morris, too.