My Great Grandmother's Bonnet

Several years ago, giving the graduation address at a local college, after the usual amenities I said to the thousands there, “this graduating class is blessed to graduate on Mother's Day. Sir Winston Churchill, in preparing one of his biographies, reading over a list of his teachers which some assistant had prepared for him, wrote hist mother's name at the top of the list. He said, 'my mother was my first and greatest teacher.' Right now, before I go any further, I want to honor the mothers of these graduates.” The graduates immediately rose and everyone told me that they began to clap and wave to their mothers in the audience. Along with their graduation, which I stressed is the one thing that cannot be taken from them, they knew they were there because of their mother.

On our farm, there was a large camel back trunk. As I child, I finally got it open one day, someone had put in the trunk a round-up of items belonging to my great grandparents, among which were some political posters of Theodore Roosevelt. One thing that got my attention was my great grandmother's bonnet. Someone had put a note with the bonnet stating that this one was new when she died. I had claimed possession of this trunk, but some time during my long absence from the farm, while I was away in military service, farm hands in and out of the property, the trunk disappeared. She would have worn this bonnet and others like it, homemade like their long dresses and aprons, post civil war. It had been easy to trace her ancestry to England because her family had arrived much later than my great grandfather's family...the Lucas family, who had owned a large part of one eastern North Carolina county.

While in the military, stationed for awhile on the staff of an Army hospital in Alabama, active in a local Baptist church. I was responsible for the Mother's Day program at the Baptist Association's men's annual brotherhood meeting. About the time I arrived for the meeting, I had a received a message that the speaker had been injured and was in the hospital. I went around to several outstanding men in the meeting, one a former senator, one a former school superintendent, a doctor, a lawyer, a produce-dealer and I said to each, “you must help me out with the program. I want you to speak for a few minutes about your mother.”

I would recommend this program for any church, any civic club. I have been to many church gatherings of every type, on every continent of the world, this ranks #1 as the best service I ever attended. Each of these men has a remarkable story about his mother, her cooking skills, her child-training skills, her influence on their community, her putting up with a rotten husband. One of the best stories, “my mother always went around in our large, cold country house, putting her hand to our feet to see if we were warm.” One said, “she forgot that I was married and my wife was in bed with me. My wife said to me the next day, 'I loved your mother before, but after I found how careful she was, and attentive to her children. I love her even more.”

There will be many tears, and this will be a problematic program for your group, but I found that each man there wanted to talk about his mother. I always started out my talks before groups on Mother's Day by telling the story of the young husband who asked his bride, “when are you going to learn to make biscuits like my mother?” Her reply, “when you learn to make dough like my father.”

Pity the individual without memories, many children do not have pleasant memories of parents...dope addicts, philanders, drunks, abusive, but most, in spite of poverty, frugality, lack of preparedness for parenthood, have good memories of parents and home. When I was a child, I could not understand why on homecoming Sunday at our country church, old people who I did not know would enter the church and as soon as the singing started, there was so much crying and tears.

This is what it was all about, homecoming, they had come back to their home church, where they were raised as children, and their minds were flooded with memories of their parents, the old building, the old hymns of faith. My parents owned a very large farm, the highway which goes through the land is named for my father. On the highway, probably two miles from our home, was an old homestead...an old house in a grove of trees, unoccupied my entire life. On one Saturday of the year, the yards and path to that house was lined with fine automobiles. Under the trees, tables were set up, covered with white clothes, filled with food. Descendents of that family, who had been reared in that home gathered at this very uncolorful place. There was no color or attraction there for anyone else, but a certain attraction to the descendants of that family, most of whom were long dead. They did not want their children to forget.

There have been about 4000 books written about the life of Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps one of his greatest expressions, “all that I am, or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” Lincoln's mother raised a family in a log cabin. His mother, like many mothers, never had a manicure, had few, if any, store-bought clothes, and probably her name was never in the newspaper except for her obituary.

I am one of the few fortunate people who remember both of my grandmothers, both prepared meals on wood-burning cook stoves, never saw a supermarket filled with food items. I think of my great grandmother who probably never went to a beauty shop, riding in a buggy wearing her bonnet. Her bonnet which covered most of her head, face and shoulders. About 4 miles from our house, on other family land, land bequeathed to a Christian college. Out in the woods, there was an old structure, over 100 years of age. This too had been preserved because of its heritage. My uncle took me to this structure one day and told me this was where the slaves and the hands on the farm worshiped. Glass was too expensive to have windows, just hinged shutter-like doors. Inside were rough, hand-made benches, you would not consider them pews, there were no backs. He said they mostly used them to lean on since they spent most of their time on their knees.

One old black man has maintained an outhouse for the building, and one Sunday of the year, would cut back the bushes so they could have their annual homecoming observance, remembering their ancestors. Beautiful automobiles would be parked up and down the highways, well-dressed attendees. They did not want the world, nor their long dead ancestors to forget that they could remember...and so it is with every mother's day. Not too busy to forget your greatest friend.