Cooperative Living September 2015 - 4

VIEWPOINT by Richard G. Johnstone Jr., Executive Editor
Vol. 69, No. 9
ISSN 1529-4579
RICHARD G. JOHNSTONE JR.
Executive Editor
BILL SHERROD
Editor
LAURA J. EMERY
Field Editor
JANET ROGERS BAILEY
Production Manager
LAURIE MILLS,
Apple Eye Studio, LLC
Graphic Designer
AMANDA S. CUNNINGHAM
Advertising Sales
SUSAN C. GLISSON
Advertising Assistant
To contact magazine:
9 a.m.-5 p.m. M-F
Phone: (804) 346-3344
Or at any time:
Fax: (804) 346-3448
Email: bsherrod@odec.com
Web: www.co-opliving.com
Published by the VA, MD & DE Association
of Electric Cooperatives
LARRY C. HOWDYSHELL
Chairman
JAMES E. HUFFMAN
Vice Chairman
HERBERT R. PATRICK
Secretary
FLETCHER B. JONES
Treasurer
JACKSON E. REASOR
President
RICHARD G. JOHNSTONE JR.
Executive Vice President
Board of Directors: R. Wayne Browning, R. Dodd Obenshain,
A&N; Michael Sandridge, Michael J. Keyser,
BARC; George N. Goin, Jr., Gary E. Wood, Central Virginia;
Olin S. Davis III, Michael I. Wheatley, Choptank;
Jeannette S. Everett, Steven A. Harmon, Community;
James E. Huffman, Shawn C. Hildebrand, Craig-Botetourt;
Patricia S. Dorey, J. William Andrew, Delaware;
Fletcher B. Jones, John C. Lee, Jr., Mecklenburg;
J. Steve Thomas, Sr., Greg W. White, Northern Neck;
J. Manley Garber, Stan C. Feuerberg, Northern Virginia;
Dale McNiel, Randell W. Meyers, Powell Valley;
Herbert R. Patrick, Micheal E. Malandro, Prince George;
Richard C. Oliver, Kent D. Farmer, Rappahannock;
Larry C. Howdyshell, Myron D. Rummel, Shenandoah
Valley; Frank W. Bacon, Jeffrey S. Edwards, Southside.
To advertise in Cooperative Living, contact:
Amanda Cunningham (804) 346-3344
National Advertising Representative: NCM
611 South Congress Ave., Suite 504
Austin, Texas 78704 * 800-626-1181
Member of the NCM network of
publications, reaching more than
8 million homes and businesses.
PRESSRUN . . . . . . 508,873
COOPERATIVE LIVING (USPS 473300)
is published 10 times a year, monthly
except for combined March/April and
November/ December issues, by the Va., Md.
& Del. Association of Electric Cooperatives.
POSTMASTER, address changes should be
sent to: Cooperative Living, 4201 Dominion
Boulevard, Suite 101, Glen Allen, VA 23060,
(804) 346-3344. Periodicals Postage paid at
Glen Allen, VA, and additional mailing offices.
Subscription: $4.90 per year for members of
subscribing co-ops; $10 per year for all others.
ADVERTISING published is accepted on the
premise that the merchandise and services offered
are accurately described and willingly sold
to customers at the advertised price. Neither this
magazine nor the electric cooperatives in Virginia,
Maryland, and Delaware endorses any
products or services advertised herein. If any
readers encounter non-compliance with these
standards, they are asked to inform the Editor.
FAMILY STORIES
Loved ones long-gone come alive again with
the discovery of long-forgotten portraits.
J
ohn L. Williams and Mary Emma Fowler
Williams are together again, side by side,
husband and wife, for the first time in over
a century. Or, at least, they're together again
in portraiture.
They were separated by a tragic train accident
that took John's life in 1909, leaving 33-year-old
Mary alone, carrying their final child, a girl like
her five sisters, her name - Johnnie - both a
tribute to, and a remnant of, the father she would
never know.
These portraits of John and Mary would lie
wrapped in tissue paper, unframed, for decades,
and were offered to me by Mary and John's granddaughter,
my mother, who, like me, is puzzled
why no one ever framed, much less hung, these
silent sentinels of a lost time.
Now properly framed and matted, affixed
firmly in our upstairs hallway, these 8 x 10
hand-tinted portraits, taken only shortly before
John's death, freeze in time a young couple with a
large and growing brood of girls, living in a dusty
crossroads town in west-central Georgia, each
offering the photographer a properly serious face
and a proper display of Sunday attire.
On the left is John, his handlebar mustache
stretching jaw to jaw, wearing a dark coat, pressed
white shirt and bow tie. On the right there's Mary,
her long hair pulled back tightly, wearing a white
blouse demurely covering even her neck, the hint
of ruffles on the front the only concession to fashion
or frivolity.
Mary's serious look must surely have turned
profoundly sad when word of the accident reached
her, leaving her to raise six young girls alone, in a
world where workplace options for women, especially
in rural areas, were limited or nonexistent.
So helped by her brother Bart, she did what she
had to, opening her home as a boarding house,
renting rooms to passing " drummers, " as traveling
salesmen were called in that time, and taking in
sewing and other handcraft work to piece together
a meager income for her and her girls.
Sadly, two of them never reached adulthood,
one dying of disease, the other in an accident,
Mary's heart broken two times more. But during a
time when self-pity must surely have been a luxury
few could afford, Mary persevered, raising her
girls, insisting they be able to make their own way
in a challenging world, building in each a passion
for learning, both through school textbooks and
2
Richard Johnstone
through the Good Book that Mary encouraged
them to hold near as their lifelong guide.
All four heeded her, each following one of the
few career paths then available to women, each
becoming a schoolteacher during the decade of
the 1920s, when life was roaring in the big cities
and the pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but was merely
puttering in small Georgia towns and villages
like Harris and Woodbury, where they grew up,
and Thomaston, where Mary and her four girls
would settle.
Two would marry and raise families, the other
two would continue working. Far from shrinking
into old age, though, Mary and her two single
daughters enlarged in the eyes of grandchildren
and great-grandchildren, splashing color onto the
black-and-white world in which they grew up
with wonderful family stories of church tent
revivals, outhouse visits on cold nights, picnics
on hot summer days, trips by horse and buggy to
call on family and friends.
Mary's four daughters called her " Mama "
throughout her life, and Mama she would become
to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren,
and through shared stories, to her great-greatgrandchildren
as well.
Mama passed away on a cool, sunny Sunday
morning in early January 1966, the day after she
turned 90, and a few days before I turned 10. During
the holidays that year, my family was visiting
the rambling house on the edge of town where
Mama lived with my grandparents, and her two
single daughters.
I vividly remember the hushed early-morning
voices, the light air of the holiday season turned
heavy, the bed where she spent her nights now
empty, the rocker where she spent her days now
casting long shadows over the braid rug in the
small " sitting room. "
Mary was born into a world little more than 10
years removed from the Civil War, that awful crucible
that forged the nation we know today. The
Mama she would become left little more than three
years before the first man walked on the moon.
In this long-forgotten portrait, I see a shy,
modest young wife and mother. But I also see the
strong, secure older woman she would become, in
her last decade reaching down three generations to
touch my life. And by sharing her stories with my
children, they've gotten to know a great-greatgrandmother
they never met. n
Cooperative Living/September 2015
http://www.co-opliving.com
Cooperative Living September 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Cooperative Living September 2015
