My mother was born in the small town of Boston, Texas. From the time she was very small, she could be found following my grandfather down a row of cotton, helping him with the picking. She only made it as far as the third grade in school because her presence was required at home to help with the chores. She met my dad when she was 17, and married him at 18. I was born a year later.

Over the next twenty years, she bore seven more children; five more girls and two boys. For most of her life, she was a single mother, raising us on the small salary she made as a car hop at the Cutlet House, a local drive-in, and then later, as a waitress at the restaurant at the Continental Bus station. She somehow managed to keep us all fed and clothed.

When she was in her early 60's, she was walking across the room one day, and the bone in her right leg snapped. She was taken to the hospital, and after the tests were done and the x-rays taken, the doctors came back with the bad news. It was bone cancer.

For five years, she fought the disease, with visits to the hospital a frequent occurrence. Eventually, she was forced to allow herself to be placed in a nursing home because she was not able to walk on her own.

At the beginning of May in 1998, my sister Gloria called to tell me that Mom had been taken to the hospital in Dallas, and the prognosis was not good. She had a massive infection in her leg that the doctors could do nothing for, and that it was only a matter of time. I was absolutely stunned... I had always felt that there was always something that doctors could do, and to hear that they gave us no hope for her recovery literally took my breath away. All I could do for the next twenty-four hours was cry; I had no way to get home to be with her.

On May 3rd, my sister, Peggy called to tell me that Mom had just drifted away that morning; she was in no pain, Peggy said, and between one breath and the next, she was gone.

She was only sixty-eight years old; she had not even been given her full three score and ten. She left behind eight grieving children, fifteen grandchildren and and eighteen great-grandchildren who all love and miss her with all their hearts.

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The graphics on this page were made exclusively for it, and are the property of Penney's Place. Please do not take them. The music is 'Rise Again' sequenced here by Dallas Holm. It was my mother's favorite song, one she had first heard sung by Pastor Harold 'Kenny' Feldman of the Sunlight Mission Church in Santa Monica, California.