My Southern Heart

Meeting Jimmy…

Classes resumed after Christmas at a furious pace. The professors piled on the assignments making up for lost time. I was struggling in botany and hated it. There didn’t seem to be enough time to get it all done, not with working three hours each day, and I had no choice about that.

Looking back, it seems that my work at the infirmary helped pay for my meals, because I only received a small check once or twice a semester. So, if I received a dollar or two in the mail, which I did from time to time, it was needed and welcomed. For a brief time, I found another parttime job typing for an accountant there just to have some spending money, but that only added to the frustration of not enough time to study. Two jobs and 18 hours was altogether too much and overwhelming.

The occasional outings with the Baptist Student Union were good for me, and I tried to reserve the time for them. I loved going to the pediatric floor at the hospital where the children always made me laugh. Visiting with the women prisoners at the jail was a heartbreaking experience, listening to the stories of their lives and what they had experienced. I had nothing to compare to it, but I listened and hugged them. Somehow, that seemed to help and they welcomed us back each week. My favorite trip was probably to the nursing homes. Never having really known my grandparents, I had a tendency to adopt anyone older than 75. I loved them all, and they were so excited each week when we came for our visit.

The weeks had tumbled quickly by and it was March already…March 16, 1964. We were having a blowing rain storm…the kind that turns your umbrella inside out and wrenches it from your hands. I had managed to get across campus but was pretty soaked and freezing by the time I got to my speech lab. There, we would sit in our little carrels, wearing headphones and listening to difficult vocabulary words, repeating them quietly into microphones. I wasn’t real thrilled with this exercise or too sure of the use of it, but I complied. Sitting there in my little cubicle, I had my sweater wrapped around me, still trying to get warm.

I was quietly repeating the words I heard in the microphone, when I heard these words in my headset: “WHERE have you been?”.

“Huh?” I thought to myself…am I supposed to repeat that?!

“WHERE have you been? I haven’t seen you on campus, and I KNOW I would have seen YOU!”

“Okay, what’s going on?” I thought to myself. I looked up and there in the instructor’s booth was a very handsome young man, looking directly at me and smiling.

“Where would you like to go?” he questioned…speaking softly into his microphone. “I’ll close the lab and take you anywhere you want to go”.

Now that I’m older and a little wiser, I would probably say, “you’ve been watching too many romantic comedies”, but I was eighteen and he was cute!

Jimmy did close the lab class that afternoon, making all the students happy. By that time, the sun had come out and a beautiful rainbow made a timely appearance. We went for a long walk around the campus, and Jimmy pointed out things that had been there all along…but I’d never even noticed. A junior and a speech major, he was from the coast of Florida. He was there on a speech debate scholarship, and he was very good at it. A Methodist ministerial student at a Baptist college, his plans were to go to Duke University after graduation for his masters and to become a Methodist minister.

With a quick wit, beautiful blue eyes and a disarming smile, Jimmy was the proverbial tall, dark and handsome. He invited me to go to a play on campus that night…MacBeth. As I recall, it was a lovely evening…and the start of a close friendship.

Home for Christmas

My Southern Heart, Reflections

The days on the calendar flew quickly by. Thanksgiving had come and gone, and I was looking forward to a nice long break at Christmas. I was tired and “run down”, to use one of Mama’s expressions, after a bout with strep throat and a high fever. I had even managed to spend a few days and nights as a patient at the infirmary where I worked. The Christmas break would give me a chance to rest and catch up on all the school work I’d fallen behind on…not to mention preparing for the finals the week after my return to school. Not the best way to spend Christmas vacation, but I was thankful for the time.

It snowed the day before we were to leave for Christmas break. A deep blanket of white covered the campus. Icicles hung from the chapel and other buildings and weighed heavily on the tree branches. Everything glistened in the bright sunlight. It was a winter wonderland in the deep South. No one had come prepared with boots but we still tromped in the snow, throwing snowballs at one another and basically acting thirteen again. It added to the excitement of going home.

I was riding home with Sandra, one of my friends from Memphis, who was also a freshman there. Her boyfriend Mike had come down to drive us back to Memphis. It seems there was someone else with us on the trip…but I can’t quite remember who it was. I gently remind myself that it has been forty-five years.

It continued to snow all that day, and the roads had turned into a solid sheet of ice. Driving was reported to be treacherous at best. Under normal circumstances, the trip took four hours. We left school about eleven o’clock in the morning right after our last class. It didn’t take long, or very many miles, to know we were not looking forward to this trip. Mike was a good driver but totally inexperienced driving in snow; and now the snow had been packed under a sheet of ice.

I remember vividly that, at first, there was talk and laughter among us on the trip…and then silence as we realized how dangerous it was. We must have only been traveling about 20 miles per hour, but more than once, we slipped and slid totally across the road and into what would have been oncoming traffic…had anyone else been there. We passed dozens of vehicles abandoned on the side of the road or, even worse, wrecked. There were very few stores open and we needed to stop for gas. We also needed to get some food and something warm to drink. Unfortunately, this was before cell phones so we had no way to call our parents or anyone if, indeed, we were to need help.

We finally found a store open and bought some sandwiches and hot chocolate. We also filled the tank with gas. I remember calling my dad collect at that point. He said to find some where to buy chains for the car and that he would pay for them along with the gas. Luckily, we did find a store open and managed to get chains to fit. A little while longer and we were back on the road. The chains did help some, but it was still rough going. Twelve hours after leaving school, we pulled up to my front door. We were all exhausted but glad to be home.

Since that long ago journey, I’ve lived in Illinois and Iowa where it snows a lot. I’ve driven in snow storms and blizzards with white-out conditions. I’ve driven on sheets of ice. Yet, each time I do, I’m transported back in time to a car full of college kids trying their best to get home for Christmas…

First Impressions

My Southern Heart, Reflections

The days immediately preceding my freshman year of college were bittersweet ones. My heart was still tender and nothing was ready for my leaving home. Since I’d given up my scholarship, it meant Daddy having to get a bank loan for my meals, housing, books and tuition; and it meant my having to work on campus at the infirmary for anything else I might need. My sister Gerry helped me with the last minute preparations, remembering many things I hadn’t even thought of, such as an alarm clock, iron and ironing board.

A few days before leaving for college, I was browsing through a friend’s yearbook from the school. One photo in particular caught my attention – that of a young man whose face was literally, vertically half handsome and half distorted. I’m not sure if he had been born that way or at some point in his life had experienced severe nerve damage. At first glance, his face was disconcerting, and a giggle nervously escaped my lips. My friend glared at me, and said “that’s John and he’s wonderful”.

The next few days were extremely busy as I packed and my parents drove me the four hours south of Memphis to school. The weekend before registration was hectic as I unpacked, set up my room the best I could and slowly met a few people. Honestly, I was still feeling very much alone and lonely.

It poured rain the Monday of registration. We stood in line, outside of course, with a line of umbrellas stretched one after the other. My umbrella accidently hit the umbrella behind me. I turned around to apologize…and there stood John. I looked into one of the sweetest faces I have ever seen in all of my life. He laughed, made some joke about the weather and we were instant friends. John was a senior at that time and a leader on campus…president of half the organizations there as I recall. He was a strong Christian and a great speaker. John became my good friend.

I learned a lot from John that year…I learned about overcoming from someone who had overcome and found great joy. I learned not to dwell on what could have been but to look forward to what my Heavenly Father had in store for me. I learned to look for what’s on the inside of someone’s heart…rather than the outside…and that first impressions aren’t always right.

My friend John graduated with high honors and married one of my closest friends…a sweet and loving young woman who also just happened to be one of the most beautiful girls on the entire campus. I love it when God smiles…

Seventeen…

My Southern Heart, Reflections

The first time I saw Josh Lucas in Sweet Home Alabama, I was propelled back in time…as swiftly and surely as any time machine could have managed. It was June 1963 all over again and a Saturday night in Memphis. Two sisters and friends from church, Diane and Yvonne, and I had just arrived a little late to the Saturday night gathering for Youth for Christ. They were showing the film A Man Called Peter, the story of Peter Marshall’s life, and we had been looking forward to it.

It was crowded that night, and so we slipped quietly into the nearest row of open seats that we could find. I glanced around at those seated nearby…just as he glanced back at me…blonde, blue-eyed and a dead-ringer for a young Josh Lucas. I think that was the first time my heart had ever truly skipped a beat. I really did enjoy watching the movie that night, but I also spent a good bit of time checking to see if he was still there, usually just about the exact time he was doing the same thing.

When the film was over, I glanced around to see if he was there, but he was gone. For some reason, I was immediately disappointed. About that time, John, the director of YFC and an Irishman with a lilting brogue I can still remember, made his way over to Diane, Yvonne and me to ask us to go with a group to Pasquales for a pizza. Since none of the three of us had a car, I think we called their dad to arrange for a ride home later…at any rate, we said yes we’d love to go. There was already a crowd in the parking lot waiting to go to Pasquales. John pointed to the car waiting for the three of us. I opened the car door and there he was. It was one of those “you would have had to have been there” moments.

I remember sitting at a small round bistro table in a little Italian cafe named Pasquales in Memphis and falling in love at the age of 17 and a half…with a young man named Ross who was far from home. He was dressed in khaki trousers, a navy blue blazer with a baby blue oxford cloth shirt, a tie and loafers…so I had no way of knowing at first sight that he was a sailor. I had a “policy” that I didn’t date sailors…my little rule that I would soon break for him. He was from Oregon…of all places…the son of a newspaper owner and publisher. He’d been to college in Oregon and then joined the Navy. He was headed to the U.S.S. Forrestal…at the age of nineteen.

Ross and I spent as much time as possible together over the next few months. He gave me a diamond solitaire engagement ring and I said yes. Now, as a mother of three young adults and a grandmother of six, I can see why my parents and older sisters were “fit to be tied”. There were two obvious strikes against us from the start: Ross was from much too far away and I was only seventeen. My parents and sisters couldn’t bear the thought of my moving so far away. An honor society student, my plans for college had been disrupted when I had given up my scholarship to a college in Tennessee. My life was in turmoil at that moment.

There are crossroads moments in each of our lives…the sad day came when I gave Ross his ring back and temporarily broke both our hearts. I ended up going to a Baptist college in Mississippi. Ross came to visit me once there, and we wrote to one another for a couple of years after that. When the time came, he got out of the Navy and returned to Oregon. My guess is that he still lives in the same little town where he grew up. I truly hope he has had a good and happy life.

Life has a way of turning on a dime. Who would have known that 45 years later, I would be in Oregon anyway.

A moment in time…

My Southern Heart, Reflections

Forty-six years ago we were standing there smiling…the shutter was pressed…and a moment in time was captured forever.

It seems to me I can remember that day. I’m not positively sure where the three of us (L-R: Nancee, Dianne and Kathy) were going, but I believe it was the Cotton Carnival. It would have been May or June 1962 and definitely already quite warm in Memphis.

I’m sure we took in a few exhibits, lots of rides, cotton candy, pronto pups, corn-on-the-cob, ice cream and, no doubt, checked out the cute boys. After all, we were almost 16 at the time.

We’ve all said it a million times…where did the years go? We grew up, got married, had children, grandchildren, joys and heartaches. Each of us had some dreams fulfilled and some disappointments. Life has a way of not waiting for us to realize it’s moving on, and before you know it…forty-six years have passed!

Nancee always had the gift of music…a beautiful voice even as a teenager and that has definitely continued. She has worked in the music industry for years and has recorded several CD’s. Nancee has also traveled extensively sharing her amazing story through her Whole Life Precepts. You can hear her beautiful rendition of Tennessee Waltz here.a teenager and the same soft Southern voice. The minute the two of us get together, we’re teenagers again and time never moved…it’s like it’s yesterday all over again.

Our graduating class had its 45th class reunion just a few months ago in Memphis. I wasn’t able to be there, and I’m truly sorry I missed seeing faces I have not seen since graduation day in 1963! Sadly, we’ve lost so many during these years…I would like to have known about their lives. The funny thing is seeing photos of one another after all these years. I’m sure my classmates are wondering where the cute, skinny girl went…oh, well.