Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - A Tribute to Your Mother

Randy Seaver of Genea-musing has a new challenge for us this week. For this week's mission we were challenged to:

1)  This is Mother's Day weekend, and I have been thinking about my mother - the family times, the hard times, the wonderful times.

2)  For SNGF this week, write a tribute to your mother.  It can be any length.  What do you remember about her, and what did you learn from her?

3)  Share your tribute or memories in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or other social media.  Please leave a comment on this post if you post something elsewhere.

My mother was an only child but dreamed of having a big family. She did. I am the oldest of six children born in the 50s and 60s. She was fun-loving and doted on her children. But I think a big family was a bit overwhelming to her as well. It was a lot to handle, even though she was a stay-at-home homemaker.

Childhood

Lela Nell Johnston was born 21 August 1934 in Stephenville, Texas to Pansy Louise Lancaster and Tom J. Johnston, Jr. Perhaps her mother doted on her. Photos of Lela, as a child, showed her in pretty dresses and fancy hair-does. There are shots of them in matching dresses.

Teenage Love

My mother was popular in her first two years of high school at Acalanes High School. She held the office of Social Secretary as a Freshman . She also had lots of dates and kept track of them with a chart.

She met my father, William J. Hork, at the Walnut Festival where she was attending with other friends. They double-dated with one of Bill’s friends and went steady afterwards. They had a very traditional wedding at Queen of All Saints Catholic Church which was written up in the newspaper.

Thrifty

Growing up, I remember Mom as a great cook, who was able to stretch the food dollars. She read all the women’s magazines such as McCall’s, Women’s Day, Family Circle, and Cosmopolitan.  She got lots of recipes from them, as well as the newspaper. She made shopping lists from looking at the LoRay’s grocery store ads. When I was older, we shopped together, each with a shopping cart and list.

She also saved money by sewing clothes for me and  my three sisters. She even made matching clothes for us, including shirts for my brothers. The best outfit she made for me was a matching skirt and jacket which was the rage when I was in 8th grade.

The suit made by my mother

Artistic

I remember when I was young that my mother would paint using oils. At our house in Pittsburg, there was a smaller house in the backyard where she had a little studio. But by the sixth child was born, I guess she didn’t have time for painting. She was artistic in other ways. She made many items out of used things such as bowls from 78 rpm records she baked over coffee cans and then spray painted  gold, or taking old metal platters and decopaging pictures cut from old calendars or magazines. One of her favorite activities was going “junking” at second-hand stores. Finding treasures she could re-use was a highlight. All of her children seemed to inherit the love of “junking” and having a bit of the creativity bug.

Games

Although we didn’t go out much as a family, we did play games. We played card games, dice games, and board games. She taught us a game much like the game Scattergories. We just made our own grids and used a magazine to get letters for the game. We played gin rummy, double solitaire, liars dice, and Scrabble.

Advice Giving

When I married, I called often for advice. I valued her wisdom about how to deal with household chores because I hadn’t paid as much attention to those things before. But she died young and couldn’t be a resource on how to raise my children, nor did my children get a chance to know their grandmother.

Hork Family 1978

It’s been sad having my mother gone, but the artistic trait lives on in my daughters: one is a fine artist and the other a fine actor.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

Copyright © 2017 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family