Cathy's Corner

Cathy’s Corner

 

By the time you read this I will have spent part of my weekend celebrating my grandmother’s 100^th birthday. We’ve been planning it since January and there are about sixty people that have said they are coming and she is very excited about it. She can recall what happened yesterday and what happened a hundred years ago. When I talk to her she sounds weak but she knows the names of all our kids and their spouses and always asks about them. She gets up every day and puts on a dress, usually panty hose but no make up unless she’s going somewhere. She’s in relatively good health except for she has a hundred year old body. Can you imagine all of the things she has lived to see?

Leatrill Catherine Loard was born May 25, 1909. She was the oldest of three daughters and married Herb Lockhart in 1926 at the age of sixteen years and nine months. They had four children in eighteen years. My Aunt Evelyn was 18 years old when my grandmother has my Uncle Ted and the first place she took him was my aunt’s High School graduation. My aunt was mortified. My granddad died at the age of 95 in 1999.  My grandmother has outlived her sister, husband and two of her children, one of those being my mother. My Grandmother and aunt who is terminally ill live together with my uncle Ted and he takes care of them.

Theodore Roosevelt was president when my Grandmother was born and has seen eighteen presidents follow and outlived fourteen of those. She worked hard raising her children and they lived in Oklahoma, California, North Carolina and Texas. My grandparents owned their own grocery store from the time I can remember. The best times were going to stay with them in the summer and walking out of the front door of their house about twenty feet to the back door of the store and getting to pick out whatever we wanted for breakfast. That was when my brother, sister and I developed the love for eating Campbells Chicken noodle and vegetable beef soup for breakfast. My parents were appalled! We loved it. In the 70’s they bought a farm and my granddad raised cattle and peanuts until he was forced to semi-retire in the 90’s. He still had a couple of cows until he and my grandmother moved to Amarillo to live with my uncle in 1998. My grandmother has seen the discovery of penicillin the “miracle drug” and also seen the development of the aids epidemic. She’s lived through World War I, World War II, The Korean War, Vietnam, Gulf War and Iraqi Freedom. She saw the invention of radio and  television and that explode into VCR’s, Cassettes, DVDs, Blu Rays and HD. She can work a remote better than I can. She’s seen the invention of computers, the internet. Six years before she was born was when the Wright brothers invented the airplane but I don’t think she has ever flown on one. She has seen the best of mankind and the worst of mankind. She survived the Great Depression when everyone helped their neighbors and watched as people gained more and more “things” that they can live without.

She also was the spiritual backbone of our family. I remember going to church with them when I was very little. She raised her girls in a Christian home. This weekend my brother, his son, Caitlin our youngest daughter and myself will form a quartet and sing several of the old gospel songs my grandmother and my parents used to sing when I was growing up. My grandmother will love it. Thanks grandmother for laying a spiritual foundation for my mother and for me and my children.

Have a great day in the Lord.