I just returned from the Howard family reunion where some 100 family members gathered on a rainy Saturday afternoon in South Alabama. This family has gathered every year since 1940 to remember and to celebrate their shared heritage.
My grandmother, on my father’s side, was a Howard. Mary Lois Howard Smith was born August 14, 1915 and was one of 9 surviving children. I didn’t know her, she died of breast cancer when I was 6 months old, but I am a product of the choices she made.
My Dad wrote about one of the instances where a seeming misunderstanding changed my life, 24 years before I was born.
When Lois went to the Shawmut Mill to secure a job, she was hired in the spinning department. When the personnel manager sent her to the job location, she explained to the foreman that she had a friend who worked there by the name of Ruby. Ruby was from near Lafayette. As a favor to her, the foreman put her with her friend to learn the job. However in the confusion of all the noise in the spinning department he had not heard the last name clearly. So instead of putting her near the friend she had intended, he put her with Ruby Oliver. They became dear friends. Ruby Oliver was a member of Shawmut Church of the Nazarene. It was from this bit of divine providence that the Smith family became a part of the Church of the Nazarene. This event forever changed her life and the lives of her family.
When she was delivering her second son, Lamar, she came close to death. In those moments she promised God that if he would allow her to live that she would raise her children in the church and for Him. It was a vow that she took seriously and did her best to carry out.
After the reunion, on our way home we stopped by a little cemetery behind the Center Baptist Church. There, buried in the back, next to my grandfather, great aunts and uncles and great grand parents was a lady I never knew, but a lady whose choices have shaped my life. There in that country cemetery I stood at the feet of someone great, someone who didn’t break her promises and gave me something I couldn’t give myself, a godly heritage. May her memory be eternal.
Who has shaped your heritage?
My father and son at the headstone of my grandparents.
