Paternal grandmama strong but distant

I didn’t know my father’s mother very well. And she didn’t leave behind a box of stories she wrote about her life like my maternal grandmother did. But apparently, Lucy Maxwell Childers, born and raised in Tuscaloosa, was a strong woman in her own rights.

Until she died on Thanksgiving in 1963 (the week after JFK was assassinated), she attended most of our annual family reunions. And occasionally, my family would pack up the car and go visit her in Houston, where she lived with her only daughter and her family. 

But according to my checkered memory, she didn’t seem to interact much with the gaggle of grandchildren milling around these events or visits. Even when we were smaller – and fewer in number – I don’t remember her being much of a warm and fuzzy hands-on grandmother. Maybe by the time we came along, she figured she was done messing with small children.

Differing opinions

My mama had a nearly opposite opinion. And of course, she was an adult with a different point of view than my young filtered one.

Mama said Lucy was a capable, compassionate, understanding person. She was a hard worker, much like her own mother and grandmother. She had all kinds of physical problems all her life, including active tuberculosis after her children were grown. But it didn’t slow her down much. 

She was also an excellent cook and an easy person to talk and relate to – a good woman.

As the first-born in her own family, Lucy spent most of her childhood taking care of younger siblings. Of the eight children born to her parents, Roxie and Frank Childers, one sister died in infancy of pneumonia and another died in her teens from tuberculosis. 

An accomplished seamstress from early on, Lucy sewed and mended for her entire family. According to my mama, she made beautiful clothes.

Her child-rearing duties simply shifted to another set of children when she left home at 21 to marry the Rev. James T. Self. The widowed preacher, 17 years her senior, had three young children under the age of 6. Their mama had died the year before.

Lucy and J.T. then had six more children, five boys and one girl. My daddy, David, was her fourth son.

Hard times for Lucy

Her father, Frank Childers, moved from farming in Tuscaloosa to law enforcement in Bessemer when Lucy was a teenager. Five years later, an armed robber mortally wounded him when he attempted to stop the robbery. He died a week later, seven months before Lucy married J.T.

A few years after her father died, Lucy’s mother, Roxie Harbin Childers, married William Emil, who was known as “Daddy Will” to her children and grandchildren. Roxie became “Mama Emil.” They had no children together.

Roxie’s mother, Sarah Harbin, did all her child-rearing and housework sitting in a straight chair. She was crippled but managed to maneuver the legs of her chair to go wherever she wanted to go in the house. That was before wheelchairs were easily accessible.

When Lucy married J.T., his doctor told her that J.T. had a bad heart and might die at any time. He warned her not to be surprised if she woke up one morning and found him dead. It didn’t seem to affect J.T., who lived for 33 more years, but was always lurking in the background for Lucy.

Totally dependent on her parents, then her husband, Lucy never had any money of her own. When the family needed groceries, J.T. did the shopping or gave her just enough to buy the groceries herself. 

Taking care of Mama

That bothered my daddy when he got old enough to notice. As soon as he joined the Navy in 1942 and started earning a little money of his own, he sent $10 or $15 every month to his mother. He talked to his father before he left home, explaining what he was going to do.

“Daddy, I know you’re doing the best you can. But I want Mom to have this so she doesn’t have to account to anybody for it, doesn’t have questions asked about how she’s using it. If she wants to spend it on herself, that’s fine. If she wants to spend it on you, that’s fine. But it’s her decision.”

That opened his daddy’s eyes, according to the story my mama told me years later. J.T. never had thought about how women ought to have some say-so in the money. When they married way back in 1913, it was not common for a woman to have her own money. 

David continued to support his Mama, wherever she was living, mostly with her only daughter, for the rest of her life. 

I recently saw photographs of Lucy when she was a young, healthy girl and felt a deep sadness that I hadn’t gotten to know her better when she was still alive. My immature notions that she didn’t care much for me were probably way off base – or not.

The only thing I strongly remember and know in my bones is she loved her own sons and daughter, and they adored her. The only time I ever saw my daddy cry was the day she died.