Memories of my Maternal Grandmother

My maternal grandmother would have been 107 today….and I am celebrating the part of her life I shared. The picture of her I am including with this post is from the mid-1980s when she traveled to visit me after I moved from Texas to Virginia. We sat on the patio - eating lunch and talking - while dogwood petals drifted down around us. The picture appeals to me because she was focused on the conversation rather than my husband taking her picture!

By the time I remember her, she was running a grain mill and storage. It was a career added after more than 20 years as a wife and mother - starting rather abruptly when her husband became ill and simply continuing on for over 20 years after he eventually recovered.  She had settled into the job by the time I remember going to the mill with her when my family visited during the summer. It was a special time when she and I could be together without the rest of the family crowd. There were tall stools to sit on behind the counter. Trucks filled with grain would come to be weighed….and then return after they had been emptied so that the weight of the grain could be calculated. People would come in to buy garden seeds; the drawers of seeds with their colorful picture labels were one of my favorite features of the office. Beside the back door was a large catalpa tree; I remember the long seed pods of the summer time tree.

She had never had formal training for her second career. I’m sure she applied everything she had learned in her 20 plus years of managing a household with 9 children before she started. Children and employees apparently accepted her authority without question.

My grandmother was a small person - not much over 5 feet - with white hair that appeared early on (I only know that she originally had black hair from old pictures and a portrait done in her late teens. She was always the smallest adult at the mill - and most of the time the only woman. She spoke calmly and softly. She was decisive and firm. Her style of management and leadership was effective….and ladylike…even in a business dominated by men.

I didn’t realize until years later how rare she was in the business world of the 1960s….or how much she influenced the way I wanted to be in my career relationships...and, now, the type of matriarch I have become.