{"id":302,"date":"2016-03-02T20:23:09","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T01:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=302"},"modified":"2016-03-02T20:23:09","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T01:23:09","slug":"the-person-without-whom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=302","title":{"rendered":"THE PERSON WITHOUT WHOM…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I heard recently on television a request for essays on \u201cthe person who made the biggest difference in your life.\u201d\u00a0 Immediately, I knew who that person was for me.\u00a0 I passed over both my parents, though they certainly influenced my life profoundly.\u00a0 My father, in particular, in both negative and positive ways helped to make me who I am.\u00a0 My Grandmother Junkins formed my conscience.\u00a0 She set an example of one who lived by the scriptures and wanted me to do the same.\u00a0 While I don\u2019t always live up to her standards, they are indelibly stamped into my conscience and form the example by which I judge myself.<\/p>\n

My Aunt Hilde, a war bride from Germany planted the idea that if I became educated, I could rise above what my mother expected of her children.\u00a0 Mama thought that a good job in the Dalton, Georgia mills was the most any of us could aim for.\u00a0 That was especially her expectation for her two daughters, and she frequently reminded us that we didn\u2019t need a high school diploma for that.\u00a0 But as powerful as Hilde\u2019s influence was, there was still another who was more powerful.\u00a0 I won\u2019t use her real name, though, if she reads this, she will certainly recognize herself.\u00a0 I will call her \u201cCora Lee Humphrey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOld Lady Humphrey,\u201d as my mother resentfully called her, chose me as one of those girls who might be capable of making something of themselves, but lacked encouragement from their families.\u00a0 She wanted more than good grades from me.\u00a0 She wanted a well rounded educational record.\u00a0 So I had to take geometry, even though math was the one area where I consistently made low grades.\u00a0 I had to take home economics class, because a well rounded woman needed to know how to plan meals, set a table, and operate a sewing machine.\u00a0 I had to join clubs, because I needed to participate in worthy organizations, and I needed to accept leadership roles, because I had to learn responsibility.\u00a0 I had to do the devotion for student assembly because I needed to learn poise in front of an audience.\u00a0 She pushed me into writing an essay about \u201cThe Home: The Cradle of Democracy\u201d sponsored by the American Legion.\u00a0 I had to rewrite that thing five times before she called it adequate.\u00a0 To my amazement, I won first prize at the school, county, and district levels.<\/p>\n

Then Mrs. Humphrey decided I needed to work as her helper on Saturdays for pay.\u00a0 This gave her a chance to teach me even more about meal planning, cooking, mending, and how to operate a vacuum cleaner and how to use a food mixer.\u00a0 It gave her more opportunities to talk about college, too, and how an education could give me a better life.\u00a0 She found a loan fund where I could borrow to supplement what I could earn at a work-study school in Rome, Georgia.\u00a0 She pushed me into taking a college aptitude test and I was accepted at Berry College.\u00a0 After my high school graduation, she presented me with a check that she and others teachers contributed to help me begin college in May, 1957.<\/p>\n

I learned something else on those Saturdays during my senior year of high school.\u00a0 I learned that not every marriage had to be based on the model I had grown up with–a relationship in which the man had all the authority in the family and the wife simply did what she was told.\u00a0 My mother could not control her envy.\u00a0 When I would mention that Mr. and Mrs. Humphrey were planning together which car to buy, or what to plant in the garden, or where to go on vacation, Mama would always say, \u201cWell, I guess he\u2019s scared not to do what she says.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t have a man I could boss around.\u201d\u00a0 Eventually, I figured out that the Humphrey marriage was the only model I would be able to live with–a relationship where both partners had a say in decisions.\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks to that close-up example, I recognized when I met my husband-to-be that he was the kind of man who also wanted that kind of marriage.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Humphrey gave me a new pattern for my life.\u00a0 In doing that, she provided a vision to my younger siblings of how they, too, could have a better life.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure I was only one of many mountain young people whose future she shaped.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Mrs. Humphrey.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I heard recently on television a request for essays on \u201cthe person who made the biggest difference in your life.\u201d\u00a0 Immediately, I knew who that person was for me.\u00a0 I passed over both my parents, though they certainly influenced my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}