Who has been the biggest influence on your life? What lessons did that person teach you?

I would have to say it was my mother and dad. My mother was a Methodist and I followed her in religion. She showed kindness and love and was a good neighbor. When she was older she would have my dad drive her to someone's house and she would go in and visit while he would wait in the car for her. The special thing that she would do for people is make an angel food cake. She had her own eggs and would beat the egg whites by hand, no small job. My mother sewed and made things herself. She liked to take care of her home. She made drapes and wallpapered and put down new linoleum from time to time on her floors. She had a good garden and canned in her early years, but in the later years she had a freezer and used that a lot. I inherited my split front teeth from my mother. I felt like, being the only girl, I should have been spared that. My brothers all had the split too.

From my dad I was influenced in politics, which sometimes disagreed with Edd's. My dad was outgoing. He went with a group to Nashville to meet on some issue at the state Capitol. They had a group of about four. They planned what they would say. When they got there, the others were all tongue tied and my dad had to do all the talking. Then on the way home the others wanted to stop in every little town to get a beer. That disgusted my dad. My dad also would rather people not smoke. My brothers Forest and John never did, but Lester smoked cigarettes and Jim, or J.T. smoked a pipe at the end of a day's work. From my dad I inherited my loss of skin pigment. You won't remember it, but I was once olive skinned and had very dark brown eyes. In my 50's and 60's my skin lost its pigment and I became spotted like some animal. Now I am white as can be. Again, I wondered why the only girl had to have that. My brothers didn't.