For the past four to five years my mother, Vera Elizabeth Mann Jenkins, suffered the debilitating effects of Alzheimer's disease. Until that time she was an active woman. She walked. She grew flowers. She raked leaves. She helped everyone she could. But all of that gradually changed.
Actually, we noticed that my mother's condition was more than just getting older as early as 2003 at the time she was 90 years of age. At that time we arranged a gathering of her close family members to celebrate her birthday. I prepared a tribute to her at that time and presented it to her. My wife arranged for her to have 90 beautiful roses. We have no indication that she remembered the occasion, or that she ever read the tribute.
At this time I wish to share with our friends and family those things I wrote for the occasion of her 90th birthday in 2003. I am including additional photographs of my mother and her family.
The funeral service for my mother was conducted at the Laughlin Service Funeral Home in Huntsville, Alabama, Friday, October 16, 2009, at 7 p.m. Songs were led by Jack Bradford, an elder of the Jordan Park Church of Christ where my mother had been a member since about 1961. Jeff Archer, minister at Jordan Park, spoke from the Scriptures. The audience consisted of family members, friends from the church, and past neighbors. On the following morning we placed her body in the red dirt of North Alabama beside my father who preceded her in death in 1979.
The following obituary was published in The Huntsville Times on the morning of her funeral.
Vera E. Jenkins, 96, of Huntsville, passed away Wednesday. Mrs. Jenkins was an active member of Jordan Park Church of Christ. She was an avid gardener, especially roses. She loved her family very dearly. She was preceded in death by her husband, B.M. Jenkins.
Survivors include son, Ferrell Jenkins and wife, Elizabeth, of Temple Terrace, FL; sister, Marie Maples of Huntsville; grandsons, Ferrell Jenkins, Jr. and Stanley Jenkins and wife, Terri, all of Tampa, FL; great-grandson, Drew Jenkins and several nieces and nephews.
Visitation will be from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Friday at Laughlin Service Funeral Home. The funeral service will follow at 7:00 p.m. with Jeff Archer, minister of Jordan Park Church of Christ, officiating. There will be a private burial.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Ferrell and Elizabeth Jenkins Scholarship Fund at Florida College, Temple Terrace, FL 33617.
To have lived almost a century is quite an amazing thing. We remember that our nation was founded only 233 years ago.
My Tribute
Vera Elizabeth Mann Jenkins, or "Mother", as I have always called her, today [Sept. 12, 2003] celebrates her 90th birthday. I thought it appropriate to recall some of the significant things I remember about her over the years. I have had a rather personal relationship with her for nearly 68 of those years.
The most important thing that comes to my mind about Mother is her constant encouragement to me in the work I have chosen to do as a preacher and teacher of the Bible. This meant that when I left for college in far away Temple Terrace, Florida, in the fall of 1953, I would never return to live in her home. After my marriage to Elizabeth, and my graduation from college, my work would take me to Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, and then back to Florida. I think she and Daddy came to visit us every place we lived except one. When we went to see them we always left with a nice stock of groceries from the store.
For the earliest years I remember her as a good mother. She taught me to do right. I don't remember much about her discipline, as she left most of that to Daddy. My earliest remembrance is the move from New Hope to Harvest, and that was long before Harvest was a fashionable address. We lived in a four room house on the hill west of PawPaw and MawMaw, my maternal grandparents, on the 16th section road. Mother prepared the meals, took care of various chores, and frequently worked in the fields. There was no indoor plumbing, and the well was at least a quarter of a mile away from the house. It was a deep well and considerable effort had to be expended to draw the water to the surface.
I don't remember Mother doing much driving, even on the farm. She did learn how to shoot a rifle, kill a snake, milk a cow, and cook a squirrel. Well, it's good to be well-rounded!
We always went to church. Sometimes we walked about 2 miles on the gravel roads to the Church of Christ in Harvest. If company came on Sunday morning, my parents would invite them to go with us, and, upon refusal, tell them to make themselves at home till we got back. I remember gospel preachers being welcomed into our home: Bennie Lee Fudge, A. C. Moore, Granville Tyler, Gadys Roy, and Jake Williams, to name a few.
Mother read to me from Hurlbut's Bible Stories. She taught me to read before I went to school. By the end of the first year of school I had covered all of the material normally taught in grades one and two. Both grades were taught by one teacher in the same room at Harvest. After one year I was promoted to the third grade and this always put me a year ahead of students my age.
Mother later taught at Harvest, Athens Bible School, and Madison Academy. Her students always remembered her and many of them kept in touch through the years. At her funeral service several mentioned that she had taught them in the first or third grade.
After completing eight grades at Harvest, it was time for me to move on to the high school at Monrovia. Probably through the influence of some of the preachers who came to preach at Harvest, Mother and Dad decided to send me to Athens Bible School. This, I believe, was one of the most significant decisions they made. The training there added to the home training I received and influenced the direction of my life.
I always enjoyed visiting with the Mann family. They were a warm, tender, and caring group of people. Visiting with MawMaw and PawPaw was always a real joy.
Sometimes I would spend a week with Aunt Marie, Uncle Woodrow, and Donald Ray Maples. I enjoyed going to the river near their house at New Hope with Woodrow to help bring in the nets and check for any fish that might have been caught during the night. Woodrow also made sure that we had plenty of fireworks to enjoy.
One summer I stayed with Aunt Laura and Uncle Milton Pitts and went to summer school to try to remove a math deficiency. Uncle Milton seemed to enjoy buying milk shakes for me — and I didn't offer much resistence! I enjoyed hanging around the Hill's Brothers Grocery that was managed by Uncle Milton. I always thought Aunt Laura was as important to the operation as he was. I think they took me to my first movie, a Western at the Lyric Theater.
I never stayed for any extended period with Billy and Dorothy Mann, but they lived across the street from us for a while and I enjoyed going over and spending time with them. Dorothy and I were both fans of Eddy Arnold.
Ruth Mann left for Nashville to attend business college and work when I was very young, but I recall several good experiences involving her in those days. Once when Mother was sick, Ruth and Sarah Mann (her aunt who was about the same age), came to cook for us. They prepared a chocolate pie for dessert. Ruth went on and on about the crust not turning out as she intended. I said, "That's all right, Ruth. We don't eat the crust anyway."
Everyone in the family knew how to work, but Margaret was an exceptional worker. She worked in the fields, hoeing and picking cotton, but would always leave a few minutes early at lunch to help MawMaw put the meal on the table for everyone else.
Most of my visits with the Jenkins family were when the family gathered for special occasions. With 11 living children, and the grand children, that was a large group. Because our visits were limited, and the fact that there were so many grandchildren, I did not get to know them as well as I did the Mann family. I enjoyed the visits and remember especially having a lot of fun with all of the cousins.
When Daddy decided to try his hand at trucking, he moved a load of furniture from Huntsville to Los Angeles, California, about 1946. I remember visits to the White Sands, Grand Canyon, and several sites in California. We bought a shell lamp and mother held it in her lap almost all the way back to Alabama. She was afraid it might get broken if we put it in the floorboard. We wanted to prove to everyone that we had really been to California. After we moved to West Lawn in Huntsville, and Daddy decided to start a neighborhood store, Mother worked six days a week in the store. The store was actually part of the house, and she had a ready supply of groceries. This made it easy for her to make a selection, go in the house and prepare a meal. I suspect this is the reason she has continued to store up sugar, margarine, pecans, paper goods, etc. in large quantities.
In addition to the teaching she did in the school system, Mother also was active in the Bible class program at church. As a long-time member of the Jordan Park Church of Christ she remained active in teaching as long as possible.When former students of mine, and preachers, visited Jordan Park, they would often report to me later that they had met my Mother, and in the earlier years my Father. Mother remembered every compliment they made about me and often reported each one to me.
After I left home Mother and Dad began to grow roses. Dad even won a few awards at the rose show. There is no way to know how many bouquets of roses mother gave to the sick and those who befriended her. And there is no telling how much divinity candy she made and gave away!
I regretted that my Father never was able to visit the Bible lands with me, but Mother made two trips. The first in 1980 and the second in 1993. I enjoyed having her as part of the group. She could walk faster and longer than anyone in the group, I think.This has been one of my favorite pictures of Mother. I made it at ancient Joppa in Israel, March 13, 1993.
Mother and Dad came to my wedding in Florida, Dec. 16, 1954, and Elizabeth and I visited with them, and with her parents in Kentucky, the following week.
Several times our boys stayed with them. They enjoyed helping in the store, and going fishing at the trout farm with Granddad. They got so much attention that it took a while to get them back in line when they returned home.
In Her Own Words
In 1996 Stanley and Terri gave Mother a Grandmother Remembers book for her to complete and return to them as an heirloom. I would like to share a few of the things she wrote in that book.
As a student: "I didn't want to miss a day and I brought my lessons up regularly." I understand that Mother and another girl were tied for the honor of valdictorian in their high school class, but because Vera had missed a day of class to help at home she was the salutatorian.
At home I was expected to: "Help with the chores such as: cleaning house, wash clothes, help cook, pick cotton."
She said her father taught her to value, "my time, good name, to be honest, truthful, to have a sense of honor."
She said her mother taught her to value "doing things for myself such as: taking care of my clothes, how to cook, to be a lady at all times. They took us to church."
When asked what she loved about her father she said, "His love and fairness to us all. He would bring us [from New Hope] to Huntsville in the beginning of winter to buy our coats and clothes."
Regarding her mother she said, "She loved and was good to us, a good cook. I liked to hear her talk. She had a beautiful penmanship."
She started to date at the age of 19. Box suppers were common in those days. Bartholomew Jenkins caught her attention when he bought the box supper she had prepared. Boys did that in order to eat with a girl they liked, and that surely must have been his motivation.
B. M., as he was called, made a living helping people farm. She says she liked him because "he was honest, truthful and a Christian." She says that he liked her because she "had good values and was fun to be with." When they dated they liked go to "ice cream suppers, box suppers, and to church." They courted for two years before getting married.
When she told her parents about her desire to marry B.M., she says her parents "didn't want me to marry him because he was a member of the Church of Christ." I know, however, that they came to love and appreciate him just as she did.
The wedding took place at the Madison County Court House at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 2, 1935. She wore a deep blue crepe dress. She says they celebrated by going to a movie. She added that her most vivid memory of her wedding day "was being with my new husband." She was married to B.M. until his death on April 1, 1979. I think a second marriage never entered her mind.
A Final Word
Mother, I love you for who you are, and for all you have meant to me through the years. As a little boy at Harvest I could never have imagined doing all of the things I have been able to do, nor of traveling around the world. Thanks for your inspiration.
Photographs to be Added
I have prepared a number of photographs of my mother and her family that I plan to include as soon as possible. Check back in a few days to see them.
© Ferrell Jenkins 2009.
FerrellJenkins.com.
