Her Name Was Mary

by Dorothy Bible Kawaguchi

Kawaguchi has written the story of her mother's life as fiction, though it is very much fact-based. It is the tale of a woman left with three little girls to raise alone during the depths of the great depression.

Memoirs, Great Depression, Historical, Appalachia

ISBN 1-59431-001-7



Chapter One Mary Was My Mother

The Deep Gap Baptist Church in Del Rio, Tennessee had been moved again. I believe this makes the fourth move since the church was founded in the early 1880s. It stands upon a mountain near the Clark Cemetery. The church has been modernized with electricity. That took place in the middle of the 1950s. Electric lights illuminate the church, though the old oil lamps still hang on the wall for sentimental reasons.

Today, there are good roads that lead up to this attractive little country church. On one side of it is the Clark Cemetery, which spans over 5 acres, the largest cemetery on this part of Bull Mountain. Before the church was moved to its final place, whenever a loved one passed away, the pallbearers had to carry the casket more than a mile from the church and up a steep mountain to the cemetery. Back then, people didn't take their dead to a funeral home. All burials were prepared in the family homes, including the making of the caskets. If the weather was too warm in summer months, the burial was usually performed the day after the death, two or three days after the death in cooler weather.

In those depression years not many people had the money to hire a modern funeral service. There were some cases in the late 1930's when the funeral homes would direct the services. However, it was the early 1940's before most of the people began turning their dead over to a funeral home in New Port, Tennessee.





On March 30, 1969, just a week before Easter, I entered that church to honor my mother one last time. The granddaughters and grandnieces were the flower girls. They were sitting in the front row. Behind them, in the second pew were my two sisters, Ruby, and Betty Ann, and I joined them. Our families sat next to us. The minister was standing behind the pulpit saying kind and gentle words about a lady who lay in state in front of the altar.

I looked around the church and saw that the auditorium was completely full. Some people were even standing in the aisle. Though my eyes held tears of sadness, still my heart was filled with joy when I saw all those people. My sisters noticed, too. Isn't it wonderful that so many people have come to pay their last respects to this lady, I thought!

"Mama you always thought that not many people loved you--look down from Heaven. See all these people. I know that life was not easy for you, and I can understand why you felt the way you did," I whispered to her.

I sat next to a window in the church and turned my head, looking out at the old Clark Cemetery. I could see the ready open grave where our dear loving mother's body would be placed. I remember there was an early spring slow rain, and a green canopy sheltered the open grave.

A few feet from where our mother would be buried, and from the lower side of the Cemetery; there was a thick forest of trees, tall pines, maples, poplars, so many different trees, too many to name.

Small bushes like evergreen laurel and ivy that bloomed in mid-summer months. The dogwood trees blossom in the spring. They had just started budding out, and the dark green holly bushes were filled with red berries. The holly bushes keep their berries all year round. There was mistletoe with greenish white berries. The mimosa trees do not grow very tall, but they do their part to make these mountains, beautiful with their feathery pink blooms. They bloom around the month of July.

The forest floor was filled with various shades of pink lady slippers, called "wild orchids of the mountains" by the people who lived there. Every season brought so much beauty to enjoy. I knew Mama's spirit would always enjoy the beauty of the mountain.

But where is the joy today?

While I was looking out the window, my thoughts strayed back in time. I thought of all the hard times our mother had endured while bringing up her three daughters alone.

During the Great Depression, in the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s, when thousands of people like my mother, were trying hard to find a way to make a living. Surviving from day to day was a challenge. But Mama was a determined woman. She wanted to earn enough money to make a living so that the four of us could live in our own house. All the time that I was re-tracing the years, the tears flooded my eyes.

I listened to the minister's kind words about my mother. My thoughts kept going back to that time, and place, when I could see our mother looking for dry firewood and carrying the heavy load to be cut up, down the same mountain, down to the valley and our house where we lived many years ago.