June 09, 2012
Lucille Myatt Talton 1919 - 2012
She was born near Raleigh North Carolina to a fairly well to do dairy farmer. Despite this, and to the astonishment of all, she married one of the field hands...a scrappy but utterly impoverished young man from the streets of Newport News who had moved south in search of work. She followed him to the coast where he built houses and rented them. She bore him a son, then saw him off to war and waited 4 years until he returned in traction. She nursed him back to health, bore him another son, stood by and supported him as he built a business from nothing, built a boat, and became one of the most sought after charter boat captains on the Crystal Coast. A decade ago she buried him, and tonight, just after dinner she joined him.
Despite her age, it was a bit of a shock. She had actually been improving by leaps and bounds over the last few months and had regained the ability to walk. Nevertheless, my grandmother, who was born in an utterly different world, passed quite suddenly this evening a little after 6.
The things she'd seen, the change she'd experienced...it truly boggles the mind.
She was born before women could vote. For a third of her life there was a polio season. For the first decade of her life there was no electricity in her house. She saw the great depression, a world war the cold war, Jim Crow, integration, all six moon landings, and the Berlin Wall go up and come down. She saw the introduction of radio, then television and then the internet. She saw all the other things that transpired over nearly a century.
Now, in the blink of an eye, all that perspective has left us.
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She was born near Raleigh North Carolina to a fairly well to do dairy farmer. Despite this, and to the astonishment of all, she married one of the field hands...a scrappy but utterly impoverished young man from the streets of Newport News who had moved south in search of work. She followed him to the coast where he built houses and rented them. She bore him a son, then saw him off to war and waited 4 years until he returned in traction. She nursed him back to health, bore him another son, stood by and supported him as he built a business from nothing, built a boat, and became one of the most sought after charter boat captains on the Crystal Coast. A decade ago she buried him, and tonight, just after dinner she joined him.
Despite her age, it was a bit of a shock. She had actually been improving by leaps and bounds over the last few months and had regained the ability to walk. Nevertheless, my grandmother, who was born in an utterly different world, passed quite suddenly this evening a little after 6.
The things she'd seen, the change she'd experienced...it truly boggles the mind.
She was born before women could vote. For a third of her life there was a polio season. For the first decade of her life there was no electricity in her house. She saw the great depression, a world war the cold war, Jim Crow, integration, all six moon landings, and the Berlin Wall go up and come down. She saw the introduction of radio, then television and then the internet. She saw all the other things that transpired over nearly a century.
Now, in the blink of an eye, all that perspective has left us.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
11:30 PM
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