February 19, 1923: One Hundred Years Ago

One hundred years ago today 63-year-old Wilson Baird and his much younger wife, Ieula, welcomed their eleventh child into the world. She was the only one of the eleven born in town. The others had all been born on the farm at Oak Hill before the boll weevil drove Wilson from the farm to the mill. They named the baby Sarah Ruth and would call her Ruth. They had lost a baby after only a few weeks of life back in 1908. So they had nine other children now ranging in age from Grice at 19 down to three year-old Leon.

Their joy would change to terror a few weeks later when a measles epidemic would sweep through their mill town, Porterdale, Georgia. Both of their youngest children, Leon and Ruth, would contract the frightening disease. The baby would manage to survive and live 98 more years. Little Leon's life was snuffed by measles and the resulting pneumonia on April 18, 1923. 

As far as I know, no photograph ever existed of little Leon Baird. These are his scuffed and worn little shoes that my grandmother kept in her cedar chest for the rest of her life.

Ruth is the child at the right.

My Mother often speculated that her parents surely would have preferred that the child they had already loved for more than three years survive, but that they never showed anything but unconditional love to her. 

Her father would only live nine more years himself. Though he died when Ruth was still a child, her Mother kept him alive through stories. She learned to revere the Papa whose healthy days had to have been only a vague memory. He had been completely bedridden his last year. The misty memory of picking wildflowers with him by the Yellow River while her Mother fished nearby was one of the few stored away. But she loved to tell of what she'd heard about him from her mother and siblings. How he and Ieula would sit on the farm porch swing in the evenings in the dusk, talking about the farm and the children and their days' activities, his arm draped around her, her head on his shoulder.

I love this picture of my wife, Sheila, and my Mother Ruth. They are watching a video of my grandchildren on the computer, sharing a pair of earbuds, each with one to her ear.

That day is long gone. Wilse Baird has been gone 91 years. Ieula died in 1973. After Leon's death almost 100 years ago, the other siblings continued to grow, some had already married, the rest did. Some moved away; some stayed pretty close. Most had children. Grice would die of a heart attack here in Rome in 1965. Jack in 1988, Gradually, like all of us will, they met their mortality. Now even the majority of the next generation, mine, is gone, including my own sister Beth. Only Grice's Wayne, Tom's Jane, Jack's Sandra, and Ruth's Janice, Joan, Terrell, Carol, Debi, and David remain.

Mother

Mother died at 98 on August 1, 2021. Today is the 100th anniversary of her birth. I am such a lucky man to have had my Mother with me for 74 years and especially to have been able to see or talk with her almost daily for the last 24 of those years. 

When you get to be 75, as I am for a few days yet, you realize that even 98 years is a mighty short time.

I miss my Mama.

This is the last picture of me with my Mother, the day before her death.

Mother on her 98th birthday.

Mother and Me

Mother and Me