Daddy's 100th Birthday

Lillian Ophelia Wilkerson was only eight when her beautiful twenty-nine year-old mother died. Ruby was just a babe in arms and Jessie was seven. Lillian went to live with her Aunt Lou Annie for a while. When she was 10 her father remarried. Aunt Lou Annie told Lillian, "Don't let that Mattie Kiser boss you around." I can't imagine anyone needing to issue that warning to my feisty grandmother. Evidently her father noticed some tension between his eldest daughter, now eleven, and her step-mother. One day he came to her bedroom, sat beside her on the bed, and suggested, "Sister, don't you think it's about time you started calling your step-mother, Mama." In telling me that story "Mama Shaw" who worshipped her Papa, would say, "If Papa wanted me to do it, I did it." So from that point on, when Lillian said "Mama" she was referring to Mattie Kiser Wilkerson. And when Lillian's grandchildren, including me, came along she was Ma Wilkerson to us.

Like many mill workers, Charles Rueben Wilkerson moved from mill to mill always seeking a better job. He was industrious and smart and his responsibilities increased as he moved from Aragon to Atco to Milstead. At Callaway Mills in Milstead he found a good job and stayed long enough to earn that famous retirement pocket watch. One of the little tragedies of my life is that the watch, given to me for safe-keeping as oldest grandson by Pa Wilkerson's daughter Winnie, was stolen in a burglary in the early nineties.

Grady Columbus Shaw also worked at Callaway Mills and met Lillian. They married when she was fifteen.

On May 21, 1919, sixteen-year-old Lillian Ophelia Wilkerson Shaw...

Lillian Wilkerson Shaw as a teenager

...gave birth to her first child, a very blue baby boy.  He was not breathing. He was, the family has always put it, "Born dead." How sad. It was not rare, of course. Few families of any size were untouched by infant death.  Everyone present was sad, but what can you do.
Lillian's step-mother, Mattie Kiser Wilkerson, pregnant herself at the time ...

Mattie Kiser Wilkerson at the time of her wedding

Mattie Kiser Wilkerson as I knew her.

...had no medical training. She had no schooling. She couldn't read, for heaven's sake! But she wouldn't just accept the situation. She would try to change things. She would do something. She wouldn't give up.
She took a handkerchief, doused it with a few heathy splashes of whiskey, ran her chubby index finger through his mouth to clear any obstruction, draped the wet hanky across those little blue lips, and bent to blow her breath into his lungs. After a few puffs the baby sputtered and cried and preached his first sermon, "Never give up!"
So, friends, the old woman I knew as Ma Wilkerson, though no blood kin, is as responsible for my existence as any of my "real" ancestors.
A jolt of whiskey breath awakened Charles Columbus Shaw, a tee-totaling Methodist pastor later in life. He was named for his two grandfathers, Charles Rueben Wilkerson and Columbus Turner Shaw.
Mattie couldn't read, but she loved the movies. After Charles had made it through a few years of school she would have him accompany her to the theater in Conyers, where he could read for her the printed narration that accompanied the silent movies.

Lillian Wilkerson Shaw with her son Charles Columbus Shaw

My Dad would have made a great old man had he had the chance. He would have loved the spunk of his granddaughter (and his mother's namesake) Lillian Matthews Shaw, not to mention several other grandchildren he missed out on, and soon to be 35 great-grandkids.

Charles Columbus Shaw as I remember him.

Happy 100th birthday, Daddy. I still miss you. Few days pass without a twinge of pain at the realization of questions I can't ask, advice I can't get, stories I can't tell you about. But how thankful I am to have been your son. And I am also thankful for that whiskey and the presence on the day of your birth of your illiterate stubborn step-grandmother, who would not give up.

Granshaw and Granmop with seven of their (eventually) 18 grandchildren
L-R: Josh Hearn, Matthew Lewis, Ruth Baird Shaw, Jessica Rogers, Amanda Sims, Lisette Lewis, Brannon Shaw Carlin, Charles Columbus Shaw, Andrew Lewis