Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— … and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood (Isaiah 58:7 NIV)?
My earliest memories of my grandmother are of her flying in from Denver to visit our family in Upstate New York when I was three or four. I still remember the excitement when she walked in the door. Clothed in a fancy dress and bright costume jewelry, she smiled as she looked around at us four girls. Her bluish-gray hair was freshly permed, and she wore bright lipstick. Her presence filled the room with a sweet scent. My sisters and I would clamor to get the first hug.
“Give me a little sugar,” she would say pointing to her cheek, then she would get smothered with kisses. She would reach into her bag and say, “Look what Grandma brought you,” and pull out a little trinket to give to each of us, nothing that she spent any money on--maybe a ribbon, a little heart-shaped box, or airline peanuts. The way she carried on, she had us believing that our token gift was an expensive treasure.
Before long she would say with a twinkle in her eye, “Pull my finger.” One of us would pull her finger and she would pass gas. We would all giggle, except for my mother, who would blush, roll her eyes, and turn her face away.
What I remember most about those early visits from my grandmother is she was so invested in each of us kids. Grandma wasn’t one to hang out with the adults at the exclusion of the children; she made each of us feel special.
As I grew older and heard more family stories, I realized what an incredible person my grandmother was. My grandmother was jovial and fun, a hard worker, filled with compassion and faith. We remember her singing hymns and fun songs around the house like, “Mama’s Little Baby Loves Shortnin’ Bread.”
But what set her apart was her ability to love in a practical, self-sacrificing way. She would open her home to whoever needed it; her theme seemed to be “the more the merrier.”
She was born in 1900 as Olga Runee Pamplin. (She later changed her name to Ruth.) As the oldest of six children—three girls and three boys-- she found her passion early in life, mothering and caring for others. But her childhood was tainted by sorrow. Neither of her sisters lived to adulthood. Her precious little sister, Ora Bell, passed away at the age of four when Grandma was only five.
When Grandma was fifteen, she took her eight-year-old sister, Elkie, swimming. She got too cold, developed pneumonia, and died. Grandma would often tell the story, perhaps as a warning to us, but also because she felt guilty that she did not recognize that her sister was chilled, and she did not bring her home sooner.
When Grandma was an older teenager, her father became disabled, and, as the oldest child, she was left with the responsibility of running the farm and helping her mother care for the family. Her Uncle Fantis (Fant), her father’s brother came to help during that time. Grandma started at a young age to make sacrifices to help her family, a trait that she continued throughout her life.
We don’t know much about Grandma’s courtship, except that Grandma initially would have nothing to do with her future husband because he was twelve years older than her. She finally agreed to go out on a date with him, and she married my grandfather, Collier Castro Brewer (Charley) on September 5, 1920, the day after her twentieth birthday.
The couple took a train ride for their honeymoon. When they got back, they settled in Haileyville, Oklahoma, about 130 miles from Grandma’s family in Blue Mountain, Arkansas, and bought their first house and furniture from a Sears Roebuck catalog.
The joy of Grandma’s first year of marriage was overshadowed by the death of her father around nine months later. She gave birth to her first child, Lois, less than two months after that, and my father a year and a half later.
During this time, while Grandma was a young mother of two, she boarded a train to visit her mother. The train stopped suddenly, and Grandma looked down the aisle to see robbers going through the train row by row demanding money from the passengers. Grandma thought quickly and stuffed all the money she had in a place the robbers would be sure not to look--in my father’s diaper.
By the time Grandma was twenty-five, she had four children. The family moved to Arkansas in 1928, and Charley became a District Manager for Oklahoma Gas and Electric, the position he held until he retired. Grandpa was responsible for reading the meters, collecting payments, and fixing the lines. My Grandmother would get nervous every time he had to go out in a storm to fix downed wires.
They moved a few times before my grandparents purchased a piece of land in Paris, Arkansas, where they had a house built. Grandpa put in state-of-the-art plumbing--a 100-foot well with a pressurized water pump. I am sure my father and the rest of the kids did not miss living in a home with an outhouse!
Grandma embraced motherhood and running a household. Their new home had enough land for a large garden which my cousin James described as being “as big as a basketball court.” They also had chickens and a cow the kids would help milk. Grandma sewed dresses for her daughters out of flour sacks and was known to be a superb cook. As busy as she was caring for her own family, she always had room for more around her table and in her home.
After Uncle Fant’s wife died, he came to live with Grandma and her family. She no doubt wanted to pay him back for the kindness he had shown to the family when her father had become disabled, but her children were not thrilled.
While I was growing up, we heard many stories about Uncle Fant. My father used to tell how Uncle Fant would pinch the children when they were squeezed into the car on the way to church. They would squirm, and Grandma would reprimand them, but the kids retaliated.
We heard stories about the kids pouring syrup down Uncle Fant’s sleeve, putting snow outside of his bedroom door, and shooting holes in his potty bucket. When my uncle told me that last one, I said, “My dad did that?” remembering what a mild-mannered kind of guy my father was. He passed away years ago, so I can’t ask him about it.
Twice my grandmother took in her brother-in-law, Kit Brewer’s family, doubling the size of the Brewer clan to include five more kids and earning them the nickname, “The Dirty Dozen.” The first time was before 1935. My second cousin, Don Brewer, explained to me that his Grandmother Jewel (Grandma’s sister-in-law) went to Chicago to take care of her sister who had terminal cancer. She stayed with her until her passing while her family stayed with my grandparents.
When Kit’s family went back home, Grandma missed having a baby around, so she and Grandpa decided to have another child. My Aunt Ava was born in 1935, nine and a half years after her youngest sibling.
The second time the cousins came to live with my grandparents was in 1937 after their father, Kit Brewer, was killed in a railroad accident. The story we heard is that the children were cared for by Grandma while Jewel went back to school to get her teaching certificate to be able to provide for her family.
Grandma was a saint to take in all those kids. At the time that Uncle Kit died, her own children were 19 months, 11, 13, 14, and 15. Kit’s children were 3, 8, 10, 12, and 14. “Your grandparents were very welcoming and treated them as their own kids,” said Don Brewer, the son of my dad’s cousin who was one of the “Dirty Dozen.”
I always wondered where they put all the kids in their three-bedroom house. Don shed light on that subject. He explained that the kids slept lined up on the screened-in back porch. He also said school lunches were made every morning assembly-line style.
What stories we have heard about the Dirty Dozen! Here are just a few:
One of the older kids held one of the younger kids upside down and left footprints walking across Grandma’s ceiling.
One of the kids brought their pet cow in the house which was a big no-no. Some of the kids were trying to distract Grandma from coming in the front door while the others were trying to lure the stubborn cow out of the back door.
Every Sunday morning, they would cram into their Model-A Ford. My aunts used to tell the story of a time when the kids decided to drive the car around by themselves in the backyard which was strictly forbidden. My aunts would start laughing hysterically, so I never got the whole story—something about the kids putting plates down on the kitchen floor to slow Grandma down from going out the back door and catching the kids driving the car.
Once when Grandma had mopped the kitchen floor to prepare for company and then left the house, she instructed the children not to walk on it. The children obeyed her and did not walk on the floor. They put plates down on the floor and walked on the plates instead.
The kids were a handful, but from all accounts, Grandma loved the challenge and dished it right back.
We are not sure how long Grandma took care of the cousins, but not long after the children went back to live with their mother, in 1940, Jack Brewer, one of the cousins, passed away at age 11 from appendicitis. My father felt like he had lost a brother, and Grandma felt like she had lost a son.
The next few years would bring changes for the Brewer family. Grandma’s mother, “Little Mama” moved in to live with them since she was showing signs of dementia. Grandma took care of her for years.
In 1944, both Grandma’s sons left for the war. Her nineteen-year-old daughter Dorene announced that her beau had a leave from the military, and they would be getting married. The news seemed to be too much for Grandma. She strongly objected. “I am going to be planting potatoes that day,” she told her daughter.
“Then I will have the wedding in the potato patch!” Dorene retorted. Grandma relented, and the wedding took place in their house on March 15, 1944. Three months later, Grandma’s oldest daughter, Lois, was married.
Grandma had major changes in her life starting in 1954. On a hot day in July, Grandpa was working in the garden and Grandma was rushing around the house getting ready to send the Brewer men and boys off on a fishing trip. Grandpa came back into the house and collapsed. His daughter, Ava, who was 18 at the time tried to revive him. I don’t know the details, but they got him to the local hospital where he was told he had a heart attack. He seemed to be doing better, but he had another heart attack three days later and passed away leaving Grandma a widow at fifty-three years old.
Little Mama passed away just ten months later, and Grandma’s youngest daughter got married a month after that. Grandma was afraid to be alone on the farm, so her children helped her sell the farm and buy a duplex in Fort Smith. She lived on one side and rented out the other. This didn’t last long—she missed being close to family.
It had been a tough couple of years for Grandma. But she emerged with a brilliant plan that worked well for her. She would move close to each of her children for a couple of years and get a job doing what she did best—mothering. She was hired as a dorm mother at two different colleges in Oklahoma--one near her son, and the other near her daughter--and then at Cazenovia College in New York near my family. Grandma’s jobs provided room and board, and she loved her role as a caregiver. She also enjoyed hosting her older grandchildren on campus as her “special guests” during her time off.
Unfortunately, I was not old enough to remember when Grandma lived near my family. When I was little and Grandma would visit from Denver, she was a house mother for intellectually challenged boys. I remember her talking fondly about her “boys” as if they were family.
The last time I saw my grandma was in 1985 when my sister and I drove to Arkansas with her two children, ages 2 and 4. Grandma was showing signs of Alzheimer's, and though she was not connecting with the conversations, she seemed happy to be surrounded by family. She was content to sit on the porch swing and rock back and forth nestled between her daughter and granddaughter, and to watch her great-grandchildren play.
Grandma seemed to get the last laugh. She passed away on January 4, 1988, at the age of 87. On January 6-7, when the family was coming in from all parts of the country to attend her funeral, the Midwest had a major snowstorm with record snowfalls. My cousin James described driving in from Kansas in white-out conditions. Over two feet of snow fell in Paris, AR, where the family was gathering. The funeral was delayed by two days while the family was holed up in the local hotels. James ran out to Walmart, bought all the boots they had in stock, and passed them out to the funeralgoers. When Grandma was lowered into the ground, the family members were sinking in mud up to their knees. It seems that Grandma paid her children back for all the pranks they had played on her through the years!
*In gratitude to the many family members who contributed to this story: My sisters; Elizabeth Shannon, Sharon Barros, and Cynthia Kropp; my brother, Jim Brewer; my cousins, James Carter, Carol Holmes, Cynthia Allen, Don Brewer, Leanna McCrady Crist, Terry Brewer, and Lori Taylor; and my uncle, WC Carter. This story represents my best effort to convey our collective memories of my grandmother.
*Background Image by Jennifer Esneault from Pixabay
If you enjoyed this story, you might enjoy these other stories from Nancy's Family History Collection:
In Honor of My Grandmother, Dr. Lulu Violet Long
In Honor of Older Americans Month: Inspiration from WC Carter, My 97 year-old-Uncle
Susan Brownlow, Civil War Hero: In Honor of National Women's History Month
A Message from My Father: Blessed Be the Tie That Binds
Finding Loveliness in Cancer: Inspiration from the Last Year of My Mother's Life