Today’s Walk

Through My World and My Mind

Being “Just an Observer” is Inexcusable

Posted: January 29th, 2022

By Jennifer Bryon Owen

Today is much like the day in this photo. The sun shines brightly and fiercely. The sky wears its best blue. Winter grips us tightly enough, teasing those of us who live in the South with its power to turn into a deathly reality.

The difference in today and the day of this photo is that the person—I believe it was a female—is not in the picture. For several years, this homeless person switched her location between this spot near fast food restaurants and an all-night grocery store with one across the street that has a combo convenience store and service station nearby. I watched for her every time I joined hundreds of other drivers regularly and quickly traversing this intersection.

I absorbed that day’s scene as much as I could, give that frequently the traffic moved quickly. Occasionally, the red light caught me, and I was able to see more.

This woman created what seemed to be a well-functioning abode. Essential to her life, shopping carts formed the basis of whatever structure she built. They held most of her belongings. (This photo only shows the beginning of a much larger domain.) Running a close race for the essential essentials was plastics, which seemed to proliferate in the warmer weather. Plastic buckets, plastic drinking cups, plastic bottles, plastic lawn chairs, plastic tarps, plastic storage bins, plastic bags—all things plastic.

Finding plastic in our society is easy. But, I wondered how far and wide she roamed in her shopping. Then, I wondered—to my horror—if she ate, drank or otherwise used whatever had been left in the plastic containers.

Brooms, mops and industrial-size brushes featured prominently at her house. Why? What did she do with them? How much and what did she clean Or, did just having them provide some sort of security for her, as it does for so many “homed” people?

She had cardboard boxes. That I understand. Cardboard boxes, plastic tarps and a plastic chair, in the right combination, could provide shelter.

While the summer heat and humidity in the South are no laughing matter, winters here can sneak up and can turn deadly quickly. That’s when I worried about her. The cold seems unbearable. The only time I saw the person I think was this woman was during one of those unbearable cold spells. I was grocery shopping, and she had stepped just inside the store. She didn’t continue into the store as if there to shop; she just stood inside in the warmth. I wondered how often she did that and whether the store cared or even knew. Or perhaps they gave her warm food and drink?

I noticed other things that gave me a bit of hope. The first was that during an extremely cold spell, I saw she had built sort of an igloo shaped dwelling out of what else but grocery carts, plastic and cardboard. It seemed okay, maybe it keep her warm or at least from freezing to death. But I became worried when I passed several times and did not see her at all. Then, one day I saw a leg and a foot extended through the door opening.

On another winter’s day trip, I saw that she had on what looked like new, or almost new, sturdy boots. That’s when I entertained the idea that someone was helping her. Maybe she wasn’t totally alone in her life, several seasons of which she spent on two corners of a busy Metro Atlanta intersection.

But this year she is gone. Every time I pass her corners, I look for her and wonder. I wonder where she went and why. Did wonder lust call and she took off on foot, pulling and pushing her world with her? Or did she call a moving van to transport her? Was she made to leave by the merchants and/or the government? Worse still, did she become ill and die—alone?

I’ll never know. I pray she found shelter with people who care about her.

In the United States, almost 554,000 people experience homelessness on a given night: in Georgia, its more than 10,000. Myriad reasons caused people to become homeless. Those of us who have warm or cool homes, depending on the season, best not judge. It is easy to say, “Well homeless people should …,” followed by whatever we think their “failing” to be.

Our better selves should help in any way we can. For homeless people who want more permanent housing, we can help them find it.

We can also help with temporary housing. When the winter temperature falls to a certain point, my church parish provides a hotel room for families with children. That is a practical way to help. It doesn’t save the world, but it can save one family for one cold night. Those of us who have been temporarily cold know how good the warmth feels. We can provide or join others in providing that warmth through shelter, clothing, blankets and food. If we get really serious, we can do so much more.

I only observed the woman on the corner. I wish I had done something.

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Weather Warnings Are Our Friend

Posted: August 28th, 2021

By Jennifer Bryon Owen

Naysayers become weather experts as fast as the weather develops. Hurricane Ida weaves her way toward our Gulf Coast, yet undecided exactly where she will bestow her wrath. But she’s coming and she’s gaining speed.

This is considered a big news day, weekend even, for reporters. And right on their heels are the people who know more about hurricanes than the Weather Channel. These naysayers claim  reporters just want to scare people.

I have some experience in the news business and in the hurricane business.

For the news business, reporters try to keep people informed about what is happening, and in the case of hurricane, what probably will happen. We have wonderful technology that tracks hurricanes and technology that transmits information to people. Almost everyone has access to smartphones, these days. Once the information is out there, people can make their own decisions. But we know from current experience that you can’t scare people to act in their own self interests. You can, however, scare them into being foolish.

I trust my local NBC affiliate and like their new slogan.  “We’re not trying to scare you. We’re trying to prepare you.” So I pay attention.

Floods have been chasing my family for generations. The two-year-old who would become my father and his 20-year-old mother were passengers on the last train leaving Greenville, Mississippi, because the town was flooded. When I was a baby, my father, mother, and I left Louisville, Kentucky, because the Ohio River was after us.  The first two condominiums I owned as an adult were flooded in the great Nashville, Tennessee flood of 2010. Thankfully, I had moved years before.

None of these were caused by hurricanes, as far as I know. That changed when we moved to New Orleans.

I’ll never forget the first hurricane warnings we experienced, totally different weather that anything I’d ever been in. The atmosphere changed—you literally could feel it in the air. The tension level of an entire city, a city already floating below sea level, ramped up. Batteries, water, food staples, plywood flew off the shelves.

That hurricane missed New Orleans. We eventually moved away only to return to the magical Crescent City a few years later. We then met hurricanes and their destruction face to face.

My father pastored a church in the even then multi-cultural Lower Ninth Ward (on the same street where Fats Domino had a house!), and a hurricane decided to head our way during a revival meeting. My father cancelled services and took his family and the guest preacher to higher ground. His intention was to return Sunday morning in time for services. New Orleans did not take a direct hit, as I recall, but unstable weather continued. When we reached the causeway to cross Lake Pontchartrain into New Orleans, we were stopped and not allowed on the bridge. Winds were 60 miles an hour. We missed church that day.

Men in the church kidded my father, saying it was going to rain this weekend and asking if he would be at church. I recall his response was that if they had all ended sitting on the roofs of their houses, he would have been the smartest guy around.Then along came Betsy. My bags were packed and waiting on the floor of my bedroom because the next morning I was headed off to college, where I would gain a little expertise in being a journalist. Betsy had other ideas.

Brave Tempest

As this hurricane worsened, my father decided we should leave our wood frame house and go to our church, which had steel beams and perhaps better construction. Our house was two blocks from the Industrial Cannel. Our church was farther south in the Ninth Ward

Other church families had the same idea, and we all settled in to wait out the storm. Around midnight, water began seeping into the first floor of our educational building; we moved to the second floor.

Daylight came and we saw the water—water, water everywhere.

Looking out the upper floor windows, I watched the looting of a grocery store. At the time, I thought looting was awful. I’ve changed my mind. The people doing the looting had nothing before the flood and they would have even less after the flood. The products in the store would not be sellable after the flood crawled away, and the owner most likely had insurance.

While this was going on, my father was walking through flood waters, looking for dry ground and a telephone. Men from our church went in a pirogue to check on our house and the dog we had left behind. They had to reach into the water to put the key in the door lock to gain entrance. They found the dog floating, hanging onto a plastic (the then popular Naugahyde) couch cushion. At least five feet of water filled the house.

They brought the dog, aptly named Tempest, back to me. And that wet, frightened—she was in shock—dog became my responsibility.

Finding a working telephone, finally, my father called his brother to come get us. My uncle met us on the dry side of the St. Claude Avenue bridge, a bridge just down the block from our house and the bridge I crossed every day on my way to high school. But first, we had to get to the dry side.

Someone supplied a pirogue. My mother, my sister and the dog rode in the boat. My father and I walked alongside it. We made our way to the bridge. It must have been difficult walking in water above my knees for that distance, but my mind has hidden that experience.

What I do remember is standing on that bridge and looking at people behind us making their own way to dry land. So many had small children, clad only in their underpants. I knew right then that they had little, if any, hope coming out of that situation. I also knew the privilege I had because my father was educated and knew how to earn a living.

Irwin Thompson, a photographer for the Associated Press, took a photo 40 years later of people crossing the St. Claude bridge because of Katrina’s wrath. I found it recently in my files and had to check the date. It looked eerily like the day we crossed that bridge for the last time.

So on September 10, 1965, the day I was to make one’s iconic trip to college, my uncle took us to his house “up in Mississippi.” I carried a wet dog with me all the way, and she promptly threw up in my lap just as we arrived. I recall nothing else until I got to college.

After he got us to safety, my father visited the college, told them the situation and that he had the money for me to register; he just couldn’t get to it right then. The college let me register and gave me $60 toward books. I entered college with two dresses, two sweaters and one pair of shoes. I did not miss one day of college.

After Betsy

My parents returned to New Orleans to clean out and salvage what they could, but they spared me the details. That trunk of clothes that had been on my bedroom floor was “thrown to the curb,” as were most of our belongings. My mother did note that my love letters from my boyfriend were a “stinky,wet lot.”

But we survived. We did lose my little turtle that had been in a dish on my bedroom floor did not hang around. But he was uniquely equipped for the adventure ahead of him. I envision him living a life of luxury on some south sea island.

We lost a lot of other things. But we didn’t lose each other. None of us got sick or hurt from walking around in the murky waters of Old Man River.

On this occasion, my father proved to be one of the smartest men around. No one teased him about rain or hurricanes.

When Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans on September 9, 1965, as a category 3 hurricane, later upgraded to a category 4, it was the most costly and furious hurricane ever. There will never be another Betsy; her destruction so great that the name has been retired. Betsy’s claim to fame lasted 40 years, usurped only by Katrina.

I love New Orleans; it is a wonderful city with lots of good personal memories. These hurricanes brought this lovely, unique, vibrant city to its knees. But hurricanes don’t confine themselves to the city limits. They wreak havoc for as long and far as they can muster any strength.

I’m a believer in hurricanes. Don’t mess with them. This isn’t a game of chicken. Listen to the weather experts and take proper precautions. Leaving a hurricane’s path and having nothing happen is far, far more desirable that staying and having something happen.

As we wait for Ida to decide where she’ll land, I’ve been looking at pictures of Betsy’s flood waters covering the Ninth Ward. Fifty-six years later, fear almost overwhelms me, fear of what might have happened to us if my father had not paid attention.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I Love Connections

Posted: August 16th, 2021

By Jennifer Bryon Owen

Remember the blue back and orange back biographies that proliferated our library shelves in elementary school? I read every one of them. Hence the comments on my report card, “Jennifer reads too many library books.”

Presented as nonfiction, many of these biographies were doctored to present a more noble heritage. True or not, they did not dampen my enthusiasm for biographies, autobiographies and memoirs.

Glimpsing into other people’s lives intrigues me. I’ve learned how to solve problems, how I want to be and, surely, how I don’t want to be. Most of all, other people’s lives enlarge my world. The life of Bobbie Ann Mason took me on a journey through my childhood.

Her discussion of one of her books, Elvis Presley: a Life, during the 2016 Conference on the Book in Oxford, Mississippi, had introduced me to her writing. While not an Elvis fan, I am a fan of successful writers, always hopeful that I will learn something from them. 

Following this introduction, I read her novel In Country, which is about a Viet Nam veteran who returned home to Kentucky forever bearing the burden of that war. I’ve been researching/writing a biography of a Viet Nam war correspondent and thought I might learn something. I did. This led me to more of her writing.

Only pages into reading Clear Springs, I discovered Bobbie Ann Mason and I share connections—lots of them. We both are Kentucky natives. She arrived a bit before I, but in the same cultural time frame. My family’s peripatetic lifestyle began early and took me from the state when I was a toddler. But it wasn’t long until the family journeys landed me in a house on Highway 45, an asphalt ribbon connecting Bobbie Ann in Kentucky and me in Tennessee.

It was Highway 45 that Bobbie Ann followed from her house in Kentucky, past my house in Tennessee, and on to Tupelo, Mississippi, to find Elvis Presley’s childhood home.

Hwy 45 was a death trap for Bobbie Ann’s pets as well as for many of my cats that followed me the short distance along the highway from my house to the church next door where my father was pastor.

Reading was, and is, a way of life for both of us, but who knew we both had an affinity for the Bobbsey Twins? I still recall the opening lines to The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore. Bobbie Ann’s memoir pictures her grasping The Bobbsey Twins at School, but she didn’t stop there. She wrote about these adventurous brother and sister Girl Sleuth: A Feminist Guide.

The Weekly Reader was a game changer for me, and it seems so for Bobbie Ann. I loved getting this newspaper at school, being able to order my own books through WR and having them delivered to my classroom, a foreshadowing of today’s book buying. As an adult, I found a copy of the first book I ever ordered, Blue Willow. It is in my library.

Bobbie Ann and I picked strawberries, a product so popular in Highway 45 country that schools dismissed in early May so children could pick strawberries. Bobbie Ann writes that her crates contained six quart-boxes and she got a nickel for every quart. I recall pint boxes and a penny a pint. I should have picked with her.

We loved Fabian. He was soooooo cute and, by our teenage standards, had a wonderful voice.

Other connections found in Clear Springs:

• The nearby town of Paducah. I have several dolls Santa found for me in Paducah.

• We were children of the “great polio scare” and that new-fangled television’s Howdy Doody. I don’t know about Bobbie Ann, but I got all my polio vaccines and watched a lot of Howdy Doody.

• Murray State College (now University). When my parents married at age 19, my father had only two years of high school. After earning his GED, he began his formal educational quest, which he completed when he was 37 and I was 15. Everywhere we lived, he enrolled in the nearest college. Murray State College was one.

• As first-born children, Bobbie Ann and I share burden to be perfect.

• We wrote for our college newspapers.

• As career newbies, we interviewed celebrities and famous people.

• We had a family member who “went to Memphis” for mental health issues.

• She was 21 years younger than her mother. I was 22 years younger than mine, a short distance that weighed heavily on me when my mother died.

• Bobbie Ann’s stories about grandparents on the farm mingle with mine. I didn’t live on a farm but just went farther south on Hwy 45—and closer to Elvis—to my grandparents’ farm, which turned into a kind of amusement park for my cousins and me.

• Our grandmothers made quilts for us. Mine began making a half-bed quilt for each grandchild as he/she graduated from high school. I was Number 4. I still have my quilt, which was made from my dress scraps as well as those of my mother and my cousins. As and adult, I bought more quilts from my grandmother.

• Milk cans were integral to our grandfather’s work. I didn’t wash my grandfather’s milk cans as Bobbie Ann did, but I still see why grandfather rolling a wooden cart with two milk cans out to the road to be picked up.

• She shares the conflict of leaving the house on the farm, where she was born and grew up. I understand some of that because I spent so much time in my grandparents’ house and around the place, pretending to be a farmer. So many of my memories, especially the good ones, center on that farm. I was in their house once after both had died. I could not stay. Memories filled every inch, but the most important ingredient was gone. When the house was demolished, I was given two bricks from the fireplace. They became bookends in my library.

• We share a period of mourning. Bobbie Ann and I had grandfathers who died the same month of the same year, the first immediate family member to die.

• We had an Aunt Hattie. Mine was a great aunt, but I knew her, and she is memorable because she helped “raise” my father.

• We had relatives who “ran” or managed the local county home. Mine was my great grandfather and great grandmother. They provided a place for people who had nowhere to go. My mother told stories of spending the night with her grandparents at the county home and being “paid” ten cents for her help. The nursing home where my mother spent her last days is located on the site where that county home once stood, just a stone’s throw from where my grandfather’s farm used to be.

• The family stories from a time so hard on people. For me, it was when my grandmother was “flat on her back” for a year. Ida was hired to take care of the five children. The time when my grandparents’ only two children had contracted diphtheria, taking their first-born, Lucille, and leaving their son with health life-long health issues for life. Their daughter’s obituary breaks my heart for those young parents. Fittingly, one of Lucille’s books is in my library.

• We had ancestors who died early and no one remembers or knew about that person. I grew up thinking one of my great grandfathers was an only child. But in the first census in which he was recorded, a younger sister is named. She appears nowhere else in official data or anyone’s memory.

• In college, Bobbie Ann thought everyone was smarter than she. From first grade through graduate school, I felt the same way. Now, I always choose friends from the smart kids group.

• The best connection, however, is Bobbie Ann and I love words, the reading of them and the writing of them. And we have spent our lives doing just that.

I suspect that if Bobbie Ann Mason and Jennifer Kay Bryon had lived closer on Highway 45, we might have become best friends.

To get the full details of Mason’s life on Highway 45, read Clear Springs. Her life is way more interesting than mine!

“Google” Bobbie Ann Mason and you find a complete listing of her books as well as the other writers to whom she is compared. They, too, are some of my favorites.

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Return on a $17.50 Investment

Posted: November 3rd, 2020

By Jennifer Bryon Owen

For good or bad, those “first times” we do many things are etched into our memory bank. I have such a memory.

The first time I was paid for my writing.

It was in the mid-1960’s, the beginning my college career. I knew I wanted to “major in journalism.” To date, I had written for high school newspapers that were printed on those mimeographed purple pages; had studied journalism in only one high school class (the only one that had been available to me); had been a staff member one semester on a real, printed high school newspaper. Now, I was in a college that offered no classes, but did offer a chance for me to write.

Walker Knight was the ahead-of-his-time editor of Home Missions, a Baptist publication about Southern Baptists living, or trying to live, their faith in the place where they lived. Through its pages, Walker also encouraged people to embrace a growing understanding of that faith and to incorporate that understanding into their daily lives. To that cutting-edge magazine, I submitted an unsolicited article on the ministry of Southern Baptists for deaf people.

I received a response, and it was not an insignificant one! Walker sent a note, saying he would probably hold the article and use it as part of a larger one sometime.

He also included a check for $17.50! A huge sum for a wannabe writer in those days. And it was my first time to be paid!

My article never saw publication, as far as I know. I’ve often joked that both steps—paying me but not publishing the article—demonstrated the editor’s insight.

Little did Walker know what his encouragement—symbolized by that hard cold cash—unleashed. I later transferred to a university with a journalism program, and my entire life has been spent putting words on paper. I was going to do that anyway, but Walker’s encouragement made me believe I was on the right path. When I worked for the same denomination a few years later, my encourager became a colleague from whom I learned.

Last December, Walker Knight’s family and friends gathered to say goodbye to his physical presence. As I heard numerous people talk about Walker, I looked at those gathered around nodding and smiling as they remembered him, too. I wondered how many of them had received Walker’s encouragement in some way during their lives and careers. I bet most had. He gave people opportunities. He led people by example and by challenging them to be their best.

The day was not a sad one, but an energizing, reflective one in which we talked about a person of integrity and commitment, words used infrequently in describing people these days. Walker Knight, a human being with all that can mean, chose to live and be a certain way, and he formed his life around those choices to the point that they became his being.

His obituary in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted his family, “Walker Knight was a man who lived his life at the convergence of faith, character and a love of the written word.”

During his memorial service, the words integrity, peacemaker and making things right surfaced continually in the comments. His belief that “peace, like war, must be waged” formed a lengthy poem many speakers referenced. Those words became a mantra for his life.

Walker’s beliefs guided his employment. He pushed boundaries when he discussed civil rights in a magazine whose readers, by and large, would not willingly discuss that subject, lest it make them uncomfortable or requiring them to change. When organizational and directional changes in that job made it impossible for him, he took his being and his words elsewhere so he could be the person he had become. He continued to try to right wrongs by leading his church as it grappled with including all of God’s people inside its walls and heart.

Wherever he lived, whatever job he had, Walker Knight took with him his integrity, peacemaking and zeal to make things right. It wasn’t always easy, safe nor profitable by today’s standards. But he did it.

How fortunate I was to have known him. His memorial service encouraged me to contemplate in more depth what it means to live as a principled person. My unique connection to him is a $17.50 treasure in my memory bank.  Walker Knight’s priceless example remains eternal.

 

To learn more about Walker L. Knight, read his book From Zion to Atlanta: Memoirs.

Photo Credit: Lynn Farmer









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A Work from Home Pioneer—Who Knew?

Posted: September 10th, 2020

By Jennifer Bryon Owen

It was the early 1980’s. I quit my job of 11 years and headed home. Home to work.

Starting my own communications business on a slim budget, I set up shop at home. Our new condo had just the spot—an upstairs room with a door that could be closed. We purchased a state-of-the-art computer that today could easily be mistaken for minifridge. Along with the computer, I had a landline telephone, a typewriter, bushels of hope and tons of anxiety.

Making my intentions known to anyone and everyone I had ever met, I mailed through the USPS tasteful, printed notices of my new venture. I knew even then that people would share my contact info with their contacts. These announcements sidestepped my home office location by listing a mailbox number for an address.

And one day my office phone rang. I answered in the most professional voice I could muster, fearing I might not sound like I knew what I was doing.

The caller said, “This is Tandy Rice, and I just wanted to call and wish you well on your new business.”

I almost gasped right into the receiver.

Anyone in Nashville, Tennessee, in the 1980’s knew that name. He was an entertainment manager and booking agent of such folks as Dolly Parton, Porter Wagoner, Tom T. Hall and Jeannie C. Riley. He had begun his career as a publicist, which was one of the services I was offering, so he knew a bit about the business. He rose to fame as founder of Top Billing, Inc. and garnered numerous accolades through the years, including serving as president of the Country Music Association.

Known for his business expertise, his looks contributed to his persona—longish flowing and graying hair, an ever-present ear-to-ear smile always, seersucker suits, Southern accent and but happy voice that “carried.” A handsome man in my book.

His 2015 obituary says he purchased the booking agency Top Billing, Inc and developed it into a Nashville powerhouse, at its peak managing or booking 18 major artists. Under Tandy’s tutelage, one of his clients, Billy Carter, became a national media celebrity who earned more than his brother President Jimmy Carter.

The differences between Tandy Rice and myself stumbled all over themselves inside my head while my professional self tried to sound lucid. I had met Tandy when he attended some event I had planned while gainfully employed. I don’t remember which one, but it assuredly was a book autographing party. Perhaps for Minnie Pearl, who was distantly related to Tandy?

Then he asked the question I didn’t want to answer: “Where are your offices?”

Now I did gasp, but to myself. I was about to be found out. He wouldn’t think I was a real business. Once again, trying to sound as professional as possible, I replied, “For right now, they are in my home.”

“Keep them there,” said Tandy. “Your clients don’t care where your offices are located, and they surely don’t want to pay for your expensive overhead.” Then he told me he had just moved his own offices from his fancy digs to a smaller space.

I was floored. First of all, I couldn’t believe a person at the top of his game had called to encourage someone just starting out in his game. And then, instead of making me feel inferior because my the location of my offices, he validated my choice.

Both of these say a lot about that man, and they tell me why he was successful. He was kind, he was an encourager. How very nice of him to call me.

Buoyed by such affirmation, I gained confidence. Through years I learned a few things. When your office is in your home, you either work or you don’t. Regular hours devoted to the work are a must. Those hours can vary, but you must have a concentrated block of time each day to work.

You can be more productive because you don’t have the constant distractions of such things as “water cooler” talks, people popping into your office to chat, unplanned meetings. At the end of my working from home day, I scheduled tasks for the next day. I soon realized I was completing that list within a couple of hours. Eventually, I new schedule was based on the amount of work I completed downtown in the big office building.

You can be professional, even in a home office. At one time, I had a telephone with a mute button installed in my kitchen because I had clients in different time zones. I frequently received business calls while cooking dinner. I became adept at saying, “May I put you on hold while I go to my desk?” and deftly turning off stove burners, all in one swift motion.

Only once did I have a problem and I just had to be honest. I was conducting a telephone interview and my two-year-old decided to have a crying fit. I was embarrassed but honest with my client. He graciously rescheduled. I learned that lesson.

Working from home in 2020 forced itself on employees and employers alike. It was their only choice. But both are discovering the advantage, as Tandy Rice said, “ of keeping the offices at home.” It looks as if this setup is viable option going forward.

Who knew I was a trail blazer! Because of Tandy Rice, I have never been concerned about working from home. I’ve embraced it.

Tandy’s obituary also called him “loyal and generous.” He was most generous and encouraging to me. I wish I could have told him the impact of that phone call. But since I can’t, I’m passing Tandy along to everyone “working from home.”

Working from home is a good and honorable thing. And professional.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 









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Days Longer than the Summer Solstice

Posted: June 20th, 2020

By Jennifer Bryon Owen

Imagine this. You awaken in the morning and have no idea where you are, who are
or who any of the people around you are. And that not knowing did not go away as the day progressed. It lasted all day.

Alzheimer’s Disease does this to its victims.

The Alzheimer’s Association aptly designates today—June 20 and the Summer Solstice—as the culmination of their month-long observance highlighting the estimated 5.8 million people age 65 and older living with the disease. The association emphasizes their activities on this day by naming it The Longest Day.

In his last years, my father greeted each new day without knowing anything about it before Alzheimer’s took him almost 20 years ago. Especially when he had to live in a nursing home, my father awakened in an agitated, sometimes combative state. Alzheimer’s morphed an always mild man not given to anger into a ready-to-fight senior citizen. My sister and I think he became this other person because he didn’t know anything about the day he had entered.

Seven years in age separated my father and his brother, but they seemed to have a strong, supportive relationship.

It was my uncle who came to our rescue when New Orleans flooded in 1965. My father was devastated when my uncle went to Viet Nam. Perusing family papers and pictures yields many other examples of their brotherly relationship. Unfortunately, they shared what we are afraid may be the “family disease.” Alzheimer’s took my uncle 10 years after my father.

Now, my cousin, the one closest to me in age, and I kind of check each other out from time to time to see if we recognize Alzheimer’s symptoms in ourselves.

So far, so good. Watching Alzheimer’s unfold in a loved one is not fun. Alzheimer’s robs a person of his or her personhood. Everything is taken, usually slowly and painstakingly.

My father and my uncle earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Both were ministers, with my uncle becoming an army chaplain and serving twice in Viet Nam and my father being a church pastor. Both were married and had children.

Alzheimer’s stealthily pulled the details of their lives from them. Now we can laugh about my father and the printer he bought for his computer. It stayed in the box, and of course. unconnected to the computer. Forever. Anytime someone mentioned the printer, Daddy would reply that he wanted to read the instruction manual first. That printer never left the box. This from a man who had built a stereo from scratch, and it worked. This from a man who could do just about anything to an airplane.

My father began airplane flying lessons at age 16 and joined the Army Air Corps during WWII. When I was born, he was in civil service, taking care of airplanes. He later taught others to fly. My mother said he could tell what kind of plane was flying overheard just by listening. But, the last time my sister drove him to the airport just to watch the “take offs and landings”—one of our family fun things—he didn’t even look up.

From my father and uncle, Alzheimer’s took:

Brothers who had delivered sermons to countless people in sometimes trying setting, the ability to speak, read or write;

Brothers who enjoyed playing gold together, the ability to enjoy their hobbies;

Brothers who had families, the names of their wives and children;

Brothers who shared family and a family history, the knowledge of who they were;

Brothers who participated in daily life, the knowledge of where they were as they awoke each Fromday;

Brothers  who shared their history, their memories, their lives, their very being.

 

Never forget this. Alzheimer’s is an insidious disease.

 

 

Thoughts from my book in progress, In the Gloaming: My Father, Alzheimer’s and Me

 









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The Forgotten Valentine

Posted: February 21st, 2020

By Jennifer Bryon Owen

Without saying a word, Mother handed me a valentine she had received. It was handmade, but childish. Construction paper, crayon colors drawn in odd shapes, hearts glued wherever, signature scrawled.

Emotions surfaced quickly inside me, spanning the range of what was humanly possible—sadness, revulsion, anger—anything but love and happiness.

My father had made the valentine for her at his adult “daycare” for Alzheimer’s patients. I hated—and still do—that this insidious disease stole an adult man’s entire life, his accomplishments, his education, his interest in life, his relationships, his awareness of anything around him, the names of his family members. Alzheimer’s thrust him back into a form of childhood, a childhood that did not even have the skills, knowledge or awareness that, in most children, grow and develop into adulthood. A child bereft of hope for a bright future, facing a slow, lonely decline into what I imagine as a dark void.

He was a grown man making a construction paper valentine for his wife of more than 60 years.

I never asked my mother what she thought about that valentine. She was pretty much in over her head dealing with the husband left to her after Alzheimer’s took over his world. She, my sister and I were dealing in different ways with loss of this man who always called us his girls.

But I was sad—and mad. I was mad that his life had resorted to such childish activities. I’m not mad at the people staffing the “adult daycare” for Alzheimer’s patients. They are trying to create and pull from these victims some sense of normality. They are trying to engage them in something constructive instead of just letting them sit and stare off into space. It’s not their fault; out system of care hasn’t figured out what to do.

That valentine pierced me to the core. The pain really hasn’t gone away in the dozen years since. And I’ve wondered what hurt me so badly.

The pain comes, I’ve decided, because that valentine represents the loss of dignity suffered by Alzheimer’s victims. My father was a human being, a mixture of good and not-so-good, as are all people with Alzheimer’s. But, just like the others, he had built a worthy life for himself and his family. He had failed at some things, but he had succeeded at others.

A 10th grade high school dropout, he later earned his GED, a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree. The love of airplanes and flying that propelled him toward his first flying lesson at age 16 and into the Army Air Corps during World War II, forming the basis of his lifelong avocation. He could do just about anything to small airplanes, including teaching others to fly them.

His mechanical mind allowed him to repair family cars, to a certain point. It also gave us our first stereo, which Daddy ordered in a kit form and constructed. I can still see the floor where he laid out all the parts, with like parts together. That stereo played as it was designed to do from the first time it was plugged in and turned on.

As a minister, he stood before groups of people at least three times a week and delivered sermons and devotionals that he had researched, studied and written. To do that, one must have confidence and decent public speaking skills. I’ll never forget the time I accidently locked the car keys, his Bible and his notes into the car just before one of those times. He didn’t get angry at me—and he really didn’t need all those props. He remembered what he had intended to say.

And he loved his family, his girls, and tried to do the best he could for us as we grew up. He admitted to my new husband that he had really wished his two daughters could just stay home forever. But, of course, he let us go.

Not a perfect life, but a good one. One of dignity.

Alzheimer’s took every bit of that life away. Each bit of that life dripped and dripped away until it took his last breath. It was a process of loss.

He bought a printer to go with the computer he had, but the printer never got “hooked up.” Daddy was waiting until he read the instructions. But, of course, he never did. He bought a riding lawn mower, gave it a brief try, and asked my brother-in-law to return it.

He quit reading, quit handling family business, lost most of his vocabulary and his ability to articulate simple statements. He had what I call a “canned speech” he gave me when talking on the phone, the same stories, the same weather report, etc.

The patience he exhibited with flying students and with his growing daughters throughout his lifetime left and was replaced by anger.

Names of his immediate family members flew into oblivion. During a doctor’s visit, he was asked if he had children and what their names were. He recalled my name. But he could not recall my sister’s name. She was standing right beside him. During a phone call with his brother, my uncle asked to speak to me. Daddy said, “Jennifer’s not here.” I was sitting on the sofa, facing him.

Once, after having spent the entire day with my brother-in-law of many years, Daddy turned to him and said, “I have to ask you an embarrassing question. What is your name?”

The worst came when he had to ask my mother her name. He might have known she was his wife; he certainly seemed to know she was the one to stay near. Who knows?

The loss of dignity for those with Alzheimer’s is horrendous. I don’t know the solution, but I have thought about small ways that might help.

Practice patience, a most difficult trait to develop and maintain in the middle of the battle.

Be courteous. They are human beings who have had, probably, a full life.

Employ empathy. They are not being “willful” in their inabilities. They didn’t ask for Alzheimer’s.

Speak in a normal voice. They aren’t hard of hearing (unless they really are!)

Speak to the adult they are.

Do away with criticism.

Talk about the now. Dispense with saying, “Don’t you remember?”

Find adult activities they enjoy.

Not an easy task.

 

Essay taken from my work in progress, In the Gloaming, My Father, Alzheimer’s and Me.

           

 









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Common Words for an Uncommon Woman

Posted: January 14th, 2020

By Jennifer Bryon Owen

Kathryn Johnson (c.) discusses her book, My Time with the Kings, with AP’s Valerie Komor and civil rights icon Ambassador Andrew Young.

The frequency with which we hear people described as a trailblazer and legendary almost negates their value. But sometimes they are the only words. Especially when describing a female whose life as “one of the first” and as an exceptionally good reporter made her a legendary trailblazer. Even the Associated Press used them in writing the obituary of their noted journalist Kathryn Johnson, who died in the fall of 2019 at the age of 93.

Since then, I’ve thought a lot about what I know about Kathryn and comparing that with what I’ve heard from others. There was no dissonance.

Kathryn was my friend and mentor, although I knew her only the last 10 years or so of her life. She was a graduate of Agnes Scott College, where I edited the alumnae magazine. (She had graduated the year I was born!) We met when I interviewed her for said magazine. As we sat in my office exchanging getting-to-know-you pleasantries, she latched onto a couple of things about me: my journalism and English degree and my employment with the Associated Press. In truth, I had been a stringer for the AP during my senior year in college. I hadn’t pursued full-time employment with the AP when I graduated. But if I had, my chances would have been better because of the trail forged by Kathryn.

The Carter Center in Atlanta where Kathryn shared stories of her relationship with the late Martin Luther King Jr. and Mrs. King.

Upon her 1947 graduation from Agnes Scott College, armed with her English degree and a certainty about what she wanted to do, Kathryn applied for a reporter’s job with The Associated Press. She was refused. Although the AP did employ women, their numbers were significantly fewer than those of the men. The bureau chief tried to dissuade her because their men reporters were returning from World War II, and the AP had fired all the women who had—temporarily—filled in.

But with her clear vision of what she wanted, not what current norms dictated, joined hands with her determination. She did what she had to do in order to reach her goal. She accepted a job as secretary for the AP, wrote features she dreamed up herself and studied how the top AP stories were being written. She eventually got a reporter’s job.

Kathryn’s relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. and his family demonstrates her willingness to do the work and not worry about prestige. She was assigned to cover King, she told me, because at the time he wasn’t a big story and male reporters didn’t want to waste their time. She accepted the assignment. By the time of King’s assassination, she had developed a trusted relationship with him and his family. She was the only reporter Mrs. King allowed in the house the night of his death. On the day of his funeral, Kathryn cooked breakfast for the King children., which she was doing when former first lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis arrived at the home to offer Mrs. King her condolences.

At the visitation for Kathryn, I met the daughter of Vietnam POW and Navy Captain Jeremiah Denton. Kathryn had been assigned to cover the POW wives, which she did so well that she had access to their husbands when they were released and returned home. There are stories to tell, but it seems everyone loves the one about Kathryn getting in bed one night with Denton and his wife. And it wasn’t at all about what it sounds like.

Kathryn told me told me she clearly understood the difference between business and personal, as did the people she covered, and she maintained that line.

Her creativity, which capped off Kathryn’s hard work and determination, literally opened doors for her when the University of Georgia was integrated. Reporters were not allowed into the classrooms. Yet, Kathryn was there, walking past the guards and into the class with Charlayne Hunter, the first Black female to enroll at UGA. Kathryn, still young looking at age 34, donned a sweater, a “poodle” skirt, bobby socks and loafers, and with books in her hand, she walked side by side and chatted with Hunter as they entered the building. Kathryn told me all the reporters standing outside knew her identity, but no one gave her away.

I enjoy about being around reporters to hear their war stories, and Kathryn’s were touching, informative, sometimes hilarious and fantastic examples of what she did to “get the story.”

Kathryn, retired when I met her, was working on her autobiography. It was in her role as mentor that I really got to know her.

She listened, asked questions and discussed with me a biography I am writing of a deceased AP correspondent. Her insights were invaluable; her encouragement even more so.

And she connected me with her friends and colleagues who provided me with excellent, detailed and first-hand knowledge of my subject. She had paved the way for me by contacting numerous people first. I learned quickly that I my acceptance was automatic when I said to them, “Kathryn Johnson suggested I call you.”

As I met with others to honor Kathryn, I learned that she sought the opinions and thoughts of others over telling others about hers. She genuinely wanted to know what they thought.

All the stories and reflections about Kathryn revealed a unique woman who followed her dream and did so in such a way that created opportunities for those of us behind her. I know she made an impact on me.

All I can say is what others have said, “I will miss her.”

 

To learn more about Kathryn Johnson, read My Time with the Kings; Breaking News—How The Associated Press has covered War, Peace, and Everything Else; and Agnes Scott The Magazine, Fall 2009.

 









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The Importance of May 30, 1431

Posted: May 30th, 2019

By Jennifer Bryon Owen

May 30, 1431, Joan de Arc was burned at the stake.  This is significant to our family.

Fast-forward a few years to the early 1990’s and a rising third grader. During the summer, my son discovered Joan of Arc—through a video game, I recall—and his was intrigued.

He came to me, asking if there were any books about Joan de Arc. Our home housed an extensive library even then, but we had no books about the young heroine. So, per our custom, we grabbed our library cards and headed to our local public library.  He had been a library cardholder for several years. Getting his first library card was a family event, something we tied to our town opening a new library.

Our local library did not have a children’s book on Joan of Arc.  I guess children’s book people in those days thought it was too scary for impressive little minds to read about a girl being burned at the stake.

Not deterred, we searched the adult section and found a suitable book. I read the book to my son since it was beyond his reading level, and we completed the book before school began again.

First day of third grade, we arrive to find a big poster board standing outside the classroom, bearing instructions to “Write the name of your favorite book you read this summer.” He did, and I laughed, thinking, “Yeah, sure, his teachers will believe this one.”

That day continues to elicit a smile from me almost 30 years later whenever I think about it. But, I love the mind of that little boy whose interest was sparked and who wanted to learn more.

This experience tells me video games are not all bad. They contain a lot of “teachable moments,” so to speak.

I love that my son’s go-to for more information was books. He once said that he had been raised in an intellectual household. We laugh at that, too! What he was really saying was that our house was full of books, and we never questioned purchasing more. We attended library events, author signings, readings and theatre performances based on books.

Having a library card was a big deal to him. He didn’t know it then, but he had found the doors to his world. He still drops by that very library occasionally when he’s in the area. And one of the first things this 19-year-old son did while settling in as a college student in Boston, was to go to the infamous Boston Public Library and get a library card.

What a tribute to a child’s curiosity!

That little boy is now a man with a grownup version of that curious mind. He reads voraciously, loves words and writes.

I hope Joan knows this.

 









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Sisters: Having vs Being

Posted: April 15th, 2019

By Jennifer Bryon Owen

“Tell me about when I was born.”

An unusual request from my only sibling. But a legitimate one since my sister is almost 10 years younger.

On a sister’s weekend, we had just settled onto our comfy beds in our room at the beach. Driving rain pelted our windows, roaring waves pounded the beach and the wind whipping around the corner of our room sounded like a pack of wolves. With a forecast of the same tomorrow, we anticipated lots of naps, snacking and talking.

Not anticipating my sister’s question, I went with one thing I’ve always known about her birth. “You were very much wanted.”

On a postcard April day when my father appeared at my fourth-grade classroom, asking to speak to me. He told me I had a baby sister, and he had come to take me to the hospital to meet her.

I went to my teacher. “Miss Bennie, may I be excused. I have a new baby sister.” Tears rolled down my freckled face by the time I said, “sister.”

I had picked out my gift for her—a rubber bath toy of three men in a tub. I insisted  that day. My father understood. He didn’t try to explain it would be months before she could play with it.

What she also got with a much older sister was a third parent. I babysat her a lot. I’m sure she saw me as another parent, the extent of which I did not understand until she was a teenager. Then, I consciously began a lifetime of trying (still) not to parent her.

Certain memories make me smile–like the time she found the Vaseline jar. A toddler wearing only diapers, she plopped onto the hardwood floor of her bedroom and greased her entire body and the floor as far as she could reach. The funny part was watching Mother try to grab her. And there was the day she found a miniature frog and staunchly refused to let go at naptime. Mother compromised by putting the frog in a jar (glass in the baby bed!!!) and placed it in the corner of the baby bed. When Mother later checked on my sister, the jar was empty. My sister’s fist clutched a very dead little frog. There was the f time my sister saw my boyfriend kiss me as he left to return to college. I walked back in the house to find a seven-year-old girl with very big eyes. “Did he KISS you?” But any time a date and I sat on the living room couch, she magically appeared between us.

All times were not great; after all, she was human. I remember her dropping a tube of red lipstick down the skirt of my new yellow dress. My protests were met with “She’s just a child.”

She was 8 and I was 18 when college and career took me away for the most part. I missed a great deal of her life. She did live with me and had a summer job for a few weeks. She was in my wedding. But our lives continued on separate paths until our father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. From then until our Mother’s death more than 15 years later, we worked together to care for them. My parents designated both of us with power of attorney for them; something most people say should not be shared. Our father made us promise we would not fight about them during the years that lay ahead. Little did he know that we both had enough of him in us that fighting wasn’t our nature. Of course, we both made mistakes; we did not agree on everything; we second-guessed ourselves about their care. Big Sister, Third Parent appeared sometimes.  But we didn’t take it out on each other.

As we both head toward being “little old ladies,” the years between our births shrink. The age difference diminishes. We know each other as grownups. Our differences are surface; our sisterhood is deeply embedded.

I don’t just have a sister; she is a sister. And in this, her birth, month she is still wanted—now more than ever.









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