8 ONE February–March 2013
Annie’s Angels By D. Ray Lewis
Many people live a lifetime without realizing the impact they have on others. Recently, my family and I had the privilege of visiting Oak Grove Free Will Baptist Church in Elm City, North Carolina, when one such individual was honored for a life well spent.
Her name was Annie. She was a 5’ 4” stoop-shouldered little lady with nothing about her appearance that made her stand out in a crowd. As a matter of fact, she preferred to stay in the background. She was never comfortable being the center of attention. Annie did not have an easy life. She was born April 12, 1923. Adopted at birth, she never learned anything about her birth parents or the circumstances that led to her adoption. She never lost the desire to know who her parents had been and why they gave her away. Annie grew up in a poor, often abusive home. One winter when she was small, she did not have a coat to keep her warm, so her mother pieced a coat together from old scraps of material left from other sewing projects. Annie thought her “coat of many colors” was the prettiest thing she had ever seen. But the next morning when she boarded the school bus, the kids on the bus began laughing and making fun of her coat of many colors. Years later, every time she heard Dolly Parton sing “Coat of Many Colors” the tears would flow because she was reminded of her own painful childhood memories. When she was 15, she married Edwin. Seven children were born to this union. Life was tough for this sharecropper family. The farms they worked were large when it came to getting the work done, but too small to provide a decent living for a family of nine. Often, there was little food; sometimes, none at all. Many times Annie would come in from the fields after working all day and prepare dinner for the family. She would tell them to go ahead and eat, saying, “I’m not hungry.” Her children believed her then, but now know she must have been starving, sacrificing her own needs for those of her family.