Guest Column: My mother, my hero

By Scott Loftis

and so funny that we wanted to burst out laughing. We learned pretty quickly not to do that, though, because she didn’t find it amusing.

She could be tough, and she was not a believer in sparing the rod. I wasn’t there to witness it, but one of the enduring legends of my mother was the time my brothers, horse-playing in the back seat, hit her in the back of the head with a Frisbee while she was driving on a busy city street. Justice was swift and severe: Mom pulled the car over and administered what some folks refer to as corporal punishment. I’m pretty sure my brothers’ backsides are still a little tender.

More than anything, though, my mother was the glue that held our family together. And there was absolutely nothing she wouldn’t do to protect and provide for my brothers and me.

When I first got the idea that I might be interested in writing for a newspaper, it was my mom who took my handwritten stories and typed them into neat, doublespaced pages. It was my mom who made a 50-mile round trip each week so I could deliver those neatly typed pages to the editor of the little weekly newspaper where I first got paid for my work.

It was my mom who encouraged me. It was my mom who believed in me. It was my mom who was there for me, always. My mother was three months shy of 15 years old when I was born. She was three weeks past 50 when she drew her last breath on a cold January morning in 2005.

I’ll remember my mom on Sunday, like I do every day. I’ll think about what it might be like if she were still with us. I’ll think about how much she would adore her great-grandchildren. I’ll allow myself a few minutes of sadness that I can’t celebrate the day with her.

But then I’ll remember how blessed I am to be her son. I’ll remember that as long as I have precious memories of the kind of person she was, she’ll never truly be gone. I’ll remember the inscription at the bottom of the headstone she shares with my dad: “In our hearts, you’ll always be.”

Brenda June Cullum Loftis Dec. 30, 1954-Jan. 19, 2005

Scott Loftis is editor and publisher of Carroll County Newspapers. His email address is SLoftis@CarrollCoNews.com. This column was originally published on May 9, 2017.

The fragrant smell of peonies in the air lets me know that Mother’s Day is near. Every year my mom and I look forward to the blooming of the peony bushes in her yard. They have a special and genealogical significance to us. They originated from cuttings off the bushes that my maternal great-grandmother, Alice Shufflebarger Hendrix planted in the late 1930s or early 1940s in the front yard of her home. Her Cyprus house that my great-grandfather, Nate, built on the SW corner of 4th and Chestnut Streets long before there were houses around it, still stands. Alice died in 1943 and while I never met her, the fact that she lived was evidenced through her children, their memories and the blossoming of her peonies every spring. The peonies she grew had large delicate fragrant petals of white, pink, and a color they call red, but it’s actually a wine color. When the buds start opening around the end of the first week in May, it’s as if they are announcing their own tribute to mothers.