6 minute read
Sewing for Survival
By Sharon Oswald
Foreword
In 2011, Mississippi State University College of Business senior Emily (Moak) Ferril was concerned that some of her classmates might not have the means to purchase appropriate interview attire. With the endorsement of Dr. Kathleen Thomas of the Department of Finance and Economics, Emily pitched the idea of a clothing closet to help them out, the Dress Your Best Closet.
It didn’t take long for her dream to be realized. The Dress Your Best Closet began as a professional wardrobe “scholarship,” providing business clothing to five deserving female students, and it expanded the next year to male students. As word spread, the closet grew, providing clothing on a rent-free basis for all COB students. Over the years, the closet never found a permanent home, moving several times due to renovations within the College.
Today, thanks to the generosity of COB alumna Dr. Shirley Olson, the closet has been rebranded as Suits & Such by Sadie and is in a newly renovated permanent home on McCool’s second floor. Suits & Such by Sadie honors Olson’s beloved grandmother Sadie Bennet Slocum, who fed her family through her talent of sewing. The space includes well lit separate dressing rooms for men and women. Following is a story of Sadie Bennet Slocum’s life.
She put food on their dinner table through her talent of sewing. A mother of five by the age of 27, her days and nights spent at her Singer sewing machine were how her family survived. Sadie Bennet Slocum clothed family and friends in the small town of Carrollton, MS.
Today, through Suits & Such by Sadie, she is dressing College of Business students, equipping them with professional clothing on loan for career fairs, job interviews and class presentations.
Born in 1905 in the foothills of north-central Mississippi, Mama Sadie, as she was known to her family, was the only daughter in a family of five children. Money was scarce, so the children spent their days picking cotton. She often said the Depression years seemed like any others to her family because they were so poor.
As a young mother, she took to the fields again, raising cotton and hoeing while her young children sat quietly under a nearby tree. She was known for her beautiful, dark auburn-colored hair – for the way it shone under the intense Mississippi sun and for the way it matched her spirited personality.
With her husband barely in the picture, Mama Sadie was the breadwinner and the glue that held the family together. During World War II, she drove a truck filled with day laborers back and forth from Carroll County to the Camp McCain Army Infantry training post to work each day, leaving home before dawn and returning in time to put dinner on the table.
Sadie Bennet Slocum
Photos by courtesy of Shirley Olson
Camp McCain, the training facility for the 87th and 94th infantry divisions, also housed German prisoners of war. Years later, one of those German prisoners of war returned to Mississippi as a construction worker in Carroll County. While working on a small job for her sonin-law, he recalled how kind the southerners were to him and the other prisoners at Camp McCain. He remembered Mama Sadie among the Camp McCain workers.
To reciprocate the benevolence he was shown, he gave Mama Sadie’s favorite grandchild, Shirley (MSU alumna Shirley Olson) a German Shepherd puppy. He suggested the name of Telo, which was a popular boy’s name in Germany at the time.
Mama Sadie took pride in the fact that all her children graduated from high school and her sons served in the military. She was a stickler for manners, and she believed in “raising ladies.”
When the family moved from the country into the town of Carrollton, word of Mama Sadie’s talent for sewing spread like wildfire. Everyone wanted one of her beautiful creations. As her children grew up and had families of their own, Mama Sadie lovingly clothed her grandchildren.
But it was Shirley, the firstborn, who held a special place in her heart. Shirley credits her grandmother with raising her – having spent every day and into the evening with Mama Sadie.
“My grandmother was my kindergarten,” she says. “She taught me to read using the Sears Catalog and to write using a black crayon. I can still see that black crayon today!”
Most importantly, she taught Shirley to respect others.
As Mama Sadie would tell her, “I want you to have enough education to look up to people and enough education not to look down on people.”
Mama Sadie was Shirley’s biggest cheerleader. She lovingly attended Shirley’s graduation and her wedding a short time later to Duke Olson, whom Mama Sadie loved like her own. At 73, she was in the audience to see her beloved granddaughter receive a doctorate at MSU.
“Seeing her face in the crowd was better than any diploma,” Shirley recalls.
Mama Sadie instilled in Shirley the belief that she could do anything she wanted.
She told her, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you what you cannot do…you are smart enough to do anything you want.”
Mama Sadie lived to be 93. When Shirley saw her for the final time at the funeral home, she was shocked to find her beloved grandmother clad in a beautiful maroon velvet dress trimmed in exquisite white lace that she sewed for her own burial.
Mama Sadie entered the gates of heaven as a proud Bulldog.
Mama Sadie never had much but never wanted for anything. She loved her family, all things MSU and especially her granddaughter Shirley. Mama Sadie would be proud to welcome all the students using Suits & Such by Sadie to her MSU family.
