MOTHER MOORE

It’s a sunny, crisp afternoon at Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church. Mother Moore sits in the front pew. Linda Brown sits nearby under a high window. She’s like Mother’s own daughter and takes her on errands and to get her hair did. Linda introduces Mother as the eldest woman of the congregation, so “we call her the mother of the church.” It makes perfect sense to honor Mother with that title since, on February 10, she turned a glorious 103 years old.

Mother was born in Valliant, Oklahoma but raised in East Texas, down on Red River. She picked cotton starting at the age of 6 and unfondly recalls how the bolls would stick her hand. She called it “rotten cotton.” Her two sons joined the fields as young as she was when she started. She’s had two husbands, saying she married the first, Stanford Jackson, in 1936. Her second was Major Moore and both are deceased.

She lives with her surviving child, Patricia Campbell, and her son-in-law. Her extended family, now, is Morningstar, which reminds her of how the neighbors on Red River kept an eye on her and the other children. Everyone looked after everyone else.

Mother’s faith has kept her for years. “God made everything beautiful and true. And what got messed up was us thinking we knew everything.” With God, she says, “You have to walk by faith, not by sight,” and trust in Him daily. We wish Mother a happy belated birthday!