Pioneers
of a Finer FRontier BY TERI R. WILLIAMS
PHOTOS BY RUTH ENGLISH
A soft-spoken country boy and an outspoken powerhouse unite to continue the traditions started by generations before them.
Bessie The fire happened on September 22,
2004.
When the ambulance arrived, Bessie was laying in the front yard with burns over 65% of her body. Before she collapsed, she managed to put out the fire that would surely have burned the trailer to the ground where she lived with her parents and four sisters. Bessie came second in the order of her four girls. She had celebrated her thirteenth birthday five days earlier. “School had been canceled for a couple of days. It had something to do with the fuel crisis at the time, and gas prices went crazy. But Mama was a mail carrier and still had to deliver the mail. Daddy built bridges and had to be gone sometimes weeks at a time. But mama left us with a long list of chores to do to keep us busy.” Of course, they were putting it off until the last minute. Hannah, the sister just under Bessie in age, went to the kitchen to cook french fries, which was something she had done many times before. Setting a pot on the stove, she poured in the bottle of oil. It only took a quick look in the freezer to realize there were no fries, but those few seconds were long enough to forget she had turned the burner on. When smoke came boiling into the living room from the kitchen, the girls panicked. Emily ran to the sink and filled a glass with water. Tossing the water at the pot of burning grease only caused the oil to splatter and the fire to spread. Bessie grabbed a flat lid to smother it. Reaching behind the pot to turn off the burner, both her arms and face were immediately scorched. Hannah grabbed a towel to beat back the flames still pouring out of the burning pot of grease. In all the commotion, the pot flipped and fell. The hot grease poured straight down Bessie’s legs and feet.
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TO O M B S CO U N T Y M A G A Z I N E
