Remembering Mom this Mothers Day

By Vicki Gourley

Publisher

Mary Helen Jones McKenzie, Sep- tember 1, 1917 - June 14, 2015

The image of mother, which sticks in my mind because it’s the first story the family tells every time, is her running around the driveway in her nightgown at midnight waving her hands, one of which clutched a fishing net, and shouting “Shoo! Shoo!”

My date pulled in the driveway, looked at my mother and practically shoved me out of the car. The object of mother’s attention was a baby owl, which she rescued after a storm and bottle-fed until she thought it ought to be able to go back to the wild. She attempted to release it that evening, however the owl flew only as far as the garage roof and perched on the basketball goal.

My brother, Mike Graham, called her ‘the rabbit whisperer’ because she was always bringing cotton-tail bunnies into the house from the backyard. She did not have to trap them. She would sit quietly for a few minutes every day, inching closer to the rabbit each time, until she could just pick them up. The bunnies loved to eat her lettuce in the garden. After capture, Mother would release the rabbits in a field up the road. Her mother, Carrie Gill, came to Indian Territory to teach school in 1906. She traveled on the train from Marion, Ky., and had to spend the night in Boggy Depot before going on to Wapanucka. The owner of the livery stable met the train with a buggy to take passengers to the hotel. Love at first sight. She married Marcus Alonzo “Lon” Jones. They had two children, the late Virginia Abbott, who taught many of you in sixth grade at Belle Isle Elementary and Mother. The family and their friends, the local doctor and his family rented a railroad car and moved lock, stock, and barrel to Cache,

Dear Wise Elder: My mother has fallen a few times. She refuses to consider using a cane to provide stability. My siblings and I do not live close and my mother lives alone. We’re worried.

Dear Worried: You have valid reasons to be worried. Statistics tell the story. Numbers matter: 95% of hip fractures are caused by falling. Falls are the most common cause of traumatic brain injury (TBI), and the number is 800,000+ every year. These are numbers – not opinions –and numbers tell a story. Let’s

Okla. to escape the malaria outbreak. Another story about Mother is her teacher in grade school asking the class to raise their hands if they had head lice. Mother raised her hand because she thought the teacher said “head lights” and her family had a car.

Grandpa had some Choctaw blood and some of their Cache neighbors were full-blood Comanches. Chief Quanah Parker’s 13th, and last wife, Topay, lived across pasture and mother would take us to her house to see some of the Chief’s finery.

Mother’s parents had a little acreage in Cache and that is where she taught us about the bell cow, how smart “Old Watch” the collie was about herding cows and that turkeys were so dumb that they would look up at the rain with their mouths open and drown.

From hats and party gowns of silk

See MOTHERS DAY, Page 13 be honest, the older we get the less “steady” we are on our feet. The exceptions are few. You know the ones who do show up and work out at least 3 days a week with a trainer. I have a friend who took a magnificent fall and decided one was enough. She bought a classy, sophisticated, cane – gave it a name, and introduces it to new people. She doesn’t fall; her children don’t worry (as much), and it breaks the ice.

- Courtesy VillagesOKC, www.VillagesOKC.org (405) 990 6637