Grandma married again to a man many times her junior. Grandpa Will along with my two uncles, Uncle
George and Uncle John, served in World War II. I know my uncles were both in the Navy. I am not certain about Grandpa Will; I
suspect Army because I know he stormed the beaches in the Pacific.
Grandma never went to school long enough to learn to read or
write. However, the war made it
imperative for her to write to her sons and husband. She needed to learn what many of us take for
granted and I seriously doubt there were avenues in her day for a woman in her
mid-20s to learn how to read or write.
Grandma was smart just not educated. I often wonder if she had gotten an education
just what she would have been able to do in her life. However, the circumstances of her life did
not give her that opportunity.
Oh, did I mention my grandmother was a religious person? She loved Jesus and knew the Bible stories by
heart. Grandma wanted an underwater baptism
the same as Jesus. She became a Baptist in
order to experience submersion under water.
I could tell you more and more about her because I heard her
stories many times as a child. However,
it is not the reason I wanted to do this story.
As I said, she needed to communicate with her family serving
in the war. It was difficult to find a
way for her, but she did not give up. She
was determined.
If you named one of the stories of Jesus, she could repeat it
to you word by word, and this gave her an idea. She would take her Bible and sit down, and
recall a story to study. Taking each
word of the story, she would do her best to write out the word and learn the
meaning by its use in the sentence. She
did this repeatedly until she could write out the entire story. This helped her to learn how not only to
write, but also to read.
Using this knowledge, she was able to stay in touch with her
family. She wrote to Grandpa Will, Uncle
George, and Uncle John on a regular basis.
Without her connection to her family, she would have been scared and
distraught.
The point to this story is to understand that no matter how
bleak our situation may be, if we are determined, we can learn. If an uneducated woman with very little to
her name can educate herself out of love for her family, then what type of
excuse can we give for not achieving our goals.
