Page 30 - July 2014 Catalyst

Joe’s Heritage Part i
“How I Found My Heritage”
By Joe Grimaud | Continued From Page 5
was a Major in the Air Force and attending the Armed Forces Sta College. She and Mother (her daughter, Annie Frocie Gri- maud) rode up on the Greyhound bus...the only way Mama would travel then. We took them to Washington, D.C., and visited the capitol. It was Mama’s rst visit, and be- cause of her age, we rented a limousine for a private tour. She sat in the right front seat and was given a grand tour that I shall never forget. She was a lot of fun and the limo driver seemed to enjoy her as much as we enjoyed the tour. He used his contacts to get a special pass for this special passenger right to the base of the Kennedy Grave. As all of those other tourists walked the long climb up into Arlington Cemetery, they looked at us getting out of that limo as if to say, “Who are these dignitaries that they get to drive right up here?” When we put Mother and Mama Martin on the bus in Norfolk for the trip back to Augusta, GA, my wife remarked to me that they seemed more like sisters than they did mother and daughter. ey were constantly making verbal jabs at one like spinster sisters and seemed equally spry.
Mama Martin lived with us for as long as I can remember. Her husband had died when Mother was just a little girl. She raised her three daughters by herself. I remember so many tales. I heard most of these stories while growing up on a farm in Augusta between East Boundary and the Savannah
River just o Sand Bar Ferry Road. After Daddy was killed in a car wreck in 1963, Mother sold the farm and moved to a new house just o of Peach Orchard Road. She and Mama Martin continued to reside there right up to Mama Martin’s passing. Moth- er’s children had grown up and moved o leaving just the two of them there for the last twenty years. ey became inseparable.
On a later occasion, Mama visited us while I was stationed in Alexandria, Louisiana. Just too far to ride the bus anymore, she took her rst airplane ride on an airliner at age 92 and six years later, she ew with me in my own light airplane. By then I had retired from the Air Force and was living in Columbia, SC. I looked in the plane’s back seat to see her head bobbing to and fro. She looked so cute wearing her little colored plastic sun visor, which she always wore to shade her eyes. She was looking out over the woods and farms and commenting as though she had been doing that everyday for years. e same year, she accompanied the young people of her church to Six Flags Over Georgia. She insisted on riding the Mind Bender, which she did! And she became quite disgruntled with them when they wouldn’t let her ride the Scream Ma- chine. Her pastor said, “Many of us had worn out and given up, but Mama Martin was there watching the reworks at 10:30 that evening!” Her indomitable spirit could not be crushed with age.
30 CityLight.org
july 2014