"Mother Sadie" inherited her father's high energy levels -- he was the consummate entrepreneur and risk taker. Her grandfather Galen Taylor had deserted his family for another woman when "Papa" Taylor was a young teen ager. Galen Taylor was caught in the sack with the other woman by her husband about ten miles down the road, and shot dead, Kentucky style. (A month later, the wayward woman ran off with the local Baptist minister and was never heard of again.) The oldest son, Mitchel, her father, had to go to work at age 14, but was very successful as an entrepreneur.
Sadie's mother had died when Sadie was about twelve, and Papa Taylor put her in charge of raising her six younger siblings. Her most vivid memory of her mother was kneeling beside her bed at prayer, shortly before she died of TB. As a surrogate mother, she did well, and never complained. All the siblings adored Sadie, and treated her like the mother she had been to them -- all through their adult life.
Papa Taylor sent her off to college at Centre, where she excelled, and was described by her future husband as "she is pretty, and smart, and agreeable, and athletic, etc.".
After college, but before she married my grandfather, she did what all young ladies of means did in that era - community service among the poor - probably in the tradition of Jane Addams at Hull House. Most did so at home where it could be done part time, and you wouldn't have to interrupt your more important social life with your friends - especially pursuing a successful search for a prospective husbands.
But not Sadie.
While most of her devout Protestant friends believed in either a Lutheran concept of redemption and salvation by faith alone, or a Calvinist concept of salvation by grace and achievement, or a Wesleyan-Quaker tradition of salvation by kindness and peacefulness toward your fellow man, they rarely subscribed to the Roman Catholic orthodoxy of salvation by good works.
But not Sadie. She was in deed a spearhead of the social-activist mainstream of Protestant Christianity that we know today.
About the year 1910, probably while her future husband was studying for his Ph.D. in Germany (at the Universities of Marburg and Berlin) she went up into the mountains of eastern Kentucky and signed on as a school teacher at the Presbyterian Orphanage at Buckhorn. In addition to being orphaned or abandoned, all her students probably never had been more than ten miles from the "holler" in which they were born.
She made a deal with them on the first day of school: anyone who washed his hands and face, combed his hair, and brushed his teeth before class every day (She made sure there was an adequate supply of soap, hot water, basins, towels, toothbrushes, etc. just outside the classroom door), and got good grades and practiced good manners (like the Boy Scouts: not a demand to do the best, but merely to do your best) at the end of the school year she would take that person on a field trip to the "flatlands" of central Kentucky, and then on to the ultimate big city --- Cincinnati. For you and I in today's world, that was like being offered a free trip around the world - or maybe the ultimate fantasy, to the moon, or even Mars.
Talk about motivation. What happened would blow the minds of today's social psychologists and motivational therapists: the orphans not only adored her, they worked their tails off. By the end of the school year, she had a big problem. In a world before "grade inflation" - she was as demanding, but as kind a teacher as the best of them -- every one of her kids qualified for the trip. But the cost of the trip would be far beyond her personal means. In addition to travel and meal costs, she had to clothe about 30 of them appropriately in casual and dress clothes (including shoes, which none had), provide them with luggage, and an allowance for spending money. In short, she was in the proverbial pickle jar.
So what does a young bachelor girl with no money do? She tells them, "hang in there guys, I'm going back home for a few weeks, but I shall return." (This was thirty years before Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines in 1942.) No doubt some of her charges figured that was the last they'd see of Miss Sadie. But sure enough, about three weeks later, Miss Sadie returns as promised from "the flatlands".
She had pulled out all stops and called in her chits, visiting churches, businesses and even going door to door to raise money, and get commitments to house a guest or two for a few days. Every orphan got a new pair of shoes - actually their first and only pair of shoes -- new clothes, a suitcase, and enough spending money for the trip. She had also raised money among her father and future father-in-law's friends in the business community for hotels (when her charges were not staying in the private homes of her friends) and money for railway tickets to and from Cincinnati.
The great trip began by rafting down the Kentucky river to a place near Danville, where they were picked up in carriages and taken to Danville. Then tours of the all the sights in the area. There were no serious mishaps on the trip, except that coming down the river on the raft a couple of the more curious boys fell off - a rather serious problem, since no one knew how to swim, and had never seen a river as big, wide, or deep as the Kentucky River.
Cincinnati, though, was the ultimate eye-opener. The analogy for us would be another planet. Talk about culture shock! Imagine: It is 1910. You're an orphan from the eastern Kentucky highlands. You've never been ten miles from home, which is a log cabin in which you were born. You have never seen a building taller than that log cabin - not even a picture of one. There are no paved roads -- anywhere. Not only have you never been ten miles from home, neither has your family for at least 100 years, so there is not even a story-telling tradition of what life is all about beyond your mountains, or even your hollow.
Suddenly, this kindly social-activist lady comes to your orphanage. She is a freshly minted graduate of the finest college for women in Kentucky. She has also studied Christian education in a place even farther away --- New York City. She makes you an offer you can't refuse. You and all your classmates take her up on it, and now you are to go forth on the grandest adventure and see the rest of the world.
You get acclimated somewhat in your initial touring around central Kentucky. But now you are going to "The Queen City of the West". Imagine the looks on the faces and the inner emotions of these kids. Museums. A major symphony orchestra, led by an up and coming conductor, Leopold Stokowski. The famous Rookwood Pottery. "Ivorydale", where you will see Proctor and Gamble make "Ivory" soap. The Cincinnati Stockyards where hogs will be slaughtered and rendered into hams, sausages and to be shipped and sold throughout the world, and the lard rendered into "Crisco" cooking oil -- or "Ivory" soap. The Cincinnati Zoo with its lions, tigers, and monkeys, which none of these kids had ever seen, not even in their books.
When he saw a zebra, one orphan called out to the others, "Hey, y'all come quick here and see the painted mule!"
And of course, the Taft family was reaching its zenith, so you will hear your country's president, William Howard Taft expatiate on the future of America. None had ever even seen their county commissioners, let alone local Congressman. And of course many other things we take for granted: tall buildings, and very large churches with curious stained glass windows that had been imported all the way from Belgium. Telephones. Even a few paved streets. Outdoor fountains in parks and gardens. Indoor plumbing with flush toilets. Streetcars attached to wires in the sky that provide them power. Cash registers. The large fleet of steamboats on the riverfront. The great Roebling suspension bridge across the Ohio river, designed and built by the man who went on to build the Brooklyn Bridge. Or just the Ohio river itself.
But one incident stood out. Walking down Vine Street (Cincinnati's main thoroughfare) one morning, one of the boys got ahead of the rest, and looked into the window of a barber shop, where he spied a proper Cincinnatian all lathered up and the barber honing the razor for his ritual morning shave.
A cry went out, probably heard all over the downtown commercial district. It even prompted a couple of Cincinnati's police officers to come running with nightsticks in hand.
"Young-uns! Come quick! Come see! Hurry up! There's gonna be a killin' !!" After the chaos died down, a good laugh was had by all.
Several years ago, I came across her diary of the trip. It included a roster with the names of each kid, his clothing and shoe sizes, etc., and any special instructions on food preferences or needs - as well as a "group portrait", and a checklist of the patrons, with tally marks indicating that she and each orphan had replied to their patron with a "thank you" note.
Sadie was in many respects the distinct opposite of her husband, my grandfather.
When my grandparents married, Papa Taylor was "in the money", but it was "new money"; my grandfather's parent's was "VOM" (very old money). The Cheeks (particularly the Ashbys and McKees) were old establishment. They're called "FFVs" in that part of the world, or members of one of the "First Families of Virginia", who put the country together between 1770 and 1789 - the Byrds, the Randolphs, the Fairfaxes, etc. She was not.
She was the outdoors type, he was a scholar.
She was more into the sciences; he was into the humanities. But they were both into theology.
While they shared an active involvement in church affairs, he was an ordained minister and professor of Greek and New Testament theology (necessary prerequisites for any young man planning to become a minister), but she was a social activist, pioneer volunteer social worker, and active pacifist.
His politics were conservative, hers were liberal. But both were pragmatists. All ideology aside, their mutual bottom line was "What works?"
While not a segregationist, he probably believed that the black's place in Kentucky society of the early twentieth century was an ordained element of the Calvinist order, yet blacks were to be treated with Christian respect, generosity and kindness - especially the household help to which we were all quite close and fond. She was active in working with the schools in Kentucky in 1954 on figuring out how to totally, aggressively, and immediately integrate the schools. By 1955, the problem was behind Kentucky and fixed. By 1956, Kentucky was fully integrated. Meanwhile Arkansas fiddled with Faubus and Alabama with Wallace diddled and demagogued until well into the 1960s - and still haven't recovered from those policies.
His personality was cold and "stuffed shirt", hers was warm and engaging.
Worst of all for a college professor, he had a stammering and stuttering problem, which made him the butt of many cruel jokes among his undergraduate students at Centre. She could speak engagingly, forcefully and positively about just about anything to anyone at anytime in a non confrontational way.
He relished a good political argument - preferably confrontational -- over the Sunday dinner table with his children, particularly his daughter Elizabeth; she was a peace activist constantly trying to build community coalitions as well as conversational coalitions at the dinner table.
Because she was not "old money and society", my grandfather's sister, Mary Ashby Cheek, thought a Taylor not good enough to marry a Cheek. But my wimpy grandfather, for once in his life, told his little sister to shut up and buzz off. Curiously enough, in my own recent family research, I discovered that all three of them were sixth cousins, sharing a common grandparent many times over, who was also a grandparent of President James Madison. And Sadie was herself a first cousin of Zachary Taylor - which she never knew, and if she did, probably couldn't have cared less, or at least kept that knowledge quietly to herself.
Her husband, whom I do not remember, died fairly early in life of leukemia in 1939. Now Danville in that period was a starchy old remnant of the Victorian and post-Civil War era. Many parts of the rest of the South had lost over a third of their young men in the Civil War, resulting in a vast population of young widows and spinsters. As a Union town, Danville had not suffered the same fate -- at least not as severely. But a curious tradition arose. New widows were expected to disengage from all social activity for at least a couple of years. Your stationary for personal correspondence could be only white or ivory, with an elegant black border. And most depressing, the dress code called for wearing an ankle length black dress, with black shoes and black stockings. These were to be worn for the rest of your life. My great grandmother, Sadie's mother-in-law was a case study. I remember well going to church on Sunday in Danville during my summers there. Over half the sanctuary was filled with ladies, young and old, with their depressing black dresses, boring black shoes, black stockings, black purses, and black hats, fanning themselves with the free cardboard fans, compliments of the Stith Funeral Home. (There were, of course, no blacks in the congregation. At least not yet.) In the inevitable social intercourse in front of the church after services, they would blather and lather on the malarkey about "Oh, mah goodness, gracious, how good it was to see you!", and "Oh, mah goodness, gracious, how long are you staying?", and most commonly "Oh, mah goodness, gracious, how you've grown so!"
I share this because about four or five weeks after the death of her husband in late 1939, she undertook one initiative that dumped all Danville on its keester. She showed up for church one fine Sunday - in a shocking red dress! To be sure, many of the town's widows continued to wear black, but the message was clear: after a reasonable and appropriate period of mourning, you don't have to stay sad. And many followed her lead.
Yet in spite of her fashion statement, her idea of a big time when she and her sisters and their husbands went to New York in the early 1940s was to visit various faculty friends at Union Theological Seminary, and well as several officers and ministers of the Presbyterian Church in New York to discuss strategies for church social work among the poor. On the other hand, her sisters and their husbands spent the week whooping it up on Broadway and shopping.
My most uplifting personal memories of her were seeing her up bright and early at sunrise working in her 1 1/2 acre back yard garden. We only ate fresh home grown veggies on my summers there, and every spare veggie (apples, grapes, persimmons, paw-paws, corn, lima beans, bush beans, and yukky, yukky slimy okra) got put up for the winter, if it wasn't needed at the local food kitchen. (Okra remains to me what broccoli is to former President George Bush -- disgustingly slimy.) During World War II, she arranged for professional canning equipment to be brought to a local public hall or church basement, and I remember going there with her and several bushels of fresh veggies mostly beans, corn and tomatoes -- from her garden to "put them up". All the ladies of the town - blacks and whites, incidentally -- would have non-stop "putting up" parties for three weeks during harvest season. No Mason jars that year - everything was in "tin" cans, and neatly labeled, of course! That was the town's ladies contribution to winning Wworld War II.
But we were forbidden to eat those canned or bottled veggies in the summertime. Fresh only.
In the late spring, every tulip and daffodil bulb was rigorously dug up and put in the basement to dry for the summer, then carefully replanted in the fall. Each fall in her later years, she invariably had to give away a two or three surplus bushels to her sisters and neighbors, where they were planted, enjoyed for a couple of years, but left in the ground, where they invariably rotted away during the summers. But she would be right back to them in the fall with more spare bulbs.
And whether busting her hump in the garden all day long, or down at the local "Neighborhood Home" (which she started - its now the local Salvation Army shelter and soup kitchen -- but was in the tradition of Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago), she would still find time to invite over a favorite college professor or students, serve them a sumptuous meal cooked by herself, and engage in a thoughtful after dinner discussion on the finer points of current affairs, the sociology of the poor, Luther versus Calvin, or in later years, the importance of Vatican II to us heretics, or the Dead Sea scrolls to Christian theology.
A recurring dream of hers was quite telling. She would wake up in the night, having dreamed that she had been hurrying to catch a train, but could never quite catch it. Was the dream reminiscent of what Cecil Rhodes said on his deathbed, "So much to do, so little time to do it" Or a Calvinist fear of being less or doing less than your best?
I well remember one of her many letters to me in college, noting that she had several Centre College students over for dinner and discourse, and they followed up by showing her the latest dance steps in her living room. "I felt I'd have liked to ‘cut the rug with them'", she wrote.
At one of these events, she hosted coffee, tea cakes, and conversations with Crown Prince Akihito, the current Emperor of Japan. The Crown Prince spent two years studying in the United States under the close supervision of the Imperial Household and the Japanese Foreign MInistry, and part of the time was spent visiting Centre College.
My most vivid memory was coming into lunch from playing outside with the daughter (black) of our cook, Suzie, who had raised me during my first year. I was about 4 years old. Hands had to be washed before we were allowed lunch, and the two of us went to it - including scrubbing under our fingernails. When we were done, Mother Sadie took us both aside, and made us put our hands side by side, palms down.
She asked me, "What is the difference?"
"Obviously," I said, "mine are white, and hers are black."
"Now," she said, "turn your palms up. What's the color difference?"
"Gosh, Mother Sadie, when you wash them and hold them in the bright sunlight, both our palms are the same, and really white!"
"Good, Logan, so understand this: in all your life's the work and play, our palms are telling us that there are no differences whatsover between black and white."
I remember my late wife writing to me in 1965 in Germany shortly after we were married, on having met Mother Sadie for the very first time. She went out to Danville from Washington to visit my family, and get introduced to the town and its folks. For Pam and Mother Sadie, it was the first and only time they met, and they hit it off famously. Pam wrote me that night, "Logan, I'm so thrilled. You gave me a grandmother back to replace Grandma Wilcox (who had just died), and she's near as perfect as she can be."
Sadie passed away about a year later while we were still in Germany. Like Pam's recent memorial service, hundreds came to her funeral.
But only a handful wore black.
Sadie's mother had died when Sadie was about twelve, and Papa Taylor put her in charge of raising her six younger siblings. Her most vivid memory of her mother was kneeling beside her bed at prayer, shortly before she died of TB. As a surrogate mother, she did well, and never complained. All the siblings adored Sadie, and treated her like the mother she had been to them -- all through their adult life.
Papa Taylor sent her off to college at Centre, where she excelled, and was described by her future husband as "she is pretty, and smart, and agreeable, and athletic, etc.".
After college, but before she married my grandfather, she did what all young ladies of means did in that era - community service among the poor - probably in the tradition of Jane Addams at Hull House. Most did so at home where it could be done part time, and you wouldn't have to interrupt your more important social life with your friends - especially pursuing a successful search for a prospective husbands.
But not Sadie.
While most of her devout Protestant friends believed in either a Lutheran concept of redemption and salvation by faith alone, or a Calvinist concept of salvation by grace and achievement, or a Wesleyan-Quaker tradition of salvation by kindness and peacefulness toward your fellow man, they rarely subscribed to the Roman Catholic orthodoxy of salvation by good works.
But not Sadie. She was in deed a spearhead of the social-activist mainstream of Protestant Christianity that we know today.
About the year 1910, probably while her future husband was studying for his Ph.D. in Germany (at the Universities of Marburg and Berlin) she went up into the mountains of eastern Kentucky and signed on as a school teacher at the Presbyterian Orphanage at Buckhorn. In addition to being orphaned or abandoned, all her students probably never had been more than ten miles from the "holler" in which they were born.
She made a deal with them on the first day of school: anyone who washed his hands and face, combed his hair, and brushed his teeth before class every day (She made sure there was an adequate supply of soap, hot water, basins, towels, toothbrushes, etc. just outside the classroom door), and got good grades and practiced good manners (like the Boy Scouts: not a demand to do the best, but merely to do your best) at the end of the school year she would take that person on a field trip to the "flatlands" of central Kentucky, and then on to the ultimate big city --- Cincinnati. For you and I in today's world, that was like being offered a free trip around the world - or maybe the ultimate fantasy, to the moon, or even Mars.
Talk about motivation. What happened would blow the minds of today's social psychologists and motivational therapists: the orphans not only adored her, they worked their tails off. By the end of the school year, she had a big problem. In a world before "grade inflation" - she was as demanding, but as kind a teacher as the best of them -- every one of her kids qualified for the trip. But the cost of the trip would be far beyond her personal means. In addition to travel and meal costs, she had to clothe about 30 of them appropriately in casual and dress clothes (including shoes, which none had), provide them with luggage, and an allowance for spending money. In short, she was in the proverbial pickle jar.
So what does a young bachelor girl with no money do? She tells them, "hang in there guys, I'm going back home for a few weeks, but I shall return." (This was thirty years before Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines in 1942.) No doubt some of her charges figured that was the last they'd see of Miss Sadie. But sure enough, about three weeks later, Miss Sadie returns as promised from "the flatlands".
She had pulled out all stops and called in her chits, visiting churches, businesses and even going door to door to raise money, and get commitments to house a guest or two for a few days. Every orphan got a new pair of shoes - actually their first and only pair of shoes -- new clothes, a suitcase, and enough spending money for the trip. She had also raised money among her father and future father-in-law's friends in the business community for hotels (when her charges were not staying in the private homes of her friends) and money for railway tickets to and from Cincinnati.
The great trip began by rafting down the Kentucky river to a place near Danville, where they were picked up in carriages and taken to Danville. Then tours of the all the sights in the area. There were no serious mishaps on the trip, except that coming down the river on the raft a couple of the more curious boys fell off - a rather serious problem, since no one knew how to swim, and had never seen a river as big, wide, or deep as the Kentucky River.
Cincinnati, though, was the ultimate eye-opener. The analogy for us would be another planet. Talk about culture shock! Imagine: It is 1910. You're an orphan from the eastern Kentucky highlands. You've never been ten miles from home, which is a log cabin in which you were born. You have never seen a building taller than that log cabin - not even a picture of one. There are no paved roads -- anywhere. Not only have you never been ten miles from home, neither has your family for at least 100 years, so there is not even a story-telling tradition of what life is all about beyond your mountains, or even your hollow.
Suddenly, this kindly social-activist lady comes to your orphanage. She is a freshly minted graduate of the finest college for women in Kentucky. She has also studied Christian education in a place even farther away --- New York City. She makes you an offer you can't refuse. You and all your classmates take her up on it, and now you are to go forth on the grandest adventure and see the rest of the world.
You get acclimated somewhat in your initial touring around central Kentucky. But now you are going to "The Queen City of the West". Imagine the looks on the faces and the inner emotions of these kids. Museums. A major symphony orchestra, led by an up and coming conductor, Leopold Stokowski. The famous Rookwood Pottery. "Ivorydale", where you will see Proctor and Gamble make "Ivory" soap. The Cincinnati Stockyards where hogs will be slaughtered and rendered into hams, sausages and to be shipped and sold throughout the world, and the lard rendered into "Crisco" cooking oil -- or "Ivory" soap. The Cincinnati Zoo with its lions, tigers, and monkeys, which none of these kids had ever seen, not even in their books.
When he saw a zebra, one orphan called out to the others, "Hey, y'all come quick here and see the painted mule!"
And of course, the Taft family was reaching its zenith, so you will hear your country's president, William Howard Taft expatiate on the future of America. None had ever even seen their county commissioners, let alone local Congressman. And of course many other things we take for granted: tall buildings, and very large churches with curious stained glass windows that had been imported all the way from Belgium. Telephones. Even a few paved streets. Outdoor fountains in parks and gardens. Indoor plumbing with flush toilets. Streetcars attached to wires in the sky that provide them power. Cash registers. The large fleet of steamboats on the riverfront. The great Roebling suspension bridge across the Ohio river, designed and built by the man who went on to build the Brooklyn Bridge. Or just the Ohio river itself.
But one incident stood out. Walking down Vine Street (Cincinnati's main thoroughfare) one morning, one of the boys got ahead of the rest, and looked into the window of a barber shop, where he spied a proper Cincinnatian all lathered up and the barber honing the razor for his ritual morning shave.
A cry went out, probably heard all over the downtown commercial district. It even prompted a couple of Cincinnati's police officers to come running with nightsticks in hand.
"Young-uns! Come quick! Come see! Hurry up! There's gonna be a killin' !!" After the chaos died down, a good laugh was had by all.
Several years ago, I came across her diary of the trip. It included a roster with the names of each kid, his clothing and shoe sizes, etc., and any special instructions on food preferences or needs - as well as a "group portrait", and a checklist of the patrons, with tally marks indicating that she and each orphan had replied to their patron with a "thank you" note.
Sadie was in many respects the distinct opposite of her husband, my grandfather.
When my grandparents married, Papa Taylor was "in the money", but it was "new money"; my grandfather's parent's was "VOM" (very old money). The Cheeks (particularly the Ashbys and McKees) were old establishment. They're called "FFVs" in that part of the world, or members of one of the "First Families of Virginia", who put the country together between 1770 and 1789 - the Byrds, the Randolphs, the Fairfaxes, etc. She was not.
She was the outdoors type, he was a scholar.
She was more into the sciences; he was into the humanities. But they were both into theology.
While they shared an active involvement in church affairs, he was an ordained minister and professor of Greek and New Testament theology (necessary prerequisites for any young man planning to become a minister), but she was a social activist, pioneer volunteer social worker, and active pacifist.
His politics were conservative, hers were liberal. But both were pragmatists. All ideology aside, their mutual bottom line was "What works?"
While not a segregationist, he probably believed that the black's place in Kentucky society of the early twentieth century was an ordained element of the Calvinist order, yet blacks were to be treated with Christian respect, generosity and kindness - especially the household help to which we were all quite close and fond. She was active in working with the schools in Kentucky in 1954 on figuring out how to totally, aggressively, and immediately integrate the schools. By 1955, the problem was behind Kentucky and fixed. By 1956, Kentucky was fully integrated. Meanwhile Arkansas fiddled with Faubus and Alabama with Wallace diddled and demagogued until well into the 1960s - and still haven't recovered from those policies.
His personality was cold and "stuffed shirt", hers was warm and engaging.
Worst of all for a college professor, he had a stammering and stuttering problem, which made him the butt of many cruel jokes among his undergraduate students at Centre. She could speak engagingly, forcefully and positively about just about anything to anyone at anytime in a non confrontational way.
He relished a good political argument - preferably confrontational -- over the Sunday dinner table with his children, particularly his daughter Elizabeth; she was a peace activist constantly trying to build community coalitions as well as conversational coalitions at the dinner table.
Because she was not "old money and society", my grandfather's sister, Mary Ashby Cheek, thought a Taylor not good enough to marry a Cheek. But my wimpy grandfather, for once in his life, told his little sister to shut up and buzz off. Curiously enough, in my own recent family research, I discovered that all three of them were sixth cousins, sharing a common grandparent many times over, who was also a grandparent of President James Madison. And Sadie was herself a first cousin of Zachary Taylor - which she never knew, and if she did, probably couldn't have cared less, or at least kept that knowledge quietly to herself.
Her husband, whom I do not remember, died fairly early in life of leukemia in 1939. Now Danville in that period was a starchy old remnant of the Victorian and post-Civil War era. Many parts of the rest of the South had lost over a third of their young men in the Civil War, resulting in a vast population of young widows and spinsters. As a Union town, Danville had not suffered the same fate -- at least not as severely. But a curious tradition arose. New widows were expected to disengage from all social activity for at least a couple of years. Your stationary for personal correspondence could be only white or ivory, with an elegant black border. And most depressing, the dress code called for wearing an ankle length black dress, with black shoes and black stockings. These were to be worn for the rest of your life. My great grandmother, Sadie's mother-in-law was a case study. I remember well going to church on Sunday in Danville during my summers there. Over half the sanctuary was filled with ladies, young and old, with their depressing black dresses, boring black shoes, black stockings, black purses, and black hats, fanning themselves with the free cardboard fans, compliments of the Stith Funeral Home. (There were, of course, no blacks in the congregation. At least not yet.) In the inevitable social intercourse in front of the church after services, they would blather and lather on the malarkey about "Oh, mah goodness, gracious, how good it was to see you!", and "Oh, mah goodness, gracious, how long are you staying?", and most commonly "Oh, mah goodness, gracious, how you've grown so!"
I share this because about four or five weeks after the death of her husband in late 1939, she undertook one initiative that dumped all Danville on its keester. She showed up for church one fine Sunday - in a shocking red dress! To be sure, many of the town's widows continued to wear black, but the message was clear: after a reasonable and appropriate period of mourning, you don't have to stay sad. And many followed her lead.
Yet in spite of her fashion statement, her idea of a big time when she and her sisters and their husbands went to New York in the early 1940s was to visit various faculty friends at Union Theological Seminary, and well as several officers and ministers of the Presbyterian Church in New York to discuss strategies for church social work among the poor. On the other hand, her sisters and their husbands spent the week whooping it up on Broadway and shopping.
My most uplifting personal memories of her were seeing her up bright and early at sunrise working in her 1 1/2 acre back yard garden. We only ate fresh home grown veggies on my summers there, and every spare veggie (apples, grapes, persimmons, paw-paws, corn, lima beans, bush beans, and yukky, yukky slimy okra) got put up for the winter, if it wasn't needed at the local food kitchen. (Okra remains to me what broccoli is to former President George Bush -- disgustingly slimy.) During World War II, she arranged for professional canning equipment to be brought to a local public hall or church basement, and I remember going there with her and several bushels of fresh veggies mostly beans, corn and tomatoes -- from her garden to "put them up". All the ladies of the town - blacks and whites, incidentally -- would have non-stop "putting up" parties for three weeks during harvest season. No Mason jars that year - everything was in "tin" cans, and neatly labeled, of course! That was the town's ladies contribution to winning Wworld War II.
But we were forbidden to eat those canned or bottled veggies in the summertime. Fresh only.
In the late spring, every tulip and daffodil bulb was rigorously dug up and put in the basement to dry for the summer, then carefully replanted in the fall. Each fall in her later years, she invariably had to give away a two or three surplus bushels to her sisters and neighbors, where they were planted, enjoyed for a couple of years, but left in the ground, where they invariably rotted away during the summers. But she would be right back to them in the fall with more spare bulbs.
And whether busting her hump in the garden all day long, or down at the local "Neighborhood Home" (which she started - its now the local Salvation Army shelter and soup kitchen -- but was in the tradition of Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago), she would still find time to invite over a favorite college professor or students, serve them a sumptuous meal cooked by herself, and engage in a thoughtful after dinner discussion on the finer points of current affairs, the sociology of the poor, Luther versus Calvin, or in later years, the importance of Vatican II to us heretics, or the Dead Sea scrolls to Christian theology.
A recurring dream of hers was quite telling. She would wake up in the night, having dreamed that she had been hurrying to catch a train, but could never quite catch it. Was the dream reminiscent of what Cecil Rhodes said on his deathbed, "So much to do, so little time to do it" Or a Calvinist fear of being less or doing less than your best?
I well remember one of her many letters to me in college, noting that she had several Centre College students over for dinner and discourse, and they followed up by showing her the latest dance steps in her living room. "I felt I'd have liked to ‘cut the rug with them'", she wrote.
At one of these events, she hosted coffee, tea cakes, and conversations with Crown Prince Akihito, the current Emperor of Japan. The Crown Prince spent two years studying in the United States under the close supervision of the Imperial Household and the Japanese Foreign MInistry, and part of the time was spent visiting Centre College.
My most vivid memory was coming into lunch from playing outside with the daughter (black) of our cook, Suzie, who had raised me during my first year. I was about 4 years old. Hands had to be washed before we were allowed lunch, and the two of us went to it - including scrubbing under our fingernails. When we were done, Mother Sadie took us both aside, and made us put our hands side by side, palms down.
She asked me, "What is the difference?"
"Obviously," I said, "mine are white, and hers are black."
"Now," she said, "turn your palms up. What's the color difference?"
"Gosh, Mother Sadie, when you wash them and hold them in the bright sunlight, both our palms are the same, and really white!"
"Good, Logan, so understand this: in all your life's the work and play, our palms are telling us that there are no differences whatsover between black and white."
I remember my late wife writing to me in 1965 in Germany shortly after we were married, on having met Mother Sadie for the very first time. She went out to Danville from Washington to visit my family, and get introduced to the town and its folks. For Pam and Mother Sadie, it was the first and only time they met, and they hit it off famously. Pam wrote me that night, "Logan, I'm so thrilled. You gave me a grandmother back to replace Grandma Wilcox (who had just died), and she's near as perfect as she can be."
Sadie passed away about a year later while we were still in Germany. Like Pam's recent memorial service, hundreds came to her funeral.
But only a handful wore black.
"Mother Sadie" inherited her father's high energy levels -- he was the consummate entrepreneur and risk taker. Her grandfather Galen Taylor had deserted his family for another woman when "Papa" Taylor was a young teen ager. Galen Taylor was caught in the sack with the other woman by her husband about ten miles down the road, and shot dead, Kentucky style. (A month later, the wayward woman ran off with the local Baptist minister and was never heard of again.) The oldest son, Mitchel, her father, had to go to work at age 14, but was very successful as an entrepreneur.
Sadie's mother had died when Sadie was about twelve, and Papa Taylor put her in charge of raising her six younger siblings. Her most vivid memory of her mother was kneeling beside her bed at prayer, shortly before she died of TB. As a surrogate mother, she did well, and never complained. All the siblings adored Sadie, and treated her like the mother she had been to them -- all through their adult life.
Papa Taylor sent her off to college at Centre, where she excelled, and was described by her future husband as "she is pretty, and smart, and agreeable, and athletic, etc.".
After college, but before she married my grandfather, she did what all young ladies of means did in that era - community service among the poor - probably in the tradition of Jane Addams at Hull House. Most did so at home where it could be done part time, and you wouldn't have to interrupt your more important social life with your friends - especially pursuing a successful search for a prospective husbands.
But not Sadie.
While most of her devout Protestant friends believed in either a Lutheran concept of redemption and salvation by faith alone, or a Calvinist concept of salvation by grace and achievement, or a Wesleyan-Quaker tradition of salvation by kindness and peacefulness toward your fellow man, they rarely subscribed to the Roman Catholic orthodoxy of salvation by good works.
But not Sadie. She was in deed a spearhead of the social-activist mainstream of Protestant Christianity that we know today.
About the year 1910, probably while her future husband was studying for his Ph.D. in Germany (at the Universities of Marburg and Berlin) she went up into the mountains of eastern Kentucky and signed on as a school teacher at the Presbyterian Orphanage at Buckhorn. In addition to being orphaned or abandoned, all her students probably never had been more than ten miles from the "holler" in which they were born.
She made a deal with them on the first day of school: anyone who washed his hands and face, combed his hair, and brushed his teeth before class every day (She made sure there was an adequate supply of soap, hot water, basins, towels, toothbrushes, etc. just outside the classroom door), and got good grades and practiced good manners (like the Boy Scouts: not a demand to do the best, but merely to do your best) at the end of the school year she would take that person on a field trip to the "flatlands" of central Kentucky, and then on to the ultimate big city --- Cincinnati. For you and I in today's world, that was like being offered a free trip around the world - or maybe the ultimate fantasy, to the moon, or even Mars.
Talk about motivation. What happened would blow the minds of today's social psychologists and motivational therapists: the orphans not only adored her, they worked their tails off. By the end of the school year, she had a big problem. In a world before "grade inflation" - she was as demanding, but as kind a teacher as the best of them -- every one of her kids qualified for the trip. But the cost of the trip would be far beyond her personal means. In addition to travel and meal costs, she had to clothe about 30 of them appropriately in casual and dress clothes (including shoes, which none had), provide them with luggage, and an allowance for spending money. In short, she was in the proverbial pickle jar.
So what does a young bachelor girl with no money do? She tells them, "hang in there guys, I'm going back home for a few weeks, but I shall return." (This was thirty years before Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines in 1942.) No doubt some of her charges figured that was the last they'd see of Miss Sadie. But sure enough, about three weeks later, Miss Sadie returns as promised from "the flatlands".
She had pulled out all stops and called in her chits, visiting churches, businesses and even going door to door to raise money, and get commitments to house a guest or two for a few days. Every orphan got a new pair of shoes - actually their first and only pair of shoes -- new clothes, a suitcase, and enough spending money for the trip. She had also raised money among her father and future father-in-law's friends in the business community for hotels (when her charges were not staying in the private homes of her friends) and money for railway tickets to and from Cincinnati.
The great trip began by rafting down the Kentucky river to a place near Danville, where they were picked up in carriages and taken to Danville. Then tours of the all the sights in the area. There were no serious mishaps on the trip, except that coming down the river on the raft a couple of the more curious boys fell off - a rather serious problem, since no one knew how to swim, and had never seen a river as big, wide, or deep as the Kentucky River.
Cincinnati, though, was the ultimate eye-opener. The analogy for us would be another planet. Talk about culture shock! Imagine: It is 1910. You're an orphan from the eastern Kentucky highlands. You've never been ten miles from home, which is a log cabin in which you were born. You have never seen a building taller than that log cabin - not even a picture of one. There are no paved roads -- anywhere. Not only have you never been ten miles from home, neither has your family for at least 100 years, so there is not even a story-telling tradition of what life is all about beyond your mountains, or even your hollow.
Suddenly, this kindly social-activist lady comes to your orphanage. She is a freshly minted graduate of the finest college for women in Kentucky. She has also studied Christian education in a place even farther away --- New York City. She makes you an offer you can't refuse. You and all your classmates take her up on it, and now you are to go forth on the grandest adventure and see the rest of the world.
You get acclimated somewhat in your initial touring around central Kentucky. But now you are going to "The Queen City of the West". Imagine the looks on the faces and the inner emotions of these kids. Museums. A major symphony orchestra, led by an up and coming conductor, Leopold Stokowski. The famous Rookwood Pottery. "Ivorydale", where you will see Proctor and Gamble make "Ivory" soap. The Cincinnati Stockyards where hogs will be slaughtered and rendered into hams, sausages and to be shipped and sold throughout the world, and the lard rendered into "Crisco" cooking oil -- or "Ivory" soap. The Cincinnati Zoo with its lions, tigers, and monkeys, which none of these kids had ever seen, not even in their books.
When he saw a zebra, one orphan called out to the others, "Hey, y'all come quick here and see the painted mule!"
And of course, the Taft family was reaching its zenith, so you will hear your country's president, William Howard Taft expatiate on the future of America. None had ever even seen their county commissioners, let alone local Congressman. And of course many other things we take for granted: tall buildings, and very large churches with curious stained glass windows that had been imported all the way from Belgium. Telephones. Even a few paved streets. Outdoor fountains in parks and gardens. Indoor plumbing with flush toilets. Streetcars attached to wires in the sky that provide them power. Cash registers. The large fleet of steamboats on the riverfront. The great Roebling suspension bridge across the Ohio river, designed and built by the man who went on to build the Brooklyn Bridge. Or just the Ohio river itself.
But one incident stood out. Walking down Vine Street (Cincinnati's main thoroughfare) one morning, one of the boys got ahead of the rest, and looked into the window of a barber shop, where he spied a proper Cincinnatian all lathered up and the barber honing the razor for his ritual morning shave.
A cry went out, probably heard all over the downtown commercial district. It even prompted a couple of Cincinnati's police officers to come running with nightsticks in hand.
"Young-uns! Come quick! Come see! Hurry up! There's gonna be a killin' !!" After the chaos died down, a good laugh was had by all.
Several years ago, I came across her diary of the trip. It included a roster with the names of each kid, his clothing and shoe sizes, etc., and any special instructions on food preferences or needs - as well as a "group portrait", and a checklist of the patrons, with tally marks indicating that she and each orphan had replied to their patron with a "thank you" note.
Sadie was in many respects the distinct opposite of her husband, my grandfather.
When my grandparents married, Papa Taylor was "in the money", but it was "new money"; my grandfather's parent's was "VOM" (very old money). The Cheeks (particularly the Ashbys and McKees) were old establishment. They're called "FFVs" in that part of the world, or members of one of the "First Families of Virginia", who put the country together between 1770 and 1789 - the Byrds, the Randolphs, the Fairfaxes, etc. She was not.
She was the outdoors type, he was a scholar.
She was more into the sciences; he was into the humanities. But they were both into theology.
While they shared an active involvement in church affairs, he was an ordained minister and professor of Greek and New Testament theology (necessary prerequisites for any young man planning to become a minister), but she was a social activist, pioneer volunteer social worker, and active pacifist.
His politics were conservative, hers were liberal. But both were pragmatists. All ideology aside, their mutual bottom line was "What works?"
While not a segregationist, he probably believed that the black's place in Kentucky society of the early twentieth century was an ordained element of the Calvinist order, yet blacks were to be treated with Christian respect, generosity and kindness - especially the household help to which we were all quite close and fond. She was active in working with the schools in Kentucky in 1954 on figuring out how to totally, aggressively, and immediately integrate the schools. By 1955, the problem was behind Kentucky and fixed. By 1956, Kentucky was fully integrated. Meanwhile Arkansas fiddled with Faubus and Alabama with Wallace diddled and demagogued until well into the 1960s - and still haven't recovered from those policies.
His personality was cold and "stuffed shirt", hers was warm and engaging.
Worst of all for a college professor, he had a stammering and stuttering problem, which made him the butt of many cruel jokes among his undergraduate students at Centre. She could speak engagingly, forcefully and positively about just about anything to anyone at anytime in a non confrontational way.
He relished a good political argument - preferably confrontational -- over the Sunday dinner table with his children, particularly his daughter Elizabeth; she was a peace activist constantly trying to build community coalitions as well as conversational coalitions at the dinner table.
Because she was not "old money and society", my grandfather's sister, Mary Ashby Cheek, thought a Taylor not good enough to marry a Cheek. But my wimpy grandfather, for once in his life, told his little sister to shut up and buzz off. Curiously enough, in my own recent family research, I discovered that all three of them were sixth cousins, sharing a common grandparent many times over, who was also a grandparent of President James Madison. And Sadie was herself a first cousin of Zachary Taylor - which she never knew, and if she did, probably couldn't have cared less, or at least kept that knowledge quietly to herself.
Her husband, whom I do not remember, died fairly early in life of leukemia in 1939. Now Danville in that period was a starchy old remnant of the Victorian and post-Civil War era. Many parts of the rest of the South had lost over a third of their young men in the Civil War, resulting in a vast population of young widows and spinsters. As a Union town, Danville had not suffered the same fate -- at least not as severely. But a curious tradition arose. New widows were expected to disengage from all social activity for at least a couple of years. Your stationary for personal correspondence could be only white or ivory, with an elegant black border. And most depressing, the dress code called for wearing an ankle length black dress, with black shoes and black stockings. These were to be worn for the rest of your life. My great grandmother, Sadie's mother-in-law was a case study. I remember well going to church on Sunday in Danville during my summers there. Over half the sanctuary was filled with ladies, young and old, with their depressing black dresses, boring black shoes, black stockings, black purses, and black hats, fanning themselves with the free cardboard fans, compliments of the Stith Funeral Home. (There were, of course, no blacks in the congregation. At least not yet.) In the inevitable social intercourse in front of the church after services, they would blather and lather on the malarkey about "Oh, mah goodness, gracious, how good it was to see you!", and "Oh, mah goodness, gracious, how long are you staying?", and most commonly "Oh, mah goodness, gracious, how you've grown so!"
I share this because about four or five weeks after the death of her husband in late 1939, she undertook one initiative that dumped all Danville on its keester. She showed up for church one fine Sunday - in a shocking red dress! To be sure, many of the town's widows continued to wear black, but the message was clear: after a reasonable and appropriate period of mourning, you don't have to stay sad. And many followed her lead.
Yet in spite of her fashion statement, her idea of a big time when she and her sisters and their husbands went to New York in the early 1940s was to visit various faculty friends at Union Theological Seminary, and well as several officers and ministers of the Presbyterian Church in New York to discuss strategies for church social work among the poor. On the other hand, her sisters and their husbands spent the week whooping it up on Broadway and shopping.
My most uplifting personal memories of her were seeing her up bright and early at sunrise working in her 1 1/2 acre back yard garden. We only ate fresh home grown veggies on my summers there, and every spare veggie (apples, grapes, persimmons, paw-paws, corn, lima beans, bush beans, and yukky, yukky slimy okra) got put up for the winter, if it wasn't needed at the local food kitchen. (Okra remains to me what broccoli is to former President George Bush -- disgustingly slimy.) During World War II, she arranged for professional canning equipment to be brought to a local public hall or church basement, and I remember going there with her and several bushels of fresh veggies mostly beans, corn and tomatoes -- from her garden to "put them up". All the ladies of the town - blacks and whites, incidentally -- would have non-stop "putting up" parties for three weeks during harvest season. No Mason jars that year - everything was in "tin" cans, and neatly labeled, of course! That was the town's ladies contribution to winning Wworld War II.
But we were forbidden to eat those canned or bottled veggies in the summertime. Fresh only.
In the late spring, every tulip and daffodil bulb was rigorously dug up and put in the basement to dry for the summer, then carefully replanted in the fall. Each fall in her later years, she invariably had to give away a two or three surplus bushels to her sisters and neighbors, where they were planted, enjoyed for a couple of years, but left in the ground, where they invariably rotted away during the summers. But she would be right back to them in the fall with more spare bulbs.
And whether busting her hump in the garden all day long, or down at the local "Neighborhood Home" (which she started - its now the local Salvation Army shelter and soup kitchen -- but was in the tradition of Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago), she would still find time to invite over a favorite college professor or students, serve them a sumptuous meal cooked by herself, and engage in a thoughtful after dinner discussion on the finer points of current affairs, the sociology of the poor, Luther versus Calvin, or in later years, the importance of Vatican II to us heretics, or the Dead Sea scrolls to Christian theology.
A recurring dream of hers was quite telling. She would wake up in the night, having dreamed that she had been hurrying to catch a train, but could never quite catch it. Was the dream reminiscent of what Cecil Rhodes said on his deathbed, "So much to do, so little time to do it" Or a Calvinist fear of being less or doing less than your best?
I well remember one of her many letters to me in college, noting that she had several Centre College students over for dinner and discourse, and they followed up by showing her the latest dance steps in her living room. "I felt I'd have liked to ‘cut the rug with them'", she wrote.
At one of these events, she hosted coffee, tea cakes, and conversations with Crown Prince Akihito, the current Emperor of Japan. The Crown Prince spent two years studying in the United States under the close supervision of the Imperial Household and the Japanese Foreign MInistry, and part of the time was spent visiting Centre College.
My most vivid memory was coming into lunch from playing outside with the daughter (black) of our cook, Suzie, who had raised me during my first year. I was about 4 years old. Hands had to be washed before we were allowed lunch, and the two of us went to it - including scrubbing under our fingernails. When we were done, Mother Sadie took us both aside, and made us put our hands side by side, palms down.
She asked me, "What is the difference?"
"Obviously," I said, "mine are white, and hers are black."
"Now," she said, "turn your palms up. What's the color difference?"
"Gosh, Mother Sadie, when you wash them and hold them in the bright sunlight, both our palms are the same, and really white!"
"Good, Logan, so understand this: in all your life's the work and play, our palms are telling us that there are no differences whatsover between black and white."
I remember my late wife writing to me in 1965 in Germany shortly after we were married, on having met Mother Sadie for the very first time. She went out to Danville from Washington to visit my family, and get introduced to the town and its folks. For Pam and Mother Sadie, it was the first and only time they met, and they hit it off famously. Pam wrote me that night, "Logan, I'm so thrilled. You gave me a grandmother back to replace Grandma Wilcox (who had just died), and she's near as perfect as she can be."
Sadie passed away about a year later while we were still in Germany. Like Pam's recent memorial service, hundreds came to her funeral.
But only a handful wore black.
Sadie's mother had died when Sadie was about twelve, and Papa Taylor put her in charge of raising her six younger siblings. Her most vivid memory of her mother was kneeling beside her bed at prayer, shortly before she died of TB. As a surrogate mother, she did well, and never complained. All the siblings adored Sadie, and treated her like the mother she had been to them -- all through their adult life.
Papa Taylor sent her off to college at Centre, where she excelled, and was described by her future husband as "she is pretty, and smart, and agreeable, and athletic, etc.".
After college, but before she married my grandfather, she did what all young ladies of means did in that era - community service among the poor - probably in the tradition of Jane Addams at Hull House. Most did so at home where it could be done part time, and you wouldn't have to interrupt your more important social life with your friends - especially pursuing a successful search for a prospective husbands.
But not Sadie.
While most of her devout Protestant friends believed in either a Lutheran concept of redemption and salvation by faith alone, or a Calvinist concept of salvation by grace and achievement, or a Wesleyan-Quaker tradition of salvation by kindness and peacefulness toward your fellow man, they rarely subscribed to the Roman Catholic orthodoxy of salvation by good works.
But not Sadie. She was in deed a spearhead of the social-activist mainstream of Protestant Christianity that we know today.
About the year 1910, probably while her future husband was studying for his Ph.D. in Germany (at the Universities of Marburg and Berlin) she went up into the mountains of eastern Kentucky and signed on as a school teacher at the Presbyterian Orphanage at Buckhorn. In addition to being orphaned or abandoned, all her students probably never had been more than ten miles from the "holler" in which they were born.
She made a deal with them on the first day of school: anyone who washed his hands and face, combed his hair, and brushed his teeth before class every day (She made sure there was an adequate supply of soap, hot water, basins, towels, toothbrushes, etc. just outside the classroom door), and got good grades and practiced good manners (like the Boy Scouts: not a demand to do the best, but merely to do your best) at the end of the school year she would take that person on a field trip to the "flatlands" of central Kentucky, and then on to the ultimate big city --- Cincinnati. For you and I in today's world, that was like being offered a free trip around the world - or maybe the ultimate fantasy, to the moon, or even Mars.
Talk about motivation. What happened would blow the minds of today's social psychologists and motivational therapists: the orphans not only adored her, they worked their tails off. By the end of the school year, she had a big problem. In a world before "grade inflation" - she was as demanding, but as kind a teacher as the best of them -- every one of her kids qualified for the trip. But the cost of the trip would be far beyond her personal means. In addition to travel and meal costs, she had to clothe about 30 of them appropriately in casual and dress clothes (including shoes, which none had), provide them with luggage, and an allowance for spending money. In short, she was in the proverbial pickle jar.
So what does a young bachelor girl with no money do? She tells them, "hang in there guys, I'm going back home for a few weeks, but I shall return." (This was thirty years before Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines in 1942.) No doubt some of her charges figured that was the last they'd see of Miss Sadie. But sure enough, about three weeks later, Miss Sadie returns as promised from "the flatlands".
She had pulled out all stops and called in her chits, visiting churches, businesses and even going door to door to raise money, and get commitments to house a guest or two for a few days. Every orphan got a new pair of shoes - actually their first and only pair of shoes -- new clothes, a suitcase, and enough spending money for the trip. She had also raised money among her father and future father-in-law's friends in the business community for hotels (when her charges were not staying in the private homes of her friends) and money for railway tickets to and from Cincinnati.
The great trip began by rafting down the Kentucky river to a place near Danville, where they were picked up in carriages and taken to Danville. Then tours of the all the sights in the area. There were no serious mishaps on the trip, except that coming down the river on the raft a couple of the more curious boys fell off - a rather serious problem, since no one knew how to swim, and had never seen a river as big, wide, or deep as the Kentucky River.
Cincinnati, though, was the ultimate eye-opener. The analogy for us would be another planet. Talk about culture shock! Imagine: It is 1910. You're an orphan from the eastern Kentucky highlands. You've never been ten miles from home, which is a log cabin in which you were born. You have never seen a building taller than that log cabin - not even a picture of one. There are no paved roads -- anywhere. Not only have you never been ten miles from home, neither has your family for at least 100 years, so there is not even a story-telling tradition of what life is all about beyond your mountains, or even your hollow.
Suddenly, this kindly social-activist lady comes to your orphanage. She is a freshly minted graduate of the finest college for women in Kentucky. She has also studied Christian education in a place even farther away --- New York City. She makes you an offer you can't refuse. You and all your classmates take her up on it, and now you are to go forth on the grandest adventure and see the rest of the world.
You get acclimated somewhat in your initial touring around central Kentucky. But now you are going to "The Queen City of the West". Imagine the looks on the faces and the inner emotions of these kids. Museums. A major symphony orchestra, led by an up and coming conductor, Leopold Stokowski. The famous Rookwood Pottery. "Ivorydale", where you will see Proctor and Gamble make "Ivory" soap. The Cincinnati Stockyards where hogs will be slaughtered and rendered into hams, sausages and to be shipped and sold throughout the world, and the lard rendered into "Crisco" cooking oil -- or "Ivory" soap. The Cincinnati Zoo with its lions, tigers, and monkeys, which none of these kids had ever seen, not even in their books.
When he saw a zebra, one orphan called out to the others, "Hey, y'all come quick here and see the painted mule!"
And of course, the Taft family was reaching its zenith, so you will hear your country's president, William Howard Taft expatiate on the future of America. None had ever even seen their county commissioners, let alone local Congressman. And of course many other things we take for granted: tall buildings, and very large churches with curious stained glass windows that had been imported all the way from Belgium. Telephones. Even a few paved streets. Outdoor fountains in parks and gardens. Indoor plumbing with flush toilets. Streetcars attached to wires in the sky that provide them power. Cash registers. The large fleet of steamboats on the riverfront. The great Roebling suspension bridge across the Ohio river, designed and built by the man who went on to build the Brooklyn Bridge. Or just the Ohio river itself.
But one incident stood out. Walking down Vine Street (Cincinnati's main thoroughfare) one morning, one of the boys got ahead of the rest, and looked into the window of a barber shop, where he spied a proper Cincinnatian all lathered up and the barber honing the razor for his ritual morning shave.
A cry went out, probably heard all over the downtown commercial district. It even prompted a couple of Cincinnati's police officers to come running with nightsticks in hand.
"Young-uns! Come quick! Come see! Hurry up! There's gonna be a killin' !!" After the chaos died down, a good laugh was had by all.
Several years ago, I came across her diary of the trip. It included a roster with the names of each kid, his clothing and shoe sizes, etc., and any special instructions on food preferences or needs - as well as a "group portrait", and a checklist of the patrons, with tally marks indicating that she and each orphan had replied to their patron with a "thank you" note.
Sadie was in many respects the distinct opposite of her husband, my grandfather.
When my grandparents married, Papa Taylor was "in the money", but it was "new money"; my grandfather's parent's was "VOM" (very old money). The Cheeks (particularly the Ashbys and McKees) were old establishment. They're called "FFVs" in that part of the world, or members of one of the "First Families of Virginia", who put the country together between 1770 and 1789 - the Byrds, the Randolphs, the Fairfaxes, etc. She was not.
She was the outdoors type, he was a scholar.
She was more into the sciences; he was into the humanities. But they were both into theology.
While they shared an active involvement in church affairs, he was an ordained minister and professor of Greek and New Testament theology (necessary prerequisites for any young man planning to become a minister), but she was a social activist, pioneer volunteer social worker, and active pacifist.
His politics were conservative, hers were liberal. But both were pragmatists. All ideology aside, their mutual bottom line was "What works?"
While not a segregationist, he probably believed that the black's place in Kentucky society of the early twentieth century was an ordained element of the Calvinist order, yet blacks were to be treated with Christian respect, generosity and kindness - especially the household help to which we were all quite close and fond. She was active in working with the schools in Kentucky in 1954 on figuring out how to totally, aggressively, and immediately integrate the schools. By 1955, the problem was behind Kentucky and fixed. By 1956, Kentucky was fully integrated. Meanwhile Arkansas fiddled with Faubus and Alabama with Wallace diddled and demagogued until well into the 1960s - and still haven't recovered from those policies.
His personality was cold and "stuffed shirt", hers was warm and engaging.
Worst of all for a college professor, he had a stammering and stuttering problem, which made him the butt of many cruel jokes among his undergraduate students at Centre. She could speak engagingly, forcefully and positively about just about anything to anyone at anytime in a non confrontational way.
He relished a good political argument - preferably confrontational -- over the Sunday dinner table with his children, particularly his daughter Elizabeth; she was a peace activist constantly trying to build community coalitions as well as conversational coalitions at the dinner table.
Because she was not "old money and society", my grandfather's sister, Mary Ashby Cheek, thought a Taylor not good enough to marry a Cheek. But my wimpy grandfather, for once in his life, told his little sister to shut up and buzz off. Curiously enough, in my own recent family research, I discovered that all three of them were sixth cousins, sharing a common grandparent many times over, who was also a grandparent of President James Madison. And Sadie was herself a first cousin of Zachary Taylor - which she never knew, and if she did, probably couldn't have cared less, or at least kept that knowledge quietly to herself.
Her husband, whom I do not remember, died fairly early in life of leukemia in 1939. Now Danville in that period was a starchy old remnant of the Victorian and post-Civil War era. Many parts of the rest of the South had lost over a third of their young men in the Civil War, resulting in a vast population of young widows and spinsters. As a Union town, Danville had not suffered the same fate -- at least not as severely. But a curious tradition arose. New widows were expected to disengage from all social activity for at least a couple of years. Your stationary for personal correspondence could be only white or ivory, with an elegant black border. And most depressing, the dress code called for wearing an ankle length black dress, with black shoes and black stockings. These were to be worn for the rest of your life. My great grandmother, Sadie's mother-in-law was a case study. I remember well going to church on Sunday in Danville during my summers there. Over half the sanctuary was filled with ladies, young and old, with their depressing black dresses, boring black shoes, black stockings, black purses, and black hats, fanning themselves with the free cardboard fans, compliments of the Stith Funeral Home. (There were, of course, no blacks in the congregation. At least not yet.) In the inevitable social intercourse in front of the church after services, they would blather and lather on the malarkey about "Oh, mah goodness, gracious, how good it was to see you!", and "Oh, mah goodness, gracious, how long are you staying?", and most commonly "Oh, mah goodness, gracious, how you've grown so!"
I share this because about four or five weeks after the death of her husband in late 1939, she undertook one initiative that dumped all Danville on its keester. She showed up for church one fine Sunday - in a shocking red dress! To be sure, many of the town's widows continued to wear black, but the message was clear: after a reasonable and appropriate period of mourning, you don't have to stay sad. And many followed her lead.
Yet in spite of her fashion statement, her idea of a big time when she and her sisters and their husbands went to New York in the early 1940s was to visit various faculty friends at Union Theological Seminary, and well as several officers and ministers of the Presbyterian Church in New York to discuss strategies for church social work among the poor. On the other hand, her sisters and their husbands spent the week whooping it up on Broadway and shopping.
My most uplifting personal memories of her were seeing her up bright and early at sunrise working in her 1 1/2 acre back yard garden. We only ate fresh home grown veggies on my summers there, and every spare veggie (apples, grapes, persimmons, paw-paws, corn, lima beans, bush beans, and yukky, yukky slimy okra) got put up for the winter, if it wasn't needed at the local food kitchen. (Okra remains to me what broccoli is to former President George Bush -- disgustingly slimy.) During World War II, she arranged for professional canning equipment to be brought to a local public hall or church basement, and I remember going there with her and several bushels of fresh veggies mostly beans, corn and tomatoes -- from her garden to "put them up". All the ladies of the town - blacks and whites, incidentally -- would have non-stop "putting up" parties for three weeks during harvest season. No Mason jars that year - everything was in "tin" cans, and neatly labeled, of course! That was the town's ladies contribution to winning Wworld War II.
But we were forbidden to eat those canned or bottled veggies in the summertime. Fresh only.
In the late spring, every tulip and daffodil bulb was rigorously dug up and put in the basement to dry for the summer, then carefully replanted in the fall. Each fall in her later years, she invariably had to give away a two or three surplus bushels to her sisters and neighbors, where they were planted, enjoyed for a couple of years, but left in the ground, where they invariably rotted away during the summers. But she would be right back to them in the fall with more spare bulbs.
And whether busting her hump in the garden all day long, or down at the local "Neighborhood Home" (which she started - its now the local Salvation Army shelter and soup kitchen -- but was in the tradition of Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago), she would still find time to invite over a favorite college professor or students, serve them a sumptuous meal cooked by herself, and engage in a thoughtful after dinner discussion on the finer points of current affairs, the sociology of the poor, Luther versus Calvin, or in later years, the importance of Vatican II to us heretics, or the Dead Sea scrolls to Christian theology.
A recurring dream of hers was quite telling. She would wake up in the night, having dreamed that she had been hurrying to catch a train, but could never quite catch it. Was the dream reminiscent of what Cecil Rhodes said on his deathbed, "So much to do, so little time to do it" Or a Calvinist fear of being less or doing less than your best?
I well remember one of her many letters to me in college, noting that she had several Centre College students over for dinner and discourse, and they followed up by showing her the latest dance steps in her living room. "I felt I'd have liked to ‘cut the rug with them'", she wrote.
At one of these events, she hosted coffee, tea cakes, and conversations with Crown Prince Akihito, the current Emperor of Japan. The Crown Prince spent two years studying in the United States under the close supervision of the Imperial Household and the Japanese Foreign MInistry, and part of the time was spent visiting Centre College.
My most vivid memory was coming into lunch from playing outside with the daughter (black) of our cook, Suzie, who had raised me during my first year. I was about 4 years old. Hands had to be washed before we were allowed lunch, and the two of us went to it - including scrubbing under our fingernails. When we were done, Mother Sadie took us both aside, and made us put our hands side by side, palms down.
She asked me, "What is the difference?"
"Obviously," I said, "mine are white, and hers are black."
"Now," she said, "turn your palms up. What's the color difference?"
"Gosh, Mother Sadie, when you wash them and hold them in the bright sunlight, both our palms are the same, and really white!"
"Good, Logan, so understand this: in all your life's the work and play, our palms are telling us that there are no differences whatsover between black and white."
I remember my late wife writing to me in 1965 in Germany shortly after we were married, on having met Mother Sadie for the very first time. She went out to Danville from Washington to visit my family, and get introduced to the town and its folks. For Pam and Mother Sadie, it was the first and only time they met, and they hit it off famously. Pam wrote me that night, "Logan, I'm so thrilled. You gave me a grandmother back to replace Grandma Wilcox (who had just died), and she's near as perfect as she can be."
Sadie passed away about a year later while we were still in Germany. Like Pam's recent memorial service, hundreds came to her funeral.
But only a handful wore black.
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