A Life of One's Own

Dawn and I are in Bridgeport, WV, for my Aunt Loretta Ashby's funeral tomorrow. Visitation at the funeral home today was from 2 to 4 and 6 to 8. People started lining up at the funeral home at 1:45 and the lines continued through 4 pm. Life under Jessie Ashby had to be difficult; no woman was ever good enough for an Ashby man. Lil and Bill escaped to Indiana in the 1950s; but when Tom and Loretta married they moved in at the farm. Loretta was under Jessie's constant scrutiny, and was expected to be a full-fledged farmer's wife.

Loretta worked incredibly hard in the barns and chicken coops. As Guy and Jessie aged, Tom and Loretta became increasingly responsible for them. And indeed moved to Corbin Branch Road to care for them. It was not an easy existence.

Loretta was able to create her own identity away from the farm. The stories I heard today were of a woman who would spend the night with a dying neighbor so she wouldn't be alone, who worked diligently with the 4-Hers in Bridgeport, who became a well-respected member of the Farm Women's group of West Virginia. A compassionate neighbor who all but adopted a neighbor girl who disparately needed to be loved and cared for.

Jessie accused my mother of tricking Dad into marrying her by getting pregnant. Mom and Dad had a short courtship and married in Texas away from the scrutiny of the family. When Mom had a miscarriage 5 months into the marriage, Jessie felt vindicated that this stranger from Ohio had tricked her son. Only 40 years later could Jessie tell my mother that she had been a good influence on Dad.

I will never know what actually went on between Jessie and Loretta, but today I learned that despite all odds, Loretta was able to become her own woman outside the confines of the farm.

Since I was able to do the same thing in my own first marriage, through my church and through my college, I have the utmost respect for Loretta Sayres Ashby.

Loretta was trapped by a very angry kind of Alzheimers. With her death at merely 72, she is freed from her earthly body and I know she is soaring with Eagle's wings for now and forever.