Q. How did you come to be in Charlottesville?

A. I came here with my family when I was about 13.  My father had been managing a farm in Scottsville, but when World War II broke out, he got a job with the Barnes Lumber Company and we moved to Charlottesville.

Q. So you grew up out in the county before moving to Charlottesville?

A.  [Video Transcript]   I was born in Fluvanna County and grew up in the country between Bremo Bluff and Fork Union, near my grandparents, who were farmers like my father.  

In order to get to school in those days [1930's] we had to walk.  There were no school buses and we didn't have a car.  So, when I was seven and started at Judy Creek School, I had to walk through our cowpasture, across another pasture, through somebody's yard, and across the road.

My grandparents were die-hard Baptists, very religious people. They didn't have much money––I think my grandfather raised tobacco.  My grandmother would take one dollar out of every ten dollars they made from farming and put it in a cedar chest for the time of tithing.  She tithed all the time.

Like most people around us, we didn't have a lot.  We probably got one pair of shoes in the winter and one pair in the summer.  I don't think my grandchildren would believe me if I told them that!

Q. Did you grow up going to church?

A. I grew up going with my family to a Baptist church in Fork Union.  I guess I enjoyed church in a way.  I was in the Girl's Auxiliary; I still have a perfect attendance pin that shows that I went to every monthly meeting for a year. 

Q.Was there a time in your life when your faith became more important to you?

A. After I got married, we moved back to Fluvanna.  We ended up at a Methodist Church and the Sunday School teacher that I had was probably the best Sunday School teacher I ever had.  He really connected with people.  It was a class of young men and women, and I was probably about 34 at the time.

Q. Is that when you really came to believe in prayer?

A. That was probably when I was older.  I think it was when I really started praying hard for someone very close to me [name kept anonymous] who had [some very tough life struggles].  I had been through so much with [that person] and I didn't know which way to turn.  It was the worst thing.  I think that's when I got the most into praying.  And now I pray all the time for everybody.

But back to that time . . . I just felt that prayer was the only way to go!   Thank goodness everything turned around.  That was several years ago and things are still going well.

I think that sometimes when you pray a lot and your prayers are answered––and I think they are––when you've prayed so hard and things kind of turn around, I think that's when you realize, "There is a real God". 

Q. Are there any Bible stories or passages that have been especially comforting or meaningful to you over the years?

A. Probably the ones everybody remembers, like "So God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whomever . . . "  That one. . . .  And the 23rd Psalm.  It was a requirement that we learn the 23rd Psalm in my Baptist Sunday School class.  I practiced it and we had to learn it before we could be baptized.  I still can recite it.  

Sometimes, in Sunday School, when we were asked to say a Bible verse, we'd recite the shortest one: "Jesus wept". . . . We all could remember that one [laughs].

Q.You said you got baptized at age 11.  Was that a big step of faith for you?

A.  [Video Transcript]   Well not really. My Sunday School teacher decided we should be baptized, so that's the way it was.  I was scared to death! [laughs].  We really didn't know what was going on.  Kids these days maybe know a little bit more about it [laughs]. 

Q. You said you came to Charlottesville with your family when you were 13.  What was life like as a teenager in the 1940's?

A.  [Video Transcript]  My entire high school years were during World War II.  Those years were a little hard.  Things were so limited, just like with the Covid crisis in a way.  Gas for your car was scarce; you had ration-books for food. But, we managed.  I graduated in 1945, after Germany had surrendered in January of that year.  Japan surrendered that summer. . . .

 A. [part 2, (not on video):]  Those were my high-school years.  If we stayed after school to do an activity, they didn't provide us a bus, so I'd have to walk home a couple of miles [from McIntyre Park to the Woolen Mills].  I walked home with a friend and nobody ever bothered us.  

By the time I graduated, I was 18.  I went to a business school here in town on 5th street and went to work for the Michie company [a law publishing company, which became Lexus].

Q. How did you come to attend Christ Church?

A. My husband's background was the Dutch Reformed Church, from where he grew up in New Jersey.  But he was a friend of Mike Donovan, so when we moved back to Charlottesville in 1967, right away we started going to Christ Church, where Mike was the rector.  Years later, I went to a Bible-study class and enjoyed meeting people like Lawson Davis.  I used to give him rides home when he got too old to enjoy walking.

Q.Do you have any prayer requests?

A. Do you mean for myself or for somebody else?

Q. Well, let's start with yourself.

A. For myself . . . I'm 94 years old, and I've been so blessed to have been able to see my grandchildren and great-grandchildren that it's almost like I feel guilty to ask that I would have a few more years.  I'm blessed that I have two grand-daughters who I see pretty often; they live in Green County.

So, for myself . . . [the prayer request would be] to continue for a little longer and for my aches and pains to not be so bad.  [She mentions some pain in her joints and in her right shoulder's rotator-cuff, and then goes on to ask prayer for a friend who is at the Cedars nursing home now, but doesn't have any family nearby to look after her.]

Q. Here's what is known as a "beauty-pageant question":  In your opinion, what could make the world operate more like you'd wish to see it work?

A. Well the world is such a mess. . . it's just so awful . . . it didn't used to be this way.  I don't know how I could do something about it.  But, if you pray about it . . . I pray every night.  One thing I pray for is that people would come together in peace and not be so offended by everything.  That would be my wish.

And I do believe in prayer . . . yes.