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PAGE 8 - The Georgia Bulletin, December 20, 1990
Christmas Memories....
Looking Back At 90
BY RITA McINERNEY
Mary Jenkins doesn’t remember her earliest Christmases
shortly after the turn of the century as a time of gift
giving.
“We were very poor.” There were 12 children. “We
had nothing much,” she recalls today. “But we had
everything. We were a happy family.”
The family lived on a farm her father worked in south
Georgia. Their home was “an old fashioned country
home.” Her “Daddy” raised hogs, guinea hens and other
fowl. He also worked for “white folk” who paid him in
syrup made from the sweet fluid of sorghum grass
common to the region.
She remembers one Christmas when two 8-gallon
barrels of syrup were his wages. That meant candy making
after the syrup boiled to right consistency. Black walnuts
and peanuts were added and the children pulled and
plaited the spun candy. Then it was cut and set out on a
big plate for family and friends to eat.
Her great-great grandchildren call her “Lady.” Her
husband and other relatives called her by that name. She
came by it, she explains, because the census taker came to
the farm the day she was bom, June 4, 1900. When he
heard the newborn cry he inquired and was told about the
brand new infant girl by her father. So he put her down on
the census form as “Lady.”
“I was raised by white folk, Irish Yankees,” she
reveals. She guesses she was about five when her parents
took her to an aunt in Detroit. This memory she doesn’t
talk about. Some years later an “Irish Yankee” family
gave her a home. They treated her like one of their own.
The “Irish Yankees” had interests in saw mills,
including one in Statesboro. When they traveled there, she
went along and learned about racial prejudice.
She was about 12 when they stopped at Atlanta enroute
to Statesboro. The family had reserved rooms at the famed
Biltmore Hotel. When they got there, “they refused to let
me go in. So my folks wouldn’t stay there.”
It made her “feel bad. I have a lot of heartaches.”
But generally life with the white family was good.
“The only time I knew I was black was when I looked in
a mirror,” she says today.
At 17 she married Joseph K. Jenkins and the couple
moved to Savannah. Their home was right across from St.
Mary “Lady” Jenkins “We were poor...we
were happy”.
Benedict’s Church. Their only child, Aaron Paul Jenkins,
was bom in 1918. No matter, his mother says, “I have
children from here to the Virgin Islands.”
The family came to Atlanta in the 1930s. Joseph
Jenkins found a job at St. Joseph’s Infirmary, worked
there for about 40 years. Sister Stella Maris, RSM, the
beloved sister there and later at St. Joseph’s Hospital,
became a good friend.
“I’ve been raising other people’s children for 62 years.
I always had five or six in my home while their parents
worked. Some would give me one dollar, or two dollars,
to keep them.” Others couldn’t pay. That made no
difference to “Lady” Jenkins. “I know how to make a
bowl of soup go around.
There were always kinfolk among the children she
looked after. Her only son, who died in 1979, had 13
grandchildren. There were grandchildren of her brothers
and sisters. “I can’t count the number of ‘greats.’”
Potted begonias bloom in her sunny kitchen window. In
her stronger years she planted roses along the fence
outside the comer apartment and thrift in the bed outside
the kitchen. She’s lived in the first-floor apartment near
Our Lady of Lourdes Church about 30 years.
Great-great-granddaughter Lakisha Knight, 11, lives
with her. Her brother, Mario Josey, 8, lives with his ;
mother Maria in a unit at the other end of the building.
Both children attend Lourdes School.
All three help “Lady” Jenkins. It’s hard for her to get':
about, with bad knees and a foot that required surgery in
September. She uses a cane, sometimes a walker.
Despite the toll of 90 years of busy living for others, (
she still likes Christmas traditions. Her pound cake and
moist, sherry-laced fruitcakes are baked and ready for
favorite friends, her pastor, Father Henry Gracz, and a
faithful doctor. *
How does she manage baking? “Me and my stool and
a cane,” she replies with a broad smile.
Her crowded past surrounds her in the living room. A
large gold-framed picture of a pastel Madonna and Child’
hangs on one wall. “It was a wedding gift.”
Nearby is a small organ her doctor gave her. It was his
mother’s, he told her. On the walls are pictures of the.
Sacred Heart, of Mary, Pope John Paul II. On shelves are
photos of babies, little girls in First Communion white, a
grandson now dead.
Lakisha and Mario decorated the small tree by the front'
window. When it’s lit a Christmas tune plays.
An upright freezer stands next to the refrigerator in the
kitchen, the last Christmas gift from her husband before he
died in 1982. “It pays for itself. Otherwise the things'
people give you, you have to use right away,” Mrs.
Jenkins finds.
After his death, their good friend, Sister Stella Maris*
kept in touch until her death.
“If he missed heaven,” his widow says, “there isn’t
much need for anybody to go there.” She feels the same
way about the diminutive Mercy sister who cared about
everyone.
She lives on Social Security, pays Lakisha’s tuition outi
of it
She has good friends and “the Lord is my shepherd.”
She doesa’t want for anything. One member of the “Irish:
Yankee” family from Detroit still helps out. St. Joseph’s:
Hospital sends gifts of food. And then there is “the
church.”
Her church gave her a birthday party on her 90th
birthday last June. “Father Henry” and several others,
came to her home with cake and congratulations. It was
the first party she’d every had. “I waited 90 years.”
“I’ve been lonely and I get worried,” she says. “But
I know my work’s not done.” r
In Milledgeville, Midnight Mass Drew Overflow
BY RITA McINERNEY
Getting their church ready for midnight
Mass at Christmas meant a great deal of
work for the dedicated band of ladies at
Sacred Heart Church in Milledgeville.
Tina Home, a Milledgeville native and
lifelong member of the parish, remembers
all the happy preparation when she was
growing up. How the ladies of the parish,
“always so good with their hands,”
gathered holly and “monkey tree” greens
to make wreaths, swags and garlands to
place around the altar and creche.
“In those days Advent was observed
and you didn’t do any decorating until
Christmas Eve. Then whatever you put
on stayed until Epiphany.”
All the candlesticks had to be polished
to gleaming brightness. ‘ ‘Every Christmas
we had to shine Sarah,” she recalled
about the large candelabra given a long
ago pastor by Sarah Bernhardt, the “Di
vine Sarah” of theatrical legend.
One Christmas Eve, Miss Home recalls
“getting an alb to wash, starch and iron”
for midnight Mass. “But those were the
things that made it worthwhile. It was
your Mass.”
Father Timothy James McNamara was
pastor for about 13 years when she was
young. “He was one of the most popular
men in Milledgeville.” A Father Morrow
baptized her. He developed cancer of the
throat and left about 1930, she recalled.
Sister Mary Clare, a Sister of Mercy
from Mount de Sales in Macon, directed
Tina Horne - Dec. 24 chores
the adult choir. She also taught Sunday
school. In those pre-Vatican II days she
had to have permission from her superior
to stay overnight at Christmas so she
could play the organ at midnight Mass.
Miss Home remembers the nun staying
overnight with an aunt, Roberta Little.
The first Homes came to Milledgeville
in 1887, 14 years after the church was
built in 1873. Her grandfather, from
Macon, was a Georgetown University
graduate. Her grandmother came from
Rhode Island.
In her growing years, the church was
always filled to overflowing for midnight
Mass, people would be standing in the
aisles. It was the only Christmas Eve
service in town and drew many non-Cath-
olics.
Tina and her two brothers always had
“a hard time staying awake until it was
time to go to Mass and then staying
awake in church” with their parents,
Louis and Willette Home. But they
wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
There were busy times leading up to
Christmas.
“We were the first church in town to
have a Christmas party for the patients at
Central State Hospital. Monsignor Joseph
Cassidy started the parties. The Episcopal
church claims credit, but we know bet
ter.” Another priest, Father John Toomey,
used to have Mass there every week.
She remembers going out to a party at
Central State Hospital in 1940. “We had
a wonderful time shopping for gifts and
wrapping them” for the patients. Christ
mas cookies and candies were served, the
gifts were distributed and carols sung.
Many of the patients attended. “We
looked forward to it. They really looked
forward to it.
“When I was growing up it was the
largest mental hospital in the world,”
with 12,000 patients. Now it houses about
2,000 and the state is moving prisoners
into many of the empty buildings.
The parish young people used to buy
gifts for the children at the orphanage
maintained by the Sisters of St. Joseph in
Washington, Ga.
In the years she attended Sunday
school, a church member, Lois Hatcher,,
always gave a Christmas party for the
children. “It wasn’t a big group,” Miss
Home admits.
Flannery O’Connor, her junior by four*
year, was among the parish children. Miss
Home treasures her memories of the
writer who died Aug. 3, 1964. Her death
prompted Thomas Merton to say he v
would not compare her with writers such i
as Hemingway, Porter or Sartre but rather
with “someone like Sophocles ... I write,
her name with honor, for all the truth and i
all the craft with which she shows man’s ;
fall and his dishonor.”
Miss Home visited her friend quite*:
often after she came home to Milledge
ville when illness, lupus, afflicted her in i
1950.
“She was always a pleasure to be with.
She had a great sense of humor. She
always made you feel better.
“She kept up with her writing ... She-
was independent until the end. I don’t
ever remember seeing her depressed.”
Reading her friend’s collected letters in a !
book published after her death, “is just’ j
like being with her.”
Catholics were few when Tina Home
was in public elementary and high school,
in Milledgeville. At Georgia College for
Women in Milledgeville (now Georgia
College) there were enough Catholics to
have a Newman Club on campus.
(Continued on page 9)