Grace Viola Campbell: A daughter's tribute to her mother

I found this beautiful tribute to Grace Campbell in the journal that Grandma Izzy wrote up for Uncle Stirling's family.


My mother was a beautiful woman about 5 feet 1 in tall, with lots of freckles, a happy smile, a beautiful high soprano singing voice. She had red, curly hair, brown eyes with green centers which would go gray at time of grief or sadness. She loved to laugh. She could sew like a professional, could cut her own patterns, make men’s clothes and even sew and mend furs. She was honest, fun-loving, competent, intelligent, and hard-working. She loved to cook and raise a garden. She delighted in children and had a real skill in dealing patiently with them. However, if you got sassy, you could expect immediate discipline. She was washing dishes in a pan in the kitchen and asked me to go out and carry in wood for our cookstove so she could start supper. I whined, “It’s not my turn…” That hard hand came out of the dishwater and caught me across the mouth as she said, “It’s your turn to wash dishes—now go get the wood if you expect to eat tonight.” I got the wood and came back and finished the dishes. She was absolutely fearless in about every area, but she was terrified of going in the water and of thunder and lightening storms.

Mama was the heart of our home. Daddy depended on her and all of us did, too. She had to move many times during her married life with him working as a carpenter and farming on the side. She had 9 children at home! She cooked, cleaned, washed in a tin tub on a scrub board all her life, ironed with a smoothing iron (or flat iron). There was no electricity in any home until 1946. There was no running water or bathroom in her home even when I was a senior in college. She never had an electric stove—either cooked on a woodstove or kerosene stove. Our family never owned a car.

But Mama was a lady, educated, and charming in her humble way. Every one of us adored her. We also knew Daddy loved her. They endured raising up a family during the depression years and through World War II. They raised a family of men and women not afraid to work, community minded, and God-fearing and loving. What a magnificent woman she was!