Remembering Mamaw

Yesterday was my Mamaw's birthday. She would have been 96. A couple of years ago, I asked my students to write a personal essay for college. I told them that I would do the assignment as well. I delved deep into the writing. They all thought I was crazy with my 8 or 9 drafts, red marks all over my own paper, re-writing, editing, but, the truth is, I loved it. As I thought about my Mamaw today, I decided it would be only fitting to share my thoughts on her. Enjoy.



Written Spring 2006:
As I sit here at my desk in my classroom, I look at the picture near my desk, a constant reminder of why I’m here, how I got here, and why I’ve chosen this path in my life. It comes in handy especially on the toughest of days. All it takes is one glance, a quick look, and a smile sweeps across my face, a simple reminder to keep my head up and continue doing what I love to do—teach. After all, she is the reason I entered the teaching profession in the first place. The woman in the picture is my grandmother sitting at her old, wooden desk in her high school classroom. Wearing a pearl necklace and matching earrings, with a blackboard as her backdrop, she sits prim and proper, a smile on her face, looking exactly as I remember her at 91 years of age, right up to her death two years ago. She always looked like it was the best day of her life, even if it was one of the most difficult. That was my grandmother’s way, though.

My grandmother, Mamaw, is the woman and teacher I strive to be one day. Successful, caring, and compassionate, dedicated to her profession for 37 years, her students adored her, and I hope to make the same grand impression on my students as she did on hers.

My desire to become a teacher was fueled by her, along with my mother who is also a well-respected, talented teacher. While most little girls play dress up with their dolls, in my younger years, I played school with mine. This way I could be just like my mom and Mamaw. I would sit all of my Cabbage Patch Dolls and stuffed animals onto the couch in the living room and begin to “teach” them. This is when I felt most comfortable, discovering my niche, teaching and helping someone, or at the time—something—else. Who knows what I taught them, what was going through my childish, innocent mind, but I’m certain I tried to emulate the instructions of my favorite first and second grade teachers, Mrs. Goerner and Mrs. Turner. That is so typical of me, wanting to be just like my beloved teachers, including my mother and grandmother.

Through kindergarten to twelfth grade, I loved school, many thanks to my mom and grandmother being teachers, who instilled in me the importance of an education. Looking back to my days of just playing teacher to actually being one now, I wouldn’t be where I am today without the guidance of my Mamaw who taught me how to put others before myself and to show people—especially my students—just how important they really are.

Now that I have matured from the days of teaching fake, stuffed “students” in my childhood to having actual teenagers sitting in front of me, each day I try my hardest to display attributes inherited from the women who came before me. Because of them, I recognize my students depend on me—not strictly for knowledge, but as someone they can trust, look up to, and appreciate. In fact, taped on my podium that sits in the front of my classroom is a laminated sign that reads “People don’t care how much you know until they know you care.” This is a favorite quote of my grandmother’s. Not only her philosophy for teaching, but also for life, this maxim was proven to me on the evening of her visitation, the day before her funeral.

Among the mix of relatives, church friends, and people from the community, some of Mamaw’s former students arrived to show their respects to “Miss Whitton,” a woman they had grown to love. Most sported gray hair, one or two came by way of wheelchair or a walker, but all shared a common bond: each was touched by my grandmother in a special way. The oldest former student who came was 89 years old, Mamaw being just two years older than he was. They gathered and shared stories of my grandmother, about their days in a clapboard schoolhouse in the small community of Rocky Hill, where my grandmother taught during the Great Depression. Others knew Mamaw from her days teaching English and Journalism at Lufkin High School. They laughed, and they cried. These students showed up that evening because of the love and compassion my grandmother showed them, and 75 years later, they hadn’t forgotten it. Words can’t express what my family and I felt, realizing what an impact this wonderful woman had made, leaving my mother and me some big shoes to fill.

As I stood there at the funeral home that hot July evening, and as I sit here now at my desk—a desk I have longed to have since I was a little girl—I am so very appreciative of my grandmother and the path she laid for me, the love for English and goodness she instilled into my mom, which was passed on to me. Yes, as I sit here at my desk, I look at her at her desk, almost as if I am looking into a mirror, a reflection of the woman I have just begun to emulate, and the amazing teacher I hope to one day become.