8 Sep 2015 – Answers to Interview Questions 6-10 (Mother)

On 19 Aug 2015, I posted 50 Interview Questions.  Answers to questions 1-5 located here.   Enjoy the answers for questions 6 through 10 from my interview with my Mom!

  • What is your earliest childhood memory?
    • I remember hearing on the radio that the war ended in 1945.   We were playing across the street.  We used to play across the street with the other kids in the trees and swing off the tree limbs.  I was swinging on one of the tree limbs and it broke.
    • At the time, we just had radio, no television.  The radio had murder mysteries acted out by various people.
  • Describe the personalities of your family members.
    • Father (Melzar Williams)
      • My father always worked.  I remember him rushing from one job to another.
      • He sold the timber off his wife’s property in Quitman, MS without her knowledge.
      • Periodically, he told stories about his time in the Merchant Marines.  He joined as a cook and used a recipe to make the food – he became a baker doing cakes, pies, etc.  If the recipes didn’t turn out there was so much food that the mistakes could be tossed and you could start over until you got it right. The ship could not dock in New Guinea so the supplies had to be transported to shore.
      • Daddy Chappy  played the trumpet at a lot of the events.

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4 Sep 2015 – Answers to Interview Questions 1-5 (Mother)

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On 19 Aug 2015, I posted 50 Interview Questions.  In the past, when my Mom and I discussed her childhood, we really started in the middle of the story.  I really appreciated the survey questions because they provided a good framework for capturing family history.  In fact, I learned more about my Mom’s environment than I had in the past.  I urge anyone in the family history/genealogy business to use interview questions.  These questions were awesome!

As promised, following is a summary of the first set of answers from the interview with my Mom.  Enjoy!

  • What is your full name? Alice Lauraetta
    • Why did your parents select this name for you?  Alice was my grandmother’s name (father’s side), Laura was my great-grandmother (father’s side), and great-aunt Etta (father’s side).
    • Did you have a nickname?  No, not when young.  In college, they called me Chappy because everyone knew him.  Besides, my sister and I went to the same college.  She was two years ahead of me in college.

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2 Sep 2015 – Davis Avenue

During the 1950s, my grandparents owned a night club for about a year on Davis Avenue.  By the 1960s, Davis Avenue was the hub for Negroes in Mobile.  There were grocery stores, night clubs, doctors, lawyers, barbers, hair salons…everything needed to support the community.

I couldn’t find a good picture of Davis Ave.  My mother told me that she never went on that side of town because the neighborhood had gotten really rough – people fighting, gun shots, stealing, etc.  I imagine it must have looked like this:

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31 Aug 2015 – Love Can Conquer All!

We celebrated my Mom’s birthday on 29 Aug 2015.  It was one of the most emotional, precious and memorable experiences I have ever had in my entire life!  Our family is truly blessed!  We all met in Tampa, FL 27-30 Aug 2015, stayed at a hotel in Ybor, the historic district of Tampa, and celebrated my Mom’s birthday on Saturday night.

Our plans for the weekend were to enjoy our family, reconnect, reminisce and celebrate Alice’s birthday.  We had five generations represented in person, and with our stories, we had up to eight generations!  It was truly amazing!  We had a nice turnout, from our newest member that is 11 weeks old (Andrea Jenea or AJ) to our oldest member, Inell who is 82 years old!  We used to have family reunions every other year, but with all the competing priorities in our lives, we stopped having them years ago.  In the past, when we got together, we were the kids in my generation, and now most of us are the grandparents!

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21 Aug 2015 – I Couldn’t Wait To Have A Job

This event takes place in Mobile, AL around 1948.  Alice (my mother) was 13 years old, and Eva Jasper (my grandmother – Mom’s side) was 51 years old.  Eva worked for a white family as a house keeper.  During this time, Jim Crow laws were still in effect and the civil rights movement was not officially active (check out the history section at the end of this post).  In Mobile, Negroes worked low paying jobs, and one of the primary sources of income for Negro women was cleaning the house and keeping the children of white people.

On this day, Alice went to visit her grandmother.  However, this day was different because when she arrived at Eva’s house, she had a bandana tied around her head.  Alice asked, “Momma Eva, what’s wrong?”

Eva responded with her head hung low, “I’ve got a real bad headache.  This bandana will help it go away.  Only problem is I have to go to work today.”  Without hesitation, Alice said, “What if I go for you today?  I don’t mind!”

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