|
This, the 14th in the Rest
n’ Peace Series pays tribute to Jennie Rice
Though quite a few mile off the home turf, this one is very special
because this is a tribute to my Great-Grandmother, Jennie Rice.
This is an easy, wheelchair-accessible cache.
As with all cemetery caches, please respect those who rest
here.
|
|
 Born in 1897, her generation saw Henry Ford’s
first “Horse-less” carriage come off the assembly line,
though it would be many decades before there was one in the family.
Her’s saw the first telephones, the first radio and
televisions. Powered flight was only a dream until two brothers in
December of 1903 lifted off the ground on the plains of Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina.
She lived and worked through the great depression, very few people
alive today can appreciate what her and her brothers and sisters
had to live through during those very tough years in this
nation’s history.
She lived through two World War I and II and yes, she could
remember where she was on that infamous day in 1941; her son, my
grand father would answer this nation’s call and join the
Navy and server with the Pacific Fleet CB’s. She was still a
hard working housekeeper for local people in the Bangor area during
Korea War.
She lived through a very controversial era called the Vietnam War,
she didn’t understand why we were there, but knew what the
crosses represented at Arlington Cemetery in American lives.
She was there as Neil Armstrong made history by being the first
human to step foot on the moon. And as many in her generation,
didn’t totally believe it was real. She saw the first
PC’s and the dawn of the information age.
She suffered through a divorce in the 30’s from my biological
Great-Grand Father Weisenberger, who I understand was not such a
nice man. She had her ailing mother with her for many years until
her death of gangrene. She bravely helped her only daughter battle
cancer in 1968 at a time when the radiation treatments might have
been worse than the cancer itself. She lost Pappy Rice in the
70’s. She took my mom and I in after my mother’s
divorce and helped raise me. There was never a complaint, and
always with dignity and strength of spirit.
She mowed her own grass well into her 70’s with an old reel
mower that you wound the rope around it’s pulley to start it;
and then it putted along as long as I could remember until I took
over the mowing and we got a new rotary mower. I remember her
hanging out the windows in their home on 412 Miller St. in Bangor
PA and doing the Spring Cleaning of the second story windows. Yep,
she religiously did spring and fall house cleaning.
She sat in the last pew on the right side of the Mackey Memorial
Baptist (Crossroads now) church and made sure I went to church and
Sunday school every week. She sat me between her and her long time
Bangor friend, Laura Wolf. And in the 40’s and 50’s she
and a band of other church ladies made Pasties in the church
kitchen for years. Then many decades after she helped our youth
group at the church revive selling pasties.
And let me tell ya, she made the best pasties I ever had to date.
Mr. Pastie and Maria’s could really take a lesson from her.
Her chocolate cake was to die for, and her secret ingredient was
Miracle Whip, but though we have the recipe the taste just
can’t be duplicated.
Some of my very first memories were in the back seat of what seemed
to be the biggest car in the world as my Pappy Rice (her second
husband) drove us around in his 1939 Buick and picking black
walnuts and hickory nuts on the back roads between Bangor,
Flicksville and over then over to Martins Creek. And after Pappy
Rice couldn’t drive after a stroke, he drove the car to the
junk yard in perfect running condition and never drove again. Why
he didn’t sell it I’ll never understand. Grammie Rice
never got a drivers license. And the toll-house cookie at Christmas
time made from those nuts were nothing but awesome.
I remember taking up camping before my double digit age. Her, my
mom and I would take our tent, and Coleman camp gear, all bought
with Green Stamps, down at the Green Stamp store near the old
Two-Guys store and off we’d go to the Poconos. I remember my
mom trying to get her to wear slacks when camping but she just had
to wear her dress and apron (my wife still has one of the last ones
she had)
After falling and breaking her hip in the mid 70’s we thought
it would slow her down, but nope, she still went up and down the
cellar steps to do her wash, still went out to weed her flower beds
and trim her rose bushes. I remember a very young and frightened
MommaBot, Grammie Rice and our dog traveling across country from PA
to North Dakota in a heavy snow storm which started in Chicago and
lasted pretty much the rest of the trip until arriving in Grand
Forks 12 hours later. She then stay with MommaBot until I return
from a deployment in the Air Force; all this while in her early
80’s.
In the mid-80’s her body just started to where out and she
moved in with my mother and her husband. She got to see her first
Great Great Grand Child and we we’re able to get a picture of
them both.
Grammie died in the Brookmont Nursing Home in Gilbert PA; I was in
Georgia at Moody AFB when she died, but MommaBot spent the day with
her two days before she passed. At the time she was in and out of
consciousness, but when MommaBot took our baby into see her, she
was her old self from the early 70’s late 60’s; she was
sitting up in bed and was bright and coherent. And we thought she
was making a come back, she played with the baby on the bed for a
couple of hours like nothing was ever wrong with her.
It was only a couple of hours after MommaBot left, she slipped back
into a comma and never came back out. I flew home that fall day,
and though I was very sad to lose her, I knew because of her belief
in Christ and the life she lived, that I would see her one day
again. And I know when my time on Earth has faded and I pass into
the Lord’s presence, I know she’ll be one of the first
one that I’ll see.
As you close the lid on the cache container, I hope those happy
memories of your loved ones come flooding back to your mind. And I
hope this cache helps you to remember a generation of hard working,
devoted people who help make you who you are.
|