Month: March 2024

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“…It’s How We Play The Hand”

On By marmietedwardsIn Uncategorized23 Comments

It is with great sadness that Marmie’s daughter, Julia, will write this last blog post.

Marmie Edwards passed away on March 7th, 2024, following complications after a fall on March 3rd. When she fell, she was listening to the audiobook, “The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues” by Edwards Kelsey Moore, and engaging in one of her favorite daily rituals of walking the mile-long trail behind her condo.

Mom, I’ll do my best to do you justice here, but I assume I’ll be forgiven for any errors and lack of writing chops by all.

How fitting that your last blog post was about your mother, and now I will be writing about you. As I read it last week, through tears, so impressed by your inspirational writing, your mother, and you, I continue to be struck by your selfless nature. You are, and will always be, one of the most giving and caring people I will know. And I know others reading this will agree. At 26 years old, you put your life on hold and nursed your mother back to health after her stroke. You helped care for your youngest brother and encouraged your middle brother to continue his college studies, while you helped establish the new normal. You have shared how hard those 6 months were, but I know they contributed to your caring nature.

From there, life was not always easy, but you are a fighter and did so much with what you had. From being a staffer in the house to a future Vice President, your devotion to highway rail safety for 20 years, going back to get your Masters in Crisis Management at 58, and eventually making the choice to move across the country from D.C. to Austin, to be near your grandchildren and restart your life at 64. In Austin, you found many mentoring groups you assisted, volunteered at many local triathlons and races, and spent countless hours and years volunteering at the LBJ Library as a docent. You worked many polls as a poll worker or election judge, walked door to door for the League of Women’s voters, and met dear friends through your love of the democratic process. You started this blog in 2017 as a way to share your deep love of history with others and to help bridge the present with the past.

Above all, your love for others was shared, especially with Family. You were the invisible string that stretched out and brought them together. The string even continued through the countless baby blankets you made – from many neighbors, to a nurse who helped you once, you wanted everyone to know each baby was special and worthy of your time. You never hesitated to share how proud you were of me or your grandchildren. As you were a single mother most of my life, I can understand why you were so proud. Thank you for your countless sacrifices you made to help me and others become who we could become.

As a grandmother, you taught us so much about our children and saw their gifts in a way that parents cannot. Your encouragement to Corbin, our eldest, and his writing will be influential for the rest of his life. I spent the last hours of your life reading his latest 15 chapter book as I knew that you didn’t want to go without reading it. He will greatly miss discussing plot lines with you and his future stories. They will miss your devotion to finding just the right book for each grandchild, especially a science or comic book for Kellen to explore his engineering and comedic chops. Your willingness to create any type of craft with Talia, your only granddaughter, always made me laugh. Talia will miss your many trips to the bookstore. The countless pictures I found on your phone of your “grand dog” Rowdy, made me smile.

The hole in our hearts is deep, but we know you would have wanted us to celebrate who you are and cherish the memories we hold dear. We will forever remember you for the amazing writer, volunteer, historian, friend and grandmother that you are.

After her fall, Marmie never regained consciousness, but she took a turn on Wednesday after the Super Tuesday results – a coincidence, I think not. Because of this, we are asking any donations be given to the Austin chapter of the League of Women Voters. Where hopefully, they can help deliver the future my mom would have hoped for.

Please go to lwvaustin.org, under donation, then general fund, and state the contribution is in memory of Marmie Edwards. If you wish to mail a donation: LWV Austin Area, 3908 Avenue B, Austin, TX 78751.

In closing, I apologize for all the things and people I am forgetting, but it feels appropriate to close with the quote from her first blog post on March 10, 2017: “So as Robert Krulwich of NPR says, it’s not the cards we get handed in life, it’s how we play the hand”.

Please feel free to share a favorite memory you shared with Marmie below in the comments.

How Baseball Helped a Boy to Read

On By marmietedwardsIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

. . .in conversations with Mom after her stroke. Next, she welcomed international students to Lafayette.

I was scratching my head thinking about what to blog about when one of my friends said, “You should write about your mom!”

Mom was rather amazing in a hometown sort of way. She taught school briefly after the last of us got into first grade. Her stint as an in-school reading teacher didn’t last long. That first year, Mom had a migraine headache coming in from the playground with her students. She fell before making it inside the door, and it took EMS eight minutes to revive her.

Her doctor ran tests at Home Hospital and found a blood clot had burst in her brain. Later the following day, the surgeon went into the right side of her brain to repair the damage. Following a brain swell after surgery, she could no longer move her left arm or leg when she awoke. This situation changed little after months of therapy.

This may sound like a sad story, but it wasn’t. Despite mom’s impairment, she made the best of it. In church, offering a greeting, her right-handed squeeze made a 6-foot-tall construction worker wince; the strength of her grip could have won an arm-wresting contest.

In the mid-1970s, when this took place, little research was available to guide doctors and patients about stroke recovery. Together we discovered that she saw in vertical stripes—seeing and not seeing from right to left. Mom learned to turn her head to gather all the words in a sentence when she scanned a page. As a reading teacher, novels and short stories were vital to her happiness. She gathered a stack of books by the couch to read before the library came to trade her load of books for a new batch. Mom knew what was happening in town and across the world because she read the Lafayette newspaper, listened to National Public Radio, and watched Walter Cronkite every night.

Mom also listened on the radio to her Indiana Hoosiers basketball team, especially Isiah Thomas. Yes, years later, Thomas moved on to a professional career. Still, when Indiana won the national championship in 1981, Marion, an Indiana graduate, sat glued to the television.

Remembering recipes with more than three steps to them proved to be too challenging, but her muscle memory helped her get back to tutoring young children having difficulty with reading. Mom had no problem with her speech, which was a blessing that helped her reach out to children. I remember a particular guy, maybe eight, who had become a bit of a problem in the classroom because being unable to read took away his confidence and returned a belligerent, not very happy student. There was something about mom and struggling students. This guy, I’ll call him Tommy, may have seen Mother walk back from the door with a walker and understood life provided challenges for her. He saw her as a kindred spirit, not someone to be mocked or pitied.

They talked, and Mom, with nothing but time, listened. Tommy told her all about his favorite baseball team, the Cubs, quoting scores and the names of his favorite players. Mom’s eyes lit up because she listened to the Cubs baseball games, too, since it was Dad’s favorite team. They made a connection, and Mom ordered books about baseball for Tommy. Since he desperately wanted to know more about baseball, he had a reason to sound out the words on the page because they were about BASEBALL, his favorite thing. Funny, it wasn’t long before Tommy liked reading because he could learn more about baseball players! Soon several boys who were into sports cars, football, and baseball came along and had experiences similar to Tommy’s.

A bit later, Mom noticed a news article asking for volunteers to help international students at Purdue University feel more at home in Lafayette. She called and explained she would not be able to come to campus but would welcome students to her home for discussions.

Not long after, students from Japan, China, Mexico, and South America made the trip to Lafayette’s east side, some taking three busses, to chat with Mom. She had no English as a Second Language training but offered a willingness to answer questions on any topic. Her age endeared her to many of the students, who respected her as an elder, like those they left behind. The students soon realized they could indeed ask her anything, including things they were too embarrassed to ask their roommate. They ask about the many English words that have dual meanings, like “hear” and “here.” Some at the time were really interested to know more about football, which has always been part of student life at Purdue. Mom could easily help out. Her Dad played football with Knute Rockne at Notre Dame, of course, long before any of these students would have known. The game had not changed all that much, except maybe for weight rooms, fancier locker rooms, and probably more meat on the training tables.

My protective father asked Mom one Saturday, “Do you think I should be here when these students arrive?” My mom glanced over and gave him a strong Mom Look that said, “I got this, thank you.”