IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER:
In trying to remember mama, what is there to say? Mary Margaret Crooker had a good (as far as I can tell from her stories) childhood. I loved her very much and tried, in my own way to let her know how much, especially the older I got and through my life experiences, cannot understand how she kept her sanity. Realizing now some of what she went through...only now can I fully appreciateher love and sacrifices she made for us kids; to keep us together some how. Mary Margaret Crooker was on the chunky side leaning toward plumpness in her later years. She had light brown hair that wasblond in her youth and blue eyes. Momma used to tell us stories about uncle George and aunt Evelyn and the mischief they got int to. Janette was born when Mom wasten, but she didn't say much about her little sister. Mom was pretty much grown and married by the time Janette was able to get underfoot. They were born just after the Depression and before World War II and knew the face of poverty. She said her dad didn'treally work much at anything...at a service station, ran a small cafe, etc. Great Grandmother Johnson (Ruth Medora) helped them out. Grandpa Crooker didn't get on with the Crenshaw side of the family so Mom didn't remember them too well. Momma told us kids of Halloweens past; Evelyn and her dating and some of the young men they knew. How Grandma Crooker used to say that Mom was so popular with the boys that she would have to knock them in the head at the front door to drag them in the back door for Evelyn. There was a boy Mom was really crazy about named Edward and how she would come over to his house and help his Mother who was in poor health and how she came to love the lady, even after she and Edward broke up for good. During the Korean war, Mom had met and began dating a boy named Herman. He had to go back t o his unit, but he asked her to wait for him. After a length of time without hearing from him , shehad met my father and that was the end of that. Come to find out, Herman had written Mom several times and the mail didn'treach her because he had written her address wrong. Since he hadn't heard from her, Janette told Mom that Herman had come by the house looking for her with a ring to ask her to marry him, but by that time, she was married and I was on the way. Grandma Kirby didn't want Dad to marry Momma, but they went to Lucedale, Mississippi to a Justice of the Peace, because he was determined to marry her since she was pregnant.
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Margie K. Ezell of the Kirby & Crooker Family