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Show ' - g Mina Geinrard: Amazing Mother ' 1 eg - Mina lived in an era when you were either a child or an adult. The luxury of adolescence went unrecognized. At thirteen, she was capable of managing a ranch and dairy herd with the help of hired hands. vim Her education was expanded and she received training as a nurse. After her father recovered sufficiently to take . the responsibility of the dairy and ranch, Mina went to m work as a surgical nurse in the hospital. She had matured beyond her numerical years and at age fifteen was a young lady. She met a young lad, Jack - 2 Butler. They were married, he seventeen and she fifteen. She continued working as a nurse until the birth of their ! first child. I Her husband Jack worked in the mines in Colorado for I their livelihood. As time marched on another little girl and . boy joined their family. Lyman, Jess and Midge. The : beginning of this special family. K Fate has a way of upsetting apple carts and disrupting " people's lives. Tragedy struck, a mine accident injured her husband ' Jack. As his health was impaired, they decided to buy some land and leave the mines. They would start a little dairy herd on the 40 acres they were able to secure. s Mina recalls, "That year we raised a big garden. We had ample produce to store for winter. Jack decided to - build a root and fruit cellar. He was on horseback dragging logs in for it. The horse he was riding was an ornery old nag and if she got the chance would head for a tree to brush her rider off. Instead of watching where the horse was going, he was looking back t6 see where the log - - was trailing. The horse headed for the partially finished ' log structure and the back of his head hit a log. We took ; """" him to the hospital, but he died on the operating table." " " Mina, a young woman, was left a widow and mother of three children with forty acres of land to mete out a living - from. These circumstances would stun the strongest individual but Mina would not give up. Although she was under pressure from relatives to relinguish her children to jr" family members for help and care, she would not budge. 1"-- They were her children, she was their mother and she 1-1- would care for them. And care for them she did. As we I read through the lines of Mina's life, we find she was not - afraid of work and met each challenge head:on. She kept 'mZZ her three children and cared for them. "" Time passed and Mina met another man, a man who m . would take her for his wife and share his life with hers. "I knew his people real well, " Mina remembers. Z 4 "They had a big farm in the same area as my parents but I jp- . - had never met their son. One night the old rolks stopped B to visit, he was with them. The kids were all in bed asleep and I walked out to the car to talk to them. As they left, he asked, 'Who is that woman? His dad told him who I was." "I'm going to marry her. She is going to be my wife." - Boldly he pronounced. His mother laughed, "Why, you " couldn't keep her in socks, much less take care of her." - "The next day he came back with his brother to visit I- me. And true to his prediction, we were married." Richard Gail Gerrard and Mina were married in I . Norman, Okla. Richard gathered his new little family " together, and took them to his homestead. He owned a small ranch, having about 20 head of milk cows-. "We had been married about two months when we took our first foster children in. They were Richard's two little brothers. They were about five and six years old. His mother was sick and unable to care for them. They stayed with us until they went into the service as young men," Mina said. Turmoil in the world raged. World War I broke but. Richard Gerrard was called to serve his country. He answered the call, Mina once more was left with the full care and responsibility of their family. A family which had increased by three, Mina's three children, Richard's two little brothers and the first child of their marriage, which Mina was expecting. The little bpys helped some on the farm, but they were in school. Mina handled most of the chores and did the milking. It was during this time Mina began to work in the fields gathering grain, vegetables, fruit and cotton to gain support for their children. In defending his country, a cannon exploded, leaving fragments of metal in Richard Gerrard's eye. The metal damaged his eye lid, causing the lid to droop. He carried this injury throughout his life time. The nickname "One Eye" also stayed with him. Richard Gerrard returned home to his family. Mina was in the fields working. He hadn't let her know he was coming home. He crept up behind her and grabbed her in an embrace. She just about knocked him flat. Until she recognized it was him, her first impulse was to "pound that masher into the nearest hole." The Gerrard family was ever increasing, not only their own, but the foster children and adopted children they were acquiring. When Richard Gerrard returned from service in World War I, Mina once again had the help and comfort of her husband to care for their children. "He loved children. He loved all people. AH God's creatures and His handiwork in nature." Mina reminisced, her mind running back over the many years of their married life together. "He was a good man. He always seemed to be there when anyone needed a helping hand. As far as I'm concerned, after they made him they threw away the mold. How lucky I was to have him for my husband." 3 " We stayed on our farm for a few years ranking 21 head of cows and raising as much of our own food as possible. I handled most of the milking chores, as Richard was working at other jobs," Mina recalls. "I remember one night in particular. We had loaded saw logs all day. I was pregnant, almost near my time. That evening he left by horseback for town about three miles away for some supplies. I went to the barn and started to milk when the labor pains hit me. There I sat. I couldn t get up. The old cow was mean but she didn't offer to kick or raise a fuss. Later he came riding in. I could hear him whistling in the distance. How glad I was to hear his voice. I hollered and he came running. He helped me to the house and our baby was born. No midwife. No doctors." "Of the nine of my children, I have only had one in the hospital. My husband was always scared and nervous when the babies were due. I wasn't. I knew nature would take care of itself. Within five days after that baby was born, I was up helping load logs. Didn't seem to hurt me." "A freak accident put me in the hospital before Donny was born. Dad and I went to town for him to get a haircut. I took my crocheting and planned to sit in the car, relax and crochet. Such moments were very precious. As I sat there, quite relaxed, a woman came out of a building nearby screaming, cussin' (such carrying on I'd never heard) jumped into her car and sped off. The front bumper of her car caught the back bumper of ours, throwing it across the street, me in it. I ended up in the hospital for several weeks. The accident occurred December 22 and I was still in the hospital April 2 when Donny was born. We were afraid the baby would be crippled or hurt, but he was okay." "As our children arrived, we gathered many adopted and foster children too. In fact, for several years we had 22 children living at home at one time. Now that was fun!!!" - - "We had a lot of children come to us during the depression years. Those were hard times. Their folks just couldn't take care of them. My husband was working in the oil fields and I went to work in the cotton and grain fields gathering cotton and corn. With his work in the oil fields, he would work several weeks and then have several days off. On these days off, he would come and work in the fields with me." "One evening we gathered our family together, loaded them in our pickup truck and went to the cotton fields to work. He had fixed a frame around the back of the truck and covered it with screen. We had curtains fixed to roll up or down to either keep the kids warm or shade them from the sun. In this manner, we could take our family with us. They played or slept while we worked." "'I see you got a lot of kids,' this strange man remarked to Dad one evening." "Tup, I've got one or two,' Dad replied." ' Would you like to have any more? ' the man queried. ' ' '"Oh, I don't know, shrugged Dad. They talked for several minutes and I heard Dad say, 'I'll have to ask my wife first."' "He came and asked if I was willing to take that man's children to care for. Those little kids were just standing there. They looked so pitiful. I nodded yes and Dad said to the man, 'Put them m the pickup. I'll need their birth certificates and a record of their shots. You realize I'm not adopting them, but will try to take care of them until they are on their own.'" "On another occassion, we were living in Walters, Oklahoma. A woman came by one day and said, 'Mrs. Gerrard, I'm going to ask you something. You're going to think I'm awful."' "Maybe not," I said. "Let's hear what it is." '"Would you like to have my little twins?'" "Sure, give them to me." I thought she was only kidding. She left and directly, here she came back, two children with her, each carrying a baby and she was packing their clothes." 7" - :--- : "She had seventeen children and was pregnant again. She just couldn't take care of the twins. Their names were Floyd and Lloyd. One had the curliest hair and the other had hair as straight as a string. They were dear little things. We kept them with us until they were old enough - to enlist in the military service." . "We had one adopted boy, Larry. That was the sweetest youngin'. He was a handsome lad with black curly hair and a very cooperative personality. How did we get him?" "His mother had died, his father had turned into an - - alcoholic. He and his little sister were living with their grandparents. The grandmother took ill with a terminal illness. His grandfather told him, 'Larry, I don't know what I'm going to' do with you. Your grandmother is dying.'" '"Let me go stay with Mrs. Gerrard,' he answered." - - '"Oh, she won't want you. She' has so many kids." '"But she likes me,' he insisted." ' '"We'll go tomorrow and see,' the grandpa said." "When they came down, Dad said we would be tickled to care for him. He stayed with us until he enlisted in the ' service. He is married and has his own family now." - "I still remember how he would help around the house, wiping up spills, picking up after the little kids, just pleasantly helping wherever he could." . -, "Along with Dad's work as a trouble shooter in the oil fields, we picked up odd jobs to help support our family. When times were really hard, we spent our 'spare' time sawing mine props. We used a cross-cut saw. Me on one , end, Dad on the other. We also cut firewood. We would get $5 for a truckload of firewood cut and hauled into town. - You would work your head off for that much, but it fed us. We didn't go hungry." "On one job we even worked side by side in the oil fields. During the depression, my husband was asked to clean seven wells. He didn't have anyone to help him. The woman who owned the wells asked if his wife could help. 'Do you think she would get greasy like that?"' " '"Try me and see,' I said. We got $70 for cleaning the seven. That was a lot of money during those times. You'd get paid that much now for being asked to clean one, -without doing any work." As I listened to Mrs. Gerrard tell of the many circumstances in which they acquired their adopted and foster children, the impact of the love involved amazed - me. The love the Gerrards displayed, not only for their own children, but for the child who needed their love, their substance, their shelter, is truly overwhelming. I find myself amazed as well at the love shown by the natural I parents. To be able to relinquish the children they knew tin they were unable to care for, into the hands of someone else, is a love most of us find hard to fathom, let alone possess. I Next week we will rejoin the Gerrards with a few stories I of their home life. - " As told by Mina Gerrard. Written by Carolyn Winters. 1 All copyrights reserved. |