Eighty years ago on November 16, 1930, my paternal grandparents – Walter Lee Bird & Bertie Lorene Adams – were joined in holy matrimony in a double civil ceremony in Owens Cross Roads, Alabama, with Granddaddy’s first cousin, Winfred Bird, and his bride, Lorene Rhoden. Granddaddy was eighteen and Grandmother was sixteen. Over the next thirty years, their marriage brought forth ten children; and in fact, Granddaddy and Grandmother were still having children after they had already become grandparents!
They were together for forty-five years when the death angel called Grandmother away in 1975; and even though Granddaddy married again to a lovely woman several years later, his love for Grandmother never diminished. I still remember well, sitting in the back-yard swing with Granddaddy in the 1990’s, asking him about the day he married Grandmother. And as he began to tell me about it, his dim eyes lit up and he smiled as he spoke. I could tell in his voice that although she had been gone for many years, he still held her very close in his heart.
I never knew Grandmother; and Granddaddy left us in 2003 – but the love they had for one another is still reflected in the lives of their children, and fortunately, passed down still another generation – to my generation – in their grandchildren; and I hope to instill that same love in my own children as the years go by.
They were together for forty-five years when the death angel called Grandmother away in 1975; and even though Granddaddy married again to a lovely woman several years later, his love for Grandmother never diminished. I still remember well, sitting in the back-yard swing with Granddaddy in the 1990’s, asking him about the day he married Grandmother. And as he began to tell me about it, his dim eyes lit up and he smiled as he spoke. I could tell in his voice that although she had been gone for many years, he still held her very close in his heart.
I never knew Grandmother; and Granddaddy left us in 2003 – but the love they had for one another is still reflected in the lives of their children, and fortunately, passed down still another generation – to my generation – in their grandchildren; and I hope to instill that same love in my own children as the years go by.
The photo is of Granddaddy and Grandmother holding my dad, Ronald, in 1954.
-BYRD
-BYRD
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