Thinking today of my grandfather, Walter Lee Bird, to whom we said good-bye ten years ago today. Granddaddy was born July 8, 1912, in Big Cove, Alabama, - the first child of Wiley Virgil Bird and Willie Ann Josephine Hunter. He married Bertie Lorene Adams on Novemer 16, 1930; and to this union was born ten children - Rosie Lucille (Cowan), John Wiley, Peggy Sue (Knight), Alton Wayne, Sammy Ellis, Agnes Jane (Simmons), Phyllis Marie (Schultz), Nancy Kaye (Martin), Ronald Dale, and Kevin Alan. A few years after my grandmother's death in 1975, Granddaddy married Ruby Jewel Rhoden Dodson.
I had the priviledge of growing up in Granddaddy's back yard and got to see him pretty much every day. I love him very much and I know he loved me too. After his mind got bad and he couldn't remember a lot of things, he could still recall my name - even though I didn't still get to see him every day after I had moved to Sand Mountain. In fact, my name was the last that he called in the hospital the day he died.
Granddaddy Bird passed away February 27, 2003, at the age of ninety.
