The Russell's

Tons of gallons of water have crossed under the bridge since World War I, the roaring twenties and the times leading up to the second World War. Even still I have links to those times through family members that endured them. People I did not even know.

A family post card sent from my Great Grandfather Ollie J. Russell to the girl he courted back home in Kentucky, from some station in World War I reads:

"Mrtyle, When I return I am going to ask your Pa for your hand."

Mrtyle Johnston married him in 1919.

These two have been the subject of many fond memories and stories in our family throughout my life. And I am always amazed at what influences they had on their children and grandchildren to have been revered in such a way.

After they married they settled in Menser on the Russell farm nestled among my Great Grandfather's brothers and sister and parents. I am told they built the barn first and lived in it while the house was being erected. My Great Uncle Raymond and Great Aunt Rudell were both born while the new family was living in the barn. When the house was built electricity had not yet reached that part of the country in the early 1920s. They had a gas refrigerator, a smoke house for cured meat, oil burning lamps, and a heap of resourcefulness. For us to think back on those times it would remind us of an episode of The Little House on the Praire, and it was like that in many ways.

My Great Grandfather worked for the Veterans Administration Hospital called Outwood, located just outside Dawson Springs. The hospital was there for veterans of the war and victims of Tuberculosis, an illness that plagued many in those days. He owned a car but since the road out to the Russell Home place was dirt he often had to park it on the highway and walk down the lane home, during the winter and rainy season.

My Great Grandmother was the homemaker, she had eight children starting with Raymond in 1920 and ending with Phillip in 1935. Four Boys: Raymond, William, Joseph "Joe", and Phillip; and four girls: Rudell, Pauline, Brunette (Nannie), and Aminell "Ami". Life was good.

My Aunt Aminell often said that during the depression they really didn't know the difference in the times, her Dad kept his job at the VA, they had cattle for milk and I assume meat, and also chickens, an orchard for fresh fruit and preserves, jams, and jellies to be canned and put aside for the winter, bee hives to pollinate the orchard and for honey, and of course a garden. Doesn't that sound wonderful. I can just imagine all the children running around the house, and the trees in the orchard swaying in the breeze, an American tale.

Mamaw, as Mrtyle was fondly described by her grandchildren, quilted and made the boys clothes and the girls dresses. Sometimes out of flower sacks, which was common in the day. She canned in order to save the bounty of their harvests for the winter months, she cooked and cleaned, and did all the other things that a mother of eight would have to do.

On Sundays the family would all attend church, all day sometimes and during the week the children attended the Menser School, a one room school house that I have described in a previous blog.

Old reel to reel films, tons of family photos and memorabilia, heirlooms and stories all paint the canvas of these two peoples lives. Two people that I never knew but feel connected to them through a family bond that keeps those ties alive. But even more so by the fact that when delving into my family history I do not find a horror story or a plain Jane family. I find these two great people who had a lot of love and they shared it with eight children, eight children that married and had families of their own and that love continued to spread. It spread so far that almost thirty years after their deaths their names are being brought up in a blog, something they would have never heard of. Love is good; Ollie J. and Mrtyle Russell understood that.

My Uncle William was killed in a car accident in the 1960s, in the 1990s my Aunt Rudell and my Grandmother Brunette passed away and my Uncle Raymond died in 2003 or 2004. Today the living members of this group include Pauline, Aminell, Joe and Phillip, (my Auntie Louise and Aunt Betty) and a score or more of grandchildren and the list goes on.

Life happens to us all in a way that is fast and we wake up one day and we wonder where the previous week, month or even the previous year went. When you have eight children you celebrate many birthdays and milestones and you suffer many hardships and down times too. During the War Mamaw and Papaw Russell had two boys overseas fighting with the Allies and two girls in Evansville, Indiana working in the factories and the shipyards. Later they would worry I am sure while my Uncle Joe served during the Korean War. The times that followed the wars were bright and those children married and gave them grandchildren and many Sunday dinners filled their home with love and laughter. They lived to lose a son in the 1960s, a pain that no one knows unless they experience it. They would live on into their eighties and live to see many of their grandchildren grow up and marry and start families of their own. They would live to the days that those same children, that they reared and loved so carefully would reciprocate that same love and care for them in their twilight years. And now a stone in the middle of a sea of granite marks their names and place in the world.

But, aside from that stone are a group of people, people who I know and love and respect. All people that have been touched by the goodness of these human lives. What greater epitaph is there than the reaffirmed appreciation, that passes more than one generation, speaking loudly that your life was lived well and because it was others flourished. I smile today to know that I had Great Grandparents like that and will strive each day to live up to the bar that they set so high.

That said, a lesson can always be learned and in this case it is a valuable one. I will not try to pin point its exactness since it has already been done. I close today's entry with an excerpt from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, that I believe to be more than fitting.

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men [sic] -- go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families -- re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem

Ollie J. Russell 1896~1981 Mrtyle Johnston Russell 1898~1983