© 2024 University of Missouri - KBIA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Mid-Missourians tell us about their mothers

ninahale
/
Flickr

In a collaboration with KOMU, and the Columbia Missourian, KBIA asked our listeners "What one word describes your mother?"  The Columbia Missourian wrote up some of the great answers we got.

Here's a couple of submissions, find the rest at the Columbia Missourian:

Scott Sowle:

"Forgiven. I was left alone with my grandparents and separated from my only brother at the age of 4 and he 2. After 35 plus years and my brother being lied to that I never existed, we are together. My mother still has never contacted and refuses to explain why the separation. I've relayed the message that she is forgiven and that I love her, still no response."

 

Ida Fogle:

"Resolute. My mother has always faced what needs doing and done it. She was born into a sharecropping family in Arkansas in 1925. She began picking cotton at age five. When she was in her late teens, her parents moved to Indiana seeking work, and she took care of five younger siblings all on her own until their parents could send for them. During World War II, she worked as a welder, a la Rosie the Riveter. Then she went on to raise six children of her own, as well as caring for many others over the years, often in trying circumstances — putting in long days running a dairy farm for a while; putting in equally long days managing a small-town cafe; babysitting in-home while my dad worked all day and went to night school. Often she didn't know how the next month's bills would be paid, but she always figured it out in time. Now, she's 87 and in a nursing home, yet is concerned that she's not putting anyone out any more than she needs to. Her life has been unimaginably difficult at times, but if she ever felt sorry for herself, she never showed it. She just kept working."