Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Mom set great example

My 92-year-old mother, Faye Sloan, will spend Mother’s Day in assisted living.

My parents raised six kids, a granddaughter and three great-grandsons. (My father passed away in 1990.)

With so many mouths to feed, money was scarce, but mother would have starved to death before letting us go hungry.

The granddaughter eventually married a young black man, and had two sons. After her divorce, my parents helped raise them.

In the piney-woods of Mt. Vernon, Texas, the races mingle freely in our integrated schools. But, isolated weeds know no boundaries.

The great-grandsons became good-looking, athletic and popular. A few white fathers, including lawmen, with attractive daughters were not fans.

Some senseless white and black teenagers made late-night calls threatening to slit my parents’ throats.

Through it all, even after my dad’s death, mother took her great-grandsons to restaurants, games and other school functions. Outwardly meek, she confronted lawmen who harassed them, and teachers who treated them differently.

Although farm work denied my parents high school diplomas, what I am most appreciative of on Mother’s Day is the advanced education they gave our extended family — now including whites, blacks, Hispanics, Japanese, Kazakhstanians and Indonesians — about simply doing what is right.

 
 
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