By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams
One of the things
I loved most about my childhood was having our grandmother, Mama’s mother,
Ludie Smith Bass, live with us. She was such a sweetheart and I wish I’d been
old enough to truly appreciate just who she was in my life. Of course, I was
aware that she was Mama’s mother, but I had no clue about the people she knew
and from whom she descended.
It took me many
years to finally begin the search for my roots, on all sides. But Granny’s are
some I rarely write about. Mainly because I didn’t know much about that side of our family.
Granny’s mother
and father, I do know—Turner Thomas Smith and Elizabeth Gilbert, and sisters and
brothers, but off the top of my head, I can’t tell you all their names. That is
so sad to me. These are the people who influenced Granny’s early years, thus,
the remainder of her life.
