MOTHER

 

MOTHER

 

  Born in Wichita Falls, Texas on November 27, 1915; Sarah Geneva Mosley was the daughter of an itinerant worker who did everything from picking cotton to painting smoke stacks on large factories. A photo from childhood shows her and two sisters standing beside a tent where they no doubt lived during the turbulent 1920’s. Second oldest, she doesn’t reveal the resolute character that was to become her destiny, but her meager beginnings no doubt established her stubborn determination to survive. Her childhood would never include a stable home with roots to come back to. Oscar Mike and Annie Ruth Mosley worked throughout West Texas picking cotton in Munday, Wichita Falls and Sweetwater Texas and by the end of the 1920’s they had migrated through Colorado working on vegetable growing farms. The great East Texas oil discovery in the late 1920’s drew them back to Texas where he worked in the oil fields.

  
                

From left is Aunt Ethel, Grandmother Annie Ruth Compton Moseley                                               Mother at age 14 in 1929

Aunt Edith in lap, Grandfather Oscar Mike Moseley and Mother

 

  Her father died from a freakish misunderstanding while walking down the sidewalk on New Years Eve in Gladewater, Texas. In 1930, this piney woods east Texas town became the site of a massive oil strike that caused it to blossom from a sleepy village of 500 into a bustling boomtown of over 8,000.  Filled with wooden derricks and roughnecks, it thrived in the midst of the great depression. Oscar Mike Moseley and his brother Ed were big men, but as the story was retold to us, Oscar Mike was pistol whipped by a Texas Ranger who thought he had made a derogatory remark toward him while passing the ranger on a crowded wooden sidewalk.  He hit his head on the curb as he fell from the beating and died in the local hospital where Mother’s future Mother-in-law attended him. Mother was sixteen at the time and I’m sure that her life became a lot more complicated after that. We don’t know how she met Dad, but it must have been shortly after that.

 

     

  Dad and Mother about a month before they married in May of 1933

 

  She had no roots for her entire life until she married Dad a couple of years later, in Gladewater. On June 23, 1933, at the age of seventeen and a half, she married the love of her life, Steve Warbritton and embarked on the happiest phase of her life. Their playful staging of photos, taken just before their marriage around his Chevrolet coupe, evidences a joy and camaraderie that she may have never before experienced. Though he was a bricklayer by trade, he started working for Magnolia Oil Company and they moved to Vivian Louisiana. In 1939 their first son Michael was born in Rodessa, Louisiana and she became the loving mother and wife that would define her happy years. They developed great life-long friends and they created cherished memories to share for the rest of their lives. She still didn’t have much as far as earthly possessions, but she was no longer wandering and she had a family of her own. Their second son, Ted, was born in Marshall Texas in 1942 shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War.

  The war created tumultuous change to the entire world and obviously affected Mother and Dad. After their third son and last attempt for a daughter (me) was born in late 1943, Dad went to the west coast to find work in a defense plant. Mother’s sisters moved out to the Bay area and worked in the shipyards around Oakland, Berkley, and Richmond. Although he was 34 years old, Dad was drafted and disembarked for duty in the Pacific as a naval CB. Mother worked as a clerk in a JC Penny department store and her sisters worked in shipbuilding. I don’t know if they were a “Rosie the Riveter” but I do know they all worked on building ships for the war.

            Mother circa 1940                                                                                  Unhappy Mom just before Dad

                                                              shipped overseas in 1945                                     

         
                                 

                                                    

 In late November 1945, when Dad was discharged, they drove to Texas and decided to move to west Texas where the dry air would benefit my brother Mike’s asthma. Dad’s brother had moved to Sweetwater, Texas and built a home so Dad bought 2 lots next door to build his home. Mother moved to her mother’s farm in Throckmorton, Texas with the children while Dad built the house in Sweetwater. He was now a full time brick mason and he built a modest two room stucco home that was probably the first real home of their own.

  I believe the next eight years were the most joyous and satisfying of her life. The post-war environment of America produced a strong kinship between everyone who survived, and an overwhelming need to be connected to family and friends. We lived in a community that was heavily influenced by German-American immigrants who had recently fought for their new country. Mother loved to dance and so did everyone in the neighborhood. It seems that every Saturday night in the summer, we would go to a different home and watch Mother and Dad dance the polka, the schottische, the Texas Swing or a graceful waltz. Mother was the belle of the ball; everyone loved her and Dad and invited them to every neighborhood party. They were a perfect partnership of precision as they glided over the smooth wooden floors. As a youngster, I would sit with the other children on the outskirts of the dance floor and watch them maneuver effortlessly through each of the various steps. The women’s hooped-skirts swished softly as they twirled and spun through the difficult dances. The entire scene was mesmerizing; the music, the swirling couples, the smiling faces and the laughter of the dancers.

  These were pre-television days and life was simpler and richer. Everyone relished life and lived every moment because they had all known someone who had not survived the war. Board games and card games were very popular in that era. Canasta was the absolute rage of the day. Many pleasant weekends were spent playing canasta, dominoes or the famous “42” at the home of friends or relatives. Mother and Dad were usually partners and I remember that they both played very well. Television was in it’s infancy and available only to the well-to-do, so we sat around the radio in the living room to listen to Fibber Magee and Molly, Our Miss Brooks, The Green Hornet, and western stories or mystery stories. We played 78 and 33.3 rpm records of Patti Paige, Doris Day, Hank Williams, Hank Snow or Little Jimmie Dickens and listened to AM radio because there was no FM radio. Mother curled up in her favorite chair and crocheted while the programs played. Survivors of that terrible war developed deep religious convictions and were faithful to their church and God. We were devoted members of the Fundamental Baptist Church; Dad was a deacon and Mother a faithful member of the flock.

  Mother loved to cook and she made desserts that everyone raved about. She made chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and pecan brownies with chocolate icing that we all eagerly devoured. Her fruit cake and German chocolate cake at Christmas were a special treat to all. She especially loved to cook for the holidays and we certainly anticipated any meal she prepared. Her meatloaf was my favorite. I used to sit in the kitchen while she prepared these meals and she would let me taste of the batter before she baked, or give me a first taste out of the oven. She enjoyed sewing and once sewed shirts with various states imprinted on them for my two brothers and me. She learned to crochet and spent many hours creating doilies with florals adorning them. Mike had been in the cub scouts and had graduated into the boy scouts; Mother hauled him to his meetings and then took me to the cub scouts wearing his old uniform. Mother finally had a family, a home and a circle of friends that loved and cherished her; she had the life that she had never been able to enjoy before. I can only imagine how fulfilled she felt now that her life was ordered and complete.

 

                                         Mother in Sweetwater circa 1950 

               

                            Mother & Dad in Sweetwater circa 1954 

 

  Like a car wreck, that you don’t see coming, that you can’t plan for, that suddenly happens and you feel that your whole life shifts into slow motion as the uncontrollable events start occurring; her life was unalterably changed. In 1952 she was diagnosed with lymphoma and everything she had accomplished in her life was threatened, as her doctors recommended immediate surgery. She had a radical mastectomy of the left breast and the removal of the adjoining lymph nodes. To care for her boys while she had the operation, they sent us to stay on a farm in west Texas with her sister, Aunt Millie. We were young and oblivious to the life threatening nature of her condition. She especially protected me, as the youngest, so that I would not be overly concerned about her condition. It was at this time that she first showed the intrepidity that would carry her through the next nine years.

  She would talk to me and tell me that she was ill, but not to worry because she was going to fight it and get over it. She showed me her scars and told me that they had removed the cancer and she would be well soon. But the ruthless and relentless tentacles of the disease were back the following year. She had a radical mastectomy of the right breast while we spent another summer on the farm. By the end of the school year in 1954, we moved to get closer to better medical facilities than the small town of Sweetwater could provide. We eventually landed in Marshall Texas where Mother and Dad had spent some of the early years of their married life. Mother really wanted to be in Fort Worth where there were better cancer treatments, but she felt better and they tried east Texas first. After only one year, her condition worsened and her prognosis was diminished, so we moved back to Fort Worth. I started sixth grade in Fort Worth and Mother started radiation treatment for her cancer. Modern medicine in 1956 would be considered archaic treatment in today’s world. She required heavy medication for the intense pain she suffered. The treatment itself caused her a great deal of discomfort.

  Over the next few years, she maintained a remarkable outlook on life. In spite of the disease, the heavy medications and the painful treatments, she displayed a cheerful demeanor. Friends would visit her to cheer her up, and would be surprised to find her laughing and joking and encouraging them. During many of her long and agonizing nights, I would stay up and watch television with her until the test patterns would appear. Her favorites were I Love Lucy, Red Skelton and Jack Parr; the humor took her mind off of her pain. I don’t know what she did after that, but she would speak to me softly and send me to bed, then face her trials through the rest of the night. She was an avid fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers; she kept a complete box scorecard and recorded every pitch and hit during the 1955 and 1956 World Series. She would stroke and tally each pitch as a ball or strike, and joyously cheer when Duke Snider or Roy Campanella hit a home run. Don Drysdale was her favorite pitcher and she clapped joyously at each strikeout he pitched. She hated it when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, but she was still a fan.

  Aunts came and stayed with us for months at a time and finally we were old enough to help take care of her ourselves. Numerous times her doctors would tell her that she had only a matter of months to live, but still she hung on, and desperately fought the icy fingers that would take her life. Her onocologist said that she had a strong will to live and that her resolve itself was keeping her alive. She suffered beyond any human’s tolerance should have allowed. But cancer has no friends; it has only one purpose, to spread its malignancy. Eventually it moved into her stomach and other vital organs and she had to be moved into the hospital. We prayed that God would spare her and bring her back one more time, but it was not to be. This brave woman fought for nine years before she succumbed. I would like to think that she fought to see me through till I was an adult, but that is selfish, she fought to be with all of us; to show that even if you can’t defeat your adversary, you can conquer the spirit of your enemy. She never let it conquer her invincible spirit, and even through excruciating pain she maintained lucid relationships with all those she loved.  In her last days at home, she listened to her seventeen year old son’s questions about homework assignments and gave him sound advice to guide him. She was truly amazing to be able to concentrate on others’ concerns in the middle of so many problems that she faced herself. When visitors came to cheer her, they came away uplifted, by her humor and good will that she displayed to them. Many were amazed that she could be in such good spirits while in such pain. Her spirit was simply indomitable in the midst of her calamity.

  Mother died on the morning of March 1, 1962 and never saw her first grandchild, James Michael; who was born at the same hospital in the afternoon of the same day. I was a senior in high school and was devastated, even though     I knew it was inevitable. The church was filled with family and those who had grown to love her; many of my school friends attended her funeral in Fort Worth and then her frail remains were taken to a little cemetery at Woodlawn, Texas, deep in the piney woods. At the end of a tree lined, oil-topped country road, you open the wrought iron gate to go through the brick archway and enter this peaceful sanctuary nestled deep in the forest. One of her dear friends from Vivian Louisiana came by and paid her respects to a woman who was her lifelong friend and companion. She was laid to rest in a brick vault that had been lovingly prepared by friends and family. It’s been over forty-five years since she was placed there, but it still warms my heart and brings a flow of tears to my eyes to stop by and chat with her, and now Dad lies next to her too. I can only imagine what a sweet reunion that was in Heaven. I always bring flowers because she loved them so much. Her favorites were roses and gardenias.

   Mother was an inspiration to everyone who knew her. She lifted every spirit who came in contact with her. She endured thresholds of pain that we can only imagine. When I think of great courage and great determination, I think of Mother. Indisputable character, immeasurable love, and indomitable courage were avid descriptors of her. Add loving-kindness, unselfishness, gentleness, humor and genuine meekness and you have completed the full measure of the wonderful lady I called Mother.

 

 

 

 

Sarah Geneva Mosley Warbritton 11/27/1915 – 03/01/1962

 

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come".

- ( Julius Ceasar -Act II, Scene II).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Written by David Warbritton exclusively for the Warbritton family