Today, mothers everywhere are being showered with cards and flowers and all sorts of gifts of love.At Sylacauga Health Care, Lillian Vera Warren Carter Thornton, 94, is one of those mothers, and on this Mother’s Day she is thinking back over the years that have brought her to this point in her life.
Vera had six children — four daughters, Allie Thornton, who is deceased, Joyce Nelson, Jeanette Wilson of Sylacauga and Patricia Thornton of Pensacola. Fla.; and two sons, Rickey Thornton of Sylacauga and Bob Carter of Alexander City. Not only is Vera is revered and admired today, she’s lovingly cared for every day.
While she is the mother of six children, she has 24 grandchildren, 36 great-grandchildren and 26 great-great-grandchildren, giving her a total of 92 descendants.
It has not been easy for Vera to raise her family, especially when she started out in the heart of the Depression. Even as a child, times were hard.
Vera was born on New Year’s Day in 1914, and only had one sister. They were orphaned at an early age when both parents died in a tuberculosis epidemic.
They went to live with their grandfather and an aunt in the Avondale Mill village, known as Walco. She was 5 years old.
Vera remembers that it was right in the middle of the Depression. “I remember having a barrel of dried peas at Grandpa’s, and in the morning we would pick enough of the peas out of the shells for our meal. Sometimes we had bread to go with them and sometimes we didn’t.”
She recalled the peddler who came by once a month and they traded a hen to him for two bars of soap. “That soap was used to wash clothes, dishes, take a bath and whatever else we needed soap for,” she said. “But it had to last a month.”
Vera recalled her husband’s first job. “He was working on a bridge. He walked about 11 miles round trip to work, and he made 50 cents a day,” she said.
She quit school when she was 14 and went to work in the cotton mill spinning room. “I made $9.90 every two weeks,” she said.
She said the first car she ever saw belonged to a Dr. Lane at Drummond Frazier Hospital. “It was also made to fight fires,” she said, adding that there was a big hose rolled up on the back.
She said the first car she and her husband owned cost $90, and they paid for it in payments of $10 a month.
Vera said some of her babies were born at Drummond Frazier Hospital, “but my first baby was born at home on a shuck mattress.”
Time has taken its toll on this mother, and she is now unsteady on her feet. Bruises cover her face from the many falls she has taken in recent weeks.
She sits in her recliner at Sylacauga Health Care and reminisces about her family and the days she spent raising them. She thinks about Thomas Hill and Sunnybrook in Walco, and the washhouse she had when she lived on Tennessee Avenue in the mill village.
She said she wonders why she’s lived so long. “Nobody in my family in any generation has ever lived this long,” she said.
She has a strong faith and said that may be why she’s still here so she can continue to pray for her family.
She said she has lived through so many hard times she definitely doesn’t believe in moaning and groaning over your troubles. “God has always reminded me in hard times that I’ve never had it as hard as His Son did.
“My mother always taught us we have to have some bitter before we can enjoy the sweet,” she said. “That’s what I’ve tried to teach my family. When I see them doing something wrong, I correct them, and sometimes they call me old-fashioned. Well, I am and I’m proud of it!”
Vera’s Mother’s Day cards line the walls of her room, and she pointed to one she likes very much. It reads in part: “When I was little, I thought you were the best mother anyone could wish for. Now that I am not little anymore, I know you are the best mother a person could ever hope for!”
