Anthony Family History, Part 2

I found a note written by my great aunt Valera sharing her memories about my father's mother, Lou Alice Anthony Levell. As I read these letters, I connect more with my past, seeing the more real side to people I've always just thought of as "ancestors". One day, people will see my name on a page and just think of me as "an ancestor" too. That is if they even see my name. I wonder where old blogs go when time has passed by.

Think of all the things you do each day and how little those things will be remembered. I encourage you, and as well I ought to do the same, to print out anything that you type that you really want to remember. Who knows when all the things you send into cyberspace will be deleted by a perfect stranger who is just trying to make more room on a busy and over-taxed server! Everything you've written will be viewed not by its content, but by how much space it takes up. And actually, that's not far from how things have gone for thousands of years.

The elderly die, and there houses must be cleaned out before a week is up because the grown children have to go back to work, often times in another city. Bookshelves full of notebooks and journals and hand-written poems and stories - all are boxed for the auction or thrown in the trash because it would take forever to properly sort through them all. Every now and then one or two tid-bits gets saved and handed down from generation to generation. Well, here is one of those tid-bits written about my grandmother by her sister. Enjoy!

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES FOR LOU ALICE ANTHONY LEVELL

Written By: Valera Anthony Tindall

My first remembrance of Lou Alice was the year I was five. I have just a faint memory of anything up until then. That was the year 1922. We had moved from Kemp about 12 or 15 miles out in the country. I remember yet how I enjoyed living at that place. Our house set off the main road a few hundred yards. There was a deep creek that crossed the road and since the mail man passed that way it was necessary to have a good bridge over that creek. Papa and some neighbor men built a good, new bridge there and that was the gathering place for us kids on Sundays to get together and play. Also Lou Alice and Johnie and their friends took a lot of pictures sitting on that bridge. (I wish I had them)

Lou Alice was 15 years older that year and that was courting age. One of the boys in the community started calling on her. She was real pretty. With such blue eyes, wavy brown hair, very out-going but of a quiet nature, and I loved her very much.

This young man was several years older than Lou Alice. I think he wanted to marry her but she discouraged him. She had a date with him one Sunday evening and Mama & Papa made us kids stay outside and play. Everybody was very formal in those days.

We couldn't go in while they were courting. That young man spent the whole evening with her. Ree was 8 years old and full of mischief. She got tired staying outside and slipped into the house. She went into the room through a door to his back and crawled very quietly under the bed. She was right behind his chair where she could reach out and pretend she was going to pinch his legs. Lou Alice got tickled, but pretended to be laughing at their conversation. I don't know if Papa and Mama ever found out about that or not.

Beside the big house we lived in was a small two-room house with an up-stairs. Papa kept hay and peanuts in the upper room. That was also our play house. We would go up stairs and hold our meetings or play school. I remember one Sunday evening we were having a church service and Johnie was the preacher. He started calling for mourners. We all got up to go to the mourners bench and Ree bumped her head. She really did start crying and was fixing to turn and go to the house, but Johnie and Lou Alice said "no" go on. That's good, 'cause you are supposed to cry anyway.

That fall when crops were gathered we moved from that place a couple of miles and a family by the name of Levell moved in. There was several boys and some girls. They all got acquainted and it wasn't long until one of the boys became "smitten" by Lou Alice. He turned out to be Oather. She fell in love with him right away too. And before long they became engaged. That broke my heart because I was really foolish about her, and she was my sleeping mate. Cayce & I both cried at the thought of her getting married and leaving us.

Mama had a lot of pretty sun flowers that year and Lou Alice would stand among them and count off each petal -- "this year, next year." She said which ever it ended on told when she would marry. Each time it would end on "this year." She would become estatic and I would be heart broken. So they really did marry that year and she moved back to the place she had moved from just the year before.

Lou Alice had a beautiful voice. She sang a love song called "Tommy Don't Go." Another one called "The Great Divide, " was very popular in those days. It went something like this -- "Away out on the breast of the wonderful west, Across the great divide. With someone like you a pal good and true, I like to leave it all behind and go and find, A place that's known to God alone, Just a spot to call our own. We will build a little nest, Somewhere way in the west and let the rest of the world go by." She sang those love songs with Oather in her heart and mind. Their love for each other was very special and few people are blessed to find a love such as their's was.

Oather came courting Lou Alice in a Model "T" Ford. It didn't have a top. That is the first car I remember except our mail carrier. On Sunday evening he took Lou Alice for a drive. But he brought his widowed sister Rosa along that time for it was not proper for her to go off alone with him. I remember Rosa sat in the front seat between them even. After Oather and Lou Alice were married that summer -- in July I think, they came to visit us in that Model "T". Us kids could hardly wait for the weekend. Cayce and I would pretend we were Oather and Lou Alice and we would sit out in the car till it got so dark we were afraid to stay out any longer.

That fall they moved into a house of their own just around the curve from his family. They lived there several years and that's where you children were born, except Helen. Cayce and I spent a lot of time with them and that's when I met Leona. We were about the same age and so we would plan to visit them at the same time. Lou Alice had a lot of patience to allow us to spend so much time with them.

I was spending a week with them once and Oather went to Kemp that Saturday. He came home with the prettiest pink veil dress for Lou Alice. It was too large (She was about size 8) and he had to take it back.

Lou Alice had two little pet Bantams she was crazy about. Oather sold them to someone who was looking for Bantam chickens. When he told her, she broke down and cried. He was so sorry and promised to get her some more. I remember how he tenderly held her in his arms. She wasn't angry just sad. I never remember them being angry at each other.

I remember the Tabernacle across the field from where we lived. In the summer during their protracted meetings, we could sit on our front porch and hear the beautiful singing. A couple of songs I still seem to hear Lou Alice sing. One was "I was sinking deep in Sin." The other one was "Higher Ground." It went like this -- "Lord, lift me up and let me stand, by faith on Heaven's stable land, a higher plain than I have found, Lord, plant my feet on higher ground." She sang it with so much feeling I believe I could, at my young age, detect the seriousness she felt. I believe she helped to inspire my love for singing. I learned to pick up tunes easily from hearing her sing.

Lou Alice worked hard. In less than four years after she was married, she had her third baby. But she never complained. Just to be by Oather's side was heaven to her.

In the fall of 1927 our good times ended. That fall, the Levell family all moved back to Hubbard, and Papa had rented a place at Eustace. I don't remember for sure but I think they all stopped at our house the night they left. I can remember Maud and Opal kissing Papa good-bye and said he looked so much like their own Daddy, who had died about a year earlier. We were all so sad about being separated.

We didn't see Lou Alice again till the next summer of 1928. Lou Alice & Oather came for a visit. You children had grown so much and what a thrill it was for all of us to be together again, except for the fact Little Jack had just passed away a few weeks earlier. Poor Lou Alice, only 21 years old and so much living crowded into her short life. We never saw her again. "As I write this the tears are falling, and my throat is choking." The beautiful memory I have of her will last forever. She died the next year 1929.

She wrote us often before she died and sent pictures so we could see how fast the children were growing. They were planning to visit us that summer again. They were anxious for us to see the new baby girl (Helen). But Lou Alice became real sick. They sent for Papa. We were all heart broken. He said she told him she wanted to go home.

You children had a wonderful Mother and Father. They were beautiful inside. I wish you could have known your Mother too, but it was not God's will. Someday though you will understand and be satisfied. Then you will all be re-united and can shout together, for God has truly planted her feet on Higher Ground.

(Valera Anthony Tindall)

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I can't imagine how hard that must have been on my father's family with his mom dying so young. By the way, I was named after my father's father, Johnie Oather Levell.


--Johnie