"A Loe Family Proclamation"

*not from a bulletin but, in fact, a blown-up, hand-made poster that seems intended to have hung in (my) great-grandmother Loe's nursing home room. 

Dear Service Provider,

Please let us recount to you how the frail, wrinkled little body you labor over in this bed is worthy of your most diligent ministrations.

She is but a shadow of her former self, making her family all the more solicious of her tender and safe keeping.

Though there is a Higher reason she is worthy, we want to mention a few of the reasons.

In January 1991, she will enter her fiftieth year as a citizen of Terry County, where she has served well in making a better life for citizens of the county.

In 1942, the first crop year she and her husband farmed here -a frightening time of mobilization for war, they and their family produced enough cotton to give a change of shirts and perhaps a change of underwear for the entire then city of Lubbock, including airmen at the air bases. This is at least approximately correct, for they produced about 63,000 pounds of baled cotton. Additionally, they raised and sold grainsorgums by the carloads. There was also a full range of produce from the animals and the gardens in the fields. Then, as now, the contribution of farmers does not show up in the prices people are willing to pay.

We saw them raise and give away vegetable produce literally by pickup truck loads-with sideboards! This was for poor residents of the towns.

Additionally, she served Terry County as county welfare officer for fifteen years. In dealing with welfare cases she was a splendid mixture of velvet and steel. She had twin interests -keeping free-loaders off the rolls, and ministering to those genuinely in need. Hers was a position of not only giving away surplus commodities, but it was also one of constant search for ways of meeting special needs of hurting people. In the same week these services, provided by private citizens, could include used clothing for some, or an airline ticket to the burn hospital in Galveston. She knew every kind-hearted pocketbook in the area, and many around here can testify that she worked them.

This particular statement is a contradiction of sorts: during eight years of those fifteen years, she was a sheriff's deputy! In this capacity she served without pay. There were twin reasons why she was deputized: one, she had bought a house in a dangerous part of town -the best she could do. Second, she peddled Avon products in the most dangerous part of town! Though the sheriff was uneasy about her, she was unfazed by danger.

Mr. or Mrs. service provider: recounted here is an incident of which her family is supremely proud of her; her humanity showed all the way through.

On the day her youngest son, Rals Jr. was buried, June 7, 1962 following an automobile accident, she looked at the mountains of fancy food on her table when she arrived back at the house after the funeral. .She said, "son, this food will ruin if left here; I know a lot of hungry people in this town. let's load it up and take it to the hungry people. That day, we went into places where the people had never seen fancy salads like the ones we were delivering to them.

Then, just a few days before her disabling accident, she remembered the house located in a big sand pile where we went and where the kitchen was floored by deep sand. And she said, "Do you remember how the little children clapped their hands when they saw us drive up?" Her very presence was good news.

Then, in the early 1980's, at the urging of columnist Billie Norman, she sat down and wrote the chronicles of her life. They are a story of how, as a fifteen-year old girl, it was to move to west Texas in a covered wagon. She recounted the excitement of falling in love and establishing a family, and how hard the times were, especially in the 1930's during the Depression.

This prejudiced scribe was amazed that this woman who counted her schooling in months, could do such a good job of organizing her material. Her family were not the only ones who thought she did a good job in telling what it was like during the first half of the twentieth century in west Texas, but there is evidence others thought so, too! The Texas Tech Library sought and obtained the story, and now her account is a part of the permanent Southwest Collection at the Texas Tech Library!

She met all the good traits of a Godly woman mentioned in Proverbs 31. We are proud to call her Mom.

So, we, her family petition you for your tenderest ministrations, and we thank you for them. For your care was manifest during even the first ten minutes after her arrival.

Her Family