A Mother's Life

    My mother died yesterday, it wasn't the day before, and this is not a retelling, or to use the Hollywood parlance, retooling, of Albert Camus’ famous work, but she actually did pass away yesterday.  For some it will seem morbid, my writing, what must seem like mechanically, about her death so suddenly after the fact, however for me, that is what I am, a writer, and in order to fully process what every person must process each time they confront death, I must write about it, write about her, Mother.  I never called her Mother, not usually, sometimes, when trying to be funny or sarcastic, I would address her as such, but for all my life the term that I used was Mom.  Mother was a 19^th Century, an 18^th Century term, very rarely used, especially at the end of the 20^th Century, after the Great Depression and World Wars, the Nuclear Family resigned the term Mother to the past and ushered in the term Mom.  Today I hear young people call their mothers things like “old lady” or “grandma” (way before the term even applies), a lackadaisical attitude, what I see as a lack of respect for their position in the family. 

            If you want to know about a person then read their obituary, it was something I had learned while studying genealogy.  Obituaries, more so than census records, told you about a person, of course, they told you the who, the what, and most specifically, then when and whens.  When was the person born, and when did the person die.  Census records may have told you how many were in the home, who they were, what they did for a living, at that specific time in history, but an obituary told you who they were.  Some would talk about their careers, the organizations they belonged to, the church they attended, any military service, any vocation or avocation, any hobby or passing interest.  An obituary told you who they were.  Today, however, and I long suspected, but was truly told, the newspaper only wants 100 words, anything more and they charge you extra.  Charge you extra?!?  For a few words about a person’s life, a person’s whole existence comes down to thirty-five cents a word extra?  So the obituary I had written about my own mother’s passing had to be whittled down, it had already been a paltry 184-words originally, the first paragraph of this work you are reading contains more than a 184-words, but whittled it down I did to beneath the 100-word limit.  Gone was the name of the step-father that had raised her from a five-year-old until she ran off to get married, gone were the names of her children’s spouses and the names of the places they live, gone was any explanation of how she lived her life, where she had lived her life, with whom she had lived her life.  Out of that word limit the name of her final husband of 33 years survived, as well as the names of her children, but her grandchildren & great-grandchildren and even great-great-grandchild was reduced to just numbers.  The obituary is functional today, in the 21^st Century, but functional to a sterility that scares me about the future, if we are this careless, and only interested in profit that a full obituary cannot be ran, free of charge, for a person’s life, a life that extended over seven decades, then the future is hopeless. 

            With no proper obituary to tell you of Mom’s life, I will take to the 21^st Century’s other option for immortalizing others, the digital highway.  The digital world where immortality can finally be gained, but where also it can be lost in the blinding amount of Ones and Zeros hurtling through wires, cables, and airwaves, but at least for this moment in time, I can attempt to tell who she was, how she came into this world, how she lived, and was raised….I can tell the story of her triumphs and her defeats, her ups and downs.  No longer will I have to save some stories forever, in hopes of not upsetting people’s opinions or slanting their viewpoints, now I can tell what I hope is her story to my satisfaction, if only for my children, and their children, and if there are people who read and disagree, have disparaging viewpoints, or opinions, great…bless you, and I hope that you feel as strongly about your opinions and professions as I obviously feel about mine, however I can tell you that as her son I feel my opinions and professions are just as valid as most everyone else’s.  I have 8 brothers and sisters who each have their own, unique opinions on the matters, and may posses information of events or specific instances in her life that I do not, and that is wonderful as well, for they posses something I will never, not even if they share it, which most have shared stories, even while not in our parents’ or fellow siblings presences, but nevertheless, they can hold very differing opinions themselves with me on mine, and again, this does not trouble me, move me, or effect me, or my opinions or stories any.  Most of what I will be telling you is correct, at least in my mind, and if not, well that’s just too bad, it’s the story I am telling, and if you are willing to come along, I will tell you the tale of my mother, and how she got to be that way, as my way of immortalizing her and remembering her, properly, to me.

My Mother, my Mom, was born Patrechia JoAnn Beck to Alfonse Beck and Edith Mae Hampton in the small mining town of Desloge, Missouri.  I never knew much about her father, I never met the man when he lived.  I served as a pallbearer at his funeral, the only time I saw the man and only time I met my mother’s only brother.  Her parents had divorced when she was very young and relations between her and her biological father were strained, to say the least.  She would tell me about visiting him in his final days, how he was mostly blind and an attempt at reconciliation came on his part.  She never was able to tell me much about him, my attempts to find out more information stymied by inaccurate records, and again by obituaries that lack substantial information.  The facts I do know are sparse; Alfonse was born in 1901, although the place of birth is unknown to me.  There are rumors that he was born in Illinois to German immigrant parents, or grandparents.  Other rumors suggest that when he was a young man there was trouble with another family after Alfonse became involved with one of their daughters.  He came to Missouri to avoid legal troubles in Illinois, was the story.  His bride to be, Edith Mae Hampton, was the daughter of John Newton Hampton and Ida Mae LaRose, whose family were from Ste. Genevieve County, Missouri.  She was one of five daughters; Alma, Sadie, Audrey, and Nellie.  Little Alma Hampton died in infancy and the four Hampton sisters survived into adulthood.  Edith had been born in 1905, and sometime before 1929 she married the German from Illinois. 

Their first child, John Henry Beck, was born on February 3^rd, 1929 but it would be over ten years before another child was born.  I do not profess to know about the state of the marriage between Alfonse and Edith, suffice to say that within five years of the birth of my mother in August of 1939, the marriage would be dissolved and Edith would marry another.  On March 11^th, 1945 Edith Hampton Beck married Grover Jones; she was his second wife.  Grover had six children with his first wife, Carrie Blackwell, who passed away in 1940.  Grover and Carrie had been married since 1915, a thirty-five year marriage before her passing.  He was 12 years older than Edith and took her, and her children in as his own.  Most of Grover’s six previous children were raised, and gone from the home, when he married Edith.  He was a miner, as many people in the Leadbelt Area were then, and provided a good home for the two children of his new wife.  The two remained married for the rest of their lives, with Grover passing away in 1966 and Edith in 1969.  Another two grandparents I never got to meet and never got to know.  Suffice to say that Patrechia and John Henry were raised in a well-to-do manner, little Patsy, as she was called, was spoiled, to say the least. 

John Henry left home and joined the military.  He may have returned home to Desloge, Missouri to visit family in the early days, I’m not certain, but it is known he lived the Army life, transferring from duty station to duty station and eventually retiring to Lexington, Kentucky as a full Colonel in the U.S. Army.  He never returned to Missouri to live and lived out the remainder of his life in Kentucky.  Patrechia, on the other hand, continued to live in Missouri, off and on, the rest of her life, and what a life it was, filled with happiness but also with a huge amount of sadness.

At some point Patrechia married or at least I believe she married as I can find no record of the marriage at all.  What is known is that she gave birth to her first child, Elizabeth, in 1956 at the age of 17, the father being a man named Gene Christopher.  A second daughter, Pamela, was born in 1958, only fourteen months later, when Patrechia was still only 18.  Both of those daughters, who survive her, also brought forth children at the tender ages of 17.  Nothing else is known about Gene Christopher, other than he was a vicious man who would beat his young bride, a drunkard that was nothing but a swindler and cheat his remaining days.  The marriage, if in fact there ever was one, did not last long, as Pamela was born in February of 1958 and by 1959 she was remarried to Donald Joseph Hamm and pregnant with their first child, Donald, Junior who was born in 1960.  During this entire time, Patrechia continued to live in Missouri.  Her two eldest daughters had been taken in by her parents; Grover and Edith, to be raised as their own, some paperwork indicates that the two were adopted by Grover and Edith.  My sisters are my own aunts, great way to start life.

Eventually, after the death of Grover and Edith, the two elder daughters were taken in by one of Edith’s sisters, but that did not last long and eventually they were kept in the Presbyterian Home for Children in nearby Farmington, Missouri.  To say their upbringing was difficult is an understatement, both had been brought into their grandparents’ home to live, and mostly probably spoiled a bit, but upon the death of their grandparents that lifestyle changed.  It’s been stated to me, personally, by members of Grover’s family, descendants of his children with his first wife, that Edith was unstable, mentally.  Mother had always told stories about members of her family that were that way, unstable, mentally.  It’s no surprise then, that Edith’s sisters were also unstable, attempting on at least one occasion, according to my sister-aunts, to kill the young children by trying to drown them in a bathtub.  The two girls eventually found men to take care of them; Pamela marrying Stanley Williford, of Elvins, Missouri, a fine man that worked hard for his family.  Those two remain married to this day.  They had two children, but lost their son, Stanley, Junior several years ago.  They have two grandchildren from their son and three grandchildren from their daughter, Lori Philbert.  Their life as also been marked with happiness and a fair amount of sadness.  Elizabeth never could find happiness, albeit it could be argued that she may have not found it with one particular man (she has been married three times; George Morgan, Darrell Abney, and Jason Barlow) but instead in being a mother, having had two daughters, Shannon and Nicole, with her first husband George and five children with her second husband Darrell.  Her oldest daughter with Darrell, Samantha Charlene Abney, passed away in late 2011, while her other children still survive; Darrell Patrick Abney, Casey Lynn Abney, Michael Eugene Abney, and Jayme Lynn Abney. 

Patrechia’s second child from her second marriage was named after her mother, Edith Margaret Hamm, and born in Los Angeles, California.  Her third, and final child with Donald Hamm (known to friends and family as “Doke”), was Harold Lee Hamm and he was also born locally in Missouri.  This began her travels in life, from what I can tell.  She was still just only 20 when her son, Donald “Joe” Hamm, Junior, and had never known life outside of Missouri.  Doke had taken her to California, certainly to look for work, but that was short-lived, as was the marriage.  The final child, Harold, was born in 1963 and by 1968 she was divorced again.  She was not yet 30 years old, twice divorced and the mother of five children. 

She would meet her third and final husband in 1968 or 1969.  Gene Bannister was born in 1931 in Farmington, Missouri, the son of Richard William Bannister and the former Ruby Lee Zolman, daughter of the local Justice of the Peace, John Philip Zolman.  Richard came from working stock, his father Edward had been a miner in nearby Bonne Terre, Missouri.  Gene was the third child for Richard and Ruby and it being the Great Depression they were unable to afford to raise him alongside his older brothers Richard, Junior and Lynn Z. Bannister.  Instead, Gene was raised until the age of 8 or 9 by his maternal grandmother and her second husband, Mary Leota Level and Henry Mitchell.  In fact, on one of his early school report cards, his name was given as Gene Mitchell.  Eventually, with World War Two on the horizon, Gene came back to live at home.  His two older brothers left to join the military, Richard “Bill” Junior to the Army and Lynn “Buddy” to the Navy.  Bill was injured during basic training, having been shot in the eye during live fire exercises; however Buddy rode out the war as an electrician aboard the USS San Juan, a career he continued throughout his life.  Back at the Bannister home, Gene was joined by his youngest brother, Roger Dale Bannister, in 1940.  He too didn’t stay home long and his first marriage resulted in two daughters, Dianna in 1951 (when he was 20) and Rebecca in 1953.  That marriage did not last long, as Gene had a propensity for trouble and was in and out of jail and prison in his youth. 

There were rumors of a third child born to the marriage, a child conceived while Gene was in prison and basically bartered away via the Sheriff to a good family wanting a child.  Another child, by the first wife, was rumored to be Gene’s as well, but on his deathbed he confessed that the child was not his.  The marriage did not last and Gene did not remarry for all of the 1950s and most of the 1960s, although a search of local obituaries show a woman named Emma Mae Bannister passing away in late 1967.  The obituary names Gene as her husband, but in talking with him during his lifetime, he confessed that he never married the woman but allowed her to be buried with his name, as they had lived as husband and wife.  She was 11 years his senior, having been born in 1920, but, according to my father, passed away at the young age of 47 after having fallen down some stairs at a St. Louis restaurant.  He told how they were driving down to Farmington from St. Louis when she just slumped over in the passenger seat and passed away.  It was thought a blood clot had done her in, from the fall, but suffices to say that left Gene a divorced widower at the age of 36 years-old.  His eldest daughter, Dianna (known forever to family as “Pixie”) was being raised by his parents, Richard and Ruby, and the younger daughter, Becky, was with her mother.  The divorce decree had given each parent sole custody of one child, so that neither had to pay the other child support.

My mother once told me the story of how her and my father had met.  According to her, a friend of hers had set her up on a blind date with a man, and that man was not my father.  He had come along with his friend, a sort of wing man to the blind date, but after several drinks it was obvious that Patrechia and Gene were destined to be together.  One time, while travelling together from Florida to Missouri, my father told me something about those early days.  They had gone out to a place in what was known as the Stockyards, a company town for the St. Louis National Stockyards Company, where cattle was sold, by the late-1960s, the Stockyards was a rough and tumble place, eventually absorbed by nearby Fairmount City, Illinois.  My father confessed that at first, the arrangement between him and my mother was an arrangement of convenience; he needed a place to live, she needed a place to live.  They both had children from previous marriages and possibly could raise them together.  He told me, that sunny day as he drove, that he did not love my mother, at first, but came to love her.  The two remained married the rest of their lives, despite how it began, those two remained a married couple, raising their children together.

Married in 1969, Patrechia and Gene welcomed a son in June of 1970, Eugene Junior, and in 1972 had a second, and final, child, Jeffery Lynn Bannister.  I was born in Jefferson City, Missouri and celebrated my first birthday at a roadside park with a Hostess Cupcake for a birthday cake.  Within the year, Patrechia’s children by her second husband were living with her and her new husband.  The family moved, as Gene reached out to the network of friends and family connections around the country looking for work, making their homes in Houston, Texas, Mobile, Alabama, and Albuquerque, New Mexico by 1972, where Jeff was born.  After New Mexico, they moved on to California, living in the Los Angeles suburb of Pomona, Gene had worked for the L.A. County Fair in the early 1960s and was able to find work there again.  Patrechia’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, eventually was also living close by with her husband, George, and their two daughters.  I remember Liz babysitting me as an infant, some from actual memories and others from word of mouth.  In 1975, I was all set to begin school in California, doing a kindergarten screening there, but that was not to be.  By August of 1975 we were living in Illinois, moving another dozen times between then and 1988 but always staying within a 10-20 mile radius. 

Gene’s brother, Buddy, came to live with the family in 1976.  He had taken his little brother in and tried to teach him the electricity business in the 1950s and 1960s, having Gene help him with his business, even assisting on celebrity electrical jobs.  Buddy had been married three times and his final wife, Elaine, had died earlier.  He came to live with Gene, who was living only a few miles from his youngest brother, Roger, in Illinois.  He got a job at a local trucking company, doing electrical work, and suffered a heart attack and passed away in February of 1977.  Gene was devastated.  His older brother had been his role model, that picture perfect man that he tried to live up to.  Buddy was a champion bowler, a great hand at a pool stick, and quite the ladies man.  Gene floundered in guilt and grief, but it was his wife, Patrechia that pulled him out of it, insisting that he find something to do.  He had been unemployed at the time, and his unemployment benefits were wearing thin.  The push from my mother was just the thing, and within a few months, Gene had begun selling watermelons on his front lawn.

The town of Breese, Illinois, where we lived at the time, was a stopping point on Highway 50.  People heading to nearby Carlyle Lake would stop and buy a watermelon for their summer picnics.  The front yard sales didn’t last long, and by August of 1977 they had converted an old gas station at the four-way stop in town to a produce market.  I remember riding my bicycle to the market to tell my mother that her idol, Elvis Presley, had died.  The market grew and grew; soon it was not just watermelons but tomatoes, potatoes, onions, lettuce, and all sorts of other produce that they were selling.  Business was good and all of the children were expected to pitch in and help.   Pat, as she was known to her husband and friends, was in charge of the books in those early days and the business grew from just produce to within a couple years they had leased the next door building and were opening a bakery.

With assistance from his son-in-law, David “O’Dell” Clinton (husband of his eldest daughter Dianna), Gene’s Bakery was opened.  O’Dell was a baker by trade, having worked for various grocery stores and eventually Wal-Mart in Farmington, and his knowledge of the business helped set the family up in a new venture.  The bakery did not last long and eventually was turned into a restaurant, in order to capitalize on the large bar business in the community.  Many people were looking for a place to eat before going home from the bars.  A local restaurant known as Wally’s Drive-In was catty-corner across from the Produce market, but Gene’s Café did not work to compete with Wally, instead whereas Wally focused on hamburgers, fries, and shakes, Gene’s Café focused on home-made meals; biscuits and gravy, beef tips and noddles, lasagna, and other family-style food.  Eventually this business too fell and a third business was opened in the same location, Gene’s Thrift Store.  All the while, during each business venture, the produce market remained operational.

With all the various business interests, and with a climbing list of clients that included local restaurants and even the local grocery store, Gene decided to hire an outside accountant, and that’s when trouble began.  Within a few years, the unscrupulous accountant had failed to pay income taxes on the family’s behalf, pocketing payments and running off with the cash to avoid prosecution.  The Internal Revenue Service come calling and by 1983, the family’s luck in Breese, Illinois had run out.  By the summer of 1983 the family had relocated to Lebanon, Illinois and continued their business venture, with the same name, almost, but with a new owner, my elder sister, Edith Margaret.  Everything was put in her name, to avoid problems with the IRS and the business name was changed from “Gene’s Farm Fresh Fruits & Vegetables” to just the shortened “Gene’s Produce”.  The business continued there until the late-1980s, when the family transplanted again.

While I was gone to serve in the U.S. Army, a dream my father had had as a young man and which say realization in me, the family moved to Missouri.  Missouri had always been the “family home” in my youth.  My grandparents, my father’s parents, lived there.  My sisters from my father’s side and my two oldest sisters from my mother’s side, all lived in Missouri.  We would visit them, during the holidays or on special occasions, but it was unknown and foreign to me.  Upon my release from the military, I tried to forge my own way in North Carolina, but the call of family was too hard to ignore.  I moved to Missouri on Election Day 1992, once again living under the roof of my parents until I could get my own place.  It was strange, and wonderful, to once again be back with family.  My parents were not getting any younger, with Dad being 61 and Mom being 53, and I was determined to be there for them when they were no longer able to care for themselves.  My grandfather, Richard, had passed away in 1985 and my Mother’s father, Alfonse, in 1986.  I served as pallbearer for both men, although I barely knew Richard and had no memories of Alfonse.  I was determined that any children I had would know their grandparents. 

I was able to marry and have my own children; Kayla, Jacob and Gina.  Kayla was old enough to know her grandfather Bannister and her grandmother.  Jacob and Gina, regrettably, only have sparse memories, if any, of either of them.  After Dad passed away in 2002, Patrechia lived on her own for a while.  The family home, the same home Richard and Ruby had lived most of their married lives in, had been lost in the wake of Dad’s death to foreclosure.  Within a couple years, though, she was no longer allowed to live on her own and it began a series of moves between Retirement Communities, before she came to live at Brookside Manor in Farmington in 2007.  My family, my wife and children, were always short on funds and it made visiting, with the rising cost of fuel, difficult, but we made certain we visited on Thanksgiving and Christmas, we would visit on her birthday and Mother’s Day, but other than that, visits were reserved for once a month, maybe.  My children never got to know their grandparents, it’s a shame, but perhaps one day they can read this and get to know them, somewhat.

I’ve laid out the details of my mother’s life before you, trying to leave out some of the scandals and skeletons from the closet.  Our family, like most, has not so much skeletons in the closet but full graveyards full of skeletons to hide.  Towards the end, my father got involved in selling prescription medication to people.  A business man his entire life, trying to be the big shot and trying to be the head honcho, it got him, and my mother, in trouble with the law.  When he was younger, according to my father, he was in trouble so much with local law enforcement authorities that when he would come home to visit, local police officers were waiting for him to disembark the Greyhound bus and would warn him to make his visit a short one.  As a 70 year-old man, he was still fighting authorities.  He died before he could ever be brought to trial, but not so my mother.  She stood trial for the charges, being an accessory and willing participant in the activities, which resulted in five-years probation for the 65 year-old grandmother and great-grandmother. 

But do not let that paint a picture of my parents as criminals or persons of shady reputation.  For over 25 years my parents were productive members of society, business people that provided jobs to many young people in Illinois and a few here in Missouri at their various businesses.  In the early-1990s my parents ran a thrift store in downtown Flat River, Missouri (now known as Park Hills) and a produce market in Elvins, Missouri (now also part of Park Hills).  In the mid-1990s my brother, Jeff, my father and I went into business together, once again attempting to recapture the family glory with a produce business in Park Hills, but mismanagement of finances led to another failed business venture, my parents’ final venture.  What you should know about my mother was her thirst for knowledge.  Neither Patrechia, nor my father, finished high school, not surprisingly when you have your first child at 17 years-old, but each one completed their GED in 1986, while living in Illinois and in the 1990s, Pat went to college at over 55 years-old and completed her Associate’s Degree in Criminal Justice.  She crocheted most of her life; creating afghans, pot-holder, toilet tissue cozies, and various other yarn creations, creations that will continue well past her life in the hands of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and complete strangers.

She loved music, Patrechia did, her favorite artists being Elvis Presley and Barry White.  She loved to read and work puzzle books; word searches and crosswords.  She smoked most of her life, something that resulted in her having COPD and emphysema, but in her final years she had given up the habit, but it was too late.  The depression from losing her husband of thirty-three years was too much for her, resulting in her opening her home and her arms to a few less-than-reputable characters, which continued until she was forced to live in a retirement community.  She had always been searching for love and acceptance. 

Her children can complain about her as a parent all they want, as I have stated before they are each entitled to their opinions.  To me, she was always friendly, helpful, she was supportive and encouraging, and loved her grandchildren.  The early circumstances of her life are easy to picture.  A young child, divided from her family and brought into another, raised in affluence but running and searching for love caused her to rush into the arms of a mean, violent drunk.  A mother as a teenager, ill prepared to raise a child, forced to give her children to her parents to be raised.  Elizabeth and Pam can have ill feelings towards her, however they would not be the women they are today, good or bad, if it had not been for the decisions Pat had made for them.  She was trying to do the best she could, the best she knew, despite being a child still herself.  I am sure her own mother, and aunts, were in her ear, lending advice to the young women.  Her other set of children; Joe, Margie, and Harold, can also have bad feelings but I don’t see how, she raised them in a secure, stable household, albeit one filled with work and little tenderness.  Joe would go on to have his own child, and grandchild.  Margie would have two sons of her own.  Harold, on the other hand, is the missing element.  A drifter beginning early in life, running away to join the Army and later just plain running away, not much has been heard or seen from Harold in almost ten years. 

When it comes down to it, a person’s life is so much more than 100 words.  As you can see from all of this, a person’s life is much, much more.  At over 5000 words, this barely covers my mother’s life.  There are plenty of stories that will not be told her, but could be.  The day she stood up to my grade school Principal, who stood an enormous six foot-four inches tall, compared to my mother’s small five foot-three.  I had been accused of some minor infraction, and my mother, upon speaking to me and learning I was not the culprit, stood toe-to-toe to the Principal sticking her finger in his face, arguing for her son.  That’s how I will always see her, standing there against the giant defending her child.  For those that argue that Patrechia Bannister was not a great woman, I’d have to disagree.