By Donna Traywick

Mt. Olivet News

From reading Sherry Hopkins’ article last week about her new haircut, perhaps we can see a picture of a hair-do that she has waited seven years to get!

I got a call this week that First Faith Baptist Church will having their Bible School June 24-26. Their church is located in the Sardis Lake Estates area. Last year Mt. Olivet Methodist and First Faith had their Bible Schools at the same time and I was so disappointed that my little friends Randy and Chesley Stevens’ four children did not get to come to ours last year.

This year Mt. Olivet’s will be June 17-19 and First Faith the next week, and that will work out perfect.

I hope that someday soon Randy, Chesley, the three boys and their precious little girl will be my new neighbors in the Mt. Olivet community.

I saw Noah, one of the twins, one day when his dad had come to Miss Veedy’s to work on her roof. He is a hugger…he would first hug me and then Veedy…and then me….and then Veedy…then me. I ask, “Are your brothers and little sister as sweet as you are?”

“Naw, not my two brothers! But, my little sister is sometimes.”

Hey, Noah, I have an idea. Whoever is being the “baddest” send them next door to play with me. I taught Pre-K for 22 years and I can talk good Pre-K, like “more gooder” and “more baddest.”

Hey, Noah, I saw something yesterday that I have not seen for a long time. It was a big, fat bunny rabbit. It hopped from my yard over to your yard and then in a big pile of brush. I am going to get the Mt. Olivet Fire Department to burn the big pile of brush – but not the bunny rabbit.

What has happened to all the rabbits? We have a lot of pecan trees in my yard and also yours. Last year I had lots of pecans and lots of squirrels, but this year there are no pecans and no squirrels.

Thanks to so many of your for the overwhelming response to the saga of my three brothers’ military service. Actually, Glen (the youngest) was in what was called the “Korean Conflict” but nonetheless he was also stationed in Germany as were the other two.

Each with his own tale, his own life and his own little tune. Have you noticed that the less they spoke of the horrors the more of the horrors that actually happened. My brothers never bragged about the coat full of shiny medals that weighted down their Army jackets.

My mother, Miss Jessie, was an avid gardener. First because that was her therapy and hobby and second, with three boys in the military and a husband chronically ill with family-inherited poly-systic kidney disease (PKD) food on the table was a must.

During the time of no news…bad news…telegrams, so cut up you could not really get any sense out of them, German prisoner…missing in action, back in American hands…where? What kind of mental shape? What kind of physical shape?

My mother felt as though a little bird – but not really a bird – saying, “I’m alright, I’m alright” over and over every day as she hoed in her garden.

This story was only revealed to  me by my mother several years later when I seemed to have been the child with the “fragile faith” when only about nine months after my brothers were home from service that my two little sisters were killed in a car wreck, and six months after that my father, Jeff Berlin Palmertree died from PKD, a disease that took five more immediate family members.

War! Are you through with my family? Not many left!

PKD! Are you through with my family? Definitely not many left.

This all happened when I was nine years old. A little girl of nine definitely needed to hear the “little bird” story.

Call me with any news or send me a text. Home is 563-1742 and cell is 901-828-8824.