120 Years Ago This Week

 Gladys Vivian Rainey Smith- 1900-1983

                This week, August 11 marks the 120^th birthday of my maternal grandmother, Gladys Vivian Rainey Smith. Thinking of her life has prompted my reflection on what she experienced over her lifetime in the 20^th century. Some events through which she lived eerily shadow current events in 2020.

                Grandma hadn’t reached 3 months of age when the national presidential election selected a president in November. The male voters (women had not been given the right to vote) elected William McKinley as the president of the United States. Yet territorial residents did not/do not have voting rights, so Grandma’s father was unable to voice his choice for the first president of the 20^th century since he and his family lived in Oklahoma Territory.

                At the turn of the century when Grandma came into the world, China’s Boxer Rebellion found the Manchu dynasty in opposition to many other countries, including the United States. 120 years later, discordance between powers continues.

                By the year of 1920, Grandma had earned her teaching certificate with a summer of coursework in 1919, in Stillwater from Oklahoma A and M. As Grandma turned 20 years old the following year, the nation celebrated one of the first summers free of the Spanish flu pandemic since it had officially been declared “over” in April of 1920, having begun over two years earlier. How many of us pray for the time when COVID-19 is no longer an assailant on our people? (Here is a link to a blog post about Grandma's summer at Oklahoma A & M - https://bernadeanjgates.blogspot.com/2015/06/summer-school-in-early-20th-century.html )

                Babies always come into a familial historical setting. My great-grandmother, Rosa Jarrell Rainey, gave birth to Grandma less than five months after their family buried the tiny casket of their three-year-old Della. A grief-stricken family welcomed another little girl into their family of four that summer. (Here is a link to a blog post about Della Rainey - https://bernadeanjgates.blogspot.com/2018/03/forever-great-grandmas-baby.html )

                Upon little Della’s death, Great-grandma Rainey positioned a large portrait of her over her bed. My mother recalled seeing the cherished photograph in its traditional place over 50 years after the toddler’s death. I never heard my grandma bemoan that fact even though no baby or toddler pictures of her survived. She remained a committed, faithful daughter to her cherished mother.

                In my grandma’s family picture collection, the only photo of Grandma in her childhood showed her in a family photo taken with their farmhouse in the background most likely in the Sacred Heart community in Pottawatomie County near the town of Asher. Ironically, the photograph had been torn with the rip severing the faces of Alice and Emma, her younger sisters. Aunt Emma had a reputation for destroying or defacing photographs of herself that failed to meet with her approval.

                The saddest birthday marked by Grandma occurred on August 11, 1931. On her 31^st birthday, her beloved father at age 63 was buried at Pixley Cemetery following the funeral held at the Rainey home.

The death of Grandma's father proved to be a turning point in her life. The following month at a revival held in the Bend, Grandma and her younger sister, Alice, were “converted” at one of the evening meetings preached by Reverend Stallings, the pastor of the Ralston Federated Church. When Grandma wrote in her little family history booklet of her conversion, that experience could be described as the changing of a dead person into a transformed living person solely by the power of Jesus because the death of Jesus makes forgiveness of sin possible. His resurrection empowered her to daily walk in obedience to His Word. From that point in her life, her foundational mission in life became sharing the good news of Jesus being able to “remake” a sinful life into a new, purposeful existence.

Angie, Grandma, Bernadean and Mother

               I find myself seeking to follow Grandmother’s work ethic here on the farm. Her articulate writing serves as a standard for me with each piece I craft. Grandma’s commitment to excellence provides a lofty goal – whether in my research, Bible study, musical practicing or just about anything I attempt. Though I am not always successful, the pattern she set spurs me to do my best. Finally, and most important, she was compelled by the dramatic change in her life to share the power of Jesus. As I mark her 120^th birthday, I concur with the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5 – one of Grandma’s favorite chapters in the Bible. For those of us who have been impacted by Jesus may these two verses be the driving force for our living.

For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died:

And He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15