The First Rainey Grandson

            As the end of 1912 approached, December 30 marked the birth of the first grandchild of William Marion and Rosa Jarrell Rainey. His parents, Daisy Dean Rainey Rice and Ernest Emel Rice welcomed their first child, a son, Orlean Luther Rice.

            Two years later his sister, Hazel, was born. In the early part of the twentieth century, children started working and helping the family. In those days, as soon as a kid could walk and take directions, he started “earning his keep.”

            My grandma, Gladys Rainey Smith, became an aunt for the first time at age 12 at Orlean’s birth. In her upper teens, she supervised the potato harvest with Orlean and Hazel as her laborers. The two kids saw picking up potatoes as an opportunity for fun. Soon instead of adding to the harvested potato stash, Orlean and Hazel engaged in an all-out potato war. The dug potatoes sailed through the air from the hands of little Orlean and Hazel. Their Aunt Gladys declared war on them, enforced a potato war truce, and the two kids reluctantly resumed the potato collection. My grandma could never be classified as a “doting” aunt!

 When Orlean was almost 12, his first baby girl cousin on the Rainey side arrived. Even though she didn’t know it, her baby book records she enacted the part of Baby Jesus in the Belford Christmas program just days before Orlean’s 12^th birthday. Bernyce Smith Gates, my mother, was Orlean’s new little cousin.

Mother noted that her older cousin always seemed on the cutting edge in the 1930s and 1940s. He prized his phonograph cabinet and his record collection. Mother remembered it as a beautiful piece of furniture, much classier than other Benders had. She observed his younger siblings and cousins getting his ire up by getting too close to his cherished new technology.

Mother bragged on Orlean’s expertise at yodeling. Her own love of music enabled her to recognize his talent and admire how he honed his yodeling skill.

Mother’s little black diary even recorded visits and especially one night when the newlyweds, Orlean and his wife, Maxine, stayed all night at their house. She commented, “That was done more so back then than today.”

Orlean Rice holding their son, Bob, with Maxine, his wife, 
holding Wanda. Photograph from Gladys Rainey Smith's
collection.

          In late 1945, Mother agreed wholeheartedly to help Orlean and Maxine prior to the birth of their child, Revae Rice Baugh. (Even though Mother wrote my father, Edmund Gates, from 1942-1945 while he served in the Army Air Corps, she refused to consider marriage until he agreed to completely get out of the military. However, upon being discharged, he joined the Air Force Reserves so she was still single.)

While Maxine was on bed rest, Mother energetically took over the cooking, cleaning, and any tasks that Maxine needed done. She developed an even closer relationship with the family and especially with Wanda who was around age 7 and little Bob was around 5 years of age. She celebrated with the family when the baby sister, Revae, was born.

Orlean's baby daughter, Revae,
with the love of her life, Jimmy,
her late husband of 55 years.

            As an adult, Orlean's creativity impressed me. In his later years, I recall the keenest potato keeper that he made from wood for his mother, Daisy Rice, my great aunt. His daughter, Wanda, painted with an artistical flair the many wood-crafted items that Orlean made.

            His children, grandchildren, and friends could attest that Orlean taught them about determination and doing things well. An obstacle or set back was only an opportunity to stubbornly be more determined to accomplish his goal. He seemed to exude the axiom, If it’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing right.

            Endurance and tenacity stayed ever-present in Orlean’s vocabulary. Perhaps his size had caused him to have that persistent endurance to achieve what others thought might have been impossible. Tenacity served as a springboard to launch him far beyond any apparent failure.

            As I reflected on the character qualities of determination, doing things well, and endurance, I recalled scriptural watchwords for us to live by.

            Paul reminded the unstable believers in Corinth of his teaching and his example. He encouraged them to remain unwavering in their belief that Jesus was the only One to proclaim and commit their lives to follow. He wrote in I Corinthians 2:2 the admonition below.

For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

            The principle of doing well in whatever is attempted did not begin with Benders in the early 20^th century but was commanded by the writer of Ecclesiastes in chapter 9:10.

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.

            Finally, endurance or in the vernacular of Edmund Gates – bulldog tenacity was addressed by Paul in I Corinthians 4:2 with his personal testimony:

We labor, working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure. 

              With 2023 rapidly approaching, may we determine to make our focus Jesus and what His crucifixion accomplished for us and respond with a faithfulness in whatever He calls us to do for as long as He leads us to do it.