By
Stephanie Porter-NicholsPublished: January 14, 2011By ROBERT "ROCKY" CAHILL/Columnist
By the time this column is published, my aunt, Elizabeth Ann "Bettie" Brisco will have turned 29… again. You see, sometime back, my dear aunt, a free spirit if there ever was one, decided that 29 was old enough, and she just refused to get any older.
There were 12 children, five of them girls, in my Mom's family. Mom was the middle daughter, while Bettie was the youngest girl. She was the 10th child with only brothers Wayne and Roger (Buzz) younger.
Though my mom may have been the middle daughter, she was the first to marry and the first to have a child, me. I was the oldest grandchild in what would eventually become a whole batch of cousins (24 if my memory is correct, no guarantee on that anymore). Unfortunately, my grandfather Robert Smith passed away five years or so before I was born. The younger kids in the family were still, for the most part just that, kids. Mom was only 18, and Dad not quite 20. All of Mom's siblings thought a lot of Dad and he did them. (My uncle Buzz was and still is more like an older brother than an uncle to me.)
But my aunt Bettie loved Dad dearly and he did her. It's funny the things I remember about my early childhood. My Dad, while a big man, was a great dancer. He really was good at it. This is a talent I certainly did not inherit. My dancing skills evidently came from Mom who just wasn't much of a dancer.
Back then folks would often get together on a Friday or Saturday night, pull out the Tommy Dorsey or Glen Miller 78s (that's the revolutions per minute the turntable turned when playing them correctly). Mom might dance a few minutes with Dad, then would pass him off to her sister Betty who loved to dance and was really good at it. Some of the best times were when everyone would get together and just have a good time.
Dad and Mom bought a TV early on when not every home in Saltville had one. I remember many Fridays or Saturdays, lots of relatives from both sides of the family would gather in our living room to watch some show or another. Again it was a simple evening, watching a black-and-white TV with what would be today considered a tiny screen, but everyone seemed to have a wonderful time. I always enjoyed seeing my Aunt Bettie come around. She has never met a child she did not like, and I have never seen a child who did not like her. Maybe it's because she will always be a child at heart.
Once she finished high school, she decided to attend nursing school. Her nurse's training took place at Johnston Memorial Hospital in Abingdon. The student nurses in the program she enrolled in attended some classes at Emory & Henry College and had practical training at the hospital.
They lived in a dormitory located near the hospital. Usually, on weekends Betty would come home. Then often as not, Mom and Dad would volunteer to take her back to school. Of course I would ride along as would Rusty, who was still just an infant. I would carry her suitcase in to the dorm. I still remember all these pretty young nurses who would just be getting back. I felt like a grown-up then, helping carry my aunt's luggage back to school.
I'm not really sure when she met Marion native James "Jim" Brisco. He was a cadet at Virginia Military Institute. They would eventually marry and have four kids of their own. Jim as did all VMI cadets and received a 2nd Lieutenant's commission upon graduating from VMI. He would remain in the military for many years. It was good training for Bettie as she worked as a nurse in hospitals all over the country depending on where Jim was assigned.
Betty and Jim would in time settle in Christiansburg. This lady who kids flocked to would eventually retire as the director of nursing at Montgomery County Hospital. Her home, wherever it may have been, was always filled with kids. Her family's friends just felt at home there. Christiansburg is full of young folks who think of her as a second mother and often walk into her home like they lived there. They aren't rude, they just think of her as family, and her home as their home too.
Sadly, Jim passed away unexpectedly a few years ago. She also lost her youngest son, Donnie, after a four-wheeler accident. She recently developed some health problems of her own. This scared me as she has always been the almost indestructible one who never aged. Despite all this, she has managed to maintain her cheerful spirit.
She is the first to call and check on a family member when she hears they are not feeling well. She is the last to admit it when she is under the weather herself. While she is now more in the holding pattern than the 29 years old, she will always be my young aunt, the beautiful redhead who loved to dance, who loved to joke, even the slightly off-colored ones on occasion, and who made every kid she met feel like they were special.
So to one of my favorite people on earth, I hope this was a great 29th birthday and that you enjoy many, many more.
By the way, a historical footnote, the former nurses' dorm where my aunt and her fellow students bunked, is now the Barter Theatre's housing for its actors. One other thing, this miserable weather can't last forever, THINK SPRING!
A freelance journalist, Robert "Rocky" Cahill writes regularly for the News & Messenger. His Possum Philosophy column appears in each Saturday edition.
0 comments:
Post a Comment