Eleanor Meredith:
To think that mother and father could just be here and see all the descendants of their generation. What a wonderful sight it would be. There are so many of us here today and yet we all aren't here. Lester is missing and so many are missing. It would be a larger crowd, but anyway it is wonderful that we have all met here together to pay tribute to your heritage.
I know that my tribute to my parents might be different than Lou, Dorthy and if Lester were here because Lester and I were of a younger time. The rest of the family had grown and some had left home when I was a little girl. The biggest tribute that I can give to my parents is the attributes that they had and the home life that they gave to us was full of love, not only for us, but for God. They loved their God and they made us understand that it was God that carried them through and it has gone down generation to generation for the most part I believe. They also represented a tremendous amount of strength and courage and wanting something better for their family and only through God's help did they make that happen because we were very, very poor. In my time we went through that dreadful depression, but you know I never thought of myself as being poor. I remember others scurrying around trying to find a quarter here and there, but it didn't bother me. It didn't bother me that she made all my dresses. She wasn't the best seamstress in the world, but I never thought I was any different than all the other kids in school and I attribute that to my mother. She made me feel a worthy as they were. I didn't feel any lower because we were poor moneywise. There are two ways of being poor. One is you don't have any money. The other is there is no love, no communication, no tenderness, no happiness in the home. I'll tell you, I'll take the latter, because that's the way we lived. We were poor moneywise but we were loaded with love and compassion from our parents. They didn't push upon us, they just lived their lives the way they thought God wanted them to live and it rubbed off. Believe me it does. And it rubbed off on each and every one of us and we each and everyone have a stamina that was inherited from my parents and I give them all the credit. I thank God that I came from the home that I came from, whether it was poor or what conditions we lived in, I was happy.
Father taught me so much sitting on the front porch about the weather. We use to sit on the front porch and he taught me so many things that when I say something to somebody even today about the weather they don't understand it, they don't know what I'm talking about. I contribute that to my father. He had time for us. He had time to go to the fair with us. He had time, maybe not money, but he had time. Quality time. That is the whole difference. So my tribute to my parents is that they were loving. They didn't only love God, but they loved each other. They were sweethearts till the day father died. I remember them sitting on the sofa before Sandra as born and they were holding hands and all I ever saw of my mother and father was love. Now those are my memories. I don't know what the older children felt but that is what I felt, the tremendous love that they had for each other. You don't find that very often these days. That is my tribute. I can't thank God enough that I came from the parents that I came from.
Now I would like to carry the tribute a little farther and make it a little more of a generalization. To all the rest of you that are here today. When .... and Homer and Dorothy and Roper and Lester and Ruth and I are gone the next oldest generation will be Paul, Glenn, Shirley and Joyce. They are going to be the older generation and I would like to say something in generality. I would like to have my mother and father come back for just a little while so that I might tell them and thank them for what they did for us and not think of the hurt. I know that I hurt my mother a lot. I use to say things in bitterness to her. I can remember and I think how much that must of hurt her. And of course she hurt me. We parents, we hurt each other, we do the best we can. I made a lot of mistakes as every father and mother here today have made raising their children. If I could go back and live my life over again, maybe I'd make the same mistakes again, I don't know, because I've learned so much in the past five years. If I'd known then. But I know I caused mother a lot of hurt and I didn't write her when I was living in Wisconsin. I didn't have time, I was raising my children just as all you young people are busy raising your children. You haven't got time for mother and father, they'll get along. Just stop and think of some of the times that you have hurt your parents and they have not said anything to you about it and maybe your parents had hurt you but they also have done a lot of things for you that you remember forever and don't neglect to tell them that you appreciate what they've done for you, now, while you have time. Oh, I wish I could go back and make things right with my mother and father but I can't, it's too late, so I'm saying to you and I think this is the tribute to my parents, that I'm sorry for the things that I said and the way I neglected my parents at times when they needed me. I didn't have time to go. I was too busy and that happens to dare I say every mother and father here today. The best thing you could do is to love your parents unconditionally. That's what the Bible says and the parents to love their children unconditionally. Oh, I just pray that each and every one of you will take the time while there is still time to tell your parents and to tell your children I Love You, I Love You No Matter What. If you children could possibly know and I'm speaking from experience, when my children tell me that they love me, how much it helps me, how much it makes me want to live. There are a lot of times I haven't been told that and I couldn't care whether I lived or not. But it doesn't take much for a mother to say to her daughter or son I Love you. I love you no matter what. And for a daughter or son to say to their mother and father I love you no matter what. Be good to them and think about them once in awhile in their lonely, lonely times and I was speaking from experience there too how much all this means to them because believe me the years grow short when you reach September and then it is going to be too late and believe me those are the things you are going to remember after they are gone, that it is too late. And above all the happiness that you can give to your parents, that I hope my mother and father felt that each one of us children really loved each other. Love is the greatest word in our vocabulary and it can do so much good so I would like to in my tribute to my parents I would like to express this to each and every one of you that my parents and your grandparents and your great grandparents loved each other beyond compare and they want you to love each other and express that love once in a while because it does so much when you grow old and it becomes September.
Shirley Meredith
Aunt Dorthy asked me to put together a little program and in keeping with this a little bit backwards from the way I had it arranged, but it doesn't make any difference, after Eleanors tribute to Grandma and Grandpa Sparrow, those of you who remember, what do you remember?
It is so often that I am giving or teaching a lesson and it happens to Paul in this scripture of the Beatitudes and it comes to Mercy, Mercy, how many of you remember Grandpa Meredith saying mercy, mercy. And I say if we just had more mercy today how much better off we would be. I never see a yellow rose bush that I don't see that yellow rose bush down there. I never see an elephant ear plant in a black holder sitting out in the yard in the summer time that I don't think of Grandma Meredith.
Her ham gravy and biscuits. White beans and ham. Joyce - the one thing I remember of Grandma Meredith was at Grandpa's funeral - she bent over and kissed him. She always called our toys play pretties and blouses were waists. I remember her leaning over and I would brush her hair. I remember she would take the cake of soap and wash my hands with hers and her hands were so soft and I thought how can that be when she works so hard. She hummed Amazing Grace a lot.
The first memory I have of margarine was Grandma Meredith with this interesting packet of white stuff and this other little packet of yellow stuff and mixing the two together till it looked like butter and then putting it on a plate with some jam with a knife and stirring it all together before you applied it to the bread and I still make my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by mixing the peanut butter with the jelly before putting it on the bread.
The other memory I been thinking of quite a bit in the last six months or so, I used to have allergies when I was a kid and I kind of outgrew them and I think they are starting to come back, but some allergic reaction in my leg they just act like they are inflamed and I'll scratch and scratch and every time I do that I remember Grandma Meredith because her legs were just scratched, I'd watch her itch them and think she is going to tear the hide right off. Now I know what she felt like. I remember Grandad Meredith when they outlawed firecrackers and he said "Oh, what a shame. These kids don't have anything to really enjoy the 4th of July with anymore."
Glenn Meredith
I had kind of an advantage over the rest of my cousins in that Grandpa and Grandma lived across the road from where I lived. Two things that you all will remember all at once. One was Aunt Louisa giving Grandpa White Owl cigars every year for Christmas. The other was a lot of you only came on family dinners got to have "hand pie." Grandma Meredith made custard, you could carry it on your hand and go about doing your chores. Having lived there and worked with them when they would go to the barn to milk their one or two cows I can hear them say "mother" and "father" and that was what they always called each other. Leading the horse, plowing the potatoes, Grandpa going up to the pasture to water the hogs which were a quarter of a mile from the house and one day my father got on my mother about the way my brother and I were standing in a certain way. Everyone of the Merediths will do it. You'll stand this way (leaning forward with arms folded behind back). Dad got on my brother and me unmercifully until we broke it because we were walking so stooped. Grandpa walked stooped with that cane to go water the hogs.
Alan Meredith
I remember this last year being called upon to teach American History it is interesting to teach kids nowadays because there are too many things in life that you experienced. I told them that I remembered December 7, 1941. We were playing in the ditch bank at Grandmother's across the road when they announced the bombing of Peal Harbor.
Shirley
We were talking about Grandmother Meredith and about this family and about how most of them have lived a long life. Carol said to me, "Well mother, that goes back to the Bible. I want to take you back to Exodus 20:12 but I want to go down to Deuteronomy 5:16 "To honor your father and mother so that you may live long and it may go well with you." That is mentioned again in Matthew and Luke and in Ephesians it says, "Children obey your parents of the Lord for this is right." Honor your father and mother which is the first commandment with a promise. That promise is that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy a long life. This family has honored their father and mother. We've lived long and done well. I think that is where it all started, back to God and back to what was important to them. Do you ever remember getting together in this family on Sunday when you didn't have to wait for everybody to get there from church. That was an understood thing, everybody came from church. How many of you have gone after dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's and Grandpa would lay down on the couch and Grandma sat and held his hand all the time that he slept. I 've asked Alan to give a tribute to Dad's memory, Dad has been gone a long time.
Alan
I want to carry on the tradition, it took me a long time, Dad has been gone for quite some time now. I don't know how long it took me, when I hit 52 I wasn't too happy about that. There are several things about my father that I can remember. There was the time we were living in Seymour and we were going to Mahomet to the Baptist Church and I''ll never forget the preacher said "It's hard for kids to get out of line when Mom sits on one end of the pew and Dad sits on the other and the four kids sit between them." I remember going to the Farmer City Church, even though we milked the cows, we always went to church morning and evening. I remember people used to say "When the Merediths got there it was time to start." Dad was always in a hurry. My name was Shorty. I remember going to Farmer City, IL an trying to follow my father around which was very difficult because he always walked with a very large step at a very fast pace. I had to take 4 steps to his 1. He was always in a hurry. He always had a sense of humor. There were things that he said, things that he did as kids growing up. If we would go out in the field, working in the field, if we get the tractor stuck or get stuck in the mud, he would always come out and the first thing he would say, "If you'd kept a going you wouldn't of got stuck." He always had that kind of humor about it. He also had a serious side too. When I was a kid growing up and Dad would look around at me and say "come here" you knew what was happening. He maybe didn't do it enough. I wanted to run the other way but I knew I better not. He was one of the strongest men I ever knew. I can remember him at the Old Harris School, he was hitching up a car to a trailer and he just reached up and grabbed ahold of that trailer and just pulled it up and dropped it on. He shucked corn by hand and Dad could never find a shucking glove or a glove that would fit him. He would put on a pair of gloves and his hands would split the back of the glove. He was a big man, he was strong. He gave to his children that strong will. Being on a farm you did things early. I remember going to the state fair and getting there before the gates were even open. That was the way Dad did things, because you had to be back to milk the cows. Some of the other things I remember about him was I never forget when I came home from college to study to be a minister and came home and told him I was going to get married, he said "Well anything is better than what you are." He had a love, concern for all of his children. I remember when Paul went away to the service, none of the rest of us could ever get anything out of him because he was always concerned about Paul. He always wanted to see grandchildren. I remember when he had his first grandson to carry on the name because that was a concern to Dad and a concern for everybody to carry on the Meredith name. We've still got some Meredith's around and there will be Merediths around for a long time.
The only thing he didn't do early was teach 4-H calves to lead. He wouldn't do that till the week before the fair. We could hitch them up to the tractor or anything, but never early. Would never decide which one he was going to take. He taught us all how to milk cows.
I remember Ernest Meredith house with the office there. I don't think I ever saw him out of a suit, he always had suit on no matter what day of the week we were there and it was just so grand to sit behind his desk, his desk was piled up with papers and he had a safe there. I was so impressed by that safe that he had enough money to have a safe.
Grandpa never mowed the roadside, never had time. The one thing I remember was the story about him was that he jumped out an upstairs window an walked across the blackberry patch that hadn't been mowed, across the bridge and up another hill and when he walked in the neighbors house they woke him up. Walked in his sleep.
Kathy/Kay
He was saying how he always remembered him in a suit, but all I remember was the overalls and the boots and the farmer hat. He used to always tell "Turn off the water works" when we were crying. He always wore gun boots didn't he? Ethel always talked to us. He was sitting behind his desk, I was impressed with that safe too.
Glenn
You all aren't talking about the same man I worked with.
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