Leave a Memory

Former Student

Mrs. Hargrove was my third-grade teacher in 1987. I still remember the way she made every single child in that classroom feel like they mattered. When I was struggling with reading, she stayed after school twice a week to help me — never once making me feel embarrassed. I am a college professor now, and I tell my students about her all the time. She taught me that the best teachers do not just teach subjects. They teach people that they are capable of greatness. I owe her everything.

Neighbor

Ellie Mae lived two doors down from us for forty years. I cannot count the number of times she showed up at my back door with a pot of something she had just made, saying, 'I made too much — you have to help me eat this.' She never made too much. She just had a heart that could not rest until everyone around her was fed, in every sense of the word. When my husband passed, she sat with me on my porch every night for three months. She never said much. She just held my hand. That was her gift — she knew when words were not enough.

Granddaughter

Nana Ellie taught me how to make her biscuits when I was eight. They never come out right when I make them now, and she always said, 'It is because you are not singing while you knead the dough.' I thought she was joking. I know now that she was teaching me something deeper — that love is the ingredient you cannot measure. She was the heart of our family. Every holiday, every birthday, every ordinary Sunday, she was the center we all orbited around. I am going to sing while I make her biscuits for the rest of my life.