Page 54 - Tattnall County

ago and built her a place to do fowers. She called it Hollytree, Etc. Some nights after being all day in Glennville with her son, Martha would go into the shop at 10:00 at night and make something. The fowers were “good therapy,” she explained. Harry and Martha spent every moment possible with their son as he progressively lost all muscle movement except the ability to smile and to blink his eyes. Then they used an alphabet board to communicate.

On Thanksgiving Day of 1993, Eddie was wheeled onto the ramp his father had built so that he could look out from the porch of his mother’s foral shop. The holly tree he and his brothers had played under and climbed in as children now towered some thirty or forty feet overhead. This son had so wanted his mother to be able to do what she enjoyed that he bought a place and set her up a shop in his hardware store. As he sat in his wheelchair without any ability to move, he smiled. That was the last time Eddie was able to come home. He died on July 10th, 1995, four years and twenty days from the time he was diagnosed. Eddie’s son, Brad, is a great blessing to his grandparents.

With half their hearts they still weep for their son. With the other, they continue to love. And their love is like water in the desert to their souls so that there is no bitterness that can take root there.

Two playhouses sit among the trees in the yard. Harry built one for their six grandsons and another for their fve granddaughters. In 2002 Harry and Martha built a “farmhouse” for their growing family. A guesthouse is too formal a title to call the place where you get with folks you want to be with, Martha explained. If there’s over ffteen coming to eat, they go out back to the farmhouse where there’s plenty of room. For various holidays and at random times throughout the year Martha will take bud vases with bright and colorful

fowers that won’t fade too quickly to nursing home residents. She always asks that they be given to those who would otherwise never receive such a gift. The note cards are unsigned although each will say something like, “Have a beautiful day!” Martha fxes the vases as if they are going to be sold from a fne foral shop. This year while her granddaughter Madison and grandson Carson were with her, Martha let them write the messages. As she includes her grandchildren in such acts of kindness, they learn the value and personal joy of giving just to lift the heart of another. I can’t help but wonder how many of the problems children in America face today would be solved if parents and grandparents considered the power of their infuence.

The Cobbtown Lion’s Club found a way to thank Harry and Martha in 2008 with the Citizens of the Year award. From picking up trash on the roads, to helping prepare folks to take their GED at Southeastern Technical College, to helping with Christmas lights and decorations each year, the two are a blessing to the town. They call this “common sense.”

Harry and Martha’s altruism goes beyond the needs of their own hometown. Many weekends have been spent volunteering for the Walk to Emmaus program. Mission trips have been made to Puerto Rico and Jamaica, which Harry and Martha describe as “a great blessing for us.” Harry and some of his fellow Lion members helped clean up after Hurricane Hugo in Charlestown, South Carolina. Harry and Martha both spent a week in eastern North Carolina after Hurricane Floyd repairing homes that had suffered extreme food damage.

Martha continues to do foral work from her shop, Hollytree Etc. Harry actually began doing something he had never had the opportunity to do before retirement. Martha had always cooked while the boys were growing

up but when he retired, Harry began to help make cookies. But one afternoon he decided he could make them on his own. Now, “He can make them just as good as I can except he doesn’t use a recipe so his are not always consistently the same,” said Martha with a slight smile. “He says he can tell and just throws in the ingredients.” Since Harry started baking cookies, he’s literally given away hundreds.

The mouth-watering smell of baked cookies came wafting into the sitting room from the kitchen. When I left I was given three bags of “Harry’s Chocolate Chip Cookies”: One was for me; the other two were to give to people who I knew would otherwise never receive an unexpected gift that day. They were the best cookies I’ve ever eaten. “Sometimes just giving someone cookies when they don’t expect it can mean special something to them,” said Harry. “We’ve learned things like that along the way.”

Most of the things they do will never be known in this life, which is just the way Harry and Martha want it. They believe that they are so blessed to be able to get around at their age that doing things for others is an honor. It doesn’t cost anything to give someone a call to see how they’re doing, explained Martha. There are many stories the community could tell that Harry and Martha will not.

If God were to entrust the care of another Garden to someone, I believe it would be to people like Harry and Martha. They honestly don’t know how special and unique they are but they do understand the power of the love they have to give: to each other, their children, grandchildren, and their neighbor as well as the stranger in need. They are surely two of the Kings and Queens of the earth in God’s eyes. It was an honor to be the writer of the story their love continues to tell.  TCM