| Notes |
- In Memory of Mother
Mildred Exalene Houston Rogers Nix
May 5, 1921 - March 15, 1998
Mildred Exalene was the fourth of eight children born to Henry Grady Houston and Flora Etta Dyer in a Stanton, Alabama farmhouse.
Exalene, as she was called then, married Daddy, James Vernon (J.V.) Rogers in 1939. Two girls were born to them: Linda Carol and Mildred Ann, that's me. Daddy went home to Jesus in 1963 following a long period of failing health resulting from surgery for stomach cancer.
Two years later Mother, by this time known as Mildred, married Alonzo Hencley Nix. Nix, as we called him, die in 1973.
When I was two-years-old Mother had to take a job outside the home, which was not the norm, to help support the family. Mother accepted the unfamiliar role of breadwinner due to Daddy's poor health. It was a man's world she toiled in working for meager wages in a Maplesville veneer mill.
Mother dreamed of a better life for us and in 1956 secured a job at a meat packing plant and moved the family to Selma. The environment she labored in was still anything but pleasant with the temperature hovering at forty-two degrees year-round. However it was a vast improvement in pay, and she now worked along-side other women instead of men.
During the almost nine years that Mother and Nix had together, she did not work outside the home. Following his passing, she took a job as a secretary in the ER at the Vaughan Hospital in 1974. Taking early retirement in 1979, she devoted her remaining years to family and friends.
Mother instilled a love of God in us at an early age. We never sat down to a meal without first giving thanks to God. Nightly prayers included the same ones that I prayed with my two children and my granddaughter, Caitlyn: The Lord's Prayer, Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, and a verse from Psalms: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer."
Before moving to Selma in 1957, we attended the Maplesville Baptist Church where I learned to recite the twenty-third and one-hundredth Psalms. Those words remain in my heart today.
I am reminded of a verse from Proverbs: "Train a child up in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it," and I am filled with thanks to God for my mother who introduced me to Jesus Christ.
Mother's final illness was sudden as heart attacks are. During the three months she fought to live, she was a model of faith and courage. Linda and I were by her side every day. Without Mother's unfailing faith, courage and optimism, we could not have made it through that difficult time. She continued to make important decisions concerning her earthly possessions and preparations for the future. She did everything she could do to make things easier for us just as she had done throughout our lives. Only in the two days just before she left us did she hint that she would soon be leaving this world.
Arriving at the nursing facility just before 7:00 a.m. that Sunday morning, I found her asleep. Sitting down beside her bed, I began to read from Mother's Bible and the Upper Room devotional for the day. The scripture was from Ecclesiastes: "To every thing, there is a season and a purpose unto heaven: a time to be born, a time to die . . ." I looked at Mother. The labored breathing had stopped. And again I heard that cold word I first heard at 14-years-old when Daddy passed away: "expired." Mother had slipped away from the pain of this world to be at peace with our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Mildred Ann Rogers Love
|
1921 - 1998 (76 years)
[1] 