2. Caroline Sue McClure, born November 19, 1941, in Mt. Zion, Kentucky; died 9 January 2003 in Cincinnati, Hamilton Co., OH. Married Barry Duane Miller (1936-2000) in August 1958, in Covington, Kentucky. Two children.

3. LIVING

Homer died September 26, 1988, in Covington, Kentucky.

* * * * * *

Homer was actually named Omer after a cousin of his mother’s (Omer Speagle), and the name Omer was recorded on his original birth certificate. He was always called Jack by his parents, brother, and sisters. However, when he started school, the teacher understood his name to be Homer and that was the "official" name he continued to use. I wondered how a teacher could make such a mistake -- didn’t someone accompany him to school on the first day and fill out the information forms? But no, I was told, "When it was time for you to start school, they just got you up and sent you." In 1974 he had his birth certificate changed to Homer.

He lived on a farm in Grant County during all of his childhood, and attended Mt. Zion Elementary School, having to walk three miles to and from school. He entered Crittenden High School in the ninth grade, but this necessitated an even longer walk just to catch the school bus, so he didn’t complete the ninth grade. He was a good student, however, and won many spelling bees and arithmetic contests which were popular among the schools of the area.

He was also involved in quite a few schoolboy pranks such as putting a snake in his teacher’s desk, and pulling an outhouse over while a teacher was inside it -- stories which delighted his grandchildren over and over.

When he was eighteen years old, he married Callie Roberta Beach, and they went to live in a small house in Mt. Zion where he worked as a tenant farmer, growing mostly tobacco. Sharecropping meant very hard work and very little income. When the crop was sold late in the fall, he received his percentage of the proceeds, and that was all the money there was until the next year.

Homer was 20 when, on October 19, 1939, his first son was born. They named him Homer Clifton, intending to call him Clifton, but the nickname "Bunny" given to him by his grandfather Fred McClure was the one that stuck throughout his childhood. He preferred to be called Mac, and as soon as he was old enough, that’s what he told everyone to call him.

Two years later, on November 19, 1941, Homer and Callie’s only daughter, Caroline Sue, was born. The following month, the United States entered World War II.

Homer was called to active duty in April 1944 and sent to Ft. Riley, Kansas, where he was trained and placed in the 44th Tank Battalion, Military Police. He was tall, about 6’3", and must have made an imposing MP. Callie and the children joined him there, living in a small apartment in Junction City, Kansas. Homer was actually supposed to remain on the base, but he managed to spend as much time as possible in the family’s apartment.

The next year he was sent overseas, but on the crossing the ship struck a mine and part of it was sunk. It took 39 days to cross the Pacific in the disabled ship, and it was that long before his waiting family knew that he was among the survivors. His outfit went first to Okinawa, then after the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the 44th Tank Battalion were among the first troops to enter Tokyo. They remained there for a year of the occupation.

Homer was due to go home in June 1946, but he had to wait two months for a troop ship. When the ship finally came, the men had to be vaccinated before they could return to the states, and the vaccination had to "take" before they could board the ship. So, as many other soldiers did, Homer burnt his arm with a lighted cigarette to insure that he had a "vaccination" blister which was his ticket home.

Back from the service, he moved his family to another farm in Warsaw, Kentucky, for two years. Homer’s older son, Homer Clifton (Mac) recalls his father as a man of great strength and integrity, and a stern disciplinarian. He brought up his children as he had been brought up -- which meant if they did or said something he didn’t like, he might knock them across the room.

Mac recalls a time when he was about nine years old, working with his father on the farm. He was leading a horse along a muddy path which became almost like quicksand. The horse sank into the mire so deeply that there was no way it could be freed. In its panic it died. Mac, though only a child trying to do a man’s job, was severely punished for killing the horse.

On another occasion, a storm was coming up and Mac was sent out to close up the chicken pen. He shut it up so thoroughly that all the chickens suffocated. He was on the verge of being in serious trouble when his mother insisted the damage wasn’t total. She boiled water and the three of them, Homer, Callie, and their son, plucked every one of the dead chickens, dressed them and took them to market.

In 1948, Homer and Callie decided that they would have to leave the farm in order to provide a better life for their family. They moved to an apartment in Covington, Kentucky, and Homer found work at the Miami Margarine Company in Cincinnati, Ohio. (It is interesting to note that the certified copy of their marriage license which was in their personal papers is dated January 19, 1948. My guess is they either didn't get a copy of their marriage certificate at the time, or lost it, and obtained a copy in 1948, before their move to the city, just to play it safe.)

On January 6, 1952, their third child, another son, was born.

Mac tells some amazing stories about his father. They are stories of a man raised on a backwoods farm, without much formal education but with plenty of common sense, a man whose life had differed very little from that of his grandfather or even his great-grandfather. His days had all been spent working in the outdoors, and when work was done, there was fishing and hunting to fill his time and spend his energies. The adjustment to life in a small apartment in the city and factory work wasn’t an easy one. Whenever he could, he liked to take his family and drive back to "the country," to visit the relatives, to hunt and fish, and to work on the land where he was most at home.

They saved for years, and in 1954 Homer and Callie bought a house in Forest Hills, a suburb of Covington. In 1958 their daughter Sue married Barry Duane Miller, a young man who had grown up as a neighbor of the family in Covington.

I was maid of honor at Sue’s wedding, and her brother Mac -- my boyfriend -- was best man. I had been dating him for over a year by then, and I felt like a part of the family already. Homer and Callie from the first day I met them treated me like a daughter, and I have always loved them almost as much as my own parents.

Homer was a big man with a quiet strength. I certainly never saw in him the temper or violence that his son described. He was always kind and generous, and the most loving and devoted husband I have ever seen.

In about 1964, Homer and Callie sold the Forest Hills house and moved to Latonia, and then over the years to several other houses and apartments in Covington and Latonia. Their younger son, so much younger than his brother and sister, was like an only child, and his childhood was quite different from Mac’s and Sue’s. They were far from rich, but they were much more prosperous when the youngest child was growing up, and they tried to make up to him for all that their older children had missed.

Photo:  Homer & Callie with grandson Mike 1964

Between 1965 and 1978 Homer and Callie stayed very busy on weekends and evenings with their antique business, first on Pike Street in Covington, and later they had shops in Erlanger and Florence. They spent most of their free time traveling around to auctions to buy the merchandise which they sold in the shop. They both became expert at recognizing antique furniture, glassware, and other collectibles.

Their daughter Sue, her husband Duane, and their children lived in Cincinnati, and were always close by. But first Mac and then his brother went into military service, and Mac’s career caused him to move around the country. Therefore, Homer and Callie had good reason to travel for the first time in their lives (except during the war) outside of Kentucky and Ohio. They bought a camper and visited their younger son when he was stationed in California and later in Florida; and visited Mac, me, and our sons Mike and Dan in Oklahoma, Chicago, and Virginia. The traveling gave them the opportunity to do a little "antiquing" along the roads as well, and they usually returned home with a few treasures on which they could at least double their money.

In 1978 they closed the antique shop and moved out to a farm in Boone County, Kentucky, near the Greater Cincinnati airport. Both were still working, Homer at Miami Margarine, and Callie at Thomas More College, but after all those years of city life, they wanted the peace and privacy of the farm again (or at least Homer did).

They went into farming wholeheartedly, planting acres of garden produce, raising chickens, hogs, and beef. They spent their evenings, weekends, and vacation time doing farm work -- planting, cultivating, harvesting, canning, freezing, slaughtering -- all of it. They had some income from the tobacco, but they just gave away the excess food.

Photo:  Homer McClure 1979

In March 1980, Homer and Callie, at the rather young ages of 60 and 59, became great-grandparents when Sue’s daughter gave birth to her first son. The following month, their fifth grandchild came along, and the sixth grandchild was born in 1982.

Photo:  Homer McClure & grandson Justin 1982

In 1982, after 34 years of service, Homer retired from Nu-Maid. His health was failing, but he continued farming for several more years.

In January 1988 he and Callie quietly celebrated fifty years of marriage. Later that year, he had several strokes and was diagnosed with colon cancer, a disease that had claimed his father and sister, and probably others in his family. He died September 26, 1988.

He is buried in the Hillcrest Cemetery, Dry Ridge, Kentucky.

Written by his daughter-in-law Jane Hopson McClure

Documentation:  Marriage license of Homer McClure and Callie Beach, p.2.

Kentucky death certificate of Homer McClure

* * * * * * *

His son-in-law, Barry Duane Miller, wrote the following tribute to Homer McClure in his own autobiography:

September 1988. Homer McClure’s life has come to an end. His memory brings to me feelings of warmth, honor, and respect. I married his favorite daughter. Much more than just a father-in-law, he was a warm, gentle friend. To the people who loved him, he was a friendly, quality human being of moral character, open minded and fair. Most of the time, he had a good natured, pleasant disposition. Like any normal person, he could become excitable, but he never hated anyone. That way he stayed in control. We were employed at the same work place, Miami Margarine. People there still hold a favorable opinion and a high regard for Big Mac, a person people trusted.

Many times someone would discuss their private affairs, to have him act as an adviser. He took the time to share in their everyday problems. Growing up during the depression, forced to hunt and fish to put food on the table, he never had the chance for a good education. What he had lost in school, he made up in the practical ability to do anything. Nothing was beyond his capacity. He was one of the smartest men I’ve known. As a friend he never let you down, he didn’t know how.

Whenever we worked on a Saturday, the foreman put in an appearance, to assign people jobs and leave, making the most senior man working foreman. My father-in-law had seniority and everyone called him Big Mac. Mac was a person who could do any job, but he had no patience. The job assigned to me was to empty out the back ice box. The government inspector wanted each rack scrubbed. The late night clean-up crew would come in after we left. I had everything moved but a rack of eggs. These eggs were brought in frozen and kept to thaw in the box so the Salad Department could use them.

Mac came in where I was working and said, "Salad needs a skid of eggs." I told Mac I would get them after I moved three pallets. I had moved two when I heard a crash. I ran out the door and found Orange counting in the tempering room. "Did you hear that?" I asked. Orange said no. Then I said, "Damn! That old man has killed himself!" Running over to where the eggs were, I noticed Big Mac backing out of the rack with a forklift. There were supposed to be 75 pails of eggs on a skid, but he only had three pails. Seventy-two had been dumped on the floor. Four gallon to a pail, 288 gallons of eggs were now covering the floor of six racks.

We cannot remember Big Mac without remembering his fine sense of humor. On the farm, Big Mac’s youngest, his lawyer son, the one I called Shyster, and a friend were shooting at targets. Miss after miss with a hunting rifle. The two men were complaining about the rifle, and Mac said, "Are you sure it’s not the shooters?" He took aim, put three shots in the target, and said, "Yeah, it’s the shooters."

The same afternoon, the shooters were firing an old muzzleloader, drinking beer as they put in two loads of powder. I started to tell about the powder, but Mac pulled me back with a gesture to be quiet. I went behind a tree, thinking it might blow up. The gun let out a roar heard around the county. It was thunder, lightning, and the smell of brimstone. It must have kicked like a mule. There was Mac laughing, enjoying the look on their faces.

My mother-in-law made a trip to the beauty parlor once a week. Maybe she had gone too many times, but all her hair fell out. To conceal her hair loss, the shop bought her a wig. I was sitting in the living room when a familiar-looking but ugly woman sat down in my lap. My mind went blank. This was the ugliest female I had ever seen! It was Big Mac in the lady’s wig. Boy, was she ugly!

On the farm Big Mac was picking his tomatoes in the garden. Trying to help, I was mowing grass around the barn. It was a good thing the little tractor had a kill switch on the seat or it would have run off into the hollow behind the barn. I felt something hit me in the back. Reaching around, when I brought my hand out to see, there was a bumble bee doing the buck and wing on my thumb. I had run over a bumble bees’ nest. Rolling off that tractor as if a nest of bees was after me, I took off my shirt to fan them away, then started to run. They kept coming. Running and waving my shirt, I was near where Mac was picking tomatoes. Laughing, he wanted to know what was wrong with me. As I passed, I called out, "Beeeeeees." Still laughing, he came to the house to see if I was OK.

The man’s name was Al, and he came to our plant every couple of weeks to pull maintenance on the freight elevator. His wife had bought him a new tool box that would hold just the tools needed, and he went around proudly showing it to anyone he could get interested. He set it down in front of a concrete wall, then went to check the hydraulic oil. Big Mac, driving a fork lift, pulled up and stopped. He was carrying a skid of cartons weighing over 10,000 pounds loaded. Suddenly, there was a loud, crunching sound. The forklift had hit Al’s tool box and it was shorter and wider than it had been.

Big Mac loved to hunt, but he didn’t hunt just to kill. He ate what he brought home. During the depression as a boy, he hunted rabbits to feed his family; extra rabbits he took to town to sell to buy flour and sugar. I asked Big Mac, "How did you learn to shoot so well?"

His reply: "When you have one shell between eating or being hungry, you don’t miss."

On the farm long before daylight, he would sit near an old hickory tree. As the sun lightened the sky, he would watch gray squirrels in the tree. One movement, one shot, one gray squirrel. While people were having their breakfast, he would be back with his limit of squirrels.

During the oil shortage of the late seventies, gas was in short supply. Big Mac stopped to put some gas in a plastic container for the lawn mower. He had already paid for his gas, and as he was pumping it, a clerk from inside the station came screaming at Mac. "Hey, old man, you can’t put gas in those containers."

Big Mac said, "I paid for it. It’s my gas. I’ll pump it on the ground if I want to."

The clerk turned around and went back inside the station.

Photo:  Callie Beach with parents and brothers 1929

Callie Roberta Beach was born January 19, 1921, in Verona, Gallatin County, Kentucky, the seventh of ten children of Charles Beach and Clyde Collins Beach. (see BEACH) She married Homer McClure on January 8, 1938, in Sherman, Grant County, Kentucky, and gave birth to three children. She died January 21, 2003, at the age of 82.

* * * * * *

Callie lived during her early years on a farm which was on the border of Grant and Gallatin Counties. The house was in Gallatin County, and the barn in Grant County. Later, another house was built on the Grant County side so the children could go to the closer Grant County schools. Callie had one older sister and five older and three younger brothers. Every one of them had red hair and a slender, wiry build.

She attended Concord School in the first through third grades, another school in the fourth through sixth grades, Scroggins School in the seventh grade, Mt. Zion School in the eighth grade, and Crittenden High School in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades.

On Callie’s twelfth birthday, January 1933, her older brother Bill, age 18, was killed by a runaway horse. Later that same year, the family moved into her grandmother Lucetta Collins’ house to care for the elderly lady. Callie recalled that her grandmother was "senile," and sometimes wandered off. Callie was frequently called upon to go looking for her, or to watch out for her as if she were a small child.

Callie’s only sister Betty had married when Callie was six, so being the only girl with so many brothers, Callie had to work very hard from a very early age. Girls were expected to help with the farm work in addition to their household chores, but housework of any kind was strictly women’s work, so the men and boys never had to do any. From the time she was six, Callie helped her mother do all the cleaning, washing, ironing, cooking, canning, and sewing for her father and eight brothers. It was expected that the nine boys and men would be waited on by the woman and girl. Callie said the thing she hated the most was having to starch and iron those nine white shirts every week for church.

Callie was not quite seventeen when she married Homer McClure on January 8, 1938. She had known Homer for a number of years, but had considered him "that smart aleck McClure boy" and wanted nothing to do with him. Eventually, she accepted a date with him. Usually their "dates" were just moonlight walks or occasional "play parties" at the homes of friends. Before long they decided to get married. She said Homer’s mother would never have agreed to their getting married -- she didn’t want any of her children to marry. Since they were both underage and didn’t have their parents’ consent (Callie said she could have had her parents’ consent if she had asked for it, but she didn’t want to ask), they simply lied about their ages to the justice of the peace. Their marriage license shows their ages as 22 and 21, Homer's place of residence Mt. Zion and Callie's Elliston, Kentucky. The Certificate of Time and Place of Marriage shows the marriage took place in Sherman, but it was registered in Gallatin County, KY. A Baptist minister named A. R. Abernathy performed the ceremony.

She had been cooking for so many years for her large family of brothers that it was hard for her to get used to cooking for only two. So she cooked huge pots of food that she and Homer alone couldn’t possibly eat. (I don't think she ever got over that; she always cooked enormous amounts of food.) Homer was a farmer, and as a farmer’s wife, she had to work in the fields alongside when called upon, as well as -- naturally -- do all the work in the house.

Callie was eighteen when her first child was born at home on October 19, 1939: Homer Clifton McClure (later known as Mac). Then two years later on November 19, 1941, her only daughter, Caroline Sue, was born.

When Homer was called to active duty in April 1944, the last year of World War II, Callie packed up the two children and followed him by train to Ft. Riley, Kansas. There she stayed in an apartment in Junction City, Kansas, and Homer joined her there whenever it was possible (against the rules, usually) to get off the base. When he shipped overseas, she had to return to Kentucky and wait. The day she returned home in August 1945 was the day her father was buried.

Callie and the children stayed with Homer’s parents and sisters while he was overseas. She told me she didn’t get along with them very well, but she made the best of the situation. She was determined to put some distance between them as soon as Homer came back home.

World War II had a powerful impact on this country. Country boys like Homer McClure were drafted away from the only life they had ever known and sent around the world. Great numbers of them returned from the war to take advantage of the G.I. bill and get a college education that had never before been available to them. But not Homer McClure. All he wanted was to get back to the life that he knew, a life that differed very little from that of his parents and his ancestors for generations back.

But the World War II years had a great impact on women as well. They had been left alone to manage for themselves and their families for years at a time, and they realized they were perfectly capable of doing so. For better or for worse, the role of the wife and mother of the family would never be quite the same totally subservient one it had been.

After Homer’s discharge from the service, he would have been welcomed back to share in the work of the family farm along with his brother Coleman, but Callie refused to do that. At her insistence, the family moved to Warsaw, Kentucky, for two years, working another tenant farm, living without electricity or running water in a sharecropper's shack. But Callie wasn't willing for her children to be raised there, and she finally convinced Homer to make the break from farm life and move to Covington, Kentucky, in 1948. Their third child, another son, was born in Covington on January 6, 1952.

Covington is only about 25 miles away from the farm on Arnolds Creek, but what a vast difference there was in the two places. Covington is a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, a modern, growing, cosmopolitan city on the banks of the Ohio River. While Homer and Callie were too uneducated to take advantage of many of the opportunities there, they placed their children where they had only to look around and pick and choose where their lives would go. As their son Mac put it, "doors opened to me that I hadn't known existed." It was by far the best thing they ever did.

When I first met Callie she was 36, with coppery red hair. It was prom night, March 1957, and my boyfriend, her 17-year-old son Mac, had picked me up at my house and brought me to meet his family. Callie welcomed me into that family with such love and warmth, I'll never forget it. From that moment on, I was always treated like a beloved daughter. Callie took pictures of us in our fancy prom attire and told us to have a good time and be careful. As we left, her parting words to me, as they were each and every time I ever visited her house, were, "Come back."

What a terrific cook she was! Her table virtually groaned with the quantity of food she laid out. On Thanksgiving and Christmas she really went all out, baking enormous turkeys AND hams AND beef roasts, accompanied by probably dozens of vegetables, salads, and desserts. I always used to wonder what she did with all the leftover food, because no matter how valiantly we tried, and I always did my share, we couldn't put a dent in it. She was a true "country cook," never using a recipe. I particularly enjoyed her ham, and she told me how she prepared it, and I tried numerous times, but mine was never nearly as good as hers.

I couldn't have asked for a better mother-in-law than Callie. She never interfered with us in any way, just welcomed us with open arms whenever we came to her house for a visit. She always treated me as if she thought her son was the lucky one to have married me--how could I not love her? And she was always a generous and loving grandmother--our sons remember how she loved to have us come for Christmas, and the tree would be almost invisible because of all the presents she had stacked around it. She always sent money for both boys on each one's birthday. Mac's job and lifestyle have always kept him far too busy, so I went back to northern Kentucky to visit my family many times more often than he did. However, I never went back there without visiting Homer and Callie, and after his death, I always visited her.

Callie was a very determined person, with boundless energy. She worked at several jobs in Covington, including one at Booth Hospital and one at St. Elizabeth Hospital. From the way she described both jobs, I gather she was essentially a nurse's aid. However, Callie had special qualities—determination, self confidence, innate common sense being the key ones—that, despite her lack of education or formal training, led her to higher levels of responsibility. For ten years, from 1958 to 1968, she worked as Director of the Residence at the St. Elizabeth Hospital School of Nursing. She was in charge of housekeeping for the dorm where the nursing students lived, and the students came to her with a great variety of needs, as if she were a surrogate mom.

When St. Elizabeth closed its nursing school, Callie received offers from the University of Cincinnati and the new Thomas More College in Ft. Mitchell to serve them in the same capacity. She accepted the position with Thomas More, and in addition to being Director of the Residence, she was also a sort of unofficial housemother as she had been at the nursing school. She had a myriad of duties at Thomas More, including some that are done by people with degrees in psychology or management. She simply had good common sense, and everyone recognized it.

Callie was always a gregarious woman with tremendous interest in everything. The students living in the dorms that she oversaw turned to her for every sort of need, personal advice, and encouragement. She would drive them to dental and doctor appointments, treat their minor illnesses and injuries, tell them how to get a stain out of a piece of clothing, listen to their worries about grades, lecture them about drinking or other misconduct, scold them and kid with them, and give them advice on anything they might ask.

She also pursued other interests -- there didn’t seem to be anything she couldn’t do if she set her mind to it. She took courses in doll repairing and ceramics, and these led her to open a small shop in Covington in 1965. The business expanded to include antiques, and during the next thirteen years she and Homer devoted most of their evenings and weekends to the buying, restoring, and selling of antiques and other used furniture.

When a particular piece of antique furniture, glassware, or other item appealed to her, she usually brought it home to enjoy for a while until she decided to sell it. One of her prized possessions was one of the first gas stoves ever made, and she did her own cooking on it for several years. Her house was a treasure trove of antique furniture and bric-a-brac.

The Kentucky Post did a feature story on her on September 15, 1970, with a photograph of her cooking at her 1878 "Detroit Jewel" stove. Some of the antiques she prized so much were described: "a hand coffee grinder—the kind once commonly found in the neighborhood general store; home cooking implements—a juicer for making home jellies, a butter churner, cast iron skillets hung on a peg board; a black coal bin, brass spittoon, copper kettle for boiling clothes, and a collection of pitchers and bowls, some metal, some porcelain."

Callie McClure 1975

Callie was quoted as saying, "The problem is that things get kind of junky. I've got wall-to-wall furnishings now. Each time I get something new, something old has to go."

She told the Post that she had started collecting antiques when she was 19. "My husband and I—we were both raised on farms in Grant County—had been married two years when we started collecting. Friends gave us antique things from their families. The few things we bought were modern. Finally we decided the old things were nicer than the new things and started getting rid of the modern to make room for antiques."

The reporter described Callie's 16 by 14 foot living room as a "sort of catch-as-catch-can collection of good-natured clutter." Those of us who remember it can testify that was a perfect description. So much was crowded into the four-room house in Covington that it nearly filled the eight-room farmhouse they moved to in 1978.

At that time, they decided to close the antique shop and move out to a farm near the airport in Boone County. Due to the constant demands and seven-day work weeks of the antique business, it was becoming less than the enjoyable (though profitable) hobby it had been. Homer wanted to return to the quiet and open spaces of country life, so she agreed to go.

Homer retired from Nu-Maid in 1982, and Callie retired from Thomas More in January 1983. They baby-sat for several years with their youngest grandsons. And there was all that farm work. Callie told me more than once she would rather be living in the city, but Homer loved the farm. She faithfully canned and froze more food than they could possibly use, and had to give most of it away. The next year she would tell Homer they still had plenty of canned goods left, but he would plant as much or more.

In September 1982, my mother wrote about them in a letter to me:

Busy as she was, Callie just couldn't stay away from the antique business, so she opened a store on Main Street in Covington in what had been an apartment. She limited her hours to Friday and Saturday afternoons only. On February 3, 1982, the Kentucky Post ran a feature article on the antique shops of Covington, an article which opened with this highlight on Callie:

Covington had been on a decline since my childhood, but renovation efforts were being made to attract new business and consumers. The antique shops of Covington's "MainStrasse Village" were very much a part of this effort. Callie's shop was described in this same article: "McClure's Antique Shop, 525 Main Street. This shop used to be an apartment, so owner Callie McClure has arranged her wares according to the room they belong in. Thus, in the kitchen is a cast-iron coffee grinder ($400) and a 96-year-old wooden butter mold ($65). In the back living room are three walnut chairs from 1882 ($200) and in the front room a 1900 hermit bed (the forerunner of a couch that converts into a bed) made of mahogany, leather and horsehair ($200)."

Not mentioned in either article, but one of Callie's personal favorite antiques was an old butcher block which she and Homer used as a kitchen table when just the two of them were there for a meal. It was a massively heavy piece, scarred with plenty of use. It was never for sale; she was too fond of it.

By 1985 Callie had closed the shop in Covington, but she and Homer had a booth at the Burlington Flea Market. We have a picture taken in March 1985 with Homer and his grandson Mike standing beside a suit of armor, the showpiece of the booth which was filled with an assortment of antiques and collectibles.

Homer and Callie were married fifty years in January 1988. There was no big party or celebration. I ordered a dozen yellow roses sent to their house, and Callie said when she saw the florist delivery man walking up to the door, she knew who those roses were from.

Homer’s health had been poor for several years, but for several months in 1988 he was seriously ill and bedridden. Callie and Sue took care of him at home, or in the hospital or hospice. On September 26, 1988, he died.

Her son Mac helped her find a small house on Main Street in Covington where she could have an antique shop in the front and living quarters in the back. She assured everyone it was what she wanted to do, and everyone who knew her was sure she would be just fine -- she was a strong, tough lady. She said she would concentrate on antique glassware and other popular collectibles now that she was alone and unable to do the heavy lifting that dealing in furniture required.

However, we were to find out that much of what Callie had been had died with Homer. After his death, she had no interest in running the antique shop, or in much of anything. She really had no interest in living without him. Her memory lapses became so severe that we finally realized she was unable to live alone, so she lived with either Sue or Mac and me for about two years.

When Mac closed up the antique shop and put the house up for sale, almost nothing remained of the valuable inventory she had started with. But the heavy old butcher block was still there, so Mac and our son (with others to help) managed to get it into the truck and haul it out to Oklahoma when Callie came to stay at our house. I had Mac put it in the pool area, as I had no interest in antiques at the time and really didn't want it in the house. Somehow, as time went by, I grew quite fond and respectful of that battered old relic, criss-crossed with carving scars. And when we moved to our country house in Wentzville, Missouri, I had it placed in the kitchen where it inspired me to continue collecting antiques. (The three moving men who manhandled it into the house told me, "Be sure this is where you want it, because it ain't going anywhere.") Now, of course, I regret that my interest in antiques didn't awaken while Callie was her old self.

For about two years, Callie lived with us in Oklahoma, and for a while with Sue in Cincinnati, but such is the nature of Alzheimer's disease that she needed constant care. So for the last seven years of her life, Callie resided in the Alzheimer's Care Center in Oklahoma City. My mother also succumbed to Alzheimer's in 1997, and it is truly a dreadful disease, not so much for the person who has it as for those who care about her. It was so difficult for all of us to watch as Callie—the person we knew-- virtually disappeared. All that energy, her love of socializing, her shrewdness in dealing with sellers and buyers of antiques, her wonderful cooking, her strength of will and mind and body—all gone. For years she didn't know anyone, didn't know where she was, she didn't talk, she didn't care about anything. Mostly she slept. And all we could do was watch and wait and remember.

Most of her life Callie suffered numerous physical ailments, some very serious--or at least she believed she did--but during this period she was physically strong and healthy. Three times she was moved to the hospice when her caregivers believed her death was imminent, and twice she lived beyond the time permitted in hospice care. During her third hospice stay beginning in late 2002, she suffered a stroke, then developed pneumonia. On January 21, 2003, just two days after her 82^nd birthday, she passed away.

In one of the ironies that life hands us now and then, just eleven days earlier, her daughter Caroline Sue Miller had died, so unexpectedly, of a heart attack at age 61.

Both Callie and Sue were cremated and their ashes scattered on Homer's grave at Hillcrest Cemetery.