Down Home: We called her Grammar

The long-anticipated call arrived early Thursday morning.

Grammar, my mother’s mother, went to be with the Lord.

She joined Popo, her husband and my grandfather; and Martha, my sister; as well as far more family and friends in heaven than she still knew down here on Earth.

Helena Loewen Moore lived to be 103 years, 6 months and 21 days old.

Many people who knew her will remember the remarkable length of her life. But I’ll always remember her as much younger, and I’ll never forget how much fun we had in her home when I was a boy.

Grammar, the Wright Brothers and Fenway Park

Grammar entered this world on a homestead farm in western Oklahoma April 16, 1911. The Mexican Revolution still waged on in 1911, and Southern Methodist University was chartered the day after Grammar was born. In 1911, Orville Wright flew a glider 9 minutes and 45 seconds, a record that held for a decade. Fenway Park in Boston opened later that year. Chevrolet entered the automobile market, to compete with Ford. Ronald Reagan, Hubert Humphrey and Jack Ruby were born in 1911. World War I didn’t start until three years later.

Grammar and Popo grew up on neighboring dirt farms in western Oklahoma. In the Great Depression, their family endured the quintessential Grapes of Wrath existence. If I remember family history correctly, they were the only members of their generation on either side of the family who did not move west. Popo worked the Loewen farm—and I have the photos of him with the plowhorses to prove it—until Grandma Loewen sold it.

The Reading Room

By the time I came along, Popo worked for the Santa Fe Railway. They settled in Waynoka, Okla., a railroad town. Eventually, Popo ran the Reading Room, sort of a company-owned hotel for railroaders, who lived in Amarillo and Topeka, Kan. They worked the trains from home to Waynoka, slept over at the Reading Room and then worked the trains back home. Popo and Grammar lived in an apartment in the building, and Grammar eventually served as Popo’s assistant.

From a kid’s perspective, Grammar and Popo led the perfect grandparenting life. They lived where they worked in an eccentric building with myriad nooks and crannies. During long summer visits, I trailed them—mostly Popo, but often Grammar—from breakfast to bedtime. And if Popo and I wanted to go fishing in the afternoon, Grammar covered for us, and we headed for the stock tanks.

One of those fishing expeditions provided the surest evidence I can imagine that Grammar loved me. Popo usually insisted on throwing back our catch. But one evening, he relented, and we brought home a string of sun perch. Grammar cleaned and fried them all. If you ever try to clean and fry three-inch fish, you’ll understand she did it all for love. The exercise defined tedious.

Grammar loved to sing and to walk.

Hymn singing

Somehow, she developed this huge, warbling alto voice, which embarrassed me to pieces, because it seemed louder than the rest of the congregation combined. And it warbled. But if you listened, you wouldn’t doubt Grammar loved Jesus and hymns—probably, but not necessarily, in that order.

In the evenings, Grammar often took us kids for walks. Mostly, it was just Martha and me. Years later, when our brother, Martin, came along, he would join us. I remember walking beside railroad tracks, marveling at lightning bugs in the twilight. And Grammar extolling the joys of walking. That’s probably why she lived to be 103.

Popo died when I was a young man, with babies of my own. A year later, Grammar moved to eastern New Mexico to dwell near my uncle and aunt and their family. The distance—plus the demands of raising a family and holding down a job—made personal visits much more difficult. From time to time, I drove out to see her in Fort Sumner and later Roswell. But it was a far piece, and I couldn’t do it often.

Staying connected

Still, Grammar kept up with us by sending letters. Protracted letters, with tiny writing and, as long as she could attend, a copy of her Sunday church bulletin. We joked about how she wrote long stories about people we never met. But we stayed connected, and connection counts.

We’re disconnected now. But then again, I never expected to maintain the company of a grandmother past my own 58th birthday. We’ll reconnect again someday. And I can close my eyes and hear her warbling about that day “… in the sweet bye-and-bye.”