151. Happy Birthday Mamaw

Today would have been my grandmother's 91st birthday were she living. Vivian "Tommie" Hockensmith died of a heart attack at the age of 59 back in 1976. Later that same year my other grandmother, Grace Noble, whose birthday is January 8th, also died - she was 61. While the death dates are important, the birthdates provide an easy way of being remembered - 8/1 and 1/8.

My grandmother whose birthday is today is largely responsible for my interest in reading, writing, politics, and most everything else. In was in her house that I was raised. She was a politician, organizer, rather outspoken, and a little ahead of her time on some thoughts. Steve Beshear wouldn't have his gambling issue if my grandmother had gotten her way in politics back in the early 1960s. Her proposal then was to dedicate a portion of downtown Louisville to gambling. The district would have been from 3rd to 9th streets and from the river south to Chestnut. Had her idea succeeded, it is possible Louisville's grand hotels along 4th Street would not have fallen into disrepair, as they did in the 1970s and early 1980s. There would, in fact, have been more of them, with casinos attached. We may not have had the procession of names for the "pedestrian mall" created when 4th Street was closed in the 1970s. Remember 4th Street, then the River City Mall, then the 4th Street Mall, then 4th Avenue, and finally a return to sanity and roots back to 4th Street.

I'm not saying I would have agreed with all her ideas. She was, perhaps, as progressive as a Dixiecrat could have been for her time. She was looking forward to Jimmy Carter getting elected president when she died, although at the time Carter was not widely known or supported. She had supported Henry Jackson in 1972 but once McGovern took the nomination, she followed suit. She took me to hear Mrs. McGovern speak when that campaign made at stop in Louisville at what would become my high school alma mater. She liked Johnson and Humphrey, but both was a wee bit too liberal for her.

I've only recently learned that she spent some time working for a real estate office while living in Providence, Rhode Island while her husband was away in WW2. My mother was then a small child. They also lived in New York City and briefly somewhere on Long Island, waiting for his return from across the pond. When he did eventually come home, they settled in Louisville, despite very strong family ties to Frankfort, where she was born and raised, having attended Second Street School and joining the Choateville Christian Church. She never worked after my grandfather's return from the war. They lived on W. Bloom Street, where the Cardinal Hall dorm is presently. Later they lived on Southern Parkway while building a new house out in the middle of no-where, into which they moved in the summer of 1958, the house in which my brother and I were raised. My mother still lives there.

Upon her death, she was buried at Sunset Memorial Gardens, outside of Frankfort, on Versailles Road. May her soul and the souls of all those who have left this place Rest In Place.


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The blog is taking a four-to-six day break. I'll be in Fancy Farm Saturday for the annual political picnic, and otherwise enjoying a short vacation.