Can you imagine walking five or six miles through the snow carrying your two-week-old baby!
I can’t. As that mother snuggled her little girl close to her chest to keep her warm and safe from the biting Appalachian wind, I’m sure she had no idea her little one would grow up to be a source of hope and encouragement to her entire community and beyond. It’s been 109 years since her birth and 29 years since her death—and she is still bringing encouragement— still making a difference. That child was Opal Corn Myers, the focus of my book Letters to Lori.
Let me share the story behind her birth.
“If my mama could have populated all of Cocke County, she would have. My parents liked children and wanted a lot of them. I was the third of six, born on February 1, 1911. A lot was going on around the time my Mama was due with me. A man who wanted Mama and Papa’s cabin and land went to the government office in Greeneville and offered them $5.00 an acre, and he was given the lease. My parents found out they had lost their lease when they received the eviction papers in January about a month before my birth. Because Mama was pregnant, they were allowed to stay until two weeks after my birth. That’s what they did in a government area—if someone was willing to pay more, they could take your land lease.
My parents were not the type to be bitter and hold grudges. I’m sure they were hurt and upset, but they never said anything against that man, and they never would let us talk against him either. We were taught that talking about the bad things that people did was wrong and could cause trouble along the way. Mama always said that a person’s sin would find them out, but her family was not going to be the ones doing the talking. And we didn’t.
On February 14th, Papa loaded up the wagon. They didn’t have much to move. People didn’t have much back then. There just wasn’t room for a lot in the small one or two-room cabins, especially when the average family had six to ten children. There were no heating stoves to move; the fireplace was their only source of heat. They didn’t have dressers or any other furniture except beds, chairs, a table, and a plow and some farming tools. The biggest thing they had was their cook stove. Just one wagon full would move it all. I’m sure Papa had to make more trips to get all the animals and their winter supply of food.
In Catherine Marshall’s book, Christy made the seven-mile snow-covered trek from Del Rio to the mission in freezing weather. I too am a walker, not so much now that I’m old, but I have walked that distance on several occasions. Believe me, it’s not effortless even in perfect weather on flat land.
Christy described her experience like this. “Then the trail began winding upwards and soon became so narrow that we had to walk single file and further conversation was impossible. Because the snow had obliterated the path, I had to walk in Mr. Pentland’s tracks. But the mountaineer seemed to know exactly where he was going. For the first hour and a half the walking had not been bad, but we had delivered three letters. But here in this defile it was colder. My eyes were watering, my cheeks stinging. I could no longer feel my toes inside my rubber boots. My skirts, wet almost to my knees, were now half-frozen. The chill air caught in my throat. Even my eyelashes were beaded with wet snow.”
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