My Grandmother

Adda LuLu Tribett McKinney
17 March 1897~5 July 1940

The service was over.
She was gone.
Gone but she would never be forgotten.
Her influence for good would be felt for generations to come.
I can still hear her sing as we shared the same hymnbook at church.
"Oh My Father" was one of her favorites.
She never learned to play the piano or sing a solo but her voice rang out in song all the daylong.
She sang church hymns and patches of popular songs of the day, "A Shanty in Old Shantytown...it’s roof is so slanty it touches the ground."
She especially liked "Home on the Range."
When her children misbehaved she sang "Love at Home."
As she washed the dishes and scrubbed the floors, she sang.
Singing covered poverty, loneliness, it hid her feelings of insecurity, and it showed her joy in life.
One of the happiest days was when her only daughter played [the trumpet] and marched in the Union High School band.
Each time her daughter donned the band uniform; she, much to the daughter’s embarrassment proudly displayed her to any person or persons who happened to come along.
She was the wife of a barber.
The barbershop was located in the front room or parlor of their home.
Many customers got their 25 cent haircut and then came back to the kitchen to have a piece of apple pie and spend a few minutes talking with Addie, her given name.
I called her Mother.
Many were her rules and her children obeyed them. Mother raised us with rules, rules so smothered with love that they were unrecognizable in their original form.
“Never use a safety pin if a needle and thread is available.”
“A stitch in time saves nine.”
“She married a lemon in the garden of love.”
She knew hundreds of such sayings and repeated then daily.
She taught us kindness.
Not your ordinary kindness, but your heart kindness.
There was a young lady in our town.
She had never walked.
Her mangled body belied her beautiful face, sweet spirit, and perceptive mind.
Many of the children of the small town had heard their fair share of horror stories about "Mary the cripple."
My Mother explained to me how Mary had been born with a misshaped body.
What I remember most about Mary was her soft, heavenly voice. Her inquisitive eyes, her rich, thick, curly hair.
I cannot bring to mind her body.
Mother not only took me to visit Mary, she helped me to have a new friend.
Many an hour I sat on Mary’s doorstep, listening to the many things Mary could talk about.
In superstitious West Virginia, many years ago, this teaching experience was a phenomenon.
With the patience of Job, Mother taught me to cook.
A can of soup, a box of Jell-O for a family of six.
This is the deepest of depression years.
Mother seldom left the house unless it was to go to Grandma’s house. This one day, she was to be gone at dinnertime.
She explained to me how to fix the soup and make the Jell-O.
On her return I had mixed the soup and the Jell-O together!
She laughed.
I cried.
I was seven.
She was one of the most unselfish people I have ever known. I bought her a pair of gloves. When she came home with both hands tucked inside her coat I asked her, “Mother, where are your gloves I bought you?” “Mrs. Jones didn’t have any and I gave them to her.” was her reply. At the time it was most unsettling, but now I know what made her the kind of person she was.
For twenty-one years I was schooled by the best of teachers, my sweet mother.
She has influenced me to this day and I am forever grateful for this wonderful woman.
Yes, the service is over and yet she is not gone.
She is always with me.
Not in earthly things but by her example and teachings.
She lives everyday... with me.
by daughter Helen Ruth McKinney Marple


Addie was the second of seventeen children born to Addison Percy Tribett and Myrtle Jane Carver. She married John Robert McKinney in Huntington, West Virginia on 4 April 1919. By him she had three children: Helen Ruth McKinney born 23 December 1919 in Utica, Ohio, weighing 7 pounds, Robert Harold McKinney born 23 December 1919, fifteen minutes after Helen, weighing 7 1/2 pounds, and Lloyd Richard McKinney born 14 February 1922, weighing 11 pounds. She died the day her first grandchild, Jon Howard, was two months old. She is buried in McMechen, West Virginia, where she lived most of her life.