As mother continued to write, her accounts became less detailed; and she really didn't complete a separate section on the years that her family spent at the Lupton place on Murfreesboro Road. On December 29, 1937, my grandmother was in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where Dorothy Gentry Ewing had given birth to her only child, a daughter, that morning. My mother was at home that day and used to recount how in the middle of the day she thought she saw her father go into the barn. She was puzzled because the image was very clear, but she knew that her father was at work. That evening Zeb Gentry came home from work, ate supper, and sat down to read the paper. Within a few minutes he was dead of a heart attack.

During the late 1930's my widowed grandmother moved her family into town to a house that she rented on Fifth Avenue, South. The family was living on Fifth Avenue when her third son, David Nolen Gentry, was killed in Italy on April, 29, 1944. Shortly afterward his younger brother Jimmy entered the Army and served for the duration of the War.

During the 1930's Mother went to work as a personal shopper at the old Loveman's Store in downtown Nashville, an experience that she remembered fondly for the rest of her life. It was during this period that she got caught in a blizzard while returning from a trip to visit relatives in Asheville, North Carolina. Her car full of family members, she vowed that if she got them home safely she would never drive again; and, in fact, she did drive again only a few times before giving up driving for the rest of her life.

After their meeting in 1931 my parents saw each other only intermittently, going long periods without contact. During this time Mother sometimes dated Mac Adkerson, a career naval officer and the brother of her girlhood friend Nell. He referred to Daddy as "Casey Jones;" Daddy called him "Popeye the Sailor Man." Late in 1945 my father renewed their acquaintance and gave my mother a watch, which she wore for many years. They were married on January 4, 1946, at the home of my father's youngest sister, Sallie Belle Rippy, and her husband, Dr. Elkin Rippy, at 913 Gale Lane in Nashville. My father was one month short of his forty-ninth birthday; Mother was two months short of her thirty-fifth.

So began my Mother's years in the Chicago area, first in the suburb of Des Plaines and later on Chicago's West Side in the Garfield Park area. I am impressed by the courage with which she faced the move from a small Southern town, where she was surrounded by her family, to a large Northern city, where she knew no one and where her husband's work as a railroad engineer kept him away most of the time.

Still she was not ready to give birth away from her family. So, in the spring of 1947 she returned "back home," surprising her family with a pregancy that they had not known about. I was born in Franklin in June, and we remained there till I was about three months old. My father was able to arrange his schedule so that he would work intensively during part of the month and then be able to take ten days off at a time. My younger sister was born in Chicago in September of 1948.

During my childhood years Mother devoted herself totally to the care of her home and family. She had a knack for making the ordinary fun. She declared Friday night as "Pleasure Night" and served my sister and me a favorite meal before the television. Dessert was almost always one of her wonderful devil's food cakes with fudge icing, and we were allowed to stay up to watch the late movie. Deeply religious, she found a way to get us to church every Sunday, even though sometimes the trip to church involved riding two buses and a streetcar each way. Mother, my sister, and I spent every summer and several Christmases in Franklin and Nashville; and Daddy would join us for the few weeks of his vacation. It was his hope to retire to Franklin.

In December 1959 my father's ulcer, which had troubled him for many years, worsened. Our Chicago doctor refused to treat Daddy for it because he wouldn't quit smoking. We traveled to Nashville so that a friend of Uncle Elkin's could perform surgery. After a remarkable recovery for a man nearly 63, my father developed abdominal pains on the day before he was to be discharged from the hospital. He had developed peritonitis and died the following day, December 30, 1959. He is buried at Mt.Hope Cemetery.

After my father's death, we moved to Franklin. Corinne Channell, my uncle's mother-in-law, managed the affairs of her cousin the elderly Agnes Bennett. Among the Bennett properties was a nineteenth-century home at 138 Third Avenue, North, the corner of Third and Bridge, which had been divided into two apartments. Mrs. Channell offered Mother the use of the front apartment, which had been vacant for some time, to store our furniture. After looking at the apartment, Mother asked if Mrs. Channell would be willing to do some painting and renovation and rent us the apartment to live in. She agreed, and on January 22, 1960, we moved in--Mother, my sister, my grandmother, my great-aunt Donie, and I. For Mother it was full-circle in a sense, for this was the Rose house, just down the street from the house where her family had lived in 1915 and catty corner from the Eggleston house, where Mother had admired the older girls' singing and dancing. Later Mother would rent the entire house.

After working part-time in the Williamson County Tax Assessor's office, Mother went to work in the early 1960's at the daycare center operated by our church, Fourth Avenue Church of Christ. [This was the first daycare center in Williamson County.] When the center closed several years later, Mother began Miss Louise's Daycare Center in her home.

In the days when women always wore hats to church, Mother recalled how every Sunday during her childhood her father would say, "Come on, girls. Get your bonnets. It's time to leave for church." When I was little, I loved Mother's big, beautiful hats. After women stopped wearing hats, Mother started wearing a flower in her hair; and to many people in Franklin she was known as "the lady with the flower in her hair."

In May 2000 my sister and I persuaded a reluctant Mother to move to an assisted-living facility in Nashville, just a few blocks from our homes. Unfortunately Mother was never happy there and became increasingly feeble. A heart attack in May 2001 forced her to move to Trevecca Health Care Center. For a number of years Mother had suffered from a diminished sense of taste and had lost a considerable amount of weight. Now she refused to eat at all, subsisting almost entirely on Cokes.

To the end of her life, Mother was a person of great sensitivity and caring. On September 12, 2001, my husband and I visited her at Trevecca. As was often the case, her television was tuned to CNN. She told me that she knew that something terrible had happened but wasn't sure exactly what. I told her about the previous day's attacks. Although she said nothing, tears rolled down her cheeks.

On the morning of September 29 my sister called to tell me that Mother had not awakened and that the end was near. All day she was surrounded by family and friends, all of us hoping that she knew we were there and that we loved her. Her beloved Myron Keith, with whom she had shared many jokes when she worked at the church during his ministry, came by and urged her to let go and reap the reward that she had lived her life for. She died early on Sunday morning, September 30.

We were overwhelmed by the number of people who came to the funeral home and sent flowers. Her funeral was held at the Fourth Avenue Church of Christ, her church home for so many years, as she had wished. To have held it anywhere else was unthinkable. She was buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery near her parents, grandparents, brother, and aunt and next to my father. Their joint stone is inscribed with the last words that he ever spoke to her, "I will love you through eternity."