Birth, Marriage, Death

By Billy Reed
The Courier-Journal, Aug. 9, 1974

Excerpt

Vanceburg, Ky.—An 18-year-old named Linda Moore rested peacefully in her bed in Room 206 of the Hayswood Hospital. On her pillow, next to her head, a transistor radio played soft music. A pair of tiny knitted blue bootees was on her bedside table.

A couple of days earlier, Linda had given birth to a 6-pound, 11-ounce boy. He was named Alan Moore Jr., after his father, a young worker in a factory near Vanceburg. The birth was very painful, said Linda, but she forgot it all when she heard her first child’s squall.

Maysville, Ky.—At her family’s three-story, white-brick antebellum mansion on Third Street, the one with the black wrought-iron railings all around, Jannie Hargett sat in the middle of the carpeted dining room floor, opening wedding gifts and adding names to her list for “Thank
You” notes.

The dining room was filled with gifts, so that it looked almost like the miscellaneous section of a small department store. Over here was a table with nothing but silver trays and pitchers. Over there was a table with china and glassware. Other tables had electric appliances and other articles of her “loot,” as Jannie laughingly called it.

At 11:15 p.m. on Wednesday, July 28, Mrs. Margaret Hall passed away quietly in her 94th year. She was just 11 days shy of her 95th birthday. Until she got sick earlier this year, Mrs. Hall never doubted she would live to be 100.

“She had no patience with old people who just gave up,” said her daughter, Mrs. Lloyd Anderson, 73, one recent afternoon. “She never thought of herself as old. Why, when she was in her 90s I remember her talking about other people and calling them, ‘this old person,’ or ‘that old person.’”

Reprinted with permission The Courier-Journal ©.