My Mother, Ada Mae Mitchel Strider, A Life Lived for Others...

(NOTE: This is the eulogy I wrote and delivered at the funeral of my mother on 1/31/12)

Emmanuel Baptist Church
Grenada, Mississippi
Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Many people believe, incorrectly, that I departed Grenada many years ago for greener pastures, a career, to climb that elusive ladder to success. Folks are surprised when they discover that simply isn’t true. When my father died, Governor Bill Allain appointed my mother, Ada, as Sheriff of Grenada County. Consider that a moment from my perspective. What 22 year-old boy would choose to live where his mother had the legal status to carry a firearm, wear a badge and put him in jail?

So, I moved to Hong Kong and, eventually, Washington.

Reverend Jesse Strider, you are my first nephew. You came along when I was 5 years-old. True. The Grenada Daily Sentinel Star found it unique and interesting enough for a front page story. Jesse has served our nation in the military, like his grandfather, father and Uncle Mack, as well as answering the call to ministry. Today, he officiates the funeral of his grandmother.

My wife Karen is playing the piano. Jesse’s wife, Kelly, sang that stunning solo. And, we will hear Mack’s wife, Brenda, sing shortly. Obviously, Mack, Jesse and I take full credit. We have been excellent talent scouts for our family.

I’m honored, today, as a friend, fellow Grenadian, fellow Mississippian, cousin, relative, husband, father, nephew, uncle, and brother to Cindy, Mack and Alton and son to Ada to stand before you remembering and celebrating the incredible life of my mother.

Certainly, I speak for my siblings, who are, as we all know, so… old. As I’ve said many times, after more than a decade of raising those 3, mamma and Big Daddy simply sensed the NEED for one more. I love my siblings so very much. And, nothing makes me happier than reminding them of how young I am. In fact:

- Alton got his first AARP card when I was still in diapers

- Mack had 6 new cars and twice as many speeding tickets by the time I was 6

- And Cindy, well, no matter how many birthdays I keep having she remains 11 years older than me. She brought Richard, her husband, home to meet mamma and daddy when I was 7. I hid under a table

I’m blessed beyond words to have you three for siblings. Mamma and Big Daddy knew what they were doing.

It is moments like this one that we seek discernment and search for meaning in the events we experience and lives we live.

We find value in these moments if we will allow it. We discover solace in the past as we attempt to understand the present. We reflect on the life we today celebrate and, hopefully, we will experience a sense of perspective in our own lives.

We want it to be real and honest. Otherwise we are participating in a mere charade. So let us be careful with nostalgia for its own sake.

Nostalgia is not necessarily helpful for discernment because it can distort reality and we remember only what we want to; creatively enhancing the good – rose colored remembering glasses.

I have to be careful because I am the nostalgic sort. Not just the type who goes on Facebook to visit the “Remember when…” pages about my hometown or fraternity days in college. I am one who will lay opened-eyed, in the bed during those witching hours remembering, imagining, a past. I will make it all I want it to be if I’m not watchful of my memory.

Nostalgia provides a needed context because it enables us to feel what we once felt and share those feelings so they are real again, but such a treat cannot come at the expense of a remembrance of the past that is merely partial. It makes us partial, incomplete.

It is rare, very rare, my family and friends, when any one group gets to gather, remember and celebrate a life that is as wholly powerful as this one we are here for today. That power comes in the sheer simplicity of mamma’s motivation and desire for how she lived. And, for this, our nostalgia is well suited.

Albert Einstein said “Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.”

And, in living a life for others, a person creates the opportunity and space and atmosphere for the essence and reality of community to emerge.

Community is simply a unified body of individuals. And, for Believers, community represents those who are unified in spirit and love and the common purpose to serve others.

Mamma’s life was one of creating community--creating places and spaces where we were able to gather in spirit and love and a sense of unity. And, she did this simply by living a life for others.

The value, the essential requirement, like a thirst for water, of community lies in all of our hearts. We need it. And, it is manifested, encouraged and sustained in many ways.

- St. Augustine wrote about a shining city on a hill. A city deemed worthy and good through its citizens; through community

- Dr. King preached and believed in the Beloved Community

- Hillary Clinton reminds us that it takes a village. And, it does indeed take a community to get it right; to make us whole

- Reverend Jim Wallis often writes about the common good. That place where we find the brotherhood and sisterhood of a civil society—community

- And, Dr. Henri Nouwen said this, “Community can make us think of a safe togetherness, shared meals, common goals, and joyful celebrations… community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another."

We are alive not for ourselves but for one another.

A life lived for others is a life worth while.

A life lived for others creates community.

Mamma didn’t set out to create spaces where we could build communities. She simply lived a life full of care and love. She had fun. She had a blast. She didn’t research or write about community. She just lived, lived well and lived for others. And, we bask in the outcomes.

Did anyone here ever have a slice of mamma’s coconut cake? One simple bite could make a puppy pull a freight train, right? I’ve been home when every flat surface in every room had a coconut cake sitting on it. And she would deliver each one to friends and loved ones as gifts, or take to Civitan Club bake sales where they were the hot item year after year.

Did anyone here ever play on a softball team with her? Or play against her and her team? She would load her car up with softball players and off they’d roll to tournaments in Greenwood, Batesville, Clarksdale.

She played a mean game of bonco, too, and I see some of those friends here.

On Flag Day and other national holidays she would put on her Civitan vest and spend the wee hours of the morning hanging flags all over the town. Grenada would look like a stealth bomber dropped a payload of red white and blue bunting over it.

There are other lives here today, besides Cindy, Mack, Alton, mine and her grandchildren who likely owe their existence in large part to mamma.

Even in high school. Way back before John Rundle was an iconic name but rather the actual high school principle, mamma connected her best friend and school mate, Aunt Christine, as a pen pal, to her brother, who was racing across Europe with General Patton, freeing and saving millions from the Nazis.

They were married after the war. Uncle Edwin and Aunt Christine had two boys, Michael and Eddie who are here.

Now, to return the favor, Uncle Edwin was close friends to Big Daddy and, and after the War, when mamma and Big Daddy made their intentions known Uncle Edwin met them on the Mitchell family front porch with a shot gun; Browning 12 gauge. But, with a smile, too.

She and Uncle Edwin, together, may have saved their baby brother’s life. That would be Uncle John. On a Christmas morning, when they were kids, those two older siblings took their baby brother’s new wagon and riding it so hard and fast down a hill tore the wheels off. Uncle John never had the opportunity to injure himself. Surely, a whole branch of our family owes mamma and Uncle Edwin much.

I’m reminded, Uncle John, that you, Aunt Aileen, Keith, Melanie and Vicki would come to our home, downtown, whenever the tornado sirens went off. I never understood it because you would drive over, with your family, as the sirens and storm raged; arriving after it was over. Mamma would cook and make coffee and we always had a great time.

Who has been the recipient of one of mamma’s practical jokes? One of her favorite joke genres was to just scare you to high heaven. Growing up I rode Ms. Tribble’s bus to school. And, I am remembered by many as the boy who gave Ms. Tribble a frog on one of her birthdays (all wrapped in a Lickfold Jewelers box). But, the jokester was really mamma. She was using me. I was her pawn. She hid on the porch to watch as Ms. Tribble opened the gift in front of our house and the frog leapt, quick and high. You could hear mamma laughing as Ms. Tribble ran screaming down the street.

Mamma was director of the annual Very Special Arts festival. She would fill up the auditorium with kids from several counties. Somehow every one of them managed to win awards. Alton was often drafted to volunteer as was I.

Mamma ran booths at the county fair and concession stands at basketball games. She oversaw the same booth at every Halloween carnival and built floats each year for the homecoming parades. She collected clothing for the Mississippi Sheriffs’ Boys and Girls Ranch; a time of year when you couldn’t navigate through any floor of our home for the clothes and shoes and gifts soon to be sent to the ranch.

During Grenada Lake Thunder on the Water Festivals while her son, the sheriff, kept the peace and her nephew, Keith, prepared and launched the fireworks, mamma would serve ice cream with the proceeds benefitting charity. The fingerprints of a life lived for others all over the place.

Who spent time with her down on the Gulf? Mamma is the ONLY person on the planet who could spend the lion’s share of a day riding the waves off Pensacola and step out of the surf with perfect, untouched, Margaret Thatcher hair. It was amazing. She orchestrated trips each year of cars with Grenada County license plates rolling into the Florida panhandle where she planned, maintained the calendar, did the cooking, road the waves and had perfect hair.

Last night, during visitation, Freda Harper came with a framed shadow box of badges that belonged to various Sheriff Striders over the years. She said the shadow box had belonged to her husband, Bill, one of mamma’s high school classmates and lifelong friends. Ms. Harper said Bill would tell people that these are all the Striders Ada Mae Mitchell elected to office. He was right.

She ran the Sheriff’s office, too. Day in and day out; night in and night out she was available to the families of this county.

Mamma loved and cared for and served her family, her friends and anyone she encountered who needed help.

She did not suffer selfishness.

She lived Colossians 3 and put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness and, supremely, love, every day.

She brought hope and joy and celebration to a world that lacks these things unless we embrace and embody a love that serves and honors and celebrates life; living lives for others.

Mamma was special, a one of a kind. We are all blessed. AND, through her acts of simply living life as she saw it--living life for others she created the spaces where we experience community; where we share, in return, with each other.

We are a community; not because we logged onto a computer and went to a site where it says someone wants to be your friend “do you accept” and you click "yes".

No, we're a community because we know each other and love each other, because our parents and grandparents knew each other and we recognize the faces of those long gone in the babies we see today.

We are a community because we remember the Provine Mansion and the Burger Shack. We know when Highway 51 was first widened.

We eat Kiwanis pancakes together.

We laugh at weddings and cry at funerals, together.

We have ‘picked up’ together after tornadoes hit.

We have had catfish and hushpuppies together on our farms.

We grew up on Grenada Lake, skiing and grilling.

We know the families who have children etched on the granite memorial of war dead. And, our fathers and grandfathers served together in Europe, Burma, India, Pusan, Manila… Our sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters serve in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And, yes, we have eaten coconut cakes, together.

We have gathered together around the great table of charity providing our share for the children at the Sheriffs ranch or Very Special Arts.

We have smiled as wide as the River itself because of a practical joke that came our way.

We have bought ice cream at the Grenada Lake Festival from a woman with perfect, Margaret Thatcher hair.

We have been protected by a sheriff, taught by a teacher and made safe by an emergency first responder… her children.

And, on Flag Day, there has not been a more red, white and blue town in our fine nation thanks to Ada Mae Mitchell Strider.

We are deeply blessed for all the lives of those like our mother.

We are the result.

We are a community.

And, that's the legacy of Ada Strider; a passion for living life well and living it for others.

I want the grandchildren to stand--Jesse, William, Annette, Ronnie, Beth, Mitch, Hannah, Will and Pete. Look at these grandbabies—from 8 to 41.

Always remember Romans 14:7 “For we don't live for ourselves or die for ourselves.” And never forget your grandmother. Her legacy to you is a life lived for others.

“You will not see me, so you must have faith. I wait for the time when we can soar together again, both aware of each other. Until then, live your life to its fullest and when you need me, just whisper my name in your heart, ...I will be there.” Emily Dickenson

Ada Mae Mitchell Strider… a life lived for others… thank you for our community. Until we meet again…