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FEATURE FOR
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 2002
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Doris Graves Shares Special Memories |
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As a child, Doris Graves was a dreamer. She was just a
baby when her father moved his family from their home in
Waverly to his mother's home in Nashville. His mother was
an uncompromising woman given to excessive pride in her
status as the daughter of a physician who had immigrated
to the United States from Holland. She disapproved of her
son's unsophisticated wife, a young, part-Indian woman who
had known only foster parents in her youth.
While her son was out of town on business, she sent his
wife away, telling him upon his return that his wife had
left him, leaving their two daughters behind.
So Doris dreamed of the mother she could not remember.
When she was five years old, however, her father married a
devoutly Christian woman who loved his children.
"If I'm anything at all, I owe it to my stepmother and my
husband," Doris says today. "She made us beautiful clothes
and talked to us everyday about the Bible and things that
were in it. She also took us to Sunday School and Church
every Sunday."
Nevertheless, the girls attributed their stepmother's
strict parenting to the fact of their being stepchildren,
a myth that was aided and abetted by schoolmates who
filled their young heads full of stories about
stepmothers. Though deeply wounded, their stepmother
explained to the girls that she loved them as well as
their father and wanted them to grow up to be nice young
ladies.
"She was right," Doris says, "I thank God every day for
her. She guided my life through her teaching, and I'm
sure, prayers."
Doris was a tomboy, active in sports and competitive in
bicycle and skating races. Her stepmother counseled the
girls to be careful in their friendliness with the boys
they played with, saying it could only "lead to trouble."
So scared was Doris that when she kissed a boy on the lips
during a weiner roast outing with her Sunday School class,
she says, "I was scared to death for awhile I would have a
baby!"
Babies were a big part of the dreams Doris nurtured in
quiet times alone. She dreamed of marrying a minister and
having sons who would become ministers. She dreamed of
having a daughter as well. One thing she never dreamed,
however, was how young she would be when her dreams began
to come true, starting with her early dream of finding her
mother.
She was 14, when, after hearing her father's cousin make
mention of her mother, Doris caught her alone and asked
what she knew of her. The cousin advised Doris her mother
was married to a "well-to-do" farmer in Missouri and gave
her an address where she might write to her mother.
After a sleepless night spent holding the address in her
hand, she wrote a letter she hoped and prayed her mother
would receive.
"I poured my heart out to her," she says. Four days later,
she arrived home from school to find her stepmother
crying. A registered letter had arrived from Doris'
mother.
"She was so happy for me that I had finally found her,"
Doris says. Not so her grandmother and aunts, who banned
the cousin from ever returning to their home.
That same year, Doris was devastated when her father
bought a farm in Robertson County and she was forced to
leave the friends with whom she had attended school since
the first grade.
"We were ready to start high school together," she says,
"I felt the Lord didn't love me. I just didn't know how
much he did love me. He was beginning to bring a pattern
together that would be years of heartache, hard work and
great joy in his work and love. We moved out to the farm
with no electricity, water or bathroom. We would freeze to
death at night. Everything was so different and I was so
homesick for my pretty home and friends in Nashville."
Soon, however, young people came to call, among them a
farm boy named Truman Graves who had 11 brothers and
sisters. The two began sharing "thoughts and dreams" in a
friendship that soon evolved into "deep feelings for one
another."
The couple was devastated when Truman's family decided to
move to Florida, which Doris says, "was like moving to the
end of the world." She was just 15 and a half when 22-year
old Truman asked her to marry him. Her father advised her
that marriage would not always be rosy; that she couldn't
come running home every time something didn't suit her.
Her grandmother was more blunt. "Surely you're not going
to marry someone from a family with 12 children," she
exclaimed, "that's disgraceful! You'll have a house full
of children and anyway, Truman doesn't come from a family
with any money - What will you live on?"
Despite her family's misgivings, the couple was married in
Franklin, Kentucky on September 25, 1937, minus the white
dress and beautiful home wedding that was part of her
dreams.
"We started out without much money and have never had very
much since," Doris states, "But the Lord always provided
our needs."
After two years in Florida, Doris was expecting her first
child when she and her husband decided to return to
Tennessee. Though weak and sick with hunger by the time
the Greyhound bus rolled into Springfield, Tennessee,
Doris was too happy to complain.
She and Truman moved into a small, sparsely furnished
home. It didn't take long for the couple to discover the
straw mattress was full of bedbugs. "They just about ate
us up," she says.
She was barely 17 years old when Lofton was born on
April11, 1939. The doctor was unsure whether the baby
would survive the first few hours of life, and with Doris'
stepmother breast feeding her own six-month-old child, he
advised her stepmother to nurse the new baby until he was
stronger. Truman and Doris stayed with her parents until
Lofton was two weeks old.
Arriving at home, the couple found a postcard waiting for
them advising that Doris' long-lost mother would be
arriving by bus that day at 9:00 a.m.. They were already
two hours late.
While Truman secured transportation into town to fetch her
mother, Doris was concerned with the state of their
affairs. The straw mattress still held lingering bed bugs
while the cot in the adjoining room was filled with them.
The baby's bed was a cardboard box.
With Truman making just fifty cents a day, there was no
money to buy more food. A quick survey showed the couple
had fresh eggs from their laying hens, turnip greens
growing in the turnip patch, some dried beans, side meat,
meal and flour. Despite the meanness of their
circumstances, Doris' mother seemed not to notice their
poverty. "She was so proud to have a little grandson,"
Doris says.
When night fell, Doris and her mother slept on the bed
while Truman fought bedbugs in fitful sleep on the cot.
At Christmastime, "a huge box came for Lofton. It had a
tricycle and everything a child could want for in it, plus
a nice gift for us," Doris recalls. She never saw her
mother again, as she died soon afterwards of spinal
meningitis.
The Graves family continued to live poorly, living in one
home where only two rooms were habitable. "To get to the
kitchen you had to go through a room with half the floor
gone," she says, "but we were happy at the end of the day
with all the blessings we knew we had. We played with the
baby and talked of the future. God had a reason for all
the things that went on in our lives and it was just about
trusting Him in the little bit we had."
Unable to attend high school or even finish grade school,
Truman was nevertheless a ravenous reader. "He studied the
Bible," Doris says, "The reason I say studied is because
he looked up so many words in the dictionary to see their
meaning."
Amidst rumors of war, Truman went alone to Cleveland, Ohio
to find work, unable to afford the trip for the whole
family. After a few days, he found a job making 50 cents
per hour.
"We felt like we were rich," Doris says, who arrived in
Ohio during her second, ill-fated pregnancy. Doris almost
died having the couple's first daughter, who did not
survive childbirth.
"She was so cute; she looked like a little doll, she had a
head full of curly black hair," Doris shares, "To this day
I can see her as she looked. Truman took off work five
days to be with me and take care of me; he hardly left my
side. I'll never forget that and the many other things he
did."
During the war, Truman worked for General Motors 12 hours
per day, six days a week. "If that sounds bad, think of
the boys fighting and getting killed," Doris says.
The family moved back to Tennessee when their second son,
Ron, was a baby and soon after Truman bought their first
car, an old two-door Ford.
As time went on the couple had another son, Danny, a
daughter Connie and their last child, Roy.
Truman had resisted the call to become a minister for
twelve years, always enjoying work on the farm even when
other jobs helped make ends meet. Roy was a baby when
Truman finally gave in to his calling, though he remained
reluctant when asked to preach the following Sunday.
"Once you surrender to the Lord, there is no sense
waiting," their pastor said.
"That Sunday night the church was packed," said Doris,
whose dreams were still coming true, "I could not believe
my ears nor could anyone else. Truman preached a wonderful
message and delivered it like he had been preaching all
along. From then on he was asked to preach someplace
almost every Sunday.
Truman entered Belmont College in Nashville in 1954 where
he remained for three years.
In 1955, the family received a great blessing when Truman
was able to help with the Billy Graham Crusade in
Nashville. On the first night of the crusade, Doris and
the children arrived early. From the stage, Dr. Graham
noticed Connie, who reminded him of his own little
daughter. When he invited Doris and the children to come
down and have their photograph taken with him, Doris says,
all she could say, over and over, was "What an honor."
"He must have thought I was the craziest woman he'd ever
met," she laughs today.
The next day, across the front page of the newspaper was
the picture of Dr. Graham holding Roy, with Connie looking
up at him and Ron standing at his side. Unfortunately,
Dan, who had knelt at his feet for the photo, had been cut
out of the picture. The photograph remains a special
treasure to the family.
Although Truman had passed a test to enter Belmont
College, "he finally just gave up" and, at the age of 42,
began attending high school classes at Harrison-Chilhowee
Baptist Academy in Seymour, Tennessee where Lofton was
already a student. Several months later, Doris enrolled as
well, and the two graduated together in 1959 after which
Truman returned to Belmont for his final year of
education.
In later years, Truman's work in church missions took the
couple to many locations. The couple devoted their lives
to spreading the gospel wherever they could, often
spending their own savings to ensure the success of their
cause.
Always, Truman would see others whose need was greater
than his own family's. "He bought shoes for I would not
even attempt to say how many people," Doris says. "He
bought shoes for other children when his own children were
in need of shoes."
With money always scarce, the entire family took jobs
wherever they could find them. Doris, who had always
wanted to be either a nurse or a teacher, was able to
substitute teach on several occasions and was a nurse's
aide for 35 to 40 years. "I loved both jobs," she says.
Though the children were small, "they cut grass, contained
worms at a worm farm, did chores for people, worked in
grocery stores, on a farm or anything there was to do as
they got bigger. They never complained if they had to give
their money to help with finances," Doris says.
When there was no money to help others, Truman shared what
meager belongings the family had with those who, in his
eyes, had a greater need.
"He was always ready to share what he thought everyone
else needed more than we did," she says. From dishes and
glassware to her favorite skillet and a special cooking
pot she had received as a gift from her grandson, items
disappeared and Doris made do with whatever was left.
Doris chalks up her husband's generosity as a lesson in
"how the Lord will provide when the time comes that we
need help and how my husband served the Lord so
faithfully."
Their generosity was repaid on several occasions when the
family needed it most. She recalls a time when her pantry
was empty and it was time to fix supper. She answered a
knock at the door to find a local church had decided to
throw a "pantry party" for her family. The shelves that
were empty soon brimmed over with wonderful home-canned
foods and other goods.
Another year, when Christmastime was especially hard for
the family, Truman opened the door to guests who took him
outside for a private conversation. He returned and asked
Doris to put the children to bed. The next morning, they
awoke to the most wonderful Christmas ever.
She admits she had periods of regret over hardships her
children had to endure in their childhood until Lofton
told her, "Mother don't worry about it, it didn't hurt us.
It just made us appreciate our education and things more.
The children built good lives for themselves, some working
their ways through college, earning advanced degrees.
Doris' dreams were fully realized when two of her sons,
Lofton and Roy, became ministers. Her daughter, Connie, is
also involved heavily in the work of the church.
In 1976 the couple moved to Phoenix, Arizona for Truman's
health as they did on several occasions as his illnesses
fluctuated.
With all they had ever accumulated together having gone in
one way or another to help others, Doris and Truman
received one of their biggest blessings when they "came
home" to McKenzie where Roy was Pastor of the First
Baptist Church. The church provided a house and more to
the couple who had given their lives to God's work; they
made McKenzie home for the Graves, who stayed behind when
Roy's ministry took him to other pastures.
As he battled heart attacks, back surgery, and diabetes as
well as Alzheimers and Parkinson's disease in later years,
Doris vowed to care for Truman at home. It broke her heart
when he finally had to go to the nursing home where he
spent the last four years of his life, though she missed
very few days in visiting. He passed away on August 13,
1999.
"I have never gotten over missing him," Doris says, "I
miss him more all the time."
And sometimes in the middle of the night she forgets. "I
still wake up at night sometimes and try to be real quiet
so I don't wake him up," she says with a small smile.
She has no regrets, seeing purpose in even the hardest of
times. "I really want to help people understand how God
works with people that he calls to do His work," she says.
"No matter what age or background, He provides the ways
for them to make preparation to serve Him. It is not
always easy - it can be very hard at times - but neither
was it easy for Christ to die for us. He did it willingly,
so we are to serve Him willingly with love, steadfastness,
and a burning desire to see lost people come to know him." |
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Phone (731) 352-3323 or Fax (731)
352-3322
washburn@mckenziebanner.com
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