Between Catina and myself we only have one remaining grandparent. I do really miss my other grandparents, but I’m very happy Eva Gray Bullard is still a part of our lives and gets to celebrate our big day with us. But don’t let that last grandparent thing fool you into thinking she’s “old.” She’s still lives on her own and still drives a car. Though instead of independent she would probably describe it as spry or maybe even having gumption. There’s several things she still loves to do, but one in particular—one of my favorites—is to tell stories.
She’s pretty good at it. Actually, she’s very good at it though she’s too modest to say. Grandpa was great with a joke, but Grandma tells the best stories. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry, but they always leave you wanting to hear just one more, which is something I guess I never really outgrew asking for. Her stories are almost always about family and how things were in the past. She’s a historian who’s traveled through time to give us a glimpse of a world that she—and in many ways all of us—came from.
I wanted to collect more of these stories so I put together a trip. We loaded up my grandparents in a van and took them out for a day around the area where they grew up. Each turn in the old neighborhood triggered a memory and grandma would spin another yarn. The narrative was broken into different parts but when summarized ran something like this.
She was very young at the time, about six years old. Her mother had died from a ruptured appendix at the much too young age of 35. It was difficult for her father to manage the farm and all the kids so my grandmother, along with some of her siblings, had to move to stay with and be raised by other family members. Grandma was taken in by her Uncle Alex and Aunt Josie who had a farm in the eastern part of North Carolina. Grandma gravitated to Uncle Alex and spent her time learning about running the farm and carpentry. Life was simple and she her loved aunt and uncle very much.
Years later Grandma met my granddad in a strawberry field back in 1942. She was picking strawberries as part time work and JC Bullard was a local boy who farmed with his farther. As he was passing the strawberry field he noticed Eva and came over to talk with her. Grandma described it as love at first sight for the both of them. Years later they eloped to Dillon SC reciting their vows before a justice of the peace before returning to Beaver Dam NC to start their lives together. The couple eventually turned into a full house with seven children in all.
On her 80th birthday we put together a party to celebrate her life. We decided to go all out and create an exhibit hall from all the pictures she had collected over a lifetime. Amazingly, there were many of her and her family when she was young in a time when there might be one camera per county. Some of the images had been damaged or faded so I spent time restoring them and then placing them into a design. These 20 large displays were all over the room. She only knew we were creating a picture theme for her birthday, but when she walked into the party with everyone else she got to experience it all. Each piece had restored photos and slices of stories spanning eight decades. I’ve included the displays below for everyone to see.
She gets to celebrate another milestone this month when she watches her oldest grandson finally walk the aisle with her soon to be granddaughter-in-law.
