Tribute to Granny!

Gladys Winona Allen Graham
October 30, 1921 - October 29, 2011

Yesterday my Granny died; today would have been her 90th birthday. I loved everything about my Granny, she was feisty, opinionated, beautiful, hard working, generous & loving. While I was growing up she hosted family dinner every Sunday. And she & Pap didn’t just consider their children & grandchildren “family”. If there was a visitor at church or a family in need, she invited them too. Her home and her heart were always open.

We compiled a cookbook of our family recipes about 10 years ago & there are several from Granny. My favorite is “Granny’s Sunday Possum” She loved to get a reaction & make people laugh. Her Sunday Possum was on the dinner table every week, and thankfully it was a BEEF roast. I’ll share the recipe with you sometime but this instruction she wrote makes me smile. “Cover & bake at 300 degrees until church is over.” Church was central in her life. To me, Granny was famous for her cherry pie & blackberry cobbler. She always made several homemade desserts for Sunday.

Going to Granny & Pap’s on Sundays was such an important part of my childhood. Their home was humble and life was “right” there, love was abundant & unconditional; cousins were plenty too. I don’t remember many toys at their house. They had the woods out back & the garden, the basement (unfinished so lots of room for grandchildren to run) & the porch & the kitchen. And I had the time of my life at their house.

We had frequent sleepovers there with three or five cousins sleeping on their pullout sofa bed in the front room. We ate buttered popcorn faster than Pap could pop it & we’d always wake up to a breakfast feast of his silver dollar pancakes, my very favorite! In the summer we would spend the day picking & breaking beans from the garden. In the winter Granny would open a skating rink for us to polish the hardwood floors in Pap's socks. They must have had the cleanest hardwood floors in the world.

Granny & Pap gave me my first Betty Crocker cookbook when I was 18. I wrote their names & the date in it when I got it, “From Granny & Pap Christmas 1986”. I still use it ALL the time. I remember being a little girl & looking through my mom’s Betty Crocker cookbook, which was very worn and torn. My mouth would water at the very thought of all the delicious recipes and I would imagine making so many wonderful things. When I’d find a recipe that we had all the ingredients for, I made it. Now my Better Crocker cookbook looks just like my mom’s did, it’s splattered and torn & I cherish it. I’m sure the love of cooking goes back even further than my Granny but I’m so thankful that she passed that onto my mom & my mom passed it onto me.

Thank you, Granny for your example. I miss you; you were the best! I’m thankful & proud to be your granddaughter. You left a legacy of service and love for all who knew you. Rest in peace.

Link to Granny's Obituary