This is a short piece written by my mother about her sister, my Aunt Irene. They came from a very large sharecropping family. Mama Carr, my grandmother, had a total of 11 children, two of which died at a very young age, of the remaining nine, only one was a son, Paul Henry Carr. I have written of him before as he died in WWII, and he is remembered as one of the many heroes of that global conflict.
My sister Irene was fifteen years old when I was born. My mother was in her 40’s and had quite a rough time, both with the birth and for a few weeks afterward. As my two oldest sisters were already married and out of the home, it fell to Irene to assume primary responsibility for my care. I was the last of eleven children and the ninth daughter, so I guess my mother had run out of girls’ names or else was too ill to think about it. Anyway, Irene not only took care of me she also gave me my name. She has told me that I cried almost constantly the first two or three weeks of my life. I imagine that it was probably because I was not getting sufficient nourishment from Mama, but to a fifteen year old Continue reading “My Sister Irene by Juanita Carr Rush”