My only living Aunt will turn 100 tomorrow.
There’s a big bash planned in the hills of Virginia, and I’m a gonna’ be there.
Hopefully most of my umpty-ump cousins will be there. I have a ton, and am looking forward to seeing them.
I have posted about my Aunt Diddie often, this is a recap of a post from one of her earlier birthdays…back when she was “just” in her 90s.
I’ve said everything there is to say, but some of it bears repeating.
She is an awesome woman, an educator, a woman of influence, and our family’s last connection to our past.
Willie and Wallace
There’s really no connection other than the date and the party.
Both events happened on June 11, one in 1916, and one in 1963.
Both were Southern, both reared by parents born in the reconstruction era, both lived through the Great Depression, both were educated, both were smart, and both were Democrats.
But they couldn’t be any more different if they tried.
In 1963, George Wallace, then Governor of Alabama stood in the door way of the Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to block the entrance of Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood, two black youths who were trying to enroll in college.
It took the US Justice Department and the National Guard to get them in the building and registered as part of the Student Body of the Crimson Tide.
Wallace’s stand of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever” was the philosophy of thousands across the nation, and the attention he brought UPon the State of Alabama caused a stirring and awakening in the land.
But, back in 1916 on that same day, June 11, Willie Agnes Higgins was born.
As she spent her life in the art of educating those around her, I can not imagine Aunt Diddie barring the door to anyone who wanted to learn.
A life long Democrat and an elementary teacher for 43 years, Mrs. Ward, or my Aunt Diddie as we call her, taught thousands of kids to read and write, count, learn history, and how to behave.
I’m quite sure that had Aunt Diddie been leading the two Alabamans to Foster Auditorium, Wallace would have moved a lot faster than he did.
Happy Birthday Aunt Diddie, we love you!