People Who Influenced Me - Winnie Chapman Mizell

 

My grandmother Winnie Chapman Mizell was a big influence in my life. She had only sons and adored me as the little girl she always wanted. She bought me perfect little outfits and baby dolls. She took me shopping and to lunch on Columbia Road in downtown Bogalusa, stopping to show me off to each friend we met along the way. Some of my best memories are lying in her four-poster bed next to the long row of jalousie windows. The attic fan cooled the hot, humid air, but also blasted us with the signature Bogalusa paper mill smell. We would talk and talk like two girlfriends!

 Although I loved her dearly, her influence instilled great fear into me, not only by her story of losing her five-year-old son in a hit-and-run accident, but by the worry and negativism that this great loss left her with. She warned me of how God would punish my parents and even cause something to happen to me because of the way they lived their lives. Partly because of this I struggled with trusting that God is good and loving. She taught me to worry, but God has worked on that in my life. He is still working on me in that area. If, before I die, you can see a change in me—more of the peace of God rather than worry--then let that be my testimony.

 

People Who Influenced Me - Earl Odell Foil

 

My grandfather, Earl Odell Foil, had a calm, quiet and patient manner. I adored PawPaw’s calmness. His quietness seemed a strength to me. My mother influenced my respect for him because she portrayed him as a perfect father in her childhood.  He never showed anger. I will admit we didn’t have much to talk about, but he showed me his garden, took me riding on the back of his tractor and told me about armadillos he had seen in the year. Just sitting on the porch side by side felt like security. I admired that he was a deacon in the Baptist church. Because I went to church alone as a child, I longed to go where my grandfather was “the deacon.” I wished I could live in a small town like Bogalusa where MY grandfather was the Postmaster!

People Who Influenced Me - Rosa Green Foil

 

My grandmother, Rosa Green Foil, was a great influence in my life. In many ways, she inspired me to become a Christian. She and my grandfather raised their children in First Baptist Church in Bogalusa, Louisiana. She had been raised herself in Enon Baptist Church. The Green family was large and full of heritage! Heritage I longed for. I saw in their lives what people call “salt of the earth” and “good people.” Their lives seemed connected, clean and peaceful in comparison to my lonely life. As they say “there’s more to the story.”

Although she was sometimes judgmental and religious, it was because of her insistence and the strong Baptist background in her family, that I was sent to a Sunday School as a child even though my parents did not go. I really did fall in love with Jesus there.  I may not have understood much, but I believed and I longed for him.

I loved my grandmother’s intelligence, her smile and her giggles. She was a story teller, and I got my love of family and heritage from her. I save little clippings and keepsakes like she did. Her handwritten family history was the inspiration to do my own. Like the face on the creamy pink cameo that had been her engagement gift, she was the face of heritage to me – and that heritage was Christian. I am very grateful.