On this day, clothes hung on the lawn to dry. One shirt read, "The nightmare isn't over." Children dressed as spaceships or stars and listened to stories on an out-of0-this-world literacy day. Coffee was sold from a shipping container–a business project started by a mom for her home-schooled kids.
Two women talked about turning fifty, losing their parents, and feeling like orphans.
Crowns were worn and My Sharona was played as a whole town danced to an 80s cover band. All on this day.
On this day, a girl wrote, "I love you like all fire" on her leg, and a book advised, "Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be."
Hints of humidity returned, and gray roots were covered. Stories were told of cancer, a marriage to TG Shepard, and a necklace from Elvis. All on this day.
On this day, a Vietnam veteran told about almost dying in a ship fire, and a tire blew out on a uHaul van. A mockingbird flew twigs to her nest, and a baby squirrel escaped a cat.
Wisteria covered trees in the back of a pasture, and the temperature went to over ninety on a backyard thermometer.
A man died. He called himself Ronco, and one of his last Facebook posts was: "I am enough, Who I am is enough, What I do is enough, What I have is enough- Unknown." All on this day.
On this day, a housekeeper greeted guests on her floor: "Good morning my loves." She gets up early to care for her sick mother and then cleans motel rooms. She said her finances aren't lining up–life is hard, but others must be struggling, too. Making them feel better makes her feel better, too.
A college student missed a meeting because of a "messed up car." A gas station cashier said, "We've still got a little sense left, but it doesn't always go in the same direction."
On this day, a journalist tapped his cane with a gold alligator on the handle as he told stories of sitting on the roof of a cinder-block hotel in Somalia, watching tracer fire below. And of a dead body, tear gas, and chaos as Mississippi fought to keep integration out of Ole Miss.
A man sang "Amazing Grace" to his wife at breakfast, a crop duster sprayed a Delta field, and an odometer hit 100,000 miles, all on this day.
A normal biological event for half of the population, menopause has been dismissed, ridiculed or overlooked for generations. Adding to the confusion are symptoms that vary with each woman. It can be unclear when menopause starts, how long it lasts, or the correct names of treatments to use.
“It was a loving feeling that felt like everything was going to be okay,” he said. “We call that chasing the dragon because you're chasing the first high that you ever got. You will never be able to reach that first high, but psychologically you have to try.”
Prosecutors showed pictures of Kelsey’s lifeless body on the bed. One photo showed the tattoo on her side that read, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional,” above a flower.
The Our Southern Souls book sold out from bookstores and online sales, but it is now available on Amazon.
Davis Avenue, named after the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, was called The Avenue by locals. It was the center of business, shopping, socializing and entertainment for Black Mobilians who were unwelcome in many other parts of the city.
The Avenue was born during Reconstruction as a safe place for Black people to live and own property. As the population grew, Davis Avenue prospered through entrepreneurship and community, despite the restrictive laws of Jim Crow.
But that economically independent community collapsed with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, urban renewal, integration of schools and families moving away.
Those who grew up on The Avenue gave additional reasons for its decline: the closing of Brookley Field, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the opening of shopping malls, racism, crime, drugs and blight.
There are about 10,000 graves in the 18.5-acre cemetery; military veterans are in more than 800 of them. Volunteers documenting Oaklawn predict that number will increase as they move deeper into the uncleared acres.
The 89-year-old cemetery, located at 1800 Holt Road, is non-perpetual care, meaning families of the deceased are responsible for maintaining the burial plots. Through the decades, the graves became covered by bushes, vines and weeds or upended by trees.
The veterans buried at Oaklawn served in World War I and World War II. They fought in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Located across the chain-link fence from the well-tended Catholic Cemetery on Martin Luther King Avenue, Oaklawn is an overgrown, forgotten burial ground for Blacks in Mobile. Most of Oaklawn’s 18.5 acres was established in the 1930s and 1940s with simple gravestones facing east. Death, like life, was segregated for many buried here.
Cassandra: “I was 14 when I met him, and the beatings went on for nine years. He beat me black and blue with a pipe. After the first few whacks, you go numb and can’t feel it anymore. He threw me out of the car and punched me when I was sleeping. One night he almost killed me, and I ran out of my house naked and bleeding, trying to save my life. Penelope House is where I learned I had been abused. That is how men treated my mama, so I thought all of that was normal.
I thought it was normal.
These are the stories of survivors of domestic violence in Mobile and Baldwin counties. Each of these women could be dead today. Instead, they prove it is possible to escape an abusive relationship and rebuild self-esteem. They shared their secrets to show other victims there is hope for a better life on the other side.
“We reprogram a computer to get rid of the viruses and the ways it was infected. We also help reprogram men and women about how they think about themselves, God, work and their community. When they come to us, their identity is being a bad person. We let them know what they did was bad, but they are wonderfully made with a purpose.” Matt Armbruster
A diagram of a fire ant now hovers in the skyline of downtown Mobile. Located only a few blocks from the port where the stinging insect first entered the U.S., the recently painted ant is part of a four-story mural honoring Dr. E.O. Wilson.
During the height of Delta, one nurse described her job of giving care to the most urgent first as “playing chess with who gets a bed or care.” She went from room to room, deciding which emergency was more important.
“We were forced to make decisions none of us wanted to make,” she said
A summer that began with the hope of ending COVID-19 and returning to normal ended with 556 more deaths in Mobile and Baldwin counties. Healthcare systems were stretched to their limits, and the realization settled in that the coronavirus isn’t going away.
Exhausted doctors and nurses have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from fighting an invisible war. It’s a war they want the public to understand.
