(1/4) “I was 17 when I got married. We met at an old dance hall called Danceland where young people would go on the weekends. The first time I saw him, he and his girlfriend were getting into it. She was mad because he was looking at other girls. She told him off and left. So I walked up to him and asked, ‘Was that your girlfriend?’ He said, ‘Yeah. She said I was looking at you.’ I thought he was cute so I responded, ‘Okay, I’ll take you then.’ We both started laughing. Then we talked a bit and exchanged numbers. Later, we started meeting up. We just hit it off. We got married on April 12, 1964. Legally, I was too young, so my momma had to sign her permission. I lied and told her I was pregnant. I was just so ready to get out of that house. I had too many brothers and sisters. There were all kinds of conflicts. Plus, I was working, he was working, and we were both going to school.
Our first place was right down the street from my momma. She stayed on one corner and I stayed on the other. We had three bedrooms so every time my brothers would get put out they would stay with me. My dad died when I was young, and my mother had 10 kids. I felt like I was the black sheep of the family. People would say I was the prettiest, which just made it harder for me because my sisters were jealous. There were always excuses about why they didn’t have to help as much. I took care of my mother’s father after school. He was paralyzed on one side. He used a bedpan and I was responsible for cleaning him. I used to smack his butt hard when I had to clean him up because I hated that job. He’d call out to my mom, ‘Emma Jean! Emma Jean!’ and she’d yell at me, but I’d always deny it. He did get me back one time though. I came into the room upset because I knew I had to empty the bedpan and wipe him. He hit me on the head with a bottle of plastic alcohol and yelled, ‘I got you!’”
📷| Colleen O'Connell Smyth
(2/4) “It was important to me that we had our own place, so I was always working. When I retired, I was working in nutrition and food service. I had a lot of different jobs. I worked in clinics with pregnant women, state schools, and hospitals with babies. I also did secretary work at a school and one time I was a bus monitor. My favorite thing was working in a uniform. I felt proud, wearing white like the nurses or being in scrubs.
At times I dealt with a lot of prejudice at work. People would pick on me and lie to me sometimes. I just tried to be myself, like, ‘If you fire me, you fire me. I’ll go find another job.’ At one place, someone scratched up my car. I knew who did it and reported it, but they came back with, ‘Oh, the parking lot camera wasn’t working.’ In food service, we had to do a lot of backup prep work for the next day. I had cut up a bunch of pies and cakes, put them in boxes to serve, and stored them in our refrigerator for the next shift. Well, my one coworker didn’t like me, so when nobody was looking, he took all of that food out, put it in a giant plastic bag, and threw it away. Then he told our bosses I hadn’t done my work. Our supervisor came to check and asked me, ‘Where’s the prep food?’ I told them it was in the refrigerator where I put it, but when they checked it wasn’t there. I went outside and looked in the dumpster, but the guy who stole everything was smart enough not to throw it in the trash cans all the way down the block. Luckily, I found the food and went to show my supervisor. They still said they couldn’t prove it was the guy who actually did it even though I knew who it was. I think they wanted me gone.”
“My husband and I had three kids: Vickie, Damon, and Shantay. We moved to Penrose and the kids went to Clark School. Then, when they entered middle school, we moved back to Thomas St. and Jefferson. We got a Jeff-Vander-Lou house on Section 8 that was redone on the inside. It was beautiful with four bedrooms, two baths, a basement, and a nice backyard. The kids graduated from Carr Lane Middle School and then my girls went to O’Fallon and my son went to Sumner. Our house is still there, but it’s all boarded up. It’s the only one still standing. The rest of the houses around were bought out for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
(3/4) “My husband would never go to the doctor and didn’t keep his health up like he should have. So he had high blood pressure and his health started to deteriorate. Then one day he fell and hit his head. He had internal bleeding in the brain. I knew he wasn’t going to be here too much longer. They worked and worked on him, but then he was gone. I miss him. I still talk to him sometimes.
I’m proud to have been here 78 years on this Earth and in good health. I’m not perfect. I have arthritis, but I’m walking around and doing things on my own. I cook for myself, clean, and drive. When I turned 50, I had a moment like, ‘I didn’t think I was going to live this long.’ Then, after I got through that, I decided, ‘I want to see 100.’ I don’t want to be a burden on anybody. I don’t want anyone feeding me or cleaning me.
I did have a moment four years ago when I needed help. I was at my daughter’s house cleaning the basement, because I can’t sit still, and I fell and hurt my leg. In the back by the washroom the floor is concrete. Well, I was standing on a chair and it slipped. I tried to catch myself, but I ended up with a piece of bone sticking out near my ankle. An ambulance came. They couldn’t get a stretcher down there through the door, so the paramedics had this big, thick, black sheet to carry me on. They gave me a shot in my leg to ease the pain before picking me up. When they went to lift me, I was like, ‘Don’t be messing up my hair!’ The paramedics were laughing like, ‘You’ve got a piece of bone sticking out of your leg and you’re worried about your hair?!’ But I had just gone to the beauty salon.
When I woke up in the surgery room, it was cold and there were all of these bright lights. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I started yelling for my kids. The nurse popped up and said, ‘You’re alright! You’re just in recovery.’ I was in a wheelchair for three weeks, but I was determined to walk. Nurses came to my apartment and did therapy with me. And I started walking again. I still walk with a cane when I do longer walks. There’s an exercise room downstairs in the senior living apartments, too, so I bounce on the ball and walk the treadmill. As long as I have my limbs, I want to use them.”
(4/4) “I take care of myself by shopping or taking my grandkids to the park until they get on my nerves. Or, I go to the movies with my older daughter. I’ve seen so much death in my lifetime –– my mom, my siblings, even my nephew. I keep pictures of everyone I’ve lost on my table. I’ll look at them and talk to them like, ‘My brother’s gone. My sister’s gone.’ Just the four girls in my family are left now. I cry sometimes. But I talk to the Lord or I get with my girls when I feel lonely. I can feel everybody looking down on me. My pastor said, ‘Viola is strong. She’s been through a whole lot, but she still shows up every week.’
I’ve lived in a senior living community for 12 years. There are certain people here who are wearing Pampers or having trouble walking. I could be like that, but I took care of myself. There’s one man here who’s a trip. He was running around telling people not to talk to me, that I was his girlfriend. I said, ‘This man has really lost his mind!’ I was just trying to be nice. He can hardly walk, so I used to help him get things for his house or cook for him. Sometimes he’d come down to my apartment to watch a movie. He said to me once, ‘I like you. Will you be my girlfriend?’ I told him, ‘You can’t do nothing for me. So, no.’ But he still went around telling people that. I asked him to stop and he apologized. But then he did it again. So I don’t help him anymore. He still asks me, ‘Can we just play cards together?’ I told him, ‘No. I will say hi to you when I see you and that’s it.’ He’s a handful. I don’t want or need a man.”
“There’s an association board where I live. We used to have small events like bingo and movie nights. And a few bigger ones for New Year’s Eve or a senior prom. The pandemic shut things down, so we’ve been trying to start it back up. It’s been hard thought because so many people have died. There are folks in the senior apartments who are still messing with drugs at their age. When they die, it’s because they are OD’ing. And then there are some just dying of old age who don’t have anyone to check on them. Mr. Glen died the other week and I had just talked to him. He had said he was feeling sick and two days later the maintenance man found him sitting up in the chair, dead. I have a whole box of obituaries under my table and I go to everybody’s funeral.”
Additional photos:
Some of Miss Viola’s siblings at a luau-themed party
