Page 24 - Senior Link Magazine Winter 2018- Online Magazine
P. 24
Ralph Jearldyne Kelley
Loving Hearts
by Claire Kelley Ralph spends much of his time in
the shed behind his Brownfield,
Texas home, carving wooden
hearts and affixing them to key
chains. He’s been woodworking
ever since he was a child and
doesn’t plan on quitting soon.
Ralph was born in southern
Alabama in 1928, the oldest of ten
children. They lived on a small
farm in Pleasant Home, where he
learned about all things country
life. He spent hours in the pine
trees, cutting them down with
his father and grandfather and
hauling them to the saw mill by Ralph loved his big, welcoming
mule and wagon. He tended fields family, and that carried over into
of vegetables and cotton. He canned his adult life after he married his
jellies and preserves, babysat his wife, Jearldyne Garrett, in 1951.
brothers and sisters, toted water They raised their children on the
from the well in the middle of the same values Ralph learned from his
field to the black caldron where his parents. They worked hard. They
mother washed clothes and made made sacrifices for their kids and
lye soap. From an early age, Ralph for strangers. Ralph and Jearldyne’s
learned about hard work. children tell stories about how their
mother would eat very little or say
she wasn’t hungry at dinner, so that
His parents also taught him about
hospitality, generosity and kindness. they and whoever they brought over
According to Ralph, people often that night got enough to eat.
showed up hungry at the family’s
front door. His mother would sit Between raising the brood and
alph Kelley, age 90, doesn’t them down on the wooden porch laying tile to provide for them,
talk much. It’s an unspoken and serve up a plate of something Ralph never abandoned his hobby.
Rrule among his seven delicious, home-grown and home- He’d spend hours in the woodshed,
children, 27 grandchildren, and cooked. There was no way to making replicas of houses no taller
23 great-grandchildren that, when know how many seats would be than a foot or two, with tiny shingles
Pawpaw speaks, you listen. This is filled at their breakfast table each on the roofs and little doors that
not just because they respect him, morning, and whoever arrived opened on gold hinges. He built
but because they know that what he would be served buttermilk biscuits, and refinished furniture. He made
does choose to say will be witty or homemade jam, wild honey, and dollhouses and a swing and other
wise, and often both. freshly churned butter. toys for his grandkids.
24 Lubbock Senior Link
