Submitted by Rev. Dr. George A. Bates, JD
On July 3, 2026, the Byrd and Carr families of Cobham and Cismont honored Gloria Carr Byrd (widow of Harry F. Byrd) on the occasion of her 90th Birthday Celebration. It was the most wonderful affair that I have ever attended with hors d’oeuvres, full course meal, dancing and a brief program! Several people had Reflections and they all agreed that Gloria’s demeanor was a “mothers’ mother”—she looked after, nurtured, protected and fed all the children not only in food but in spirit, divineness and wisdom! I am certain there were many mothers in Cobham like Mrs. Byrd. (I can count my grandmother, Mildred Carr Holland who married my grandfather (my namesake, George Howard Holland, Sr.), Mrs. Carey (Kaye) Byrd, Mrs. Annie Payne, Mrs. Elsie Byrd (Big Elsie) Johnson, Mrs. Berta Gardener and last but not least, the two great Bible teachers extraordinaires, Mrs. Sarah Thomas and Rev. Phrendessa Chew (wife of Rev. Walter Chew).
The Mothers of Cismont, Virginia
But, the elderly mothers I knew in Cismont were the “crème del a crème” of mothers all over the nation! They ranged from the extremely reflective and the tersed analytical, Mrs. Chassie “Big Chassie” Carter Garland to the kindest child lover, Mrs. Eliza Dickerson (who had no children) to the wisely and highly educated Mrs. Lucinda Thornton Nicholas (my cousin and niece of my great-grandfather, Robert E. Thornton, Sr.). (Mrs. Nicholas graduated from Howard University in the early 1920’s and received her Masters in Music from Columbia University in 1926!) Of Course, my favorite was Virginia Anne Gardener Carr who married my cousin, Eugene Carr, Sr. She had eight (8) children—Blanche, Gloria, Aida, Eugene, Jr., Charles, Anne Virginia and Johnny. She was the original “child whisperer” of Cismont, a.k.a, “Mrs. Ginny.” If “Mrs. Ginny” saw a sad, out of sorts child, aimlessly moping about or a perturbed one, she would call you over to sit on her porch, give you a cookie and warmly ask you, “what’s troubling you child?” She was a consummate listener! And, after the child would finish talking, she would say, “Well, you know this, that and the other and so forth …….” If there was a “Mothers’ Hall of Fame”, she would surely be in it! “Mrs. Ginny” told me when I was eight (8) years old that “I was going to be a preacher because I had a “servant’s heart!”
Next on this list of great mothers were the younger mothers just by a tad! In this group, I would include my mother Lucy Lee Holland Bates, originally from Cobham (married to my father, Otto Landers Bates, Sr.). My mother had the lightening wit of Annie Oakley, the cool response of Mae West and the courage of Sojourner Truth! My mom kept a .410 shotgun behind the front door and she has reached for that shotgun for Deputy Sheriffs, preachers, cousins, near and far friends and she did not present it with a ‘show me’ mentally—SHE HAS PULLED THE TRIGGER ON A FEW OCASSIONS! She was known as “Mrs. Lucy” or “Mrs. Lucy Lee” and she made it clear to all-comers that you are not going to run over top of me ON MY PLACE!!!!
Ma Bates was more like Grandpa, George Howard than any of her siblings (Richard, Howard George and Rita). Ma was just like “Western Union”—when she called them, she sent them! Mom’s good Jehovah’s Witness friend, Mrs. Louise Ladd just up the road on Route 22 was also a great mother. Mrs. Ladd always told the black and white kids in the community to play fair and don’t mean to each other because God does not like meanness! If you wanted to know how to grow anything, plant, tree, bush or vegetable, go ask Mrs. Ladd–she was the “Town Botanist!” And, she kept healing plants growing on her place like peppermint, bee balm, aloe and Elderberry, etc. Mrs. Ladd was also quick to recite you a riddle or a clean tongue twister or joke! She was always welcoming to children when you walked past her place and she was out gardening!
Now, around the same mentality as my mother, was Mrs. Myrtle Anne Garland White married to Mr. James Lewis White, Sr. She was known as “Mrs. Myrtle” or “Minnie Pearl” and all of her siblings (Dallas, Jr., Daniel, Lil Chassie, Clarence, Thomas aka Tom, Robert, Elizabeth, Mildred, Mary and Jean) had the “upmost respect for her!” Her oldest sister, Sally Garland Turner was the only sibling that I saw that could “walk the floor” with “Mrs. Myrtle”, that is, she could “corral” her if Sally thought that Myrtle had “gone off the rails.” Mrs. Myrtle believed like her mother, Big Chassie that all children were capable, available and should do some work around their home! And Big Chassie and Mrs. Myrtle had the same temperament when it came to work—if her children were involved in a project on their place, you were involved in the same project as well!!! This was the ‘gospel’ for what I could see in Black communities in the South in the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s. Every mother had the ‘license’ and permission to ‘order’ any child on their place to do any work that was necessary, non-dangerous and lawful—that was the “law of the land!”
Mrs. Myrtle was the “great human resource manager” of Cismont and Cobham! Any child from age 13 to 19 that did not have a summer job by July 4, she would go to their parents and request that they work for her at her Summer Cooking job as the Head Chef for Oakland Farm School and Camp in Boyd Tavern, Virginia. She would teach any child how to clean tables and floors, wash dishes, put away goods and supplies, sort clothes, do kitchen prep and cook if they had a ‘mind too.’ At the Camp, she fed over 135 campers, teachers, counselors and staff and owners three (3) meals a day for roughly 80 days until End of Summer Exercisies and Banquet. She would pick you up in her car, her children’s car or other Kitchen Staffers’ car and transport you to and from work—no charge!
Mrs. Myrtle in six (6) summers under her tutelage taught me more about management than the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and Management could ever hope to do in three (3) years even when they taught classes six (6) days a week! My last summer (1972) under Mrs. Myrtle, I was the Second Chef in charge cooking three (3) meals a day for 135 people and supervising over ten (10) Kitchen Staffers. I was being paid $135.00 a week and had one-half of the day off on Fridays—pay day—in 1972!!! Everything I currently know about human beings and how to manage them was first introduced to me by Mrs. Myrtle Garland White from 1967 to 1972 as a teenager! Her training was so replete that when I got to college (Princeton University-1972), I was the first Freshman to be promoted to supervisor in a dining hall (Chancellor Green Student Center) in the history of the campus because I knew all the aspects of running an eatery from “busing tables” to cooking a meal courtesy of “Minnie Pearl.”
The last mother I like to highlight is Ms. Elnora “Bunky” Brassfield. Her home sat at the top of Maxfield Road, the second home on the right when you came off of Route 22 East. “Bunky” had five (5) boys (Paul, Reginald, Michael and the two twins (Charles and Wilbur). If you were born after 1960, there was a good chance that you were friends with one or more of her sons or went to school with one of them! Her home was affectionately known as the “Little House on the Prairie” because for some reason, many of the children of the community of Black Cismont congregated at her home. I asked a few of the children why did they do this and the only response I ever heard was “because that’s where the other kids are!” So Elnora “Bunky” Brassfield was commandant of our local “Fort Lee” or the “Children’s Operation Center” (COC). Of course she supplied snacks and kool ade and barked orders when a child “got out of line!” I also believe that she had some rules—no rough play, no cursing and no hitting of the girls! And, I believed I heard that the other mothers of “her other children” supplelmented the cost of some of those snacks and the kool ade! And, the other mothers, I heard were most appreciative of “Bunky” keeping a watchful eye over these kids and keeping them off their home lots and/or in the way of household chores!
So, the tiny hamlet of Cismont was a wonderful place to raise a poor, Black child with so many “child supportive” mothers. The children had a grocery store, Cismont Store, later known as Cismont Market about a mile and half away at the intersection of State Routes 231 and Route 22. Cismont Grocery during my childhood years was owned by Joe and Ethel “Tatsi” Goldberg who were Jewish transplants from New York City. Joe was a “mean sort” but Mrs. Goldberg loved all children, black or white, coming into her store! When they were closed, we use to go back to their living quarters and knock on the back door and she would open the store for us! “Tatsi” was a “sweetie!” We had Cismont Gulf owned by Ernest “Blue” Bomar about a mile away. “Blue” was from Chatham, Virginia and he married a local lady, Ms. Joan Felt who became a bank teller in Gordonsville. Her and “Blue” were real community assets—“Blue” ran a service station and auto repair shop that sold gas and a few drinks, chips, pastries and, of course, penny candy! The poor Black kids only had a few pennies, nickels and dimes from picking up soda bottles off the highway and selling strawberries, blueberries and huckaberries, here and there! “Blue” also extended credit to black people in the community which was “unheard of” at that time in the 1960’s! Knowing Mrs. Bomar, personally, came in handy when the locals needed to cash their Social Security Checks at the bank. She would allow the wives to show up at the bank with their husbands checks signed with their I. D. or drivers’ license and cash them for the Cismont residents, black or white! She and “Blue” were very nice to all children that ran around their home which was next door to the service station! And, Cismont was an idyllic place to raise a child! The Blacks and whites got along real good—I do not recall any ugly racial mess happening in Cismont when I was a child from 1954 to 1972.
Our boundaries were also set in stone—to the West we were allowed to walk to Block’s Lake and pond about three (3) miles. To the North, we could walk or ride our bicyles to Cash Corner’s Store on State Route 231 and circle back through the State Route 640 now known as St. John’s Road to Cobham General Store owned by Martha and Marion Smith. Mrs. Smith also ran Cobham Post Office and she was real good to us poor kids that would hike the three (3) miles to her Store to the East of Cismont headed to Louisa County and Air Line! Once there, we could buy more cakes, candy and sodas from the Store or from the soda machine outside of the Store. Cobham Store like Cismont Store sold clothes, shoes, animal feed, candy, household items like candles, lanterns, salt, sugar etc. like most general merchandise rural stores in the South. Our last boundary, was to walk “down the road” on Maxfield Road to the Cismont Community Center where the Negro League Baseball team (the Cismont Braves) played. It was the old segregated Negro grammar school built in the early 1900’s or late 1890’s as a “Rosenwald School.” The baseball diamond was added in the 1930’s I believe.
Oops, I almost forgot about our other favorite real adventurous trek as a child, that is, to leave “Blue’s” Gulf Station and walk North West up Route 600 toward Stony Point to the top of the Southwest Mountain Chain. At the top of the mountain lived Mr. and Mrs. Will and Grace Drumwright, the husband was aGeneral Contractor” whom my father worked for a number of years until his death in the early 1960’s. Mrs. Grace Drumwright hired black children to do chores around her homestead because they were childless. And, their home was a picture-perfect place with a stream running down through it! They had a few cows, horses, grape vines, apple, pear, plum and peach trees and all kinds of “neat stuff” around their place even a barn and a garage! Even when we trekked up there for a “pop visit” (pop in and pop out) (the distance was a little over three (3) miles), she would always give us something—a slice of cake, candy or a few coins. Mrs. Grace Drumwright was another “sweetie of Cismont.”
And beyond the Cismont School, we could traverse to Mechunk Creek along the C & O Railroad track that ran to a “place in the road” called Campbell Road Station! At Mechunk Creek, we could swim, fish and walk the railroad track looking for discarded salvageable items thrown out of the rail passenger cars. We were only allowed to walk to the North East back toward Cobham General Store! If we were to walk to the West we would soon be beyond our boundary line (at Campbell Road) and end up in the community of Keswick where a lot of teenagers in the area would “cut their teeth” on caddying at the Keswick Golf & Country Club! At the Country Club, you could make “big money”—carrying a bag of clubs for $8 to $12 for 18 holes while white gentleman played the game! The mothers of Cismont and our little rural hamlet made my home town just as good as the fictional home of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer in the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri which was based on Twain’s real-life boyhood hometown of Hannibal, Missouri! I salute the Huckleberry Finns and Tom Sawyers of Cismont, Virginia—our mothers made our childhood upbringing one “swell” deal!
AUTHOR: Rev. Dr. George A. Bates, JD
jesusonethree@yahoo.com
