Page Four		Maggie Mariah
"Marie is an Angel"               "Our dad was our idol"         The more you love someone the more it hurts                 Depression is not insanity and is not a moral nor a "weakness" flaw.           "Our world was shattered"                     "Happiness is a by-product of giving, not of getting."                 Oh, Selfless Soul! James Albert McDonald "Don" McGlohon [18 Mar 1942]   Linda Maria named for Maggie MARIAH                       "Children are made at the knees of their mothers"		[under construction THE LATTER YEARS On 13 Nov 1947 Maggie and J.F. were married by Rev. Alf Burnham in the little house down below Uncle Jim [Horton] McCranie's place now occupied by Erlene and John B. Williams. Maggie's son wrote the story of that romance:   Maggie holding Billie Carol, James Felix "Jim" and  Jacob Felix, "J.F." Kimmons [1 Oct 1897-17 Feb 1958] Mama was an old maid when she met my father at McGlohon's grocery store.  Daddy was boarding with Mrs. Mattie Wright  [uncle Albert McGlohon's aunt] across the street from the store. [Simultaneously] Mama was staying with aunt Mollie and helping them with the store.  Aunt Mollie played cupid and mama was about 33 years of age at the time. My daddy was very well educated for his time and had a good job as a depot agent for the Southern Railroad.  He was also getting up in age [he must have been around fifty years old at the time]. Daddy had been married before, had three children by the first wife and had been divorced for about ten years when he met my mama. Billie Carol Chkoreff [12 Mar 1951 -  ] Maggie's daughter, said of her beloved father: [My father] was the son of a Baptist pastor and school teacher.  His family lived near Waycross and Blackshear, as Grandpa [Kimmons] had pastored. and retired down there.  His family communicated their love to us.   They called mama, 'Marie,' as daddy had so affectionately renamed her. One of daddy's sisters said the day daddy died, 'MARIE IS AN ANGEL.'  I have remembered that all of my life.  I was six when he died and I wasn't sure what an angel was.  BUT I KNOW NOW !!!  They had ten years of marriage built in heaven.  Mine and James' early childhood was a utopia on this earth.  It consisted of precious, precious memories before all hell broke loose at his death. If my mother had a fault, which all of humanity does, it was an intolerance for people lacking mercy on the down and out.  She had no patience for critical holier-than-thou people. She truly was an 'angel of mercy' and in that whole philosophy of mercy there was no place given for belittling of the aged, the poor, the sick, and those whose lives were in trouble.  Certainly she was a rare human being. Her desire for nature and the good earth manifested itself in pure heaven, as she camped out on that old hill in McCranie Lane.   Certainly she was a modern day Thoreau when it came to living conditions.  She honestly had no desire for any of the modern day trappings that we love and call comfort and prestige.  She didn't want electricity or running water. But she found herself forced to use these commodities in cold weather.  However she clung tenaciously to her single fireplace and her quilts. Maggie's son, James Felix "Jim" [31 Jul 1948 -  ] remembered how good, how wonderful life on earth was while his dad lived. Our daddy was our idol.  I never saw him in anything but a three-piece suit and he was a very neat man.  Every hair had to be in it's own place.  His clothes were spotless, fresh starched and ironed long sleeve white shirts, like his car, were spotless. I can remember noticing the splendid vocabulary used by my daddy. Besides that I never heard my father use profanity as a child.  He was our rock and my mother loved him very much. The great philosopher and mythologist, Joseph Campbell once said that the more we love someone the more it hurts.   The truth of that observation was born out when Maggie lost J.F. to death. Death: A catalyst for change My mother was an entirely different person until our daddy died.  This crushed her and us.  Our world of security and love fell apart.   My mother went into severe depression after daddy's death and never rebounded until years later when we moved to Oak Hill in the Lane.         Mental depression has been found to be genetically based.  My own psychiatrist told me, "Depression is a disease that is inherited;  it is as genetic as heart disease."  A special on HBO, Jan 1998, talked with celebrities: Mike Wallace, Art Buchwald, etc., all of whom have the disease.  It is not a personal weakness, nor a moral flaw to be ashamed of.  And the notion, that depression is a "mental disease"" is unfortunate.  Enlightened people know that it is more appropriately described by the words, "neurological or bio-chemical disease." In 1997, I asked my psychiatrist,  "What is the most frequent problem that walks through your door day after day?"  "Depression," was his answer.  Why is that, I asked?  "Because people don't have right relationships with other people and with God."  ADE After daddy died we became mama's whole world.  I was nine years old at the time and my little sister was six.  Our world was shattered!  [To add to this sorrow] we were ridiculed by some schoolmates and loved ones who meant a lot to us. But mama stuck with us through thick and thin.   She never thought of herself.  My mama would do without adequate clothes, food, and medication to see that we had what we wanted [yes, what we wanted, not what we needed]. I remember the times when she had only two dresses to wear.  Once my pastor, Preacher O'Neal [First Baptist Church, Eastman] said the same thing about his mother and that really struck home to me. Sister Betty:  "In 1972 Billie Carol sent Maggie two dresses from California and Maggie sent them on to me in Virginia."  It never mattered how bad I felt about things I could always talk with mama for a few minutes and after the conversation, I could conquer the world.  She was my source of strength and encouragement.  She gave me the will to try harder when things were bad and nothing I had ever done...no matter how bad it seemed to me .. shook her faith in me. It almost killed me when she died. I will never forget the morning that I had to carry her to the hospital for the last time.  I almost didn't make it in time.  Upon arrival mama was foaming at the mouth with blood.  I rushed her inside and as I laid her on the table in the emergency room, she went into cardiac arrest. Mama lived for two more weeks, had surgery that removed 5-7 inches of her colon.  She went into cardiac arrest six more times before leaving this old world. In those days I would go into the unit to see mama with the ventilator hooked up to her and all of the tubes going in and out of her body.   I could see fear in her eyes.  I pleaded with God to save her, but it was not His will to do so.  I felt so useless to her at this time. I felt like I had let her down, that I could have done something else but I didn't know what.  The very person that had give me life, done without for me and there was nothing that I could do for her. We all sat in the ICU [including Don and Nancy McGlohon and others] and sometimes we would hear the ICU bell go off when someone would code.  It was my precious little Mama fighting for her life, terrified and there was nothing that I could do but watch her get weaker each time. The last time Mama went into cardiac arrest I asked God that if Mama cannot get better, please take her out of this Hell and she slipped away to be with Daddy, Pa, Big Bill and all the others. While I have told many people how I loved my Daddy dearly, he couldn't hold a light to my Mama.  She was my light, my strength, my hope and my best friend. JFK honored his mother when he named his oldest daughter Linda Maria  [Maria is derived from Maggie's middle name, Mariah].    Maggie, Jim said, would come over to see her grand daughter, Maria,  and would  carefully inspect "every little hair on her head."  She would remark to Jim how intelligent the little baby was and would call her "Little Maria."  Today/1997 JFK's Maria has a Hope scholarship and is attending Shorter College at Rome , Ga.  "Mama's little namesake!"  There she goes, Maggie!  There she goes!!   MAGGIE'S CHILDREN The beat goes on Maggie's greatest accomplishment [again] was not some high pile of money nor some terminal degree in formal education.  Her supreme accomplishment was the molding of her children, both of whom are Christians, decent individuals, economically successful; they are themselves loving and responsible parents caused by the safe harbor they grew up in.   As Abraham Lincoln aptly stated, "Children are made at the knees of mothers." Maggie's JFK [Jim] has a house full of kids including two grandchildren he is now raising.  Ah-h-h, do good Jim!  God is seeing the Gold locked in your clay frame. And in Atlanta, Maggie's Billie Carol Chkoreff and Larry are touching many people with her own Chistian hands. L-R: Susan Rene, Linda Maria, James "Jimmy" Felix, Jr., Keith Henry Seated: James Felix and Linda Kimmons   Larry [29 Aug 1940]  and Billie Carol Kimmons Chkoreff  [12 Mar 1951] Elizabeth Chkoreff  [14 Nov 1984], one of Maggie's grand daughters Go to Page Five Return to Maggie page one Return to Home Page Page last updated 01/31/98 by the Sitemaster Abbie Donald Evans