In the 1940’s the family get-togethers became maybe not quite so frequent, but it was and is a close knit family whose members genuinely like and enjoy each other’s company. They still continued to get together frequently. My parents and their family moved to Heber Springs in 1940 but went back to Banner/Concord every week or two. When our first child was born in 1956 we lived in Detroit. We brought him to Arkansas when he was about six months old to "show him off." Forty two people "dropped in" to see him!
Before Maud died January 9, 1966 she became afflicted with a "Parkinson like" disease with shaking of her head and hands. She also had an "Alzheimer like" ailment where she gradually had changes in her ability to function and care for the house and herself and gradually lost most of her speech. Finally about 1964 she was put in a nursing home in Heber Springs where she lived until she died. While she was there she was quite helpless but some aspects of her personality remained. She continued to show by her expression and a few words that she recognized us all when we visited. She continued to show warmth to little children when they visited. Once we were there with our little ones and visited her before we saw Grandpa. He reported that when he saw her the day after we left she remembered that she had seen me with a "bunch of babies."
Claudine and Norman Gray who ran the nursing home in Heber Springs where she spent her last months, wrote the family after her death. "It is not true that a patient in a Nursing Home is living a useless life, for each one that has been here has taught us a lesson in some way. Your mother gave us the gift of a wonderful sense of humor that came shining through all the trials of life, even in these last years when she was so ill."
I once asked her about how hard it must have been to have so many children and she laughed and said that she had been asked that question a number of times, and she agreed, but there was just one problem. She couldn’t find even one of her children she would want to "give back."
Maud asked that on her tombstone it should say only that "She has done what she could." All who knew her would agree that is indeed true, and what she did was a great deal!
From "Martin Family Stories" by Cleta Stuart-Porterfield
Sources for the information given, in addition to my memory, include:
Written notes by my mother, Elva Martin Stuart, Conversations with Maud’s children,
A newspaper article about their 50th wedding anniversary, Obituaries,Anecdotes written by my brother, Charles Stuart, after hearing them from Hubert and Maud’s children.
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