Sarah Cooey Wages Shiver King DeHart

Today, as we remember Aunt Sarah we cannot be content with the black and white of an obituary. There is so much more to tell and that is what I intend to do today. I want to tell you a little about Aunt Sarah - as a family person and as a woman, an individual.
Aunt Sarah as a Family Person

Aunt Sarah was the daughter of Janie Blocker and Daniel Ples Monroe Cooey. Great-Grandma Janie was her own woman. Her husband, Ples, was a railroad worker, handling Morse Coded messages while they courted. They later moved to Perry where he ran a pool room and bar. Ironically he became concern about the big city influence on his young family and moved them to the protective wilds beyond the Fenholloway River.

There they all grew up… Marjorie, Ples, Blocker, Sarah, Betty, Billy, and Fenway.

They experienced the hard lessons of the woods and the bonding of a family. It was the combination of these factors that made them all larger than life to us. A family of individualists who tenaciously stuck together. In a letter, long ago, Aunt Sarah revealed how as a young teen she desired to learn how to type. The tuition was a dollar a week and she didn't have it, nor could her parents spare it. My Grandfather Ples, her older brother made money by taking people fishing down the Fenholloway to the Gulf. Every Monday he would take a dollar bill and place it in an empty Prince Albert tobacco tin. He would throw it onto the bank of the river where it would be retrieved by Aunt Sarah for her tuition.

As a mother Aunt Sarah had a marvelous ability to allow for individuality and spontaneity, accepting her children and others as persons, yet without compromising what she saw as essential principles in life. This is no easy task in a society that so often promotes an extreme individualism that encourages personal anarchy.

Her children learned manners. They learned to say 'yes sir' and 'no sir' and treat elders with respect. They learned to be kind to others…to show respect to all people.

The children were expected to value education. My mother insisted that I where this academic gown today instead of an alb because she knew the value Aunt Sarah placed on an education. As a widowed mother, she scrimped and saved to send her children to college. There is the wonderful story that Lee and Billie tell of Aunt Sarah and the peanut butter jar. It seems that the children had a penchant for JIF peanut butter. They loved its rich creamy "peanut-buttery taste." Well, Aunt Sarah thought JIF cost too much and the children really couldn't tell the difference between it and, say, Deep South peanut butter. So each week she would buy a jar of Deep South peanut butter, skim the rancid tasting oil off the top and place the sandy-textured ersatz peanut butter in the JIF jar. After a while the children notice that the labels of the "new" jars of JIF had a faded, worn look.

Aunt Sarah knew that as adults her children would have to make their own decisions and mistakes. She hoped to prepare them so that the latter would be few. When the children were in high school they were expected to keep a curfew. If they did, and if they let their mother know where they were at all times she would reward them by extending the curfew each year. Lee tells me that his curfew was extended by 30 minutes each year while Cissie's stayed the same!

That was Aunt Sarah's way. She wanted to help her children find a direction in life. She considered it her obligation as a mother and a teacher to do this for her children and students. She was to help lay a foundation that they would have to build on for the rest of their lives. This was something she sought to do in all of her children: Early Jane, Lee, and Billie; her summertime children: Mayo and Mary Lou; and the students at school and the friends her children would bring home. Lee's friend Gene was telling me yesterday how Aunt Sarah pinned him down one day at age thirteen and asked him, "Gene, what are your goals in life." Poor Gene, beyond field goals he wasn't sure what she meant. But she pushed him and started him thinking about what he expected from life. Something he has benefited from to this day.

Aunt Sarah's children stand as monument to the kind of mother she was: Early Jane, Lee, and Billie - your mother couldn't have been more proud of who you have become. Take solace in that.
Aunt Sarah as a Woman and Person

As a woman, Aunt Sarah may have appeared overly complex to people who didn't know her well. She certainly stands with all of Janie Blocker Cooey's daughters. All of them were strong-willed and determined. They were full of purpose, independent, sincere, honest, and religious.

(Did I say honest? I may need to qualify that! It seems that Aunt Sarah enjoyed to drink cold water she kept in the refrigerator. The problem is that her children would often drink the water and place the empty water container in the refrigerator. Aunt Sarah corrected this problem with a new water container. She kept it full of water and told the children that it contained special medicine she had to take and that they weren't to touch it!)

Aunt Sarah and her sisters inherited from their mother a style of feminism that helped make the communities they lived in better places. There is a framed, cross-stitch hanging in her kitchen which reads "A woman's place is in the world." Aunt Sarah really believed that. She ran for school superintendent in 1972, helping to pave the way for woman in leadership roles in education.

Aunt Sarah was a lover of nature. She grew up in the Florida wilds and as an adult owned a camp near Perry, a beach house on the Gulf, and mountain home in North Carolina. He daughter Billie remembers her mother naming the animals that made every mark on the nature walks they would take. Often, I remember that during those childhood visits to Perry we never knew what to expect at Aunt Sarah's house - a raccoon, 'possums, whatever wild thing there was that needed a home for a time.

While I have already mentioned her place as a teacher I believe special mention is due here. She was a teacher who administered discipline with love and acceptance. She demonstrated her concern for the development of character as well as the learning of facts. That was the kind of teacher she was - in school and out.

Earlier, I mentioned all of Aunt Sarah's sisters and brothers. She is the last of her generation to leave us. Uncle Billy died in 1954. Uncle Blocker went walk-about in 1962 and hasn't been heard of since. Uncle Fenway and Aunt Betty died in 1988; Aunt Marjorie in 1994. My grandfather, Ples, died last year, in 1995. And, now, Aunt Sarah - 1996.

Her passing marks the end of a strong and dauntless generation. They were all larger than life and in some respects have already taken on a mythic quality to the members of their family, many of whom are gathered here today. It is to you that I speak now - the descendants of the children of Janie Blocker and Daniel Ples Monroe Cooey. Today we mark not only the loss of a fine woman, but, of a fine generation.

How can we honor this generation? How can we honor the memory of these people whose character and strength are etched within the fiber of our being? We do so by gathering together again and again to remember and laugh and cry. We do so by dispersing again to carry into the world the lessons and stories we have learned.

Yes, Sarah has left us - at least in this earthly, sensible realm.

Linda and Lee were trying to explain to their daughter Caroline that her grandmother, "Little Mama," had died. They told her that she had gone to heaven.

She smiled and said, "Oh! Heaven is a wonderful place!"

She was quoting a children's song she had learned off of a Psalty album…

Heaven is a wonderful place
Filled with glory and grace.
I wanna see my Savior's face
'cause Heaven is a wonderful place.

We miss you now Aunt Sarah - but, someday we will be with you again and together we will see our Savior's face.

last updated - December 26, 1997