By: Andrea H. Wright
I am here today to give tribute to a wonderful woman. Her name was Beadie Coley Crook. She was my grandmother. In May of 1941, my grandmother was a young widow, living with her father and five small children. She experienced the greatest pain a mother could ever have. She had four of her five children taken from her by the Sheriff and two deputies of Lafayette, TN. at 5:00 A.M. in the morning. This was during the time of the "Black Market" sales of the babies. According to the report on this published in 1952 they would take two or three children out of the family so it would not look like they were after the baby. They left Willard, age 12. They took Gladys, age 8, Lorene, age 6, Lamon, age 4, and Edward, 13 days old. This was at the end of the Great Depression. They were very poor and at that time only one check from the government could be issued per household and my grandmother’s father was receiving a $13.00 government check, that because my great grandfather couldn't read or write, a Mr Wooten, one of the officials in Macon County at that time would dole out a bit to Beadie's father as he thought he needed it.
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My mom’s sister Gladys says she will always remember hearing their mother begging and pleading for them not to take her babies from her. The oldest child, Willard, stayed with their mother and was not taken. The oldest girl, Gladys, was placed in a foster home. Lamon Crook, was adopted by Sidney and Mary Wilson of Signal Mountain, TN. Her name was changed to Judy Wilson,. A year later, the orphanage called the Wilsons to see if they would take Judy’s sister, Lorene,. My mother kept running away from the orphanage trying to find her birth mother. They agreed that they would adopt Lorene Crook, whose name was changed to Peggy Wilson. Edward was adopted by an Engineer and his wife, a school teacher, in New Mexico.
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Willard lives in KY. He is widowed and has 3 children. Gladys married Charles Long
and they had a daughter named Debbie. They divorced and Gladys married
Dencil House, and they live in Memphis, TN. My mother, Peggy, married a
minister, Rev. Arville Hurst, and they now Pastor in Tennessee. They have 3
children, Rev. Jack Hurst (deceased), Marcia Harbaugh, and me, Andrea Wright. Judy,
married a Army soldier, Earl Cleckler. She was widowed at 23,
They had no children. She
now lives with my parents in North
GA.
Edward is divorced and has two daughters.
He still lives in New Mexico.
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As
a child of my mother, I am so grateful for what Sidney and Mary Wilson did
for my mother and Aunt Judy. They
provided them a stable home life, education and every need suppliedl
Because they changed the life of my mother, they also changed my
life. I do not know where I would be today, if my mom had not been
adopted by them; and had not met my dad, I possibly might have been born
to someone else, who knows? It is amazing how God works out each person's
life and guides them all the way, if they will let Him.
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My mother remembers her real mom. She remembers her singing songs and telling them bedtime stories at night before they went to bed. She dearly loved her family of five small children. As a mother, I can only picture the nightmare of an ordeal that my Grandmother faced. The empty arms, the ache that would not go away.
The not knowing if her children were alright or if they were hungry and crying for her. My heart breaks for pain that my grandmother endured. Yet I find strength and such character in her. Though she was dealt such heart wrenching blows, her strength remained. She kept going. Although I never received the honor of meeting her here, one day I will. I told my mother, that I believed when Grandmother got
to heaven, that God showed
her exactly where her three babies were, and
that He had taken very good care of them.
See Mom's Beautiful Memorial Pages