I don’t know where to start, so I’ll start at the very beginning. I first met the Ennis family when I was sixteen, a junior in high school. I rode with a friend to a neighborhood party and we stopped by the Ennis’s house to pick up Stacey. Stacey was the oldest sister in a family of five kids. She and I knew who each other were in school, but were not really friends. All that changed on that evening in the spring of 1972.
After that, she and I would see each other in the hall as she was coming up the steps from gym class after sixth period and I was headed down for spring football practice. I started stopping by their house to visit. We lived on the same street in Gresham Park, Rollingwood Lane. Rollingwood was one of the main thoroughfares through Gresham Park. We lived at one end and the Ennis’s lived at the other. Before long I was stopping by more often. Eventually I was going over there almost every day. By the summer we were best of friends. Not just Stacey and I, but the whole family including Tommie and Nan, her parents.
I always got along with most of my friends’ moms, but Nan became much more one of my friend’s moms. We hit it off pretty quick and I soon considered her one of my best friends. Nan is without a doubt one of the funniest women I have ever known, always smiling with an infectious laugh. She always treated us teenagers and young adults as an equal. I would go with her and the kids to the movies. One Saturday afternoon she took Stacey, me and the three younger sisters to Lenox Square to see Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex. I’m not sure she knew exactly what the movie was about, although the title was pretty much a giveaway. Whatever the case, we stayed and laughed through the whole movie. Sometime later we went to see Disney’s Robin Hood, which was slightly more appropriate for the youngsters.
When my father passed away in 1987, Tommie and Nan’s was the first house I went to. I broke down as soon as I saw them. Daddy and Tommie had become very close friends through VWs, model airplanes, bass fishing and the fact that they had known each other for over fifteen years at that point.
Nan and Tommie moved from Linecrest Road to Butts County in 1996. My late wife Marie and I ran into Nan on New Year’s Eve in the Ingles on Fairview Road. We hadn’t seen her since they moved, so I asked her how things were going in Jackson. “Oh, God, I hate it!” she said. “It’s out in the middle of nowhere and there’s damn cows all over the place. They come in our yard. I walk out my front door in the morning and they’re out there mooing and shitting. I have to yell at them and push them just so I can go to the mailbox. I come up here to go to the grocery store just so I can get back to civilization!” We had a good laugh at that and Nan invited us to their house for a New Year’s Day get together she and Tommie were hosting. Among others, there were friends there from Gresham Park, the Redferns, whom I hadn’t seen in years, so it was great fun catching up with them.
Nan turned ninety a couple of years ago. There was a party for her at Sam and her husband Doug’s house. We attended of course and it was great to see her and hear that wonderful laugh of hers again. There was a slide show and home movies. There were lots of friends and family. Like the old days, I stayed for hours and was sad when it was time to leave. I hugged her, kissed her, told her I loved her and promised to call her more often.
I spoke to Stacey the other day and she told me that Nan looked at her recently and said, “I guess I have had a good life, haven’t I?” Indeed she has. She bore and raised five beautiful children. She endured the unimaginable heartbreak of losing her oldest, Dennis in 1989. She lost Tommie in 2017. But through it all, she has never lost that radiant smile or that laugh that filled up a room. I am thankful that God brought our paths together all those years ago. It is a gift for which I am forever grateful. I love you deeply, Nan. I always will. Thanks for always putting up with me.