Susan Hammett Poole

If you have read my brief Bio located on Our Echo, you may be able to tell that I am a "baby boomer". When Hilt Hammett, Jr. returned home to LaGrange, Georgia from World War II, he and Katherine started their family -- I was the first of their three children born between 1946 and 1950. I would describe my childhood as idyllic and ideal. Daddy was the eye, ear, nose and throat doctor in town, and Mama was a stay-at-home mother who really did have vanilla wafers and chocolate milk or little glasses of Coca-Cola ready for us when we came home from elementary school.

Daily life was centered around family and small town activities. It was the era of proper manners, conversational and listening skills, and common courtesies
taught by parents -- all practiced at the family dinner table. My family of five ate meals together, attended church together, took summer vacations to the Florida beaches and the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, and took Sunday afternoon drives with Daddy doing the driving. Stopping at a local store for ice cream cones, kiddie cups or milkshakes was a highlight of our Sunday drives. If the car radio was on, it was always tuned to a station playing the music of the 1950's. I gained an appreciation of good music without realizing it. Easily reinforcing that was listening to my parent's collection of record albums and our weekend ritual of watching the Lawrence Welk Show and Ed Sullivan Show on the Philco TV set in black and white.

We visited grandparents, had weekend fish fries at my paternal grandfather's lakehouse, and all three of us children were given the privilege of taking lessons in piano, dance, art, horseback riding, swimming, attending summer camp, and joining Scout troops. So many days of childhood, my sister and I could be found playing with paperdolls, drawing and coloring clothes for them, and playing with our dollhouses and the miniature family who lived inside. My sister, brother, and I had a menagerie of pets through our growing-up years: dogs, baby squirrels, Easter chickens, rabbits and ducks, and a horse.

Mama was a true artist who developed the creative bent in each of her three children. I think that is one reason we liked going to the vacant lot next door and making teasets by forming tiny plates and cups from the Georgia red clay then leaving them in the sun to dry. We pretended that palm-sized clumps of dried clay were pieces of country-fried steak and that the green weeds we pulled up were turnip greens; chinaberries served as peas for our picnic. Our imaginations would run the gamut from making our own kites (using sheets of newspaper or paper sacks, string, privet hedge sticks, and strips of cotton cut from old sheets), to making bows and arrows from the same abundant privet hedge branches and using crushed pokeberries to paint the arrows purple. Many a pinestraw fort was built in the side yard with a cache of sharp pinecones ready to be tossed at the opposition during pinecone battles. We pretended to be cowgirls and cowboys riding away on low-lying branches of the pine trees as we would straddle the branches and hold on while pumping the ground with our small feet.

Something I recall that obviously made an impact on me was seeing my parents read the daily newspapers. I can remember lying on the floor with the paper open before me reading the comic pages as soon as I learned to read. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Johns, was a huge influence on my loving the subject of reading, which she taught phonetically. I will always remember the honor of being asked to select a story to read to the second grade class from our reader about Alice and Jerry, their dog Jip, and Alice's doll Betsy. Oh, I really wanted a doll dressed in blue like Betsy because she could walk and talk, saying 'mama'!

My maternal grandparents had a set of fairytale books which were beautifully illustrated. I spent hours thumbing through them, and it still saddens me to think they were lost years ago when packed away and moved. By fourth grade, I was consuming the biographies in our school library. Joining the Book Club at the local library was always on the agenda during the summers. One of my gifts the Christmas of my fifth grade year was a 5-year diary, a pinky-beige plastic covered book with a silhouette of Elvis Presley imprinted on the front. It even had a small lock and key to keep little sister's eyes from reading my entries! Of course, at the beginning, most of those said something like "Went to school today. Played dodgeball at recess. Ate supper, did homework, went to bed." With merely three lines allowed per day, I couldn't write very much. And, once I started junior high school and became interested in boys, I would not write much!

My parents made sure they were acquainted with each of my friends and their family members. By the time I was in 6th grade, I was allowed to ride off on my bicycle on Saturday mornings and meet my friends in the neighborhood. We would be gone most of the day, riding all over town, stopping by the houses of friends and grandparents where we were sure to be refreshed with cookies and glasses of lemonade, the real hand-squeezed-lemons kind, or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I know the homemade cookies and juice were delicious back then, and I believe even the bread tasted better 50 years ago!

Something I liked to do with my sister and brother, after school and during the summer vacation months, was to play "school"; of course, I was the teacher because I was the oldest. Before I knew how, I vividly remember demonstrating the art of cursive writing to them on the Blue Horse brand writing tablets; I called it "real writing", and it looked like scribbled curliques with random dots hovering over the page. Then I would "read" the lines to them, creating a story as I "read" the squiggles. I don't remember ever not wanting to read. I was so fortunate to have teachers who focused on teaching good grammar, spelling and reading skills; who exposed us to excellent literature and poetry and who drilled diagramming sentences into us in the classroom. College English classes were filled with writing compositions, essays, and short stories; professors emphasized the importance of using perfect grammar, punctuation, and spelling in assignments. I cannot say that I liked those tasks, but I am thankful now for having been taught with such excellence.

Calligraphy, the art of beautiful handwriting, is a skill which I began to study in 1980. There is a humorous story to relay about that. The local art museum was offering a calligraphy course which would cost $10.00 for six classes. My mother encouraged me to take the twelve hours course of instruction, so I paid the fee and went that first evening. The teacher handed out supplies, the most important being the quill pen which one dipped into an ink bottle. You never saw such chicken-scratchin' attempts at using that pen! Black ink was spattered all over my sheet of parchment paper and on my blouse. I left that class with fingers blackened by the ink, totally disgusted and ready to quit. When I telephoned Mama afterwards to tell her of my fiasco with the pen and told her I did not intend to go back for further instruction, she very quietly said something I shall never forget: "Susan, you have paid $10.00 for that class; you can't quit." Well, I guess that remark shamed me enough to not want to waste money or to disappoint my mother, so I returned the following Tuesday evening and completed the six weeks course. In the spring of 1980, little did I realize that I would become adept in this way of writing. Since my first lesson, twenty-seven years ago, individuals and companies have paid me to do projects, and I have even taught calligraphy at that same art museum.

After attending Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia for two years, I transferred to LaGrange College, graduating in 1967 with a degree in Social Work. Two weeks later, I married my high school sweetheart, moved to Auburn, Alabama and began my first job as a DFCS caseworker in Dadeville, AL. My husband was a senior at Auburn University, and we lived there until a month before he graduated with a degree in Building Construction. Our first child was born in November 1968. We moved back to our hometown of LaGrange, GA where he worked, and I stayed at home with Larry, Jr., then three years later Kevin was born. Divorce reared its ugly head after thirteen years of marriage. The years following the divorce, until 1994, had me wearing many hats: mothering two sons, doing my Dad's office correspondence, librarian for one year at the private academy in town, teacher's assistant, substitute teacher, gift shop owner, and calligrapher. During the mid-eighties, my parents and my brother died. My sister married and moved away. My sons grew up, married, and brought children, my grandchildren, into the world -- the five little darlings who immediately captured my heart. In August of 1994, I attended my high school class' 30th reunion, re-met a classmate and married after a whirlwind courtship. Our marriage ended abruptly after 8 years due to his death from pancreatic cancer. He was the bravest man I will ever know.

I think I have filled in most of the blanks which occur in my Bio except for the most precious part of my life. It is the overriding and the underlying reason I live and breathe. In the early 1970's, I came to accept Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. How I lived without Him for the first 27 years of my existence, I cannot fathom. It is not religion, it is pure relationship. The depth of joy and the depth of compassion He has given me, can be accounted for only because of this sweet relationship. There is a vibrancy about my life which the Lord lovingly gives me each day. I will give thanks to Him forever and ever for the love, joy, and peace He provides.

As for being honored here "In the Spotlight", no one could be more surprised than I. Last summer and fall, my sister, Sandi, emailed me some stories which she had read at the Our Echo website...all the postings by Kathe Campbell, the author with whom she had an online friendship. I was intrigued and sent an email to another friend of mine, encouraging him to submit his writings to the website. In the meantime, I woke up one morning in September with a story tumbling around in my mind about my deceased husband and how we had re-met. I hurried to my computer and began typing. That initial writing primed the pump for me when I didn't even know a well existed within myself. Although I have yet to post that particular story, I have been encouraged enough to submit several others. I never dreamed that I would find myself writing down my simple tales and sending them in for hundreds of people to read. Even though I do have a dream to publish a little book of hope and encouragement some day, I am not sure when that will really come to pass. I do believe that little book is "stirring in me", however!

A thousand bouquets of gratitude to Scott Lupo and his wonderful creation, "Our Echo", which affords a grand avenue for new and not-so-new writers and for published authors to express themselves without fear of rejection, mainly for the pure pleasure of expressing thoughts, putting memories and stories in written form, and sharing them with others.

Joyfully ~ Susan Hammett Poole
March 1, 2007

Story ID:	1754
Written by:	OurEcho Admin (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	In The Spotlight
Location:	LaGrange Ga USA
Year:	2007
Person:	Susan Hammett Poole