Each week, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal’s Tony Taglavore takes to lunch a local person – someone who is well-known, successful, and/or influential, and asks, “What’s Your Story?”
(Editor’s Note: Mary Sue Evans died this past weekend, a month shy of her 105th birthday. In her honor, we are reprinting the “What’s Your Story?” featuring her, which ran this past April.)
By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
She was a high school senior in DeQueen, Arkansas. Or, as she says, “52 miles north of Texarkana.”
Papa was a preacher – a Baptist preacher who went hard from the pulpit. On this Sunday morning, he was leading his congregation in prayer, when someone burst into the church.
“My neighbor across the road – it wasn’t a street – come runnin’ in. She said, ‘Brother Karr, your house is burning down.’”
So, of course, Papa, his daughter, and everyone else ran out of the, no, that’s not right. Papa told everyone, “We’re going to finish this service.”
And they did.
“We drove home and it was all in flames.”
Papa’s daughter blames herself.
“I blew the lamp out that night before we went to church. They said that’s the corner where the fire started. It was my fault.”
There was no electricity back then. If you wanted light, you lit a lamp.
“I don’t know how I blew the light down into the oil.”
Mary Sue Evans told me that story – and her story – a couple of days after turning 104 years old. I will save you from doing the math. Mary was born in 1921. I arrived at The Guest House in Shreveport, where Mary lives, just after she finished her lunch of beef stew and English peas. Mary passed on dessert – an oatmeal cream cake. She’s never been big on sweets.
But Mary did allow herself to have cake and ice cream at her birthday party.
“It was awesome. There were a lot of people (34). It made me feel good, but I got so tired.”
That’s understandable.
“I don’t feel all that good. My eyes bother me. My not walking bothers me. Everything bothers me.”
Growing old isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But Mary has made the most of her years. Having never smoked or drank, she cut her own grass into her 80’s. Mary drove until she was a month shy of 101. “I gave my car to my great granddaughter. I held out $100. I could have sold it for probably seven or eight hundred.”
Mary’s great granddaughter repays the discount by visiting Mary every Tuesday and Thursday.
Up until Mary fell and broke her right hip several months ago, she lived independently in an apartment.
“I hate I can’t walk.”
When Mary was eight years old, the Great Depression gripped the country. People who had money suddenly found out what it was like to live without money. But Mary and her family didn’t feel the economic effects. You don’t have what you don’t know you don’t have.
“We didn’t have money to spend (anyway).”
If you think the world was a simpler place 40 or 50 years ago, it was a lot more simple when Mary was a child.
“We just all had a good time. We just played jump rope, and played hide and seek at night.”
Mary graduated from high school, then went to work at the peach shed, separating peaches. “I don’t remember what we got paid, but it was very little.”
Whatever it was, Mary saved it, and moved to Shreveport with one of her sisters (Mary was one of seven children). They went to work at Jacquelyn’s Place, a nightclub owned by Mary’s aunt.
“We sold beer at her joint. I car-hopped mostly, then danced when somebody wanted to dance.”
Mary got married – twice. She left both husbands, and for good reasons.
“I got married to an Air Force guy,” referring to her first husband. He ran around on me.”
The problem with Mary’s second husband wasn’t infidelity. It was alcohol.
“I would have stayed with him, but he drank.”
For 25 years, Mary worked as a seamstress at Shreveport Garment Factory – with no retirement benefits. When the company closed, Mary worked at a dry cleaners, operating the switchboard. “I went to work over there until I was old enough to draw my social security.”
In 104 years, Mary has seen a lot and experienced a lot. Some good, some not.
“My son, I buried him in ’94. He lived in Tennessee. Something stung him as he was going home on his motorcycle. He was a welder. He was making good money. He went on home, and something stung him on his way home. Going straight to the doctor would have saved him. But he went home first, and his wife wasn’t dressed, so she took time to dress. Then, she took Bo to the doctor. He didn’t make it.”
Bo was 45 years old.
“It was awful. That’s all I know.”
Mary has lived under 18 Presidents. Her favorite was Ronald Regan. “I just liked him.” Mary last voted in the 2020 election in which her candidate of choice, Donald J. Trump, lost.
“He’s as good as any of them.”
Mary used to keep up with news and politics, but macular degeneration stole her eyesight. Mary used to fill out the newspaper’s crossword puzzle, and beat everyone in Scrabble. Her television stays on TV Land, but more for sound, than pictures.
“I can’t read closed caption. I can’t read it at all. It’s too small.”
More than once during our time together, Mary told me she was “ready to go.” She assumes heaven will be her destination. She believes in God but doesn’t consider herself a religious person.
“My grave is paid for, right next to my son.”
Mary had more energy at 104 than I do at 61. She could have talked all afternoon. But I decided it was time to ask my final question. As always, what is it about her long life that people might find inspirational?
“Live it like you want to.”
At least until you can’t.
Do you know someone with a story? Email SBJTonyT@gmail.com.
The Journal’s weekly “What’s Your Story?” series is sponsored by Morris & Dewett Injury Lawyers.