I’d like to take some time away from folk music to tell you a little bit about my grandmother, Luella Grant, who died on Tuesday. That’s her, at the right, in a photo from 1935.
Luella Martin was born in Pliny, West Virginia, the 18th and final child of John Franklin Martin, who was 67 when she was born. Her mother was Martin’s third wife, the previous two having died in childbirth. The family lived a hardscrabble life, farming tobacco and other subsistence crops on a rocky farm on a bend in the Kanawha River, where they also tended a light on the river bank, which they were expected to light every evening.
Luella was one of two girls her age (her sister Mary being the other) to attend the local high school, which  was across the river in Buffalo, West Virginia.   She and Mary made the daily trip to Buffalo High School via rowboat across the river. After paddling across, they left the boat and walked a mile-and-a-half to the school building. When it was rainy, they had to wear rubber boots over their shoes. The girls didn’t like to leave their boots in the boat-an easy target for anyone needing a pair of boots–and they didn’t like to wear them to school. Luella remembers a woman who lived on the Buffalo side of the river who told the girls they could leave their boots with her.
She graduated high school as the salutatorian in the height of the Great Depression; however, the Pliny area was so poor already that she wasn’t able to tell any difference. She and her sister Mary took turns taking care of her elderly father, who was in poor shape, until her half-brother lost his job and moved back to the farm to tend it and take care of her father, who died in 1939 at the age of 91. Freed to find a job outside the farm, she left for Akron, Ohio, where her half-brother Dio Cletian (C.D., or Cleasy) Martin had found a job working at a rubber mill.
She found a job as a nanny for the Rose family. a wealthy family in the Fairlawn area of Akron, taking care of their young son, Joel (Joel Rose would later go on to become a TV personality in Cleveland.) She was set up on a blind date with Elner Grant, a shy, handsome young man who worked at a gas station and had played football at school. They married and bought a dilapidated home without indoor plumbing on the edge of Lakemore, Ohio.
Before the Depression, Lakemore, on Springfield Lake, was a resort community full of summer cottages for the affluent, who fished and bathed on the lake. After the Crash, however, Lakemore became a refuge for the less-affluent, where those who could bought these summer cabins and winterized them the best they could. The small Grant home, far from the lake, had enough land to garden, several fruit trees and proximity to berry bushes. A root cellar was dug in the backyard near the outhouse.
Eventually, the house got remodeled, a bathroom was added on, and four kids were raised there, including my father. Elner never made a lot of money, and the family learned to live frugally and appreciate what they had. I remember their small house being so full of family on holidays that there was little room for anyone to move around. Since Luella canned everything that came out of the garden, there was always something that she grew - green beans, strawberry jam,  the best apple butter I’ve ever tasted. Every Christmas, she made several batches of hard candy in many flavors and colors, including cinnamon.
When Elner died in 1983, Luella learned to drive at age 68. You could see her driving very cautiously around Lakemore to Lakemore United Methodist Church (where she and Elner had been the custodians, and where she continued as the custodian for quite some time after his death) or to the grocery store in a 1976 AMC Pacer (Elner was always a big fan of AMC cars – he had a Nash Rambler for many years back in the day).Â
Luella loved Lakemore UMC and served in a variety of ways, including taking the bulletins and church service tapes to the shut-ins well into her 80s. When Jesus said that the two most important commandments were to love God with all your heart and soul and love your neighbor as yourself, I think he was talking about Luella. She had a quiet strength that came from her faith in God, and was eager to learn, taking the rigorous 33-week Disciple Bible Study course in her mid-80s. She liked it so much, that she took Disciple II the next year. Her favorite authors were Max Lucado and Norman Vincent Peale.
She never met a stranger, and if you were lucky enough to run across Luella Grant, she neighbored you. In fact, she neighbored so many people that the Village of Lakemore created an award, the Good Neighbor Award, and made Luella the first recipient a few years ago.
Because she was the last of many children, Luella had few souvenirs from which to remember her family. She was determined that this would not be the case for her own children and grandchildren. For many years, until she was too old to do it with much skill, Luella would make cast ceramic objects for each of her relatives, painstakingly painting them. Many of the objects featured lights. Since my father was a minister, his gifts very often were religious in nature – light-up churches, or angels, or Christmas trees or wreaths. The figures were very often notmatching the tastes of the recipient, but they were, until the last few years, painted with great skill, and always made with love. I have one of the figures she made for me, a cardinal, on my desk at work.
When she was 89, and visiting my parents in Florida, Luella took a class in oil painting. So, for the past few years, as she was able, she spent some of her free time painting landscapes so that she could give them to all of her family members for Christmas.
Luella lived on her own until she was 90. We had a big birthday party, and all the family came from all over the country to celebrate the occasion, and then she sold the house and moved to Copeland Oaks, a retirement community in Sebring, Ohio, where she has spent the last 3+ years. As her body continued to fail, her mind remained sharp, and she spent much of her time reading an average of two books a week.
When she went into the hospital last weekend, my wife and I drove up to Alliance to visit her. “I’ve lived a good long life,” she told us. “I’d love to stick around and see my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but if I don’t, then I know I’m going to a better place.”
What a wonderful bio. It reads like a period piece – we’re losing awareness of those hard years. To talk with and see Luella you would never think she had grown up under such confining circumstances. Thanks for sharing. kath