Lou and I had just arrived in Sandy Ridge for one of our regular visits when we stopped by to see Mama and Daddy.

A few weeks earlier, Mama had attended the Patrick Central School reunion. She had already told us all about it, and I could tell she had enjoyed every minute. She even wore her reunion T- shirt during our family trip to Sunset Beach.

One thing she didn’t get that day was a souvenir program. They had run out before she could get one.

A short time later, one of her classmates found an extra copy and made sure she got it.

As Lou and I sat talking on the couch, Mom got up, walked into the bedroom, and came back carrying the program.

“I want to show y’all something,” she said.

We started turning the pages together.

She pointed out classmates as though she had just seen them yesterday. Some of the names I recognized from stories I’d heard over the years. Others were new to me.

She smiled when she found her brother, Richard Moore.

I asked, “Is Aunt Dot in here?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Let me show you.”

She turned a couple of pages until she found her.

There was Aunt Dot.

Not the Aunt Dot I had known all my life.

Not Uncle Obie’s wife.

Not the woman who became like a second mother to me growing up.

Just a beautiful young high school student with her whole life still ahead of her.

I found myself looking at that picture for a while.

It’s funny how a single photograph can make you realize you’ve only known one chapter of someone’s life.

A few pages later, Mom stopped at a photograph of the school bus drivers.

“Can you find Abe?” she asked.

Abe was married to Mom’s Aunt Rosie, so I’d known him growing up.

I studied the picture for a minute.

“I remember he was short,” I said, “but I can’t tell which one he is.”

Mom smiled, pointed him out, and there he was.

To her, he wasn’t just another face in an old photograph.

He was Abe.

Eventually we came to the Class of 1961.

There was Mom.

Mary Elizabeth Moore.

Valedictorian.

She smiled as she remembered something that happened back in high school.

The class salutatorian had looked at her and said, “You got me by two points.”
Mom grinned as she told the story.

“Yeah,” she said she answered, “but I still got you.”

We all laughed.

Sixty-five years later, she could still remember that little exchange as if it had happened yesterday.

As we kept turning pages, another name caught my attention.

Mrs. Elizabeth Bernice Barker Johnson.

Today, many people know Mrs. Johnson because of Tyler Perry’s movie The Six Triple Eight, which tells the remarkable story of the all-Black Women’s Army battalion that cleared a massive backlog of mail during World War II.

Mom knew her simply as her fourth-grade teacher.

That struck me.

History has a way of becoming famous long after the people who lived it have quietly gone on with their lives.

As we finished looking through the program, I found myself leafing back through it one more time. I looked at the cover again, opened it, and there on the inside page was a photograph of a man who appeared to be white.

I hadn’t seen any other white faces in the program.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“That was the superintendent of Patrick County Schools,” Mom said.

I sat there for a minute thinking about that.

I guess I had never really thought about Patrick Central that way before. It wasn’t a separate school system. It was one school within the Patrick County school system. The Black students all attended Patrick Central, but they were still part of the larger county school system under one superintendent.

Somehow, I had never put those pieces together.

By the time we closed the program, I realized Mom hadn’t spent the afternoon talking about herself.

She talked about classmates.

Teachers.

Her brother.

Aunt Dot.

Abe.

The people who had mattered to her.

The reunion program was filled with photographs.

Mom filled it with memories.

And somewhere in the middle of those memories, I found myself looking at my mother a little differently.

Not just as Mom.

But as Mary Elizabeth Moore—a young woman with good friends, remarkable teachers, a quick wit, and a future she was only beginning to imagine.

I’m grateful she took the time to share that afternoon with Lou and me.

Sometimes the greatest gift our parents give us isn’t another story.

It’s the chance to meet the person they were before we ever knew them.

As Best As I Remember It.