By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

Tom Landry died last weekend. So, did Charles Schultz. So did Maud Adcock.

Tom Landry, of course, was the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys professional football team. For some 29 years, he led “America's Team” to victory after victory before stepping down into retirement and into pro football history. Landry left coaching, but the Cowboys continued their winning ways. His legacy lives on.

I grew up under the influence of Charles Schultz and his Peanuts comic strip. In fact, Charlie Brown is older than I am by some three months. On the last day that Schultz's final comic strip appeared in the Sunday paper, the Peanuts creator died. But in books, and magazines, and television reruns, Peanuts continues. Schultz will soon be honored posthumously by a congressional gold medal. His legacy lives on.

Maud Byrom was born during the spring of 1912, the oldest child in a very large family, to a farming couple in Coweta County, Ga. She would graduate from a high school that no longer exists, Starr High School, in Sharpsburg, and would fall for a young man named Elbert Adcock with whom she would share long walks, taffy pulls, and hay rides. On Christmas Eve, when Maud was 25, she and Elbert would kneel in the sanctuary of Turin Methodist Church and be pronounced husband and wife by the Rev. J. W. Hancock. Elbert would flush with embarrassment as he knelt at the altar, remembering the hole in his shoe that was now visible to the congregation.

But, these were Depression years, so the congregation understood. It wouldn't be an easy time ... work was hard to find and the farm chores the couple shared were rigorous. “Little Charles,” their firstborn, would die at age 5, creating enormous anguish for the young couple. Three other children would be born to Elbert and Maud, including a set of twins, in the following years.

Perhaps it was the difficulty of the Depression years or maybe it was the loss of their precious child, but the couple would do two things that would make an enduring difference to those who would come after them.

First, in 1959, the Adcock family bought 80 acres of land, just outside the small town of Senoia, on Ga. Highway 16. In those days, the property was in the “boondocks” part of the county, far away from the activities of the nearby towns. On this land, Maud and her husband raised cows and pigs and farmed the land.

Maud, never one to shirk hard duties, milked the cows, canned the vegetables, and kept a garden. In fact, she would have a garden every year until she was past 83 years of age. Even at 83, she would water the garden carrying two five-gallon buckets full of water. She made clothes for the children, churned her own butter, and often worked outside the home to help the family finances. The Adcock children would never have to have holes in their shoes.

Over the years, the couple made some of their land available to their children and family members. Slowly, over time, nine houses would be built on the family land as the Adcock clan defied the modern trend and maintained a close extended family, with all the members living near and helping each other.

Secondly, Maud would never lack for small children in her home again. All of the love that she would have given to “Little Charles,” she poured into her other children, her grandchildren, and even her great-grandchildren.

After Elbert died, completing 53 years of marriage, Maud, who was now “Granny” to everyone, continued to serve as the matriarch of the family, wipe away the tears of children large and small, and feed the hoards of children that now descended on the Adcock land.

It wasn't unusual for the grandchildren to bring home friends who would always be welcomed with a hug and something to eat. The children fished in the lake, rode the cows and pigs, chased the chickens and consumed copious amounts of fried chicken, butter bean sandwiches, dumplings, and peach cobbler. She never complained. She never turned away a child and, in fact, would help to actually raise many kids — some her own, some not — over her lifetime.

Then her health began to fail. As leaves falling from a tree signal the coming of winter, subtle signs told the family that Granny was slipping into her final time. For a brief time, Maud went to a nursing home but, then, the family that she lovingly cared for over the years determined that she would come home. Bringing her home was easy. The hard part lay ahead.

Keeping her home was emotionally draining, time consuming, and extremely expensive. But keep her home they did, sacrificing themselves for her as she had for them. Even in her last days, she was reaching out from her bed to touch the new generation of children, toddlers and babies mostly, that now lived on her land. Just a few months shy of her 88th birthday, surrounded by her family, she quietly joined Elbert, Little Charles, and Jimmy, another son who died two years ago.

The chapel in Newnan was filled to capacity with family, friends, and others who had sat at her table over her long life. On a bitterly cold, rain-swept Sunday afternoon, her family gathered at the cemetery in Senoia to tearfully say good-bye. As they held each other and wept, the pounding rain finally drove the family from under the tent and back to their cars. Most of them went back to the land that Elbert and Maud bought 41 years ago. Her legacy continues.

[Father David Epps is rector of Christ the King Church. He may be contacted online at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com. For additional information, log in at www.ChristTheKingCEC.com.]

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