COLUMN: Strength is superpower of single moms

Twelve years ago this week, I sat in the law office of the late Lonzy Edwards on Millerfield Road in East Macon.

I cannot remember what we talked about, but I’m sure we attempted to solve the problems of the world … or at least some of them.

On a wall in his office hung a washboard, a wash tub and the irons his mother would heat with coals from a fireplace. They were there as daily reminders of the sacrifices she made for her only child.

Magnolia Edwards washed and ironed other people’s clothes in Hancock County in the 1950s for $5 a week.

That’s how she made her living.

She made her life raising her son.

Lonzy would look at that wall a hundred times a day … and never forget the gentle soul they called “Mag.’’ She died the week after Mother’s Day in 1981.

“That’s where I come from,’’ he once told me. “It keeps me humble. Those were the tools of her trade. I put them there to remind me of the sacrifices she made and the values she instilled in me. She always told me to go out and make something of myself.’’

Lonzy obeyed his mother and later became one of Macon’s most respected citizens. He was pastor of Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist for 32 years until his death in 2016 at age 67. He was a Bibb County commissioner, an attorney, a small business owner and the author of several books.

On this Mother’s Day, I am giving a shout-out to all the single moms. There is a special place in heaven for women who raise children alone, either by choice or circumstance.

Some are single parents by choice. They fell in and out of love with their spouses. Others were blindsided by the pain of unfaithfulness and divorce papers, left to rear children with limited financial and emotional support.

I have known women who lost their husbands to cancer and heart attacks, car accidents and on the battlefields of war. I have watched fathers bow out of family pictures because of poor choices and wrecked lives.

Life as a single mom is no bouquet of roses, even on Mother’s Day. The difficulties of parenting are tenfold when you have to fly solo.

My grandmother married at 18 and was a widow and young mother at 20. My grandfather died of pneumonia when she was pregnant with my mother. She raised her child during the Great Depression with the help of family across South Georgia until she remarried seven years later.

My mother, who turned 92 last week, was the closest thing to a single parent during the year my father served as a military doctor in in Vietnam. I still don’t see how she moved five children and two dogs from Portsmouth, Virginia to Jacksonville, Florida, by herself when we were transferred in the summer of 1968. She was like a pioneer woman, except her covered wagon was an Oldsmobile station wagon.

I have written biographies about two wonderful and successful men– the late Coach Billy Henderson and Durwood “Mr. Doubletalk” Fincher. They both were raised by strong, single mothers.

Coach Henderson was the youngest of four children. His father, Red Henderson, died of complications from a ruptured appendix in May 1937, one month before Coach Henderson’s ninth birthday.

Jewell Henderson moved her family from Dublin to Macon. She never remarried. Coach always said she could not have had a more perfect first name because she was one.

She found work wherever she could to provide for her family. She made sure her boys wore clean shirts to school. Although they qualified for a welfare lunch program, she would not accept charity and packed them a sack lunch every day.

“We thought we were wealthy,’’ Coach Henderson once told me. “We had everything we needed. I knew there was somebody in the world who loved me, and I wanted to please her. Her whole life was her family.’’

Durwood grew up in Payne City, where his mother worked in the spinning department at the mill for more than 30 years. It left her fingers so calloused and worn she had no fingerprints. She had varicose veins in her legs from standing on her feet all day.

Ella Mae Fincher asked her husband, Jack, to leave when Durwood was 8 years old. She told her children she still loved their father, but she kicked him out because she no longer could put up with his drinking.

Ella Mae was described by a neighbor as “one of the grandest women ever born.’’ She made time for her children. They had perfect attendance in Sunday School.

“I didn’t know anybody who didn’t love my mother,’’ Durwood said. She was his mom but, in the village, she was everybody’s mom.

Single mothers are superheroes because they are strong.

They are strong because they have to be.

Ed Grisamore teaches journalism at Stratford Academy in Macon. His column appears on Sundays in The Telegraph.