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1-878086-60-X
$19.95 hardcover
6" x 9"
166 pages black-and-white photographs
Down Home Press
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Joe was so dazed and
bewildered over Mattie's death that Leary and Marguerite had to lead him
by the hand to the grave. Afterwards, he sat alone in Mattie's empty
room for most of several days until Marguerite thought it better to get
him out. The last thing every evening, he stood in front of a photograph
of Mattie hanging over the television and one of Marvin on a nearby
shelf.
"Mama, I love
you. Bye-bye."
"Daddy, I love you. Bye-bye."
It was a day of pink
azaleas and white dogwoods, April, 1935, and Willie Ann Hill lay dying.
Thus begins this deeply
moving story of a misunderstanding that grew into a lifetime of love and
devotion.
Willie Ann Hill could not die
in peace because she did not know what would happen to her retarded
teen-aged nephew Joe, who lived with her. When a prominent couple,
Marvin and Mattie Leatherman, for whom Willie Ann Hill had worked, went
to her bedside to comfort her, they told her not to worry about her
nephew. "God has made a place for Joe," they assured her,
"and He'll put him in it."
When, a few days after Willie
Ann's death, Joe showed up at the Leatherman's front door, a cot at his
side, expecting to be taken in, they were stunned. But they made a quick
decision.
"Come on, Joe,"
Mattie Leatherman said. "We've got to fix you a room."
Marvin and Mattie Leatherman
would grow old with Joe, and he would be there to comfort both at their
deaths. But neither had to worry about who would look after Joe. Their
children had assured them that he always had a place with them.
about the author
Elizabeth Leland is a reporter for the Charlotte Observer and
author of The
Vanishing Coast. For more than 20 years, she has written about
the people and places of the Carolinas. She was a 1992 Neiman Fellow at
Harvard University and has won the Ernie Pyle Memorial Award for
human-interest writing.
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