Her pastor, Grace Methodist’s Rev. Scott, says that he doesn't see how his church will get along without the late Mrs. J. E. (for Miss Sally) Hutcherson; her neighbor, Mrs. Wallace Estes, says she will be sorely missed on Marilyn Street, and her bereft husband has asked us to comment upon her passing in this column.
This is not easy to do, because, we never knew Miss Sally in person. Which of course was our loss, and it interests us to note that we were rather close neighbors once upon a time, when we lived on South Broadway and the Hutchersons lived just around the corner on Valliant Street, directly across from the Nances. The senior George Rigneys (Winks' grandparents) lived on one side of them, and Ed Murphy, his mother, and Anne and Jane May lived on the other.
Afterward, when we moved to Peacedale, the Hulchersons moved to Lamont, and even then we weren't over six or seven miles apart. Mr. Hutcherson being associated in the store there with Mr. Ed Milliard, whose wife Miss Claude was Miss Sally's sister. And in more recent years the distance has been but a matter of from Wetherbee to Marilyn, which is something less than a mile.
So we are sorry the gap was never fully closed between this commentator and a very fine lady. Yet she made this column a few years ago, on a tip from Lilly (Mrs. Ernest) Smith, who was her fellow passenger aboard the river streamer "Oscar Barrett", during the great flood of '27.
For it was during that trip, downriver to Vicksburg, that Sally Hutcherson's fourth and youngest child was born. The boat tied up at Grand Lake Landing, where a Dr. Douglas of Eudora, Arkansas came aboard and delivered the baby, whose mother promptly named him Douglas Barrett for the doctor and the boat. And the story of the blessed event itself was picked up by the press associations, to be spread across the front page of just about every newspaper in this land of the free.
Thus did one dedicated person help focus nation-wide attention upon the problems and perils which faced the Delta country. Her travail, aboard a boat crowded with flood refugees, probably did more to bring about long-needed flood-control than a hundred speeches in congress.
So Grace Methodist, Marilyn Street and the bereaved family are not the only ones who mourn the passing of Mrs. J. E. Hutcherson. The Delta will miss her too.
At least two readers have told us they turn to page 4 and this column the minute they lay upon this newspaper. Bless their hearts, say we and, t'other day we thought for a moment there might be three.
Mrs. Lorena Upchurch cut weighed, and wrapped a steak and was handing it to us across the counter.
"Mister Crump." she said, "do you know the column I like best of all in the Democrat-Times"?
Just as a matter of form, assuming what we trusted was the proper and modest attitude, we replied that we'd like very much to know her preference, then waited complacently. But not for long.
"It's Mrs. Dean's Deer Creek Spectator," announced Lorena and we hope we weren't too visibly shaken by the news.
"Yes sir", continued Mrs. Upchurch, "there's a lady that can really write. Why I feel just like I've been to Hawaii, when I read what she says about the flowers, and birds, and the blue water and blue sky there. And when speaks of her children and grandchildren. Mr. Crump, it's all I can do to keep the tears back."
There you are, Geraldine, I call that the last word in lasts. Orchids such as Lorena Upchurch has tossed you don't grow on trees, (or bushes either for that matter) not even on the blessed island of Oahu.
P. S. Furthermore I was going to pass along this tribute, even if you and Boss Dean hadn't brung me the red necktie with the hula gals rarin' to go.
BC
