Published: September 26, 2009 09:13 pm      

Sisters share memories of life’s journeys

GLENWOOD – When the four sisters get together, they have a 357 years of experiences to talk about — everything from their father’s cattle to 10 gallons of Alaskan cabbage sauerkraut.

Wilma Mays, 93, of Athens; Jean Nash, 80, of Wolcott, Conn.; Jessie Beckett, 95, of Beckley; and Kathy Goodall, 89, of GlenWood Park Retirement Village converged in Glenwood for a weekend visit. As best they could estimate, it was the first time all four had been together in five or six years.

The daughters of the late Fred and Willie Ball of Speedway, the sisters who gathered at Glenwood Park are the last members of an immediate family that included eight sisters and one brother.

“Most of his life, he was a farmer,” Kathy recalled. “When times got really bad, like when there was the Depression, he went into saw milling and cut timbers for the mines, and raising thoroughbred cattle, all registered cattle.”

Except for Jean, the ladies are widows. Whenever possible, the sisters traveled extensively and managed to see much of the world including all 50 states, the provinces of Canada and visits to Mexico. They also found the opportunity to see much of Europe.

One particular journey stood out when they talked among themselves at Glenwood — the trip up the Alaskan Highway in the early 1990s. Jessie remembered how the 31 day bus tour took them up 1,500 miles of dirt and gravel highways.

“We traveled together when we went to Alaska. They even nicknamed us ‘The Golden Girls,’” Jessie said.

“We should go again,” added Jean.

Wilma remembered that taking photographs in Alaska without a flash was easy; thanks to the time of year, the tourists had 18 to 19 hours a day of sunlight.

“We were taking pictures 10, 12 o’clock at night,” Jessie said.

At one point, a mistake on the tour left a lot of the travelers without rooms. The sisters and their fellow tourists let an elderly man and wife have one of the only available rooms while they dozed sitting up in the hotel lobby with their feet propped up on purses. Restaurants were few and very far between in some stretches of vast Alaska, so at one point the tour guide bought bread, cold cuts, tomatoes and other food for a picnic.

Some of Alaska’s produce was especially big, Kathy said. She held her hands about a foot and a half apart.

“They had cabbages this big,” she said. “I brought some seeds back with us.”

The resulting cabbage crop was as big; so big that the sisters had to divide about 10 gallons of sauerkraut among themselves.

Besides produce and photographs, the sisters had souvenirs they could wear or read later. Each sister kept a daily diary, and they had special attire commemorating their trips. Wilma said they put tourist patches on their jackets.

“Denim jackets with patches of all the states on them,” Jessie added. “And all the attractions in the states.”

“One man at the gym I go to said, ‘We’ll call you Patches,’” Jean recalled.

Going on more tours and adding new patches to their jackets has grown more difficult as the years past, but Kathy said they have had good DNA.

“We’ve all been blessed with good health up to a point,” Kathy said. “When our children were little, you didn’t go off and leave them and you didn’t drag them along.”

But the sisters did retire in an era when seniors have more opportunities to stay busy. Besides travel, some of them worked. Jessie, for instance, worked in the retail sector. In another job, West Virginia’s lawmakers read samples of her work; she was a proofreader for their legislation.

“They would fax their bills to Beckley, and we would work on them from 4 p.m. until 8 a.m.,” Jessie said.

Staying active is important; to just sit around doing nothing is to turn oneself into an invalid, the sisters agreed.

The four sisters planned to visit with each other over the weekend, and even drop in an a nephew who was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. He now resides in Mercer County, and he had said that a visit would be nice.

“I think we owe it to him,” Kathy said.

It’s important for members of a family to visit one another when they can do it, she added.

“With the years we have among ourselves, we know that we’re not going to have that many years to get together,” Kathy said. “And we’re not going to be able to travel, so we better take advantage of that while we’re still able to get around.”

— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com