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Hazel Marie (Day) (Furrh)
Hyman
Feb 13, 1919 - Nov 5, 2021
Posted by Martha Reddout
© Marietta Monitor
1 Feb 2019, Pages 1 & 3
Miss Hazel was born in Durant on February 13, 1919 but her family later moved to Ladonia, Texas. They moved in a motor vehicle, although Miss Hazel remembers riding places in a covered wagon.
In December of 1936 she married Raymond Furrh and they, along with his parents, moved to the western part of Love County in January of 1937. She remembers coming to the area with all the family members – and a cow. Immediately after moving here, Miss Hazel began attending the Rubottom Baptist Church, which she joined in the summer of 1937. She’s been a member there ever since. Her current pastor, Ryan Eakins, to whom she refers as “a good boy” considers the church blessed to have Miss Hazel as a member. “Hazel is a huge part of our church,” he said. “She’s faced adversity in her life and is so faithful, she’s just an amazing lady.” Miss Hazel, who’s still as sharp as a tack, remembers those early years of her marriage, raising her four children and working hard to make sure they had what they needed. She remembers picking cotton, of setting a goal to pick 1,000 pounds of cotton in a day and being proud that she finally did it several times. She also recalls raising peanuts. Her jobs were shaking the vines by hand and sewing the sacks closed. “I learned how to do that real fast,” she said with a smile. She told of leaving her babies with her mother-in-law to watch while she worked in the field, and her mother-in-law bringing infants to the field so Miss Hazel could feed them. She clearly remembers getting electricity. “When we got that first light, it was so pretty and bright,” she said, “I thought I was in heaven!” But the memory that really makes her smile was in the early 1950s when they built their house (she still lives in it) and they had a dairy farm. Raymond had bought a television set and put it in their living room. “I would come in from the barn, and there would be a big bunch of people in the living room watching that TV,” she said with a smile. “The living room was so crowded I’d have to sit in the hall to watch it.” In addition to farming and raising kids, Miss Hazel worked at the cookie factory, the pants factory, and cooked in school cafeterias at both Leon and Keltner. She’s worked hard all of her life, but she’s done plenty of other things, too. She served as a voting precinct worker from about 1946 until 2018. She also enjoyed several years with the home demonstration club, and is proud of the many ribbons she won entering her canned and baked gods in the county fair. Her go-to, guaranteed blue-ribbon winner: pecan pie. “I won first place with that most of the time,” she said, “I just made one a few weeks ago for Christmas.”
The 2018 fair was the first one in forever that she didn’t enter. It was also the first year she didn’t raise a garden. “I was down and just didn’t feel like it,” she said, something almost disappointed in herself. And while she might not always feel spry, she still takes care of her own house, doing the cleaning and cooking. She’s even still confident in her ability to drive herself places. “But my kids get on to me for driving and doing too much,” she said, “so sometimes it’s just not worth the fight.” The one thing she won’t give in on is driving herself to church every Sunday. Miss Hazel is a cute little history book with curly white hair. She’s also the “Mawmaw” or “Mama” to the west end of Love County. (Some of the family doesn’t agree on spelling.) She’s outlived two husbands and three of her four children, something that she says no parent should ever have to do. But she’s still here, still going strong. Her doctors say it’s a combination of good genes and activity. Miss Hazel agrees with that, in part. “If you keep moving, you keep moving,” she said. And move she does. She and her caretaker Jacquetta Glenn, who’s related by marriage, do plenty of things together. They watch television, enjoy reading, entertain pesky writers, work puzzles to keep their brains sharp, and they go to town now and then. “We go to town and hope one of us remembers how to get home,” said Miss Jacquetta with a laugh. They stay pretty busy. And Miss Jacquetta isn’t planning on Miss Hazel going anywhere anytime soon. “I guess I’ll stay around for a while longer,” said Miss Hazel. “It seems like the Lord still has something for me to do.”This site may be freely linked, but not duplicated in any way without consent.
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