A Mother's Day for Rosa Lee

Rosa Lee Johnson Chappell and her son, Ernest

By: Gwen Veazey | Morganton News Herald
Published: May 06, 2010

I recently found two surprising letters sent to my paternal grandmother.
I'd already come across some of Granny Chappell's belongings while cleaning out my parents' home. Her dozens of scalloped handkerchiefs, brand new hairnets stretched around cardboard like spider webs, careful lists of expenses. Then I found her Bible.
When I opened this large, leather-bound King James version, falling apart from use, I paused. An image came to me of Rosa Lee Johnson Chappell, a red-haired, freckled woman in sensible shoes. Late in her life, with no other place to go, this divorced woman who'd never remarried lived with my parents for five years until she was confined to a nursing home a few months before her death.
I carefully fanned the pages and along with notes on verses and an Oral Roberts crusade flier, I saw two letters to her dated May 10 and May 21, 1929. What made me catch my breath was who they were from. G.C. Chappell.
I never knew my grandfather or much about him. His name was Grover C. Chappell and my grandmother left him in the early 1920s when my father was 2 years old.
He wrote from Atlanta to her in Saluda, NC, on lined notebook paper in pencil with his own unique spelling:
". . . Rosa write me how you and Earnest is geting along. I would be glad to here from you both. Rosa I fell off of a building last September and broke my leg in five places but I can walk a little now and have been on crutches for five months. Now Rosa, I still love you and always will if I hadn't of loved you I would have not married you. So if you will come back to me I will for get the past and do the best part by you I can . . . ."
Even though the only stories I ever heard about my grandfather Grover involved either drunken violence or hangover violence, I was touched by his pleading. My grandmother apparently wrote him back right away, though I have no copy of it. In his second letter, Grover responded:
" . . . You say you are afraid of me. I would not harm a hair on your head. Now when we was together I done the best I could for you Rosie. . . . You aught to think I love Earnest to as same as you. I don't want you to be a servant for no one. Now if you are not going to make up with me let me know and I will not write you anymore but remember I love you and would give my life this morning to have you back. . . . Now as for old Dr. Sally, I don't think he is mutch of a man. If he had of wrote me like a man I would send him his money for I do pay my bills. Surely you don't want to be a servant for someone else all of your life. Now as for me being cripple I have been making five hundred dollars a month for the last three years and I got five thousand dollars for getting my leg broke from the Cotton Belt RR. I am able to take care of you and Earnest and my self, to so don't let that worry you. You know I make good money now.
Rosie, Remember I still love you and want you and will be good to you and give me one more trial . . . ."
On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May set aside for honoring mothers. On Mother's Day 2010, I remember my grandmother with much love and admiration for making the brave choice, especially difficult in the 1920s, to keep herself and her son, my father, safe by not returning to an abusive husband.
Gwen Veazey is a member of The Morganton Writers' Group. Her father died in 1998, and she will celebrate Mother's Day this year with one of her children, Scott, and her mother, who lives at Grace Ridge Retirement Center in Morganton.

A Mother's Day for Rosa Lee

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