May Elizabeth (Taylor) Harper (1912 - 2002)

Born 26 Feb 1912 in Rock Springs, TX

Ancestors

Wife of Lonnie Lee Garrett — married 19 Nov 1928 (to 1940) in Paint Rock, TX

Wife of Willie Ross Harper — married 1944 (to about 1960) in Ft Worth, TX

Descendants

Died 13 Nov 2002 at age 90 in Beaumont, TX

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Rhitt Garrett [send private message]

Bio: By Rhitt Garrett: May Elizabeth (Dubbs) Taylor Garrett Harper was born in Rock Springs, TX in the Texas hill country about 150 miles west of San Antonio. At the time of her birth her parents and older siblings had moved from Rock Springs, TX to a goat ranch about 20 miles south of Carlsbad, NM. (out by the caverns, they say.)

She was the fourth of seven children, the only child for whom her mother chose to travel back "home" to Rock Springs, TX for the baby to be born. Don't know why. (This was a trip of over 300 miles, one-way, over dusty unpaved country roads!!!)

From her earliest years May was very "temperamental, bossy, and quarrelsome" according to virtually all of her five sisters and one brother. The family moved back to RockSprings, TX in about 1919, and on to Paint Rock, TX shortly thereafter.

In 1928 May married my Dad, Lonnie Garrett when she was 16 years old. First son Ira William was born 9 months later, then my older sister, Bea, was born in 1931. May and Lonnie lived off-and-on with Grandpa Garrett in his farm house near Paint Rock until they divorced the first time in 1935. (Grandma Garrett died in 1926 and all the other children were married off, so Grandpa Garrett, Lonnie and a longtime handyman named Jim lived together in the farmhouse. )

Even in those years May was affected by psychotic problems. She was a stickler for clean house and Lonnie became a slob, to put it mildly. One day she "went off the deep end", accidentally, apparently, causing a fire which burned the house down. No one was injured. Next day Lonnie took her to San Antonio for "treatment". (all of this was told to me by a cousin who lived on an adjacent farm, just across the road a few miles west of Paint Rock.)

Sometime in the late 1930's during the Depression the Taylor clan including May and her two kids moved about forty miles north to Runnels Co, TX. At some point May and Lonnie re-married briefly (so I'm told...) and I was born in 1940. They divorced (??) again shortly thereafter so I never lived a day with him.

In about 1943, Granddad and Grandma Taylor moved about a hundred miles east to May, TX, 20 miles north of Brownwood in Brown County. May and her three children moved with them. Later in 1943 she went to Ft Worth, TX to work building airplanes at the Consolidated Aircraft factory.. We three kids lived with Grandma and Granddad Taylor until 1945.

In 1944 she married W.R. (Bob) Harper...they soon moved to Galveston, TX where we three kids came to live with them. In early 1945 they moved on to Houston, TX. My sister, Joyce Ann was born there later in 1945.

Bob Harper turned out to be a binge alcoholic, deeply resented us Garrett kids and made life miserable for us. My older brother, Ira William and sister, Bea, left on their own to go live again with our Taylor grandparents In May,TX. I was delivered to them in June, 1946 when I had just turned six years old.

On the dreadfully cold and dreary morning of January 5, 1950 my older brother Ira William was tragically killed in an oilfield explosion outside Falfurias, TX. This threw the entire family into deep shock, strife and turmoil.

In June, 1950, May and Bob Harper came and kidnapped me from Grandma and Granddad Taylor. (they strongly refused to voluntarily give me up.) Shortly later May, Bob, my younger sister and I moved from Houston to a farm far, far in the Madison County outback in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas...to live their dream of being farmers. I won't go into details here, but those were two very, very, very tough years before they went bankrupt.

On a cold dreary Saturday In March, 1953 every single possession was sold in a bankruptcy sale. At the end of the day, deep in the cold twilight we left there forever in an old car with a couple of suitcases. May and Bob drove us over 500 miles south to Beaumont, TX... dropped my younger sister and myself on the doorstep of my older sister Bea (who was recently married, with a toddler daughter). Then May and Bob went back more than 1200 miles north to Chicago, IL to work in the factories there.

After a couple years they split for good and she divorced him. Bob was found beaten to death in, literally, a Chicago street gutter in September,1962.

May continued living in Chicago, alone except for the two years (1956- 58) I lived with her when I was in high school. It was such a miserable life for me that I left and returned to Beaumont, Texas to live with Bea and her family until I finished college at Lamar.

May lived alone in Chicago... a lonely and brutal existence. Over the years she had several total mental breakdowns, "treatments" and relapses. In about 1960, one of these breakdowns forced her to come back to Beaumont,Texas. She qualified for Social Security disability so she was able to live in an apartment near my two sisters who were more or less her caregivers.

In 1967 she had some money saved for her to pursue a childhood dream to live in the Texas hill country. She built a house and lived there until 1978 when she came back to Beaumont. She died in 2002.

May had her strengths and she had her flaws.

I personally had serious deeply-held resentments toward her... was always embarrassed by her (and my Dad) until in recent years when I finally became able to turn loose of all that garbage and accept each of them for who they were... warts and all... I had been mostly oblivious to any positive characteristics they may have had.

They gave me life, and May (but not Dad) financially supported me and my younger sister to the extent possible.

May always doted on me and was proud of my success. The commandment "honor thy father and thy mother" burned like coals in my psyche for many, many years. But a few years ago, as part of my own inner transformation, I slowly came to personally experience what "honor" really means: an inner state-of-being quality. Today I honor her and her sacrifices.

Her strongest assets were her life-long steely grit and determination in the face of any obstacle. As one small example, in Feb, 1953 when we lived on the backwoods farm in the Ozark mountains of northwest Arkansas, news came that Granddad Taylor died. This was only weeks before the farm bankruptcy sale was scheduled... Bob Harper was working in Chicago. We had very little money and no transportation, but she was determined that we (herself, my younger sister and I) go to the funeral. So somehow she arranged travel plans... perhaps thru neighbors... she learned that a man, who lived about 15 miles away from us worked in Tulsa, OK, more than 100 miles away. He came home on weekends and he would give us a ride to Tulsa, (from where May figured out that we could ride a train to Brownwood, TX) if we could get to his house. May arranged with our rural mail carrier to ride with him to the man's house where we met him and got to Tulsa. We then went by train to Brownwood, TX where some kinfolks lived. We attended the funeral and returned by similar means. It may sound simple now, but back then there was no phone within who knows how far, and communications were clunky at best. Today, the effort and determination which this required seems truly herculean.

Three weeks later the bankruptcy sale took every possession we had except for a car and a couple of suitcases. At the end of the day as darkness fell we got in the car and moved on ...to the next chapter of life.

Another example of May's determination and grit: In her later years she had some money (not enough) to pursue her dream...to build a house for herself and live in her beloved Texas hill country. Over her kids vigorous protests she persuaded a cousin to start building a house in Campwood, TX, but ran out of money. Needless to say, we children bailed her out, finished the house ourselves... and she lived the happiest several years of her life until she became too crippled and had to come back to an apartment in Beaumont.

• Sources: personal family history and experience [Garrett-4589] 12:13, 27 January 2016 (EST)