Vicki Lee Bailey

(Photo above, Left to Right:  Vicki Bailey, Sandra Gibson, Bev Gibson in the summer of 1970.  The old Union Grove School in background.)

Stem cells hold the potential to treat or even cure many diseases, such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and Huntington's Disease.  Although I did not vote for President Obama, I applaud him for signing an executive order in 2009 repealing a Bush-era policy that limited federal tax dollars for embryonic stem cell research.

I thought there was no disease more cruel than Alzheimers until I visited my childhood friend, Vicki Bailey, last December at Barfield Health Care in Guntersville.  Vicki suffered from Huntington's Disease.  When I arrived, Vicki was asleep sitting up in a chair.  Startled by how much she had changed, I had to step out into the hall until I could stop sobbing.  A nurse walked by, touched me on the shoulder and simply said, "I know."

Huntington's Disease is a brain disorder that affects a person's ability to think, talk, and move.  In the United States, about 1 in every 30,000 people has Huntington's disease.  A parent with Huntington's Disease has a fifty percent chance of passing on the disease to their children.  Vicki's mother had Huntington's Disease.

My family lived in Guntersville from the time I was five years old until we moved back to Union Grove when I was twelve.  During those seven years we lived two doors down from the Bailey family on Forest Drive which runs parallel to Sunset Drive.  Vicki and I were the same age and together we learned to ride a bike, to roller skate, and to shoot a BB gun.  We sat together on the school bus every morning and afternoon.  In the summer time I would often stay over at her house which had central air conditioning.  It was paradise!  Our house only had a window air conditioner in the kitchen that never quite cooled the bedrooms.

The summer after 4th grade I invited Vicki to go to Bible School with me at Guntersville First Baptist Church.  We learned about salvation and what it means to be saved.  On the last day of Bible School,  the pastor asked us all to close our eyes as he prayed the sinner's prayer.  With every head bowed and every eye closed, the pastor told us Jesus was knocking on the door to our heart.  He asked us to raise our hand if we wanted Jesus to come into our life to be our personal Lord and Savior.  I raised my hand, but since my eyes were closed I was unaware that Vicki also raised her hand.  I am an emotional person and the conviction of the Holy Spirit caused me to cry.  When the pastor told us we could open our eyes, I saw that Vicki was also crying.  I remember this as if it were yesterday.

When we moved back to Union Grove in December of 1969, it was long distance for me to call Vickie in Guntersville.  (Cell phones had not been invented.) So, she and I became pen pals and wrote letters regularly.  For the first two or three summers Vicki came out to Union Grove and stayed over at our house.

Vicki and I gradually lost touch, probably due to the fact that Arab and Guntersville are such huge rivals.  But, I consider her my most precious life-long friend.

Vicki passed away last night at the young age of 52.  Steve Woodward, her devoted husband, made sure she had the best of care during her last years here on this Earth.  When I spoke to him this morning he said her friends would be celebrating her life on Wednesday night at the Guntersville Memorial Chapel.

About a year before my Dad died of Alzheimer's Disease, I began to doubt God.  Daddy's brother, Don, told me that if life were pain-free and perfect here on Earth, we wouldn't look forward to Heaven. 

I pray that Steve, Bill, Sammie, Susan, and Jill find comfort knowing Vickie is now pain-free.  

Vicki and me - December 2009

Two doors down and laughing and drinking and having a party

Two doors down from my building, Berkley on Highland, lives my friend, Norma Brady.  I met Norma in 2004 shortly after I moved to bohemian Five Points South.  There is a bench outside her building where she likes to sit each afternoon from March until October.  I see her there when I take Jubal out.  Norma somehow manages to work the word hell into all her sentences.  When I first met her, I asked if she had children and she replied, "Hell no!  I never wanted any."  She asked about my occupation.  I told her I went to work for the Feds because teaching school seemed to exacerbate migraines.  She said, "Hell, who could blame you?"

Norma turned 85 in August.  I baked her some cupcakes (24) for her birthday and walked down to deliver them to her.  She asked, "Hell, why did you bring so many?"

Norma still colors her hair red and always wears makeup.  She could easily pass for age 70.  She worked as a clerk for the Birmingham Police Department before she retired.  Norma stopped driving a few years back and now walks to our nearby Western Supermarket to purchase her groceries.  Her doctor is at The Kirklin Clinic, which is also within walking distance.

I last saw Norma sitting on the bench in early November.  I realized with winter coming on that I might not be seeing her outside for awhile.  I gave her my phone number in case she ever needed me to drive her to the doctor.

It was 70 degrees in The Magic City today.  I came out of hibernation and decided to take a walk.  Norma was sitting out on her bench.  When she saw me, she sprang to her feet and exclaimed, "Let's walk up to the Vulcan!"

The good news is:  The Vulcan is just a little over a mile from my apartment.  The bad news is:  That mile is straight up Red Mountain.

As we started up the mountain, Norma told me she walks on her treadmill for 45 minutes each morning using the incline.  Unfortunately, for the last three months I have been on the sofa reading one book after the other, slowly but surely turning into a marshmallow.  Halfway up the mountain it became apparent that her goal was to get a little exercise, while my only goal was just to live.  I was gasping for breath and sounded as if I were having an asthma attack.  When we reached the summit, Norma said, "Stop worrying about taking me to the doctor.  Hell, give me your car keys and I'll drive YOU to the doctor."
- Sandra Gibson

First day of Spring

My Dad's favorite flower was the daffodil.  When Daddy and his brother Howard were just young boys they cut stovewood to heat Mama Gibson's house.  Some folks call it firewood, Daddy called it stovewood.  As a kid, Daddy loved to see the daffodils bloom because it meant he and Howard would not have to cut much more stovewood, since Spring was right around the corner.


Many women of that era married men from Union Grove who worked hard, bought land, homes and cars that did not reek of spilled beer.  Through their vows, and some luck, they made good lives and had decent things that had never been worn or used before.  Mama Gibson, bless her heart, chose badly, and the years of doing without left scars on her two oldest sons.


A year before Daddy died of Alzheimers Disease, he commented on the daffodils blooming when I took him for a ride down to Parches Cove.


The daffodil is now my favorite flower.  - Sandra Gibson

As California goes, so goes the nation

My Dad, Carl Gibson, worked as an engineer at NASA in Huntsville for 33 years. When I was in the first grade Dad accepted a one year tour of duty in Sacramento, California. We temporarily left our home on Forrest Drive in Guntersville and began our western sojourn.   We rented a furnished apartment in Sacramento within walking distance to our elementary school. 

The state of California introduced Phonics into their public schools the very year I started first grade. My 1st grade teacher, Ms. Lillard, had just graduated from college and she was teaching for her first time. She was hyperactive and jumped around the room flashing cards at us, trying to get us to say the sounds that corresponded with the letters on the cards.

So this elementary school in Sacramento divided the kids up into Early Birds and Late Birds. You know the old saying The early bird gets the worm. Kids are pretty savvy and it didn’t take us long to figure out that the early birds were the slow readers and the late birds were the fast readers. Much to my dismay, the early birds were required to be at school one hour earlier than the other students in order to receive extra help in reading.

Our school was considered a neighborhood school. We had sidewalks on both sides of the street. Everyone felt safe and the kids either rode bikes or walked to school. Daddy had to be at work early so he’d wake me and we would eat a quick bowl of Cornflakes. Then, I would walk to school with Janeen, another dumb bird, who lived in the same apartment complex.

Ms. Lillard would flash a card with the letter A and a dash above it (long a) and repeat the sound of A over and over again. Then she’d show us a card with the letter A and what looked like a little u above it (short a). Next she’d make this guttural sound over and over – ah ah ah ah ah ah. I would sit in my desk thinking, someone either give this poor woman a Phenergan tablet or shoot her and put her out of her misery. I had heard this exact, inscrutable sound coming from the bathroom when my mother was nauseated from a migraine.

Parent/teacher conferences had not yet been invented. Each six weeks Ms. Lillard just gave me a C in Reading, Mom signed the back of my report card, and life went on. First grade ended and I did not know how to read.

In August, Daddy's tour of duty ended and the Beverly Hillbillies returned to Alabama. I looked forward to starting second grade and getting a different teacher. Instead of a teacher fresh out of college, I got just the opposite. Ms. Gilbreath had taught second grade for 39 years and planned to retire soon. You can imagine she had pretty much lost her enthusiasm for teaching.

My mother started to Snead College the same time I started second grade. She had three little girls to get ready for school before her 8:00 am class. She figured her best hope for survival was to get us addicted to caffeine. She made strong coffee doctoring it with lots of sugar and milk. She’d wake us by saying, “Get in here and drink your coffee!” We’d stumble out of bed to the kitchen table for our morning Joe. After we had a good buzz, we’d quickly get dressed and on out to the bus stop, never mind that it was still 45 minutes until the bus arrived. It gave Mom some well deserved quiet time to put on her makeup and fix her hair while Daddy went to pick up our maid. Yes, we had a black maid from “The Hill” who cleaned our house, did laundry and was our afternoon nanny. Her name was Louvanee Looney and she worked for us several years. She was there when we left for school each morning and there when we got home each afternoon. The last thing my mother would say before she left for Boaz was “Louvanee, don’t let them watch Dark Shadows this afternoon. The show causes Sandra to have nightmares and she walks in her sleep.” The first thing we’d ask Louvanee when we got off the bus was, “Can we watch Dark Shadows? Please! We promise not to tell Mom.” Louvanee would say, “Sandra, do you promise not to have nightmares?”

But I digress. Ms. Gilbreath didn’t mind noise in her classroom; perhaps her hearing was bad and she couldn't afford a hearing aide on a teacher’s salary. Paul, a second grade boy who sat next to me, owned the book, The Cat In The Hat, by Dr. Seuss. He was an excellent reader and quite the show off to boot.  Since the book rhymed and the illustrations were quirky, I was intrigued. Paul would read that book to me every single day and Ms. Gilbreath never seemed to notice. He would even move his finger under each word he read, probably imitating his mother.

Every morning Ms. Gilbreath would call me to the reading group and torture me with the Dick and Jane Reader. I couldn't relate to Dick and Jane’s family. Dick and Jane's parents were just too damn happy. I mean a mother smiling as she washed dishes by hand while wearing high heels? What was that about? In The Cat In The Hat the children’s mother was out of the house for the day. Now, that I could relate to.

Day after day, week after week, Paul continued to read The Cat in the Hat to me. He read it so many times that the cryptic letters on the page eventually began making sense and it finally clicked. Alas! I could read!

My ability to read cannot be credited to either Ms. Lillard or Ms. Gilbreath. A peer named Paul taught me to read. Thank you, Paul, and Dr. Seuss.