How old were you when your Grandparents died?

Henry Jackson and Annie Rebecca Jane Kidd Fell

Lena Bell Davis Frederick

William Penn Frederick

I love my grandchildren and I even have two great grandsons! I have been so fortunate that God has allowed me to live long enough to see my grandchildren grow into the fine young people they are today and to allow me to know my great grandchildren. I was not blessed enough to know all of my grandparents. I was a late in life baby and my grandparents were older when I was born.

I never knew my mother's mother. Her name was Lena Bell Davis Frederick and she died of cancer in 1927 when she was 40 years old and 14 years before I was born. I do have a picture of her and my mother and uncle that was made in 1907 when she was very young. Looking at this picture she already looks so sad, even though I think she is beautiful! I can only imagine what a hard life she must have lived as she made a home and gave birth to 14 children! My grandfather. William Penn Frederick, didn't remarry until 20 years later so I can remember him staying at our house a lot. After he remarried I would stay with him and his new wife and she became the grandmother I never had and her name was Betty and that was what I called her. One night in 1958, he and Betty were visiting Betty's sister and watching TV. My grandfather loved wrestling and during the wresting match he excitedly jumped up and had a heart attack and died at the age of 74 years.

In 1953 we moved from town to the country and when we did my Dad's parents moved across the road from us. My grandmother (Annie Rebecca Jane Kidd Fell) was a little tiny woman who now reminds me of Granny on "The Beverly Hillbillies". She believed in old wives tales and didn't mind letting everyone know. I was 14 when she died and I can remember several clashes we had about the things we didn't agree on. I was named after her, my middle name is Jane. My Dad's father, Henry Jackson Fell, lived to be 100 years, 2 months. He was a large jolly man. He had very little health problems until he was a hundred and until he was a hundred he would sit on his daughter's front porch and wave at all the people driving by. He loved soap operas and believed everything they did and felt like they were his friends, but you could not convince him that a man really landed on the moon. He would always say it was on a desert in California! On his 100th birthday he was featured on the front page of the local paper. When he was in his 90's he went to the store and bought a special suit that he wore to his birthday party and was buried in.