 The Windham Family in 1953 (Unless otherwise noted, the Kathryn Tucker Windham blogs are written by her children, Ben Windham and Dilcy Windham Hilley.)
More than five years after her death, people are still interested in learning about my mother. I believe that would make her happy. Recently, a young graduate student called to ask me if she could interview me about Kathryn Tucker Windham. I agreed, of course, and the nice young woman opened with this question: “What do you know about your mother?” Somewhat taken aback, I wondered if Mother had some secret life of which I knew nothing. A double agent perhaps? A breeder of Chihuahuas? Lover to “Big Jim” Folsom?? All those possibilities seemed ridiculous, so I told her I knew a lot about my mother. I told her I knew everything most people knew and more. I told her that one of the most romantic things I knew about my mother was how she met my father. My father, Amasa Benjamin Windham, was born in Gordo, Alabama, in 1905, and died at 50 when I was three, so I have only a hazy memory of him. I know a great deal about him though because he kept extensive scrapbooks from the time he was at Howard College (now Samford University) to the time of his death in 1956. He was a magnificent artist, so these are no ordinary keepsakes. The scrapbooks are made in huge, leather-bound county ledgers and include pages of his original artwork, along with photographs and clippings. My father was also a prolific playwright, an actor and a journalist. He worked as a features writer for the Birmingham Age-Herald before he joined the Navy during World War II. He served as Lieutenant Commander and headed a military government unit on Okinawa. While my father was in the Navy, my mother became a reporter for The Birmingham News. Mother said when she started work there, all she heard was, “Amasa this,” and “Amasa that,” and “Oh, won’t we be glad when Amasa gets home.” He was widely adored by friends and co-workers, I understand. Mother said she was sick to death of hearing about Amasa. One afternoon while she was working away at her typewriter, the elevator doors opened, and out stepped a dashing man in full white Navy regalia. Everyone in the newsroom jumped up and went running to greet Amasa, who had finally come home from the war. My mother continued typing while everybody else fawned over him. Later he stopped by her desk to introduce himself. “You must be Kathryn. I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said. “My friends and I are going out to celebrate after work. Would you like to come with us?” “I wouldn’t be the least bit interested,” my mother said, barely looking up from her typewriter. My daddy joined the staff of The Birmingham News upon his return. One day he sent a copy boy over to deliver a note to my mother. It read: “Would you be the least bit interested in joining me for dinner tonight?” Three months later they were married. Soon they moved to Selma, had a family of three young children, and then my daddy died. Mother and Daddy had been married ten short years. He was on the road a lot covering stories for a variety of publications during those ten years, so I have lots of correspondence between Mother and Daddy. The letters are lively, full of talk about politics and family friends and us children. All of them have an underlying sense of longing to be together. I suppose that’s why Mama never remarried, never even went out with anyone else after my father’s death. It is also why she often told young engaged couples to go ahead and marry. She knew all too well the familiar saying that time is a thief.
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 Ben is earnestly blowing his trombone. (Unless otherwise noted, the Kathryn Tucker Windham blogs are written by her children, Ben Windham and Dilcy Windham Hilley.) Tornados are a fact of life in Alabama. It doesn’t mean, however, that we take tornadic activity lightly. When the sirens go off and local weatherman James Spann says, “Go to your place of safety,” we do. So it was one spring evening in Selma, when I was visiting Mother for the weekend. We had just finished supper---and if you don’t know that it was supper and not dinner, you didn’t know Mother very well---when the sirens went off. It had been a sloggy, sultry sort of afternoon, too still and hot for April, just the sort of weather that tornadoes thrive in. Because there was no basement in Mother’s house, we decided the narrow hallway in the heart of the house would be our most protective place of safety. We picked up two straight-back chairs from the dining room table. As an afterthought, Mother went to the kitchen and reappeared with a half-full liter of red wine and two glasses. “Well, we might be here a little while,” she said by way of explanation. Now Mother’s hallway was a gallery of photographs, all sorts of photographs, hung top to bottom on a pegboard wall. So as the sirens continue to sound, we sat in that passage and talked about the pictures before us. We laughed about the photograph of her dressed up as a six-year-old George Washington for a school play. She told me about going to Bull Pen Hunting Lodge, the first female ever allowed there, to cover a story for The Montgomery Advertiser. The proof was there in a photograph of deer carcasses with Mother in the foreground in knee-high lace-up boots. The sirens continued, and we were perfectly content to drink wine and shelter in our place of safety. Mother told me about the picture of the birthday party where she appeared to be about five, and everyone had on festive hats made of construction paper. I asked her about another photo of her taken at her third birthday where she sat all alone with a gigantic cake and a small umbrella. She assured me it was a grand occasion though in the picture she looks lonely. More blasts from the sirens and another glass of wine as we chatted about the certificates among the pictures. Letters from Albert Brewer and Bill Clinton and even some sort of official notice from Governor George Wallace hung on the pegboard wall, along with a picture of my brother Ben earnestly blowing his trombone. It was a while before we noticed the sirens hadn’t sounded in quite some time. “I suppose it’s safe to go back to the dining room,” Mother said. I supposed so too, though I could have stayed in that narrow hall with her picture stories all evening. I think of that night often now in the midst of tornado season and wonder where I might ever go again that would feel so safe.  Kathryn is the birthday party guest in the middle with her hand on her hat.
 Kitti, Dilcy and Kathryn on a freighter en route to Europe in 1963 - Photo by Ben Windham (Unless otherwise noted, the Kathryn Tucker Windham blogs are written by her children, Ben Windham and Dilcy Windham Hilley.)
Mother believed travel boosted the intellect. In my earliest memories, I recall being in a car and going somewhere we’d never been before. My daddy died when Mother was 38, leaving her with three children under the age of nine to raise and conduct. That she was a single mother didn’t deter her in the least from traveling the country with us in tow. Because my brother Ben was a Civil War buff, I recall spending long hours tromping around battlefields. I didn’t mind so much because I could climb on the artillery or park myself in the grass and make clover necklaces. Sister Kitti, being older and far too sophisticated for such nonsense, would stay in the car and bury her disenchanted nose in a book. One summer, Mother took us all to Europe on a freighter. It was the adventure of a lifetime, and travel to Europe in 1963 was not so commonplace as it is now. It was the summer before I started sixth grade, so I have memories of Naples and Pompeii and Ephesus. The summer before that, she took us to New York City. I was going through my temperance movement phase and refused to allow us to eat anywhere that served liquor. That eliminated quite a number of eateries in the city, so we took many meals at the Automat. That NYC adventure was also the trip where Mother corralled us onto the wrong subway, and we ended up in Harlem. Now Harlem in 1962 was not the hip and happening place it is today. As a matter of fact, it was a rough and tumble neighborhood we had no business being in. When we exited the subway and Mother realized her mistake, she turned to us and hissed in no uncertain terms, “Don’t any one of you open your little Southern mouth.” We did not. But one of my favorite traveling memories was a trip to Sanibel Island, Florida, where we collected dozens of magnificent shells that walked off the dresser and gathered at the door during the night. Yes, we didn’t check for hermit crabs. Sanibel also had the best Dairy Queen Dipped Cone I’d ever eaten in my life. I don’t know why it was the best. Maybe because we were at the beach, and it was hot. Anyway, we went for Dipped Cones every day while we were there. Mother, who as a journalist was attracted by almost anything of the slightest interest, was engrossed by the dipping of the cone in chocolate. “How can you hold that ice cream upside down to dip it without it falling into that pool of chocolate?” Mother asked the waitress at the walk-up counter. A woman far older than my mother, the waitress was pruney-faced from too much Florida sun and not a bit pleasant. “I been dippin’ these cones for years, and I ain’t had a single one ever to fall out,” the Naugahyde waitress said, peering over her cat-eye glasses. And then it happened. We watched in shock as the never-before-fallen-out soft serve ice cream plunged into that well of chocolate, splashing brown sweetness all over our server. She looked at Mother like she was the very Devil. We looked at Mother like she could jinx the very Devil. “That’ll be a dime,” the waitress said. Mother laid a dime on the counter, and we left without ordering another thing. To this day, I’m a little spooked when I order a Dairy Queen Dipped Cone. You never know---it just might happen again.  (Unless otherwise noted, the Kathryn Tucker Windham blogs are written by her children, Ben Windham and Dilcy Windham Hilley.) In 1975, nearly a decade after the publication of several successful books of recipes and ghost stories, Mother decided she would write a book about her beloved Alabama. She spent months poring over newspaper articles and interviewing folks with connections to the stories she wanted to include. The book was filled with accounts of Alabama characters such as Steve Renfroe, the outlaw sheriff, and Hatchett Chandler, who championed the restoration of Fort Morgan. Mother tested out a number of book titles on her focus group family. I don’t remember all the names she came up with, but she finally settled on “Alabama: One Big Front Porch.” We all approved that choice, and in the book’s introduction, Mother explained the title: Alabama, they say, is like one big front porch where folks gather on summer nights to tell tales and to talk to family. It’s a sprawling porch, stretching all the way from the Tennessee River valley to the sandy Gulf beaches, with its sides sometimes slipping over into Mississippi and Georgia. Folks there are close kin, too. The tale-tellers don’t all look alike and they don’t all talk alike, but the stories they tell are all alike in their unmistakable Southern blend of exaggeration, pathos, folklore and romanticism. Family history is woven into the stories. And pride. And humor. Always humor. And it was humor that came into play just after the book was published. We were all eagerly awaiting the announcement of its release and accompanying reviews of Mother’s latest literary pursuit. One of the state’s largest newspapers rushed to get word out about the publication. There, set in 60 point type, the paper announced: New Windham release is ‘Alabama: One Big Fruit Punch.’ Mother thought the mistake was hilarious and could hardly wait to add it to her repertoire of stories. The headline gods must have been on vacation that month. The next week, Mother mailed me a clipping from another large state newspaper that ran a picture of her with the unfortunate headline: Elephant, Dodo or What?  |
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"Some people are important to intellectuals, journalists, or politicians, but Kathryn Tucker Windham is probably the only person I know in Alabama who is important to everybody."
–Wayne Flynt, Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Auburn University. |
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