Aunt Lucy!

This is a picture of Aunt Lucy and Aunt Annie. Lucy is on the left and Annie is on the right. It's amazing how these faces keep repeating themselves. I have two cousins, one who is spitting image of Lucy and the other, Annie. My mom looks exactly like Annie.

They are great-aunts on my mother's side, sisters to my grandfather, John Henry Webb. I think every family in the south has an Aunt Lucy! Lucy was born March 17, 1906 in Glenmary, Tennessee. She died on May 10, 1978 in Holiday, Florida.

Aunt Lucy was a character! She could do anything. She sewed beautiful clothing. She could knit and crochet and was an avid quilter. I have some beautiful quilts that she made. I don't know anything about quilts, except that they are beautiful.

Lucy married Fred Bieber in 1937. Fred was a widower and 13 years her senior. Lucy had never been married. Fred was the perfect uncle! He was a talented painter, and in his later years, he made jewelery. He used to make necklaces and earrings our of sea shells. I have so many of them in my jewelery box, but none of the earrings are for pierced ears.

Lucy moved to Northern Kentucky in the 1930s with her mom and dad. It was there that she met Fred. They lived in Erlanger, Kentucky, where Lucy raised chickens. Legend has it that she supplied several restaurants with fresh chickens. She loved dogs and hated cats, a trait that I did not inherit. (I love cats.) The Biebers moved to Florida in 1955.

We visited Lucy's house every summer. My mother and I took the train from Union Station in Cincinnati to Columbia, South Carolina. My aunt Shelba would meet us at the station and we'd spend a week at her house in Charleston. Then my dad would come down and we drove down to Tampa and onto Lucy's house in Plant City. Lucy would have supper waiting, and she always had watermelon! That was the main thing.

I didn't see as much of Aunt Lucy in her later years after I got up into high school. She died when I was in college, and I didn't get to go to her funeral. She left me a ring that I wear on my right hand and will someday pass down to one of her great-great nieces. Lucy is interred beside Fred in Hillsborough Gardens in Brandon, Florida.