Julia moved to Illinois and became a God-send to her daughter Mary Lou in taking care of a new baby girl, Pamela, who became the joy of her life. She did this for several years, and when Mary Lou and her husband Ken moved further east, she had gotten an apartment of her own when Pam started school. She moved to the small town also and stayed in a mobile home on her older daughter's property. Julia had also sometime before received news of her son Alexander. He had been afflicted with the same disease as his father and his father's brothers and sisters. Needless to say, Julia and the daughters were heartbroken but they knew their strength lay in the Lord. After five years of illness and having to be put in a nursing home, the Lord was merciful and took Alexander home without too much pain. While Julia was sad at losing her son, she knew he would never have to face the indignity of people saying behind his back that he was insane. Which was still a very hurtful image in her mind.
But life went on. After the creek by her home flooded for the last time, Julia decided to move into an apartment in town and she did. She made friends very easily and was soon very active at the Senior Center and everyone knew she was a farm girl at heart and would bring extra produce to her for preserving which she shared with anyone in need. She traveled by bus thousands of miles in her lifetime and never came away from a trip without one or 2 pen pals with which to correspond. This was her way of witnessing for the Lord as she didn't have a vehicle and witness she did to everyone she met. She was always trying new things, would ride roller coasters with the grand kids, grew giant sunflowers that produced so many seeds she is in the Guinness book of World Records.
She would make her own clothes and sew for others, quilted quilts, loved garage sales, read continuously anything and everything. She never stopped learning, and finding new adventures. Sometimes it may have been a simple thing but it was adventure to her. She won horse shoe throwing tournaments. It never occurred to her that she couldn't do what she set her mind to but through it all she kept on reaching out to people in anyway she could. Baking for church bake sales, hemming pants and shirts for her son in law, picking berries which recalls a funny incident: Julia was picking blackberries and she heard a humming noise and couldn't locate it until she glanced down at her overalls she had slipped on over her dress. She was covered with yellow jackets. She said her first thought was to run, but keeping a level head she quietly unsnapped the overalls and let them all gently to the ground and stepped out of them, then picked up her berries and ran. She would tackle anything, several of the places that she moved hand no outside toilet. she would take the saw, go to the woods, cut down and haul logs back, split them, build a 2 holer" toilet which was the basic for the family. She did this three times during the times she moved. Julia lived after the days of pioneering women, but in a sense when was as much a pioneer as they because he had to break new ground, combat prejudice, and struggle to make a decent living and home for her family. Julia continued to thrive and live among her family and friends or several years. Visiting her other children and helping anyone in need.
She may never have had much in worldly good but she was a very rich woman and a woman as her daughters has admired and tried to emulate all her life. She overcame obstacles that no ordinary person could have accomplished she spread the good news through her correspondence and her presence wherever she went, and left a legacy of love and warmth that is still felt by her family now into the fourth generation and her presence is still felt and so sorely missed.
Her ever inspiring spirit lives on in her grandchildren and her children, by world standards when was but a pin dot in the universe but in the memories of her friends and children she had a presence that was larger than the tallest oak and as deep as the depths of the ocean.
Julia always had stories to tell of moving days of which she became quite the expert after having moved 34 times in the 17 years of marriage to Robert who was part Cherokee Indian. He had a wandering spirit and wanted to move often, never more than 100 miles in any direction.
She told of the many times of moving her flock of chickens, they were so used to it when they saw her coming with a coop they laid on their side and crossed their legs to be tied for transport. She lived in houses that had no ceiling and one day her son Alexander was climbing to the rafters looking for the bird eggs and she had just ordered him down and he jumped to the bed and as he got off a black snake fell on the bed also...he too had been looking for bird eggs. Never was a house painted...she lived in log houses with heat for the second floor coming off the stove pipe that ran from the first floor to the second then through the roof. Hunters always made their way to the Henderson house and at 4 a.m. in the morning Julia could be found making breakfast for whoever stopped by.
Later, Julia would learn to hunt ducks, geese and squirrels herself to help fill the larder for her family. She lived through two world wars, the time of ration stamps, saccharin, no coffee, doing without, riding buses as an only means of transportation and through it all good times and bad, she never lost her love for helping people or her sense of humor. She left a legacy of Christian love and compassion for all who knew her. She lives in the lives of her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren who will keep her pioneering and need-to-know spirit both in learning and striving to new heights. Alive in whatever their undertaking and horizons they cross.
Julia Ann left this world for her heavenly home June 9, 1987 at 76 years of age. When the daughter were going through the few material things of her life, Mary Lou found her correspondence box which was an old stationary box and in it were 21 letters of "pen pals" she corresponded with on a regular basis. She could write a ten-twelve page letter with hardly any effort. So, taking pen in hand, Mary Lou set about the task of answering them and informing them of Julian's passing. She touched so many lives. A little part of Julia lives on in us all.
