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WOMAN CELEBRATING HER 77TH MOM’S DAY AS A PARENT

By Jonesetta Lassiter/SPECIAL TO THE COMMERCIAL
Saturday, May 9, 2009 10:14 PM CDT

Union Stoudamire was 8 years old in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday of May as Mother’s Day in the United States.

Union Stoudamire Pine Bluff Commercial/Ralph Fitzgerald

On this, her 77th as a mother, Mrs. Stoudamire has one wish — that her son, Garland J. Carbine, 74, will make the trip from Flint, Mich., to join his 76-year-old sister Erma Dorn and her daughter Cassandria Wiley in helping her celebrate this day.

“Sometimes he surprises me and comes down,” she said.

If all went according to plan, Mrs. Dorn confided after her mother left the room, her mom got her wish. The three women share a home on West 12th Avenue.

What will they do, Mrs. Stoudamire was asked.

“Go to church. They’ll probably do something for me there. Then we’ll come home and have dinner,” she said. She is a member of St. Luke African Methodist Episcopal Church and a mother of the congregation.

Born Jan. 1, 1906, and raised in the Princeton Pike area, Mrs. Stoudamire has been a lifelong resident. Her mother died when she was quite young, and she was reared by an aunt and uncle, so she has no idea how she got such an unusual name.

“I don’t know what those old folks were thinking,” she said. “But I decided not to change it after my uncle told me I’d die if I changed it.”

She remembers hoeing and picking cotton as a child and working as a domestic as a young woman.

“I did a lot of hard work growing up. I could do anything on a farm, except pick a hundred pounds of cotton. I guess I was too neat, because if I saw any speck of dirt in it, I would stop to pick it out,” she laughed. “It was hard work, but I appreciated it.”

At 103, Mrs. Stoudamire uses a walker to help with her balance but gets around her home quite well. She has relatively few health issues, her daughter said, and spends most of her day reading her Bible and other books, talking on the telephone and watching television.

“I’m on my third Bible,” she said. “I wore the others out. And I have a book of Martin Luther King’s prayers that I like to read.”

“She’s the only one in her Sunday School class who reads without glasses,” Mrs. Dorn said.

Seated demurely on the love seat in her living room, Mrs. Stoudamire is dressed simply but elegantly in a sweater and print skirt. Her silver hair is combed neatly, parted on the left side. She wears low-heeled pumps and a strand of pearls. A picture in the living room shows her dressed in a stylish suit and matching hat. She could easily pass for a woman in her late 60s or early 70s.

Mrs Stoudamire, who has outlived three husbands, attributes her longevity to “God’s goodness.”

“That’s all I know,” she said. “I always went to church and was an obedient child. God has just been good to me.”

During a century-plus of living, Mrs. Stoudamire has seen a lot of change take place, but the one that she says gives her the most joy is the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.

“When we elected that black president, I think that’s the greatest thing that has happened in my lifetime,” Mrs. Stoudamire said the of the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president.

What advice would she give to today’s parents?

“Don’t let the child get growner than you,” she said. “Always let them know that you are the parent and (he or she is) the child.”

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