Great-Grandmother Bell

Our Memories

Even the youngest Guevara sibling had the joy and privilege to getting to know all four grandparents, certainly not a common experience. Leon Grayson lived to age 86, his wife Mary to age 91 while Santiago and Carmen Guevara lived to ages 96 and 102 respectively. Each grandparent had the opportunity to hold and behold numerous great-grandchildren. By way of contrast, of our eight great-grandparents, we got to know only one.

Julia Marie Barnard Bell (1889-1969) was born and lived her whole life in Savannah, GA. She was widow when we met her. I retain vague memories of my visit to see her. It must have been 1967, when I was 3 years old. Her dachshunds Lucy and Fritz slept under the kitchen sink and I crawled under there with them. Our late mother Mary Ann claims that when the family drove down later in the week to pick me up I ran down the steps and into the car in record time. Our older sister remembers sitting on the porch while great-grandmother braided her hair.

Mom’s Memories

In an interview in 2015, Ann shared some memories of her grandparents. Her mother Mary Bell Grayson (“Mimi” to us), the second Bell child, visited her parents in Savannah for a week or two each summer with Ann in tow. Ann’s grandfather Joseph William Bell (1883-1959) worked as a clerk in the “big old mercantile building on the waterfront.” “My grandfather was a joker. He was wonderful. Happy always, always telling stories. He was a tiny man, 5’5″ with a size 5 shoe. He was a sweetheart. Grandmother was a little bit cooler – more formal, shall we say.”

A Baptist, Julia had just turned 18 when she married Joseph, a devout Roman Catholic, in 1907.  They raised their children in the Catholic Church and Julia became a Catholic herself later in life. Julia endured more than her share of tragedy, which must have colored her outlook. Her only brother died in 1911, followed by her father in 1912. According to her daughter Betty Ann‘s family, Julia endured six miscarriages, and she would eventually outlive not only her husband and all of her siblings but also three of their six children. Ann reports that when eight year-old Mary got home from school one afternoon in early-spring 1918 she found her mom sitting in the basement mechanically churning butter. She looked up and blandly said, “Barnard’s dead.” Mary’s nine year-old brother Julius Barnard Bell had been struck and killed by a car in front of their home. “And the woman kept driving to her bridge game!” said Ann.

There were always animals in the house. Ann’s grandfather Joseph would “come home  in the afternoon, put on Bermuda shorts and walk the dogs,” always dachshunds. Memorably, “Mother was four or five years old and he had gotten the children a pet alligator and it got out one day. And the old lady down the street came running up to the house and said, ‘Mr. Bell, Mr. Bell, your alligator is in my bathroom!’ And he called the colored-man down the road who wrapped the alligator under his arm, held its mouth closed with his hand, and walked home with it. I think he had alligator soup for supper that night.”

When Ann visited each summer there were always plenty of Bell and Grayson cousins to play with, along with neighborhood children. She particularly remembers playing kick-the-can on the dirt streets and the Bell home filled with family. Julia’s son Joseph Jr. died in 1958, followed soon after by her husband. Her daughter Betty Ann was diagnosed with brain cancer, and passed away in 1968 at age 43, leaving behind a young family.

The death of her sister Betty Ann and her brothers Joseph and especially Barnard deeply effected Mimi too. When her mother died in 1969, Mary was there with her as well, comforting and praying with our great-grandmother. Mary was blessed to have the joy and privilege of introducing four of her grandchildren to her dear mother Julia. Mimi in her turn got to meet seven great-grandchildren before her death in 2001. It was our distinct joy and privilege too.