It was also at the age of 16 that Edna saw her first Christmas tree. Holidays were never anything special during the time she and Corwin lived with their grandmother. Christmas and Thanksgiving were both considered just another day. But one year around the Christmas holidays, a brush harbor meeting was being conducted not too far from their home. When word reached Edna that the folks in charge of holding the revival meeting would have a Christmas tree, she asked her grandmother if she could attend just so she could see what a Christmas tree looked like. Corwin wanted to see the tree too, and asked if he could go with Edna. Their grandmother agreed that they could go, but also told them not to expect to get a gift when they got to the meeting. It was around a three mile walk to the place where the meeting was being held. When I asked Edna if she could remember what the tree looked like, she said it was decorated with popcorn and a paper chain. The next time she saw a Christmas tree was after she had children and decided she would have one in their home for the holidays.

The Reeser family settled in the Monroe community not too far from Walter’s parents’ home. Walter had bought the property before he went to California. Farming, along with having a dairy farm, was how they made their living. This was during the time when all the milking was done completely by hand. And it was not long after moving to Tennessee that Edna’s skills as a midwife became well known. I asked her how she got started as a midwife, and her reply was that "it was kinda forced on me to begin with." She had a neighbor she went to stay with while the husband had gone to get a doctor to help with the delivery of a baby. But the doctor was too late. By the time he arrived, Edna had successfully brought the child into the world. That was the first of many she has helped deliver. She has participated in over 300 births since the day she went to stay with her neighbor. That number includes two sets of triplets, one to a Beaty family, and the other to a Brannum family. Not even a doctor in Livingston had delivered triplets at the time the first set of triplets arrived. When the word got out that the Beaty triplets had been born, Dr. Capps and Dr. Qualls both came to see the babies, and asked Edna all kinds of questions about their birth. Edna described being a midwife as nice work in a way, but hard sometimes too. She spent many nights away from home and her family, she walked many, many miles in the rain and snow when it wasn’t possible to drive the family truck. On one occasion, she was completely soaked by rain when she arrived at the home of the family she had gone to help, and had to change into the wife’s clothes while her wet things were hung up to dry by the stove. One of the stories she shared with me about her midwife travels was walking to a home she described as being across the river. When she arrived, she found the husband of the wife she had gone to help sitting in a straight back chair holding his son on his lap. After the new baby had been delivered, Edna asked the little boy how much he would give her for the new baby. He told her he would give her a quarter, but his granddaddy had the quarter. She told him that would be okay, just to save the quarter and in a couple of years she would be back, and he could give it to her then. Sure enough, in a couple of years she did go back for the birth of another baby, and sitting in the same straight back chair was the husband and the little boy. In the hand of the little boy was a quarter which he held out to Edna as she came through the door. She asked him what the quarter was for, and the father reminded her of what she had told the little boy. Even though Edna didn’t remember telling the little boy about the quarter, he hadn’t forgotten, and had kept his word.

Something else Edna was called upon to do from time to time around the neighborhood was to prepare a dead body for burial. She told me how on one of these occasions she had to get a stillborn baby ready to be buried. The best that could be determined, the mother, who was eight months along in her pregnancy, suffered a heart attack. A doctor was brought to the home, and after giving the mother a shot, it seemed that everything would be okay. Edna had been called to the house also, and left sometime after the doctor did. Before she got back home, the husband caught up with her and asked her to come back, that something was wrong. When she got back to their home, she found the baby had been delivered, but it was dead. After making the necessary preparations to bury the child, the mother asked Edna if she could see the baby. Not wanting to risk other complications with the mother’s heart problems, Edna made her promise to not get upset and to try and remain calm, and she would let she see the baby. The mother agreed, and Edna brought the baby for her to see. The mother kept her word and didn’t become upset, even commenting that the baby was a very pretty one. She reached out and held the baby’s hand, but just one week later, Edna had to go back and prepare that mother’s body for burial. She evidently suffered another heart attack that this time took her life.

Another job that sometimes Edna sat up most of the night doing when there had been a death in the neighborhood was preparing the fabric that lined the handmade coffins for burial. The process involved sewing pleats into the fabric that was all done by hand.

It wasn’t until Edna had grandchildren that she worked outside the home. She was employed at Young’s Variety Store on the square in Livingston, and later, with Smith’s Flower Shop. She has been active in church as well as the neighborhood Home Demonstration Club, and a member of the Eastern Star for over 50 years. Walter Reeser, who died in September of 1975, was involved with the Overton County Soil Conservation, the Farm Bureau, and served on the board of directors with Twin Lakes Telephone Cooperative for many years.

The Reeser family to date consists of eight grandchildren, twelve great-grandchildren, and eleven great-great grandchildren with another one on the way.

One way I would describe Edna Reeser is that she’s certainly a lady with a lot of spunk. And I’ll just bet I’m not the only person who thinks that. She told me a story about herself that I believes confirms that description, and it goes like this. One day a man came walking up to the Reeser house looking for Walter. Since he wasn’t at home, Edna asked the man what he needed with her husband. He told her he was stuck and needed Walter to pull him out. Her reply was, "Well, if that’s all you need, I can do that." She said it seemed pretty obvious that the man didn’t believe her, and stood with his hands in his pockets and watched while she hitched up the mule and proceeded to do the necessary things with a log chain to get the car out. When she got everything ready, and the chain was hooked to the vehicle, she told the man, "Get in the car and start your motor because when I speak to this mule, he’s gonna take you out of there." The man did as he was told, and just as Edna said, the mule pulled the car from the mud. The man did get out long enough to unhook the chain, but drove away without even a thank you. Some ten years later, a fellow stops to talk to Edna, telling her she must not remember him. He’s right, she doesn’t, so he goes on to explain that she once helped get him out of a mud hole. And even then, after all that time, he still didn’t say thank you. She doesn’t know even to this day who the man was.

Edna’s long time neighbor and good friend, Martha B. Parsons, requested that I do this story. I feel I have only just skimmed the surface with this writing, and that it would take at least one book, maybe two, to tell every story this truly remarkable lady has. The 97 interesting years she’s lived are very hard to capture on just a page or two, but I certainly appreciate her willingness to share the bits and pieces I’ve included here.

back