Remembering Mary Pattie Trucks

When Fran and I retired in 1988, we joined a ready-made circle of lifelong friends of my Aunt Mildred Rippy. We all met every Tuesday morning for breakfast at Hardees in Columbus because we could pull tables together to accommodate our group. We called them "The Girls" because all were more than seventy years old then: Mildred Rippy, Louise Thompson, Myrtle Thompson, Mary Trucks, and Mary Danis. Bob and Joan Stuedell, Aunt Mildred’s neighbors on Rippy Hill, also attended regularly, and Mary Trucks soon brought Virginia Gantt and Ruth Wallace from her church.

They are all gone now, except Ruth Wallace, who is 99 years old and still going strong. Aunt Mildred died last September, Virginia Gantt last week, and now Mary Trucks has left us. Mary had come back down here from Michigan for the winter and rejoined other friends of Aunt Mildred who have continued to meet for Tuesday morning breakfasts, now at TJ’s in Tryon since Hardees closed.

I had asked Aunt Mildred how she and Mary Trucks became friends, since she grew up in Lynn and went to Tryon School, and Mary in Columbus and Stearns school. They met in Letoli when they were about eight years old. I had tried for years to get them to tell me about Letoli, but it never happened. Then Mary fell recently and wound up in the ICU at St. Luke’s.

During one of my visits, she volunteered to tell me about Letoli, so I got some paper from a nurse and took notes.

Because there was "nothing to do" after school, adult leaders in Lynn (Miss Strauss), Columbus (Miss Heath), and others in Saluda and Mill Spring organized four "chapters" of Letoli for young girls. Pronounced "Lee-TOE-ly," it stands for "LEarning TO LIve," and its inspiration was Luke 2:52, "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man."

Letoli leaders combined ideas from Girl Scouts and 4-H (Head, Heart, Hands, Health) into planned activities for the girls. Letolis earned merit badges for learning how to make the bed, set the table, give first aid, etc. They went camping in cabins during their second summer; their campground is now under Lake Lanier. Someone found and killed a large rattlesnake, which dampened the enthusiasm of many of the girls for summer camping!

Mary sang for me their camp fireside song: "Day is done, Gone the sun, from the lakes, from the hills, from the sky, All is well, Safely rest." The girls had a Bible lesson each week; they learned the names and order of the books of the Bible by singing them to a simple tune. Mary also told of making three "gates" of paper: (1) wide, (2) medium and (3) narrow, to test whether speech should pass through: Is it (1)true, (2)needed and (3) kind.

Mildred Rippy of Lynn, Mary Pattie of Columbus, and Margaret Pace of Saluda formed a leadership trio for younger girls at combined meetings and field trips. They became known as RipPatPace. Edna Leonard also belonged to Letoli, but when I invited her and Mary to a lunch to discuss it, Edna had appointments with the medical profession, and Mary soon began a series of her own visits after breaking her wrist and three ribs in a fall.

The late Homar Ashley Jones spoke of Letoli in a program for the Polk County Historical Association, so there must have been many girls who "learned to live" in Our Area while the Twenties roared around them. Mary finished Stearns High School about the time I was born, and died on my birthday this year. She lived long and well, raising her three girls and two boys in those Letoli principles that have made them a wonderfully functional family.

Mary always brought sweets to breakfast, either cookies she had made or a package of little candy bars.

But what I will miss most is her melodious "Hello" with the well-rounded Michigan "o" when she answered her telephone, and her big smile and sparkling eyes that greeted me when we met for an extra breakfast on a Saturday morning.

As the old hymn says, "Let the circle be unbroken . . ." Now the circle of "The Girls" is complete again, "In the sweet by and by . . ." You may read more about "the Girls" in Goodwin’s "A Boy in the Amen Corner," a book containing the first hundred of these columns.

You may also see other columns and comment on them in the Bulletin’s "blogs" on-line at www.tryondailybulletin.com.