My Mother's Birthday

Today is my Mom's birthday. She's been gone for 15 years, but she would have been 85 today. She was born in a little coal mining town in West Virginia, her father and most of her brothers worked as coal miners. Like so many of her generation, world war 2 broke the cycle of poverty and allowed her to leave. She worked as a QC inspector in defense plants, because of her intelligence and sharp eye for detail. She finished eighth grade, that was all the formal education she had. She would have been a brilliant attorney, and would have been successful at anything she did, if fate would have allowed her an opportunity for an education. As it was, she was a very successful business person, and died with an estate valued at several million dollars. Not bad for a little girl from the Appalachians with an eighth grade education! She was a smoker, a patriot, and drank coffee like it was water - I guess I come by it honestly. Although she was a hard-nosed business woman, she helped so many people over the course of her life that I couldn't count them. I had so many "uncles and aunts" (honorary) that I felt rich in family. I could name three men and one woman who would have starved in poverty or ended up institutionalized had it not been for her kindness. This is why I get so damned angry when liberals try to villanize smokers as being bad people. Most of those idots could only hope to be half the genuinely good person she was. She was the woman's side of the greatest generation. Happy birthday, Mom, I love you.