The assignment was straight forward – write a research paper about an influential American.

I was attending classes at Wharton County Junior College in Richmond about 15 years ago, and decided to write my paper about Barbara Bush.

The former First Lady was someone who used her political position to shine a light on important issues – education and reading. As an avid reader, I was happy someone in power could perhaps convince young people to pick up a book or newspaper.

After we turned our papers in, I was standing in the hall talking with three young classmates. The conversation turned to strong female leaders, and it was clear they weren’t familiar with strong women on the national level.

I asked them to name an influential woman from the last 50 years. They thought and then one girl blurted out an answer.

“Betsy Ross,” she said confidently.

“That was over 100 years ago and doesn’t count,” her friend replied.

They laughed, but I groaned inside.

These three had no clue who’d paved the path for them so they could go to college and pursue the career of their choice.

With the death of two influential women this past week, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and former Fulshear mayor Viola Randle, I started thinking about the women who made it possible for other women to go after their dreams.

Over the years, I’ve had opportunities to interview leaders in our community, and I sought out women who’d led the way.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Ms. Randle at her home. She was unpretentious, funny and sharp as a tack.

She helped run a business and a city as an African-American woman, and she opened the door for many young women in this county.

Other women stepped up back in the 1990s in this area. Lupe Uresti served on the Rosenberg City Council and was mayor of Rosenberg in 1992. Dorothy Ryan also served on the council and was mayor in the 1990s.

I also had the good fortune to interview and develop a friendship with the late Kathleen Lindsey. She was one of the few women in her law class at the University of Texas, was instrumental in starting the Fort Bend County Library system and an elementary school was named after her.

Most of us have strong women in our family histories, women who overcome great odds, often as part of their every-day life.

Our family is no exception.

My great-great grandmother came to America because she knew there was no future for her family in Lebanon. She saw poverty and wars and believed she could make a better life for her and her sons in the United States.

Her husband refused to leave his home country, so she left without him. She came to America, sold apples and did whatever she needed to do to keep her sons fed and clothed.

So many women walk this path every single day, most without thanks or others knowing about their quiet strength and positive influence in their families’ lives.

We should tell our nieces, granddaughters and daughters about the strong women in our families. As mothers and aunts and fathers and uncles, it’s our responsibility to make sure our girls believe they can be a vocal part of society and be the change makers the pioneers in our families and community showed us was possible.

If we want our daughters to realize how powerful they are, they need to know they have a solid foundation on which to build. They need to realize the dreams they have can come true if they are strong and refuse to give their seat up to someone else because of the color of their skin, their gender, their religion or their beliefs.

It’s time for our girls to realize the strength they have inside themselves.

Help them find that grit.

Tell those stories.

 

This article was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

Although the coronavirus has us socially distancing, life goes on.

People have found ways to continue toasting happy events, and many of those ways are quite creative, even though they’re not what we initially had in mind.

My nephew, Ben, is engaged and had a big wedding planned for the first part of October. He and his fiancée, Shevy, had venues booked, and we were making plans to attend their wedding in Virginia.

Covid stopped all that.

Ben and Shevy had to cancel everything. As a family that loves to celebrate together, the news was disappointing. We also realized we wouldn’t be able to host a bridal shower for Shevy and scrambled for an alternative.

Showers are a big deal in many families, mine included. My mother’s idea of what makes a great shower and mine are often at opposite ends of the spectrum. A few years ago, she came over early to help with a shower I was giving at my house.

She was inspecting the plates of snack foods and stopped at the chicken-salad sandwiches.

“You didn’t cut the crusts off the bread,” she said, pointing at the triangles of sandwiches on the plate.

“And I don’t plan to,” I told her. To me, that was too much work and I had no intention of standing by the sink and cutting crusts off all those sandwiches.

“People know sandwiches have crusts,” I told her as I dumped some chips in a bowl and put a can of store-bought dip next to the bowl.

While I finished a few last-minute preparations, my mother quietly got a serrated knife out of the drawer and cut the crusts off the sandwiches.

People at the shower commented on how elegant the sandwiches looked. My mother smiled. I rolled my eyes. But the next time I hosted a shower, I grudgingly cut the crusts off because I learned that little extra step did give the sandwiches a fancy look.

My sisters-in-law, nieces and sisters go all out for showers, and I’m amazed at the professional level of culinary and decorating skills our nieces have demonstrated. They created original invitations, made party favors that matched the colors of the wedding and decorated their tables in an up-to-date, modern style.

Following their grandmother’s advice, they cut the crusts off all the sandwiches.

We have brilliant nieces.

But we were still stumped on what to do for Ben and Shevy. Sister Diane came up with a Zoom shower, yet we were quite nervous about how to run the shower. Zoom meetings are usually for business or school, so we weren’t sure what to do when.

Despite our worrying, the shower came off flawlessly. My sister found a game where people got points for finding obscure things in their home, if you consider a VCR obscure, and points for having more than 1,000 pictures on one’s phone.

Relatives from all over the country, including France were there, and it was wonderful to see everyone, even if it was electronically.

We laughed, played the game, watched Ben and Shevy open their gifts and because we were all in the same area – a computer screen – nobody was left out of conversations.

Nothing beats being at family functions in person, but the virtual shower was pretty simple. When the call was over, we were finished – no dishes or pots to clean, gifts to haul out to the car or leftovers to divide between the hostesses.

Preparation chores were non-existent – no bathrooms to clean, rugs to vacuum or furniture to dust.

Best of all – no cutting the crusts off the sandwiches.

I think we hit gold.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

The quiet.

An unfamiliar setting for me.

Most of the time, noise is comfortable – family conversation, the dog snoring, the hum of the air conditioner.

Over the past few months, though, the racket has grown disturbing. My husband suggested we take a morning trip over to Seabourne Creek Nature Park in Rosenberg to escape the news for a bit.

I love nature, but not necessarily the outdoors. There’s mosquitoes, snakes and the unrelenting Texas heat and humidity. But other places of interest were either closed or unavailable, so I agreed.

Seabourne Creek is located on Highway 36 within eyesight and earshot of I-69. I was surprised by the number of people in the park. I admired their toughness – the temperature was quickly rising, but they jogged along the pebble paths, oblivious of the sweat.

Our first stop was the butterfly garden. I remember seeing this patch years ago when there were only a few small plants. Now the garden is bursting with color – reds, yellows, greens, blues and purples. How those plants can grow in the brutal Texas heat is beyond me, but the dozens of butterflies seemed quite content to feed.

Families were at the park, mostly around the lake fishing. Dads and moms were baiting hooks while their children did cartwheels, spinning to a stop when they heard a fish jump in the water.

Couples were seated on park benches watching the birds and enjoying the shade. One pair told us some pretty birds were over by the lake, so we headed there. I was hoping for some photos and my bird-watching husband was looking forward to seeing some songbirds.

On the walk to the lake, I noticed for the first time how quiet the park was. Even though the freeway was close by, the sounds of civilization were non-existent.

No trucks lumbering past, no car horns, no radios blaring. Just birds rustling in the trees, tiny frogs calling to each other and the crunch of the walking path gravel underneath our feet.

When we came to the educational garden, my husband and I separated, and I was all alone with the plants. Although I didn’t know the names of any plant or bush in the lush garden, that didn’t matter. Volunteers had listed the names of all the plants on signs, along with botanical information, and I silently thanked them for their tedious work.

Taking pictures of the flowers, hoping to catch a butterfly sipping on nectar, I realized how weary I’d become of the news and the world. Turn on the television or the radio, and all we hear is bad news, and that’s all there seems to be.

A hurricane decimated central Louisiana, quiet magnolia-lined streets and a laissez-faire way of life left in shambles.

Around the world, unemployment numbers are high, many businesses have closed down and there doesn’t seem to be an end to this pandemic. I feel guilty for having a roof over my head and pessimistic for the future.

But here in this park, where the entrance is free and the prairie is wide open and constantly blooming, the quiet gave me hope.

A belief that volunteers will make sure we have a quiet sanctuary where we can catch our breath and recharge.

A reminder that getting back to nature is the jump start we need to believe that the world will go on, change and renew.

A kick in the pants that there is good in the world.

We just have to go find it.

And often, we find that good in the quietest of places.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. For photos of Seabourne Creek Nature Park, visit Denise Adams’ Facebook page. 

There are few genuine things and people in this world. Such was the case with William “Junior” Hartlage who passed away this week.

Years ago, photographer Russell Autrey and I came up with an idea for a special section in this newspaper featuring cowboys.

Fort Bend County was changing. Acres of open prairies and pecan orchards were giving way to master-planned subdivisions and four-lane highways.

I’d seen young cowboys at the Fort Bend County Fair and wondered how they stacked up against the seasoned cowboys in the county. As a city girl, I was enamored by the cowboy mystique. They could rope cattle, fix fences and work year round, regardless of the Texas heat or the bitter cold spells.

Editor Bob Haenel gave us the green light to profile young cowboys and weathered cowboys. I wanted to find a genuine cowboy so I went to the one person I knew would have the answer – Frank Briscoe Sr. at Fort Bend Feed and Farm Supply in Rosenberg.

I went into the store, greeted by the rich smells of leather and sounds of chirping chicks, and asked Mr. Briscoe if he could recommend someone for the story.

“Junior Hartlage,” he said with his drawn-out Texas twang. I called Mr. Hartlage, set up an interview and headed out to the country.

He was tall and soft spoken, and welcomed me into his and Charlotte’s comfortable home. Junior, as he asked me to call him, told me stories of growing up in Fort Bend County when the county was farmland as far as the eye could see.

They had cattle drives across open acres where houses in New Territory now sit side by side. He remembered sleeping under the stars near Sugar Land, listening to coyotes howl at the moon.

If I wanted a feel for what life was like for a cowboy, he asked me to come with him while he vaccinated some cows.

We went outside and stood on a narrow wooden platform with stairs on each end. The farm hands would steer a cow into the chute, close the two ends, and Junior would give each cow a shot.

I stood back a bit because I’d never been that close to a cow, especially one that wasn’t happy about being in the chute.

All of a sudden, a cow reared up and knocked Junior off the platform. He fell onto his back into the dust as the crew wrestled the cow under control.

Junior picked up his hat and stood up. As he knocked the dirt and dust off his jeans, he looked straight at my face and pointed his cowboy hat at me.

“You don’t tell my wife about this,” he drawled.

I assured him I wouldn’t and I didn’t. At that moment, I thought Junior Hartlage was the toughest guy I’d ever met.

The story was complete after interviews and photos with the young cowboys, and they said there’s no other life they would wish for themselves.

They talked of how ranching was in their blood, and that was exactly what Junior said when I was leaving his place.

Russell and I finished the story, confident that the Texas cowboy mystique was aptly being passed down to young cowboys who loved the lifestyle they’d chosen.

Junior was the real deal, a genuine cowboy, and I was so glad I got to meet him.               He sat tall in the saddle and quietly commanded respect, a respect he’d earned from a lifetime following his dream, something few people get to do.

Junior Hartlage was the real deal.

You’ll be missed, cowboy.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.