MY MOTHER - DONIE BELLE BROWN SEGROVES

  My mother was a "Yankee Doodle Dandy" because she was born on July 4, 1923. She was only on this earth thirty-nine and one half years. My mother impacted the lives of every one she ever met. The people she knew are all my age or older and there are not many of us left. The older ones are pretty much all gone now but for years whenever I went to a funeral or a family gathering someone would always tell me how much they loved my mother. She saw good in everyone and she passed that optimism on to me and my siblings. I was a mama's boy and it would be years before I would even spend a night away from home. Mother was a nurse when she met my father. She was working at Doctor Martin's office in the Bennie Dillon building on Church Street in Nashville. Daddy worked at a nearby Walgreen's at 5th and Arcade. They married around 1948 or 1949 and and she became a full time stay at home mom after I came along. At some point daddy bought his own drugstores in 1949. One was at 17th and Charlotte and it was called Segroves Drugs. The other two were partnerships that he ran with an army buddy named Milton Kelly. There was Segroves-Kelly Drugstore and Market at 12th and Jefferson. The other was Segroves-Kelly Drugs at 9th and Cheatham. 

 After I was born my sister Donna, who was my mothers daughter by her first marriage and myself were always with her. My brother Mark came along in 1955. We spent a lot of time at the drugstore and she had a playpen set up in the middle of the store for me while she helped my dad. When I grew older I learned to do my part around the store. I did chores like dusting, cleaning glass with Windex, sweeping floors, and working the cash register. Because our stores were in predominately black areas of town she taught me not to use words that were hurtful such as racial slurs at a time in the South when they were commonly used. By her example I learned that words are powerful and can be used for good or bad. Primarily she taught me to respect everyone and to be courteous. Mother also taught me not to use profanity. We weren't even allowed to use words like liar. She preferred to call someone a storyteller instead of a liar. I always felt secure because of her love for us. She wasn't the kind of Christian that was in church every time the doors opened but she loved Jesus. She made sure that we were always in Sunday school and church somewhere. She had a beautiful singing voice and played the guitar. Mother was always singing hymns either by herself or jamming with her cousins down on Cahal street in East Nashville. Some of my favorite moments were hearing her sing gospel songs as we rode in the car with her. Every night she would bow down beside my bed and listen to me recite "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take". Although I didn't become a Christian until I was twenty-one years old her faith preserved me for that day. 

 My father was married before he married my mother and he had two girls by his first wife Mamie. Their names were Carolyn and Faye. My sister Carolyn told me once that she loved my mother more than she loved her own mother. They spent many weekends at our house during those years. I am a flawed man but whatever is good about me I owe to my mother and Jesus Christ. She was such a gentle soul and I will never understand why God allowed her to die in such a violent manner. When I was 12 years old on January 16, 1963 my father placed a gun to my mothers head and shot her three times while she slept. He killed both her and her unborn baby. Daddy then shot himself. Because of the legacy of love that she passed on to me I have never blamed God for the bad things in my life. When we all bow down on that last day I will see her again and then I will understand.