Flora Ann Scearce award winning writer

Flora Ann says: My life has by no means been perfect. I married an Air Force sergeant and for 15 years was an AF wife, moving often and never close to home or family. Of course, he's now retired from the AF as well as the state of NC. Our first son was born in Gulfport, MS and, being a breech delivery, a neck muscle was pulled (torticollis) and he had have physical therapy for that as a baby. The next child, two years later, was born with spina bifida and lived only three days. This was at Barksdale AFB in LA. A year later I had a miscarriage and nearly died of infection. Herman was overseas and I was getting ready to join him. While in Morocco, our son, aged four, had a tonsillectomy and afterwards started to bleed profusely, was rushed back to surgery for a stitch to stop it. Our two younger children were pretty tame pregnancies and deliveries, though our daughter, Rebecca was a breech delivery, making two of our three to back into this world. I don't think they let women go through breech deliveries anymore. They go ahead and do C-sections.

I've written about my mother because I believe most people today don't have a clue to life as she lived it in the mountains of NC. Children today are so privileged they could not imagine walking miles to a one-room schoolhouse, having to entertain oneself with games and songs, having only a homemade doll and homemade toys to play with. My mother went hungry often while her family lived off a patch of land that was not their own, and she lost her mother at age nine. Children today cannot be put to work at age twelve in a tedious workplace for long hours as she was, thanks to child labor laws. Yet my mother learned to be independent at that age when her family moved from the mountains to Gastonia, NC, and put her to work in a cotton mill. As they say, her schooling was truly in the "school of hard knocks." Still she went on to become a writer herself (how else could I have all the material on hand that I incorporated into my books?) She also wrote poetry. Though she never graduated from high school, she liked to say she went through HS four times (with her four children,) and she valued education highly, taking courses at the community college as an adult. She became an expert in flower arranging, never having taken a course in that, but born with a natural eye for beauty and symmetry of flower arrangements. She was president of her garden club, did flower show judging, and conducted workshops. My mother was also a Christian and chaired a mission circle of women.

Those are among reasons I wanted to write about my mother. Long ago I saw that, for a new writer, it's almost impossible to break into the realm of the big publishers. After countless rejections along with publishers who ask you to rewrite and re-submit ad finitum, I found Tate Publishing, a Christian publisher, who read and liked my work. I've stuck with them, though there's much to complain about and I often do. They never fail to address any questions, concerns, that I have, and for that I'm grateful.

Mother's Day

Anna Jarvis, daughter of a Methodist minister in Grafton, West Virginia, made Mother's Day a national event.
During the Civil War, Anna Jarvis' mother organized Mothers' Day Work Clubs to care for wounded soldiers, both Union and Confederate.

She raised money for medicine, inspected bottled milk, improved sanitation and hired women to care for families where mothers suffered from tuberculosis.

In her mother's honor, Anna Jarvis persuaded her church to set aside the 2nd Sunday in May, the anniversary of her mother's death, as a day to appreciate all mothers.

Anna Jarvis had such success in West Virginia, she pushed a national campaign for the day and the nation backed her on it with a letter writing campaign. MAY 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first National Mothers' Day as a "public expression of...love and reverence for the mothers of our country."


One woman changed our calendars.

Resource: American Minute

Teddy Roosevelt

Who are the four presidents on Mt. Rushmore? George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Which one was the first famous environmentalist? From 1901 to 1909, he designated 150 National Forests, five National Parks and other conservation projects. Before he thought about and cared for the environment, there were few protections. This Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, is rarely given credit for his work. He was like a teddy bear to his constituents, but he helped the real bears and all wildlife as well as the people.
Who was the youngest president? At the age of 42, he became president, younger than JFK. Which one busted big companies who were trying to control certain industries like the Sugar industry and Oil industry? Teddy was a trustbuster. Who helped millions to earn a living wage with the Square Deal? Who built up the Navy establishing America as a major world power? Who began the Panama Canal? Who won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end to the Russo-Japanese War? He was the first American in 1906 to win any Nobel Prize too. Who reduced the national debt by over $90,000,000? Who secured the passage of regulation of the railroads? Who promoted the Inspection Act to have meat inspections? Who secured consumer protection with the Pure Food and Drug Act? Theodore Roosevelt. These were done when he was president. He had other accomplishments as New York governor and a private citizen who founded National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Just as Abraham Lincoln advocated freedom for slaves this Republican believed in women's rights. As the leader of the Progressive or Bull Moose Party, he welcomed women into leadership positions as no major party had before. The party advocated women's rights including voting. He said, "Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly." in An Autobiography, 1913. And "Alone of human beings the good and wise mother stands on a plane of equal honor with the bravest soldier; for she has gladly gone down to the brink of the chasm of darkness to bring back the children in whose hands rests the future of the years. "
He had many famous quotes like: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." And "Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally—I do not mean figuratively, but literally—impossible for us to figure what that loss would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards towards which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves."
Born October 27, 1838, he is often overlooked because of his niece Eleanor Roosevelt who was First Lady during a war. Most of the more promoted presidents were vanguards of our nation like the other three men on Mt. Rushmore.