Jesse B and the woman who tamed him.

I've been wanting to write this story for a long time now. My dream is to one day turn it into a book, but there's no need to hesitate on the basics. I'm afraid most of the details are long lost behind the disease that now plagues my grandmother, but I'll recount the story I've been hearing all my life.

This all started Saturday when I met a woman in Tuscaloosa who had worked with my grandmother on the Arsenal. She said, "Oh yes, she was a little woman but she could command a room full of men like no other." It's true. She was all fire. She always had been. So now, here's the way I heard it all...

It was one of those Alabama summers in Oxford. You know, the ones where you're miserable from June to September. Doris was set to be married to a man, a Roman Catholic man. This was back in the late 1940s when good little Church of Christ girls didn't marry the Catholics. Actually, good little Church of Christ girls still don't marry the Catholics, but that's another story for another day. She was set to be a young bride, but as she told me when I was about 17 and nursing my first broken heart, "He had lost interest and I wasn't about to live with that forever." So, she left him. She left him at the alter from what I understand. She left him and moved to Huntsville with one of her friends.

In Huntsville, she started the life of a single woman. Again, this rarely happens in the Church now, much less back then. One day, while walking down the street, she ran into a sailor. Literally, she bumped into him. To this day all the women in my family have a weakness for sailors. Especially in those nice white uniforms. They dated for two weeks then eloped. Now, if you knew my great grandmother, this is where the story gets funny. She's an "anti." That's what the Church calls those old school people who damn everyone to hell and tell people the only ones who go to heaven are the Church of Christ members. That's not true. I think hearing this was the first time I ever thought of my grandmother as a rebel. She never even had the pretty white wedding dress, just a suit and a courthouse.

The day after the elopement, Jesse B, my grandfather, was shipped off to Korea for 6 months. They had no contact. She didn't know if he was alive. She barely even knew what he looked like, as she later told me, "I flew out to meet him in California. I was so scared that I wouldn't know what he looked like. I never really remembered, I think I just went home with the first sailor who grabbed me off that airplane."

They were married until he died sometimes in the 80s. I don't know what year, all I know is that it was before '88. I never met Jesse B. I never got to see the man I'm named after, even though I've heard he would have loved to have a little granddaughter.

I love this story. Every single detail. I love hearing and telling it. It never gets old. My grandmother wasn't meek. She wasn't the weak little woman that was the norm back then. My grandmother has guts. She was on fire. She worked at the Arsenal for years, no college education, but from what I've heard, she could handle any soldier of any rank without batting an eye. Her life wasn't perfect; but through those bumps and turns, she used it to glorify God.

I come from some good, God-fearing, Southern women. I think they're made of stone. I hope I don't let them down.