Lifestyle

One of the few things I do love about fall is that it celebrates someone I love very much. Especially this year, when my mother, Virginia Arrowood, will celebrate her ninetieth birthday. A full nine decades ago, a beautiful baby girl was born to Jack Sexton and Sarah Jane Wallen Sexton in her home in the hollow in Wellington, Kentucky. Mom was the only one of her siblings not to receive a middle name. Even at birth, they knew how special she would be! I took a column to spotlight her again (she was the first I wrote about in the old timers of Cozahome community) because she is the oldest in our church, and only one person on our road is a few months older than her. Mom only had three children, but from that small family beginning, she has enjoyed eleven grandchildren, twenty-four great-grandchildren, and nine great-greats! Those numbers, of course, do not reflect all the dozens of community children who have grown up calling her Granny. Mom worked at Flintrock Shirt Factory in Marshall the first few years after we moved to Arkansas way back in the mid-60s. At that point in time, we rented, later building our own home, which still stands (and is inhabited) on a side road off of Cozahome Road. After leaving the shirt factory, she started commuting from Cozahome to Mountain Home where she worked at the Baxter Travenol labs until she retired.