Sally Lou Fitzhugh

Sally Lou, called by those who loved her best Aint Sallou, was the daughter of Sallie Fitzhugh French and Lee Brockenborough Fitzhugh. She entered this world on January 16, 1931, the much loved and spoiled youngest child of her family, 13 years younger than her older sister, my grandmother, Virginia Lee Fitzhugh (Moore) and 14 years behind her oldest brother, John French Fitzhugh (another older brother, Lee, died in toddlerhood). She was born at Poplar Grove Farm on Poplar Road in the west part of Stafford County, Virginia, where she resided virtually all of her life.

Sally Lou loved to tell stories of her childhood growing up on Poplar Grove farm, describing how she carried heavy buckets of water from the 1600s era spring house up the steep rise to the house until the family finally got a water pump; how much she missed the farm when the family was unable to take care of her after her father’s early death and her Aunt Edna Pilcher took care of her; how sick she was when she cut through the woods and got a terrible case of poison ivy that affected her lungs and resulted in several weeks of hospitalization; the year she spent in Washington DC with her Aunt La Crockett at school recovering and catching up from missed schoolwork; the near-constant trouble she was in for sneaking up the steep hill out of the farm across Poplar Road to her best friend/cousin Nancy’s home for a daily visit and to snack on Aunt Bessie French’s mouth-watering buttermilk biscuits; how she rode the mail truck to piano lessons and walked the several miles back home because times were so hard; how she earned money for college by raising a pig to sell; about the time her pigtail got caught in the newfangled electric clothes washing machine; her many cats — so many stories, tied up in the farm.

Sally Lou’s family lived in the farm’s original two story stone house, and Sally Lou was born in that house. During the Depression her father, Lee, traveled to Alabama to take care of degenerate relatives. He often wrote letters home asking the family to remember him to little Sally Lou. While he was absent, the stone house caught fire and was destroyed. Because the house was stone, it burned relatively slowly. Brother John and farm hands were able to pass many items out the windows, and several furniture items and heirlooms were saved. The family, excluding Sally Lou who went to live with her Aunt Edna and cousins, lived in the red smokehouse while Sally Lou’s then 17 year-old brother John built a new wooden home out of lumber from the farm with the help of another man. Sally Lou lived in that home, embracing all its electrical and plumbing and construction peculiarities, virtually all of her life.

Although unwell himself, Lee was anxious about his family and returned home from Alabama, traveling most of the way on foot. Sally Lou did not recognize her father when he arrived because he was so thin and sick. He was in late stage Bright’s Disease, and died shortly thereafter in the newly built house. Sally Lou grew up looking at her elder brother, John, as a protector and friend and father figure. It would be hard to overstate the adoration Sally Lou had for her jolly, storytelling brother. John taught Sally Lou to drive, let her borrow his fancy car, and managed the farm his entire life. John lived on the farm until he married in his fifties and moved to nearby Fredericksburg with his wife, Mae, driving the 10 miles back to the farm each day. He died in 1986, but rare was the day that Sally Lou did not express how much she missed John and what she’d be willing to give to sit with him on the old stone steps at the back porch while they laughed until they cried at his home spun stories and jokes again.

During her teenage years, Sally Lou went for a dentist visit that went awry. Shortly thereafter, the bone in her right cheek began deteriorating, resulting in a distinctive sunken area. Though she sometimes felt self-conscious about it, she chose not to have the sunken area repaired by plastic surgery. This striking physical trait turned out to be a blessing as it made Sally Lou easily recognizable throughout her life, helping people remember and recognize her whenever she traveled in public, even many decades after having seen her last.

Sally Lou’s best friend was her cousin, Nancy French Cox, who lived across the street from Sally Lou. Nancy was Sally Lou’s first cousin and she was just over a year younger, but that didn’t stop the two from being best friends. They played together each day and got many whoopings for sneaking off to be together. Nancy moved away and married, eventually settling in Manassas, where she, too, taught school for many years. As older women, they spoke on the telephone every night sharing news and laughs. The pair acquired season tickets to the Riverside Dinner Theater in Fredericksburg and attended every production from its opening show until Sally’s lack of mobility after her stroke prevented her from being able to attend independently.

Sally Lou rode the bus from the farm to school each day. She was not a gifted student and a notoriously poor speller, but Sally Lou enjoyed school, particularly the annual May Day pole celebration. She remembers her first boyfriend: his mother sent him to school each day with a piece of cake for dessert that he gave to Sally Lou as a love offering. Physically strong throughout her life and naturally athletic, she enjoyed sports activities as well — she was a good basketball player except for all the fouling out.

After graduation from Falmouth High School in 1947, Sally Lou attended university at Radford College in Radford, Virginia, which at the time was a prim and proper all-women’s school. She studied business and education. Sally Lou lived in a guesthouse there and did well enough in her classes to graduate, barely. She made lifelong friends at Radford that she corresponded with and spoke about throughout her life, like Betty Joyce, and learned ladylike manners that she talked about but mainly ignored thereafter. Sally Lou was earthy but not coarse, and exhibited a natural kindness and good nature that made her easy to like wherever she went.

Sally Lou began attending church services while at Radford and was baptized into the Episcopal church in her late teens. Though her father, Lee, had been the son of an episcopalian minister, Sally Lou’s mother, Sallie, was a nondenominational sort of Christian who attended whatever nearby country church was having a picnic dinner after services. Sally Lou herself was never regularly active in the church, but she enjoyed visits from the priest at Aquia Episcopal Church as she became more elderly, and she participated with the church on a travel exchange with their sister congregation in Staffordshire, England. She brought niece-in-law, Carol, and great-nieces, Jenny and Melissa, on that ten day trip in June 1997.

After graduating from Radford in 1952 with her bachelor’s in education and teaching certificate, Sally Lou took a high-paying job at Fort Belvoir working as a secretary. Her fast typing and shorthand skills won her the job, but she despised her military bosses, thinking them uncouth and did not enjoy the long commute. She quit the secretary job after a few months and took a new position working as a schoolteacher in nearby Bristersburg, Virginia, with lower pay, but better quality of life and flexibility. Soon a teaching position opened up in Stafford, where Sally Lou taught in several schools, including at what is now Drew Middle, Stafford High, and North Stafford High Schools. She laughingly remembered teaching seventh grade and helping the uncomfortable boys and nervous girls learn to dance the waltz, and loved to dramatize the angst of pre-teenagers by sharing how she rescued one hysterically sobbing middle schooler from a bathroom only to discover the student was distraught because a boy she liked had held hands with ANOTHER GIRL. Sally thought that a ridiculous reason about which to become so traumatized.

In December 1947, Sally Lou and her family received a letter from her brother-in-law, Wilburn Moore, describing the frog-like croaking sounds coming from the other room. Sally Lou was the proud aunt of a little baby boy, Davis. Sally knitted Davis a special vest and sewed his favorite toy, a rag doll he named Tar Baby. Davis and Sally shared a special bond, with Sally keeping an eye on Davis during his years at law school at University of Virginia law school. Beginning in the 1990s, Davis called Sally Lou every day to check on her and to share gossip, family stories, and good natured teasing. When she moved to assisted living in 2021, he watched her on camera to be sure she was safe, even alerting caregivers to falls and other issues he noted from his home in Mississippi.

Also during this time, Sally Lou experienced romance. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joe, but she called off the wedding, having decided she did not want to be tied down to a man. She lived the remainder of her life proudly independent and single. A romantic at heart however, Sally Lou kept all her love letters in a trunk, and later in life as her memory got a little confused even imagined some incidents where she’d seen her ex-beau or where he bought her dinner while eating with a caregiver. Though not conventionally attractive, Sally Lou’s good nature attracted men, and she had many brief encounters with “boyfriends” all the way into her 80s about which nephew Davis and friends teased her good-naturedly. She was naive and slightly absentminded, which resulted in lots of scrapes. She had a special ability to laugh at herself.

During summers and in between trips, Sally Lou took courses at the University of Colorado and with some struggle, was awarded a Master’s Degree in business education in 196=.

Sally Lou taught thousands of Stafford students to type in her business classes. Her own struggles with schoolwork and especially spelling made her unusually compassionate when working with students. Rarely did we go out in public with her that someone didn’t stop to tell her/us that our Aunt Sally Lou had been their very favorite teacher.

One memorable event occurred at the time she took the yearbook committee on a field trip in her car — and got a speeding ticket! One of those students was Dottie Truslow whose father who was the school principal, much to Sally Lou’s eternal embarrassment. The trauma must not have been too bad for the students, however, as Dottie also became a principal and led Margaret Brent Elementary School where Sally’s great-great-niece Sydney and great-great nephew and Caleb attended years later. Dottie tactfully never brought up Sally Lou’s ticket.

Sally Lou didn’t learn to drive until she was a college student, ands she was never a very good driver. She failed her driving test multiple times, which as it turned out, accurately predicted her lifelong terrible driving. Not only was she a notoriously poor driver, Sally always drove her cars fast, and she got many speeding tickets and was involved in several automobile accidents during her lifetime. Once on a trip with Nancy, Sally was pulled over for speeding, but after bribing the traffic cop with a bag of M&Ms he let the silly, good-tempered old women go without a ticket. Her driving was so infamous we warned people whenever they came to visit. Jared Smith in particular didn’t believe our tales until on his first visit she drove straight into a curb in Washington, DC, at about 35 mph, caught air (!), and Jared’s head actually hit the roof although his seatbelt was buckled. Virginia always told Davis to never drive like Sally Lou. We consider it evidence of a charmed life that Sally Lou was never seriously hurt in a car accident and never hurt anyone else – well, except for that deer she sent to meet the Lord.

Sally Lou taught for thirty-two years when Stafford County Public Schools made an effort to push out higher paid teachers with Master’s degrees, like herself. Officials took away her classroom and rest period. Forced to teach all of her seven daily classes from a cart, moving from room to room, and exhausted from having recently suffered the devastating deaths of her mother and brother in 1986 just months apart, she decided to retire in 1988.

After John’s death, Sally Lou rented Poplar Grove Farm out to some city slicker cattle ranchers and then to cousin Betty Brown’s fiancé Claude Price, and Ray Humphreys from Hartwood. These men took care of the farm and helped with repairs and maintenance to buildings, tractor, and house. Special friend Bryan Mock looked after the grass cutting and wildlife in exchange for exclusive hunting privileges for many years.

With Poplar Grove Farm as home base, Sally Lou lived her life on the go, traveling constantly by automobile, jet plane, prop plane, helicopter, row boat, ocean cruise, river cruise, human powered conveyance, bungee rope, bicycle, hot air balloon, taxi, rv, roller skate, horse, camel, and elephant to anywhere on the planet that struck her fancy. Using thousands of hours of PBS viewing as inspiration, Sally Lou traveled the world, accidentally visiting men’s bathrooms in practically every airport she ever visited. Among her favorite destinations were China, Alaska, Hawaii, Russia, India, Egypt, and England. She’d visited all fifty states, and most countries in the world. In the year 2000, she got into a limousine and left Poplar Grove Farm for a special three month five star luxury trip around the world, visiting every continent except Antarctica. The culmination of that trip was a hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti looking at her beloved wild animals. On these many trips, Sally Lou was famous for never operating her giant Sony video camera correctly, and we have enough video tapes of the backs of tour bus seats and women’s shoes to fill a small school bus.

Sally Lou loved video tape recordings, and recorded hours and hours of PBS and news shows. For her great nieces, Jenny Moore (Smith) and Melissa Moore (Stephens), she recorded the Canadian filmed Julian Fellowes’ Anne of Green Gables movies, which started a lifelong obsession with the books by Melissa. We can’t remember without laughing how Aunt Sally Lou became enamored with the OJ Simpson trial in 1994 and recorded every minute of it, even buying a special case to store the precious videocassettes — know anybody at the Smithsonian?

Sally Lou was an active, proud member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, United Daughters of the Confederacy, Daughters of the War of 1812, Patawomeck Indian Tribe, and Phi Delta Kappa sorority.

Motherly and patient by nature and after so many years of school teaching, Sally Lou took care of a wide variety of friends and strays, human and animal alike. These included younger men like her policeman friend Michael Jenkins, tenant David Park, former student Bonnie Plaster, tenet Jean Pearson, friend and housekeeper Lillian Ford, blind farmhand Randolph, and cats and dogs galore — dog Missy and cat Tiger deserve special mention. She bred Siamese cats, and the squalls of those cats along with the cries of her mother’s peacocks meant there was rarely a dull moment at the farm.

Sally Lou traveled to Mississippi each Christmas to share the holiday with her sister, Virginia and Virginia’s Moore family. She always stayed long enough to have a sleepover with Jenny, Melissa, Wil, and John each in turn. We loved that Sally Lou would let us eat sugar cereal in the morning with orange juice(!) and she’d take us shopping to get a special gift. Each Christmas Eve, Virginia and Sally Lou would host a formal dinner served on family china, and afterwards we would go excitedly to the breezeway where the trees was set up to open our gifts from grandma and Aunt Sally Lou. These visits were a highlight of our holiday.

Also in the 1990s, Sally Lou took over caregiving responsibilities for her Aunt Lula (La) Crockett, who, like her, did not have children. La had moved herself into an apartment with assisted living and skilled nursing facilities in Alexandria, and Sally Lou traveled there at least weekly to check on La. She had more and more responsibility handling La’s large estate until taking it over completely at La’s passing in 1997 at age 99.

In 1997, John Moore visited Virginia with his Boy Scout troop. Sally Lou always said she about died walked miles and miles with 35,000 scouts to see then President Clinton address the Scouts.

In between trips, life passed along quietly at the farm until July 2006 when it was unceremoniously invaded by the Smith family, Jared, Jenny (me), Caleb, and Sydney Jo. After a period of unemployment, the family decided to move to Virginia where jobs were steadier and higher paying than in Utah. We planned to build a home on Poplar Grove Farm. Bureaucratic posturing and red tape hindered progress, but Sally Lou moved heaven and earth for us, even accompanying me to the county planning commission offices where she tearfully demanded the county make exceptions to its family subdivision rules for us, her closest relatives. They didn’t make the change, but they did bend over backward to help us through the subdivision creation process, and finally our home was completed on the hill near the front gate to the farm in 2007.

Sally Lou, youngest child in her family living quietly alone on the farm for over a decade, had her life turned upside down when the Smiths arrived. Sally Lou, ever patient, tolerated the Smith children’s noisy invasion with aplomb. She took care to introduce Caleb and Sydney to many cultural activities, including visits to Monticello, her beloved Riverside Dinner Theater, national and international Fitzhugh family reunions, genealogy group events, and activity in the Patawomeck Indian tribe. She participated with the children during Stafford County’s 350th anniversary celebration in 2014 by riding on the tribe’s parade float — at age 83, it was her very first time participating in a parade. She attended their school activities, concerts, and plays, and she especially enjoyed watching Sydney develop a talent for drama. Sally Lou was the first to recognize her natural ability when during a kindergarten play, she saw Sydney play both the main role in the play and take on a secondary role last minute when that student fell ill and was absent.

Sally Lou continued looking after the children, and her home became a secret escape for Smith children looking to get out of housework. Sydney learned no one would tell her no if she asked to visit Aunt Sally Lou, and when it looked like she might get assigned work Sydney would ask to walk down the hill for a visit where Sally Lou would always make Sydney a delicious tuna fish sandwich — the taste of FREEDOM! Caleb loved to play on Aunt Sally Lou’s electronics. Her WebTV and iPad were big attractions. He spent many hours helping her learn to use the latest technology, like her cell phone. During a trip to England, Caleb shared a room with Aunt Sally Lou and somehow racked up several hundred dollars in internet fees playing games on the in room television — the two had many technology adventures together. Despite her age, Sally Lou never feared technology and even embraced it. She even took classes in her 80s to learn to use her computer and how to send emails to far flung family and friends.

In 2013, Sally Lou had another life-changing permanent effect from a dentist’s visit. She got a toothache and was prescribed a strong antibiotic, which triggered a bout of shingles that affected the nerves in her right eye and right side of her face. Sally Lou suffered several weeks with painful shingles, and just as she was about to be well enough to drive again, suffered a massive stroke in the nerves affected by the shingles. The stroke left Sally Lou with a paralyzed left arm, weak left leg, and serious left side neglect. After many months of intensive rehab and a bathroom overhaul, she was able to move home with in home caregiving staff that took fantastic care of her for nine years, including Maria Amaro, Evelyn Ford, Mim Kala, Nelly Lizama, April Lamb, Sharon Wehle, Sharon Robinson, Liz Jaxel, Elizabeth Gaspar, Ayden Furness, Courtney Dingess, great-neice Sydney, and others.

The stroke didn’t keep Sally down too much initially, and in addition to the parade, she traveled with us on a cruise from Florida to Mexico in 2015, on a surprise car trip to Mississippi to celebrate Davis’ 70th birthday in 2017, a visit to Myrtle Beach with Mim, a trip to Philadelphia to visit the LDS temple, and flew with us to Houston for Carol’s 70th birthday in 2019 at Melissa’s home. She experienced a broken hip, kidney troubles, and some mini strokes along the way, but Sally Lou stayed remarkably healthy and thinking well through it all.

Family meals were a tradition Sally Lou kept throughout her life, gathering with Betty Brown, Claude Price, Heather Brown, Tony Brown, Nicole Brown, Ella Brown, Jenny Smith(me), Jared Smith, Caleb Smith, and Sydney Jo Smith plus various neighbors and friends like JoAnn and Lee, Bunny, Andra, and Gail each Christmas and Thanksgiving to share a meal and visit. She scheduled an evening meal for every family birthday to make her mother’s famous fried chicken, birthday cake with candles, and the traditional, somehow perpetually burned, biscuits. Even after her stroke, Sally kept up this tradition and directed her caregivers as they made the chicken and cakes for birthday meals and her specialty: garlicky deviled eggs for family dinners.

Sally Lou loved to hear the news on her Stephens great-great-nieces in Houston, Mary, Diana, Sarah, and Laura, and she proudly displayed their photos and artwork where she could see them daily.

For eight years Sally lives at home with her caregivers offering more and more care. Pandemic work shortages affected our ability to hire enough help to cover all of the shifts for the 24/7 support Sally Lou needed. In late fall 2021 daddy and I visited several facilities with Aunt Sally Lou, and she picked one where she would live out the rest of her life — noting it was the only location we visited where the residents were smiling.

For the last year of her life, Sally Lou lived at Charter Assisted Living just 10 miles from the farm. She was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly before moving. She didn’t want any radical treatment, pills were tried unsuccessfully, and the cancer weakened her strong frame over time. She entered hospice in October 2022. On November 23, 2022, Sally Lou suffered another massive stroke. She stayed in her apartment and remained alert and responsive until just three hours before her passing. Though unable to speak, she could smile and hold hands with family members who visited including Betty Brown, Nicole Brown, Ella Brown, Heather Brown, Davis Moore, Jenny Smith, Jared Smith, and John Moore, and longtime caregiver Marinely Lizama. Sally Lou left this world peacefully at 1:05pm on November 27, 2022, Davis holding one hand and Jenny the other.