Mary Francis Virginia Moore was born, January 15, 1928, in a 3-room house on a peanut farm in Desdemona, Texas. She was the sixth of nine children born to Frank Dalton Moore and Stella Ethel (Wisdom) Moore. First born was Thelma Pauline (Polly) and then brother, William Powers, who passed away from food poisoning at eighteen months of age. Third in line was Stella Ruth, then Cyrus Neal (Ted), and Kenneth Ray (Kenney). Mary Francis Virginia and Frankie Maxine, came next. Last but not least were Margarette Ann, and Katherine Louise.
Mary was a fair haired and pretty child, which didn’t fit the nickname of ‘Pig’ that her older brothers, Ted and Kenney, gave to her. As brothers will be, they were equally as harsh with nicknames for older sister Ruth (Tootsie) and younger sister Maxine (Pot). Mary said that the boys were nicer in assigning nicknames to the youngest sisters, Margarette (Chick) and Louise (Shug). It is unknown what names the girls gave their brothers, but Frank called the brothers “Smoke”.
Life Down On The Farm
Mary’s parents were share croppers. Each year, they borrowed enough money from Eastland County to buy seed to grow peanuts. It was a good year if they harvested enough peanuts to have a little money left after paying off their loan.
Everyone in the family had a job to do. Polly and Ruth took care of the house work and the babies. Stella, the boys, and Mary worked in the fields, sometimes joined by Maxine.
One of Mary’s earliest memories of her childhood is hoeing weeds in the peanut fields. Work began after breakfast. They hoed weeds until lunch, then it was back out in the field to hoe until supper. Mary would keep an eye on the sky in hope of a cloud to shade her from the hot sun. And, if she was really lucky, maybe it would rain.
Mary also kept a watch out for that awful plant called bull nettle. If you have ever tangled with bull nettle, then you know how it stings and burns when it gets against the skin.
The family had chickens, cows, and pigs – and not for pets. Mules were used for working the fields before the family got a tractor.
Before Mary was big enough to work in the fields, her job was churning butter and picking up wood chips for the wood stove in the kitchen and for the fireplace. No surprise, Mary recalls that she did not enjoy any of those jobs!
Inside the house, a fireplace and a kitchen stove kept them warm in winter months. Before bedtime, Stella would get an iron hot in the fireplace and then wrap a towel around it before she put it in the bed to get it warm. Each bed had two mattresses. One mattress was pulled on to the floor each night so that everybody had at least a mattress to sleep on. Two or three kids slept on each mattress.
Mary remembers that the family gathered around the battery operated radio after supper each evening. The battery was rechargeable and the Moore family always made sure to have a full charge when the radio broadcast, “I Love a Mystery” was aired.
Mary’s mother, Stella, was a hard working woman. She cooked three meals a day and worked in the peanut fields. She tended a garden, and canned and pickled food to sustain the family through the winter.
Stella was also an accomplished seamstress. She used a treadle sewing machine to make clothes for the family out of flour sacks and feed sacks.
Mary’s father, Frank Dalton Moore, was an intellectual fellow. He attended ‘Teacher’s College’ in Commerce, Texas. Frank taught school for a time when he and Stella were first married, but did not care for disciplining the students. He loved to learn. He enjoyed reading the encyclopedia.
Frank was a self-taught carpenter and mechanic as well. Sometimes he would leave the farm to go do a carpentry job in a nearby town to supplement the family’s income.
Frank demonstrated his exceptional carpentry and mechanical skills by building a complete stereo system. Before his death in 1981, Mary’s dad met his goal of building a grandfather clock for several of his children.
The War Years
In December 1941, at age 13, Mary was in the house when she heard something on the radio. She did not understand exactly what was going on, but she knew it was something serious! So, she ran outside and told her father and brothers, Ted and Kenney, to come inside to listen.
Of course, the news report turned out to be the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Mary could read the concern on her father’s face as they listened intently.
Frank told Ted and Ruth that the three of them needed to go to Dallas to a training school. So in 1942, the family left the farm and rented a house in Ranger, Texas for about 6 months, while they went to training school. After training school, Frank, Ted, and Ruth were hired for jobs at Consolidated Vultee, also known as the ‘Bomber Plant’, where the B-24 Bomber was to be built.
Soon, the rest of the family left Ranger and moved to a rent house in the Ridglea West area of Fort Worth. After a year or two, the Moore’s bought their first home. They settled in the Arlington Heights neighborhood, west of downtown Fort Worth.
The Moore family home at 4730 Pershing Avenue was originally a part of the Fort Camp Bowie hospital or headquarters during World War I. The property is now adorned with a marker to commemorate its historical significance.
High School at AHHS
Mary attended high school at Arlington Heights High School during the war years. She was a star athlete. As one of the tallest girls in her class at five foot, six and a quarter inches, she was on the volleyball team and she played the position of forward on the girls’ basketball team.
English was Mary’s favorite subject. Her favorite high school memories are playing basketball and dating the president of the student body.
After school hours, Mary held several different jobs. She first worked selling baked goods at Blue Bonnet Bakery, currently doing business at 4705 Camp Bowie Boulevard inside an old church building.
After the bakery, Mary moved to work for the catalog store, Montgomery (Monkey) Wards on 7th Street, as a file clerk.
Mary was later employed downtown at JCPenney as a sales clerk. Mary recalls that she spent most of her money on “something to wear” – (in other words…not made from flour sacks).
Mary graduated from Arlington Heights High School in 1945. Public schooling at that time extended only through eleven grades.
Life as a Young Adult
After graduation from AHHS, Mary worked for a short time as a cashier at Renfro Drug Store. Her good friend, Cleo, told her about a job at Liberator Village, which was a huge housing complex operated by the Federal Public Housing Authority of the City of Fort Worth, near the ‘Bomber Plant’.
So, Mary interviewed and was hired for a job as a cashier in the rental office. Many of the workers at the ‘Bomber Plant’ lived in the complex. Rent at Liberator Village was $35 to $40 a month with all bills paid.
And Then There Was Jimmy
One day, a handsome young man with dark curly hair came in to the Liberator Village rental office to see Mary’s boss, who also owned a roller-skating rink. This young visitor ran the roller rink. His name was James Ferguson Mitchamore. Some called him Jimmy or Fergie.
Mary and Jimmy began dating and skating. They were the couple to watch at the rink. They could do all the fancy couples skating moves…what a beautiful couple. Jimmy and Mary dated and skated for more than a year.
On August 14, 1947, Mary, now nineteen and a half years old, married Jimmy. They were married at the preacher’s house which was in the next block of Pershing and the preacher and his wife were the only witnesses.
Mary wore her best dress, which was a powder blue dress that her mother had sewn. If anyone said their marriage would never last, they were wrong. Mary and Jimmy were married for 58 years.
A few weeks before their wedding, Jimmy started working at the Coca-Cola Bottling Company, delivering Cokes. His Coke career spanned forty years.
When they first married, Mary and Jimmy lived in a one room apartment in Victory Village. But soon, they moved to a four room duplex in east Fort Worth.
Along Comes Jimmy with a Baby Carriage
Mary continued to work at Liberator Village until she was six months pregnant. In those times, women were required to quit working when they reached their sixth month of pregnancy. Mary was twenty-one years old when her first child, Gregory James, was born on February 6, 1949.
In 1952, Mary and Jimmy bought their first home on Moresby Street in Fort Worth. They paid $50 down and got a 20 year $6,900 GI bill loan for a new house… 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, kitchen, living room and a one car garage.
While they lived there in the house on Moresby, they had three more babies: Gail Lee, born November 5, 1953; Julie Carol, born February 26, 1957; and Scott Kevin, born July 16, 1959.
Mary was a seamstress like her mother, making many clothes for herself and her daughters… just not out of flour sacks.
Mary’s dad helped Mary and Jimmy add on to the back of their house in 1962. They added a living area, bathroom and bedroom. Now the boys could share a bedroom and the girls shared a bedroom… instead of all four kids sharing the same room.
The new bathroom had connections for a washing machine, but Mary still had to hang clothes on clothes lines outside to dry. Nothing like having a frozen sheet slap you in the face.
Life in Hurst
The Mitchamore family moved in 1965 to Oakwood Avenue in Hurst, Texas. They bought a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 living area, and 2 car garage brick house for $13,500 on a twenty year loan.
Greg, who loved Polytechnic High School, was able to transfer back and graduate from the Fort Worth school. Gail, Julie, and Scott began schooling in the Hurst Euless Bedford School District, and they each graduated from L.D. Bell High School.
Mary joined First Baptist Church of Hurst and was baptized in 1966. Mary began to make friends and has cherished the life-long friendships she developed at First Hurst.
Mary was a stay-at-home mom, caring for the kids during their formative years. She went to work in 1977 at the Jimmy Morgan Evangelistic Association as a Secretary. She worked part-time while her kids were in school so she could be at home when the kids were out of school. A highlight of her time with Dr. Morgan’s Association was meeting Reverand Billy Graham in person when he visited Dr. Morgan’s Hurst office.
In 1979, Mary went to work for Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD. She worked in the tax office for a short time before transferring to the business office. There, she worked in Accounts Payable paying the bills for all the school cafeterias in the HEB district. At age 62, after eleven years with the school district, Mary joined Jimmy in retirement.
On the Road
After their retirements, Mary and Jimmy traveled, seeing the Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, Europe, and Canada. They also enjoyed several cruises. The trip to Alaska was Mary’s favorite. They ultimately accomplished Jimmy’s goal of seeing every state in America.
When Jimmy became too ill to continue their travels, Mary set a perfect example of devotion and commitment for their children by selflessly taking care of Jimmy at home for the last two difficult years of his life. Mary’s constant caring for Jimmy took a physical toll on her, but she never complained and she never felt sorry for herself.
Mary in her 80s
Early in her life, Mary began to show signs of things to come. Her family was large, and when they all went for a car ride, they did not always fit well within the confines of the vehicle.
One time, on a family trip, Mary fell out of the moving car. She tumbled to the ground. By the time her dad could stop the car, Mary was already up and running after them. She didn’t want to get left behind.
During her eighties, Mary wasn’t quite so nimble. In fact, she broke several bones. Painful; yes. Comical; well, a little. One such escapade began with Mary on a mission in the backyard early one summer morning.
In an act that most Octogenarians are unlikely to undertake, Mary was dragging a caged and highly agitated raccoon across her backyard. Mary had trapped the varmint to end his frequent visits to the yard. She was dragging the muddy cage with its muddy captive to the hose on the other side of the yard.
The sprinkler had run overnight and the raccoon stirred mud as it fought to escape. Mary thought that she should rinse the critter so that the City Animal Control Officers would not think she was abusing her captive.
As Mary reached the sidewalk with the caged raccoon, she heard a crack and she crumbled to the ground. Her lower back had broken.
Dirty raccoon! He must have jeered watching Mary scoot across the ground for the next hour so that she could get to the back door before the hot sun rose.
Mary broke her wrist on another occasion – no wild animal to blame here – just a bug. On her way out for Sunday church, she bent to pick up the Star Telegram. Seeing a bug on the sidewalk, Mary went to stomp it. Don’t know about the bug’s fate, but Mary did break her wrist in her tumble to the sidewalk. She missed church that Sunday morning.
Mary broke her hip at age 89. This time, it was the attack of the carpet. Two surgeries followed. The hard work Mary did as a child prepared her to do whatever it took to “get back to normal” after her injuries. That is another lesson Mary taught her children…work hard and don’t complain.
And Beyond
Mary decided to move into Stone Creek Retirement Community in the Spring of 2023 to begin a new chapter in her life. She built new friendships and happily reunited with her friends who had moved into the community before Mary got there. Mary took care to learn and recall as many of her new neighbors’ names as she could.
Perhaps Mary’s happiest moments at Stone Creek were riding her Great Granddaughter on her lap to share her with the other residents who had assembled in the dining area. She would stop at tables from the front of the room to the back to briefly visit and let them spend some time with the baby. They often told Mary that they were so happy because it was a rare opportunity to see a smiling child.
The Stone Creek community offers a variety of activities to engage the residents. Mary, however, preferred to view pictures and videos showing the everyday activities of her Grandchildren and Great Grandchildren. She looked forward to receiving a new video on her iPad so she could share it with Margarette and Louise. Together, they would entertain themselves, laughing and remarking on the unique exceptionalism of each child. A good day was one that brought a new video. A great day was one with a personal visit.
Mary has been blessed with, and has richly blessed her siblings, nieces and nephews, her children, thirteen Grandchildren, and 13 Great Grandchildren. Mary continued loving them all and showing them how to live a good life into her nineties! “Jump up …quick as you can…and keep on running…”
Mary Francis Virginia (Moore) Mitchamore; you are loved by all!
In lieu of flowers, friends who wish may consider a donation in Mary's honor to the First Baptist Church of Hurst.
Services for Mary will take place on November 21st, 2023 at the First Baptist Church of Hurst 1801 Norwood Drive, Hurst, TX 76054. Her visitation will begin at 10 a.m.followed by her funeral starting at 11 a.m. She will be laid to rest at Bluebonnet Hills Memorial Park 5725 Colleyville Blvd. Colleyville, TX 76034 at 12:30 p.m.
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.bluebonnethills.com for the Mitchamore family.
COMPARTA UN OBITUARIO
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