Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 10, 1990 TAG: 9005110045
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHERYL ANN KAUFMAN SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
On that, they all humbly agreed.
They also agreed motherhood is a worthwhile profession and that there is nothing more important to them than being a mom.
This year's nominees for the 36th annual Mothers of the Year Awards were chosen by a committee for the Credit Marketing and Management Association, formerly the Merchants Association of Roanoke Valley, from more than 50 candidates.
They were honored for their contributions in six categories - family life, education, business and professions, community affairs, arts and sciences and religious activities.
One look at her family and you're reminded of the movie "Yours, Mine and Ours."
But unlike the monstrous brood of stepbrothers and stepsisters created by second marriages in the Lucille Ball-Henry Fonda comedy, all 17 of Loretta McGarry's children were borne by her.
Thirty-one years ago, while most couples were contemplating the perfect pair of children to round out a cozy family unit, McGarry and her husband, Richard, were dreaming of creating a clan of extraordinary proportion.
"I always wanted a large family. I wanted at least 13," said McGarry, who considers herself lucky to have exceeded that number by four.
Five of the McGarry children were delivered by natural childbirth. McGarry said she would have had all of them that way, had she known she had a choice in her early childbearing years.
"Back then, ladies were put to sleep, and I played the game exactly as I was told," she said.
Today, the McGarry offspring range in ages from 6 to 30. Nine of them still reside at the family's Roanoke County home, a modest ranch whose dining and recreation rooms have been converted into bedrooms to accommodate the children.
Financially, McGarry said, "we're flexible. A large family takes sharing on everybody's part. There is a large expense. You do what you can, and you do a lot of praying."
"The kids didn't have silver spoons in their mouths, and they wore a lot of hand-me-downs," she added.
To pay the bills, husband Richard works two jobs. He is a state toxicologist and a pharmacist.
McGarry herself has worked only for a brief time outside the home. She was a clerk at Lipe's Pharmacy for two years before she enrolled at the College of Health Sciences to study nursing.
The children said nursing was a natural choice, since she had doctored the family for so many years.
McGarry, however, decided she was not quite ready to doctor others. She dropped out of school eight weeks before graduation.
"There's a hymn at church that goes, `We are called to be the light for the kingdom.' Right now, I feel my light isn't strong enough."
She's considering going back to school someday - when she has more confidence in her ability to serve as a registered nurse.
As for now, McGarry said she is prefectly content baby-sitting her McGarry seven grandchildren (another is on the way in September) and chauffeuring her youngest children to and from school, sports, practices and parties.
In the letter nominating McGarry for Family Life Mother of the Year, her children wrote, "Ben Beagle claims he is married to the World's Greatest Station Wagon Driver, but Mom drove 25,000 miles one year and NEVER left the Roanoke Valley."
"When the children were little, we had a van," said McGarry. "It was like one of those cars at the circus - the children just kept coming out of it."
When asked how difficult it has been to keep track of so many kids, McGarry was matter-of-fact: "We never lost one for long."
\ Lorraine Lange never considered herself mother-of-the-year material.
"I'm a good mother, but not typical," she shrugged. "I don't stay home and bake cookies for the children."
In fact, her three teen-agers of Lange ten tease her about her cooking, or the lack thereof.
But the one thing her two sons - 15-year-old Aaron and 16-year-old T.J. - and 18-year-old daughter Heather never tease her about is her passion for education.
Lange, this year's Mother of the Year for Education, has been a teacher and a principal, and now is Roanoke County schools supervisor of language arts. She is an adjunct professor at both Roanoke College and Hollins College and is an educational consultant and lecturer who has received many awards in her field.
In 1988, she earned her doctorate in educational administration from Virginia Tech.
And, while she may not be a great cook, Lange said she is confident she is a great role model for her children, as well as her students.
"[As an educator] you have a lot of power in molding the lives of children," said Lange. "Education is lifelong learning, not just teaching kids a skill to pass a test. I hope to motivate children so they'll voluntarily pick up a book and read."
Since entering the education field, Lange has gone from teaching students to teaching teachers, fledgling educators who, much like herself, "will influence a lot of youngsters."
Lange finds time for both her work and her family in a day that begins around 6 a.m. and sometimes ends at 3 o'clock the next morning.
She is a big supporter of her children's sporting events and other activities. For one of her sons, she endured 12 hours of wrestling. She recently traveled to Florida to catch her daughter's gymnastic meet.
"I set my priorities. One day I may have 10 things to do. I pick two that are most important."
She lists her career, family, people and books as her primary interests. She used to enjoy golf, tennis and bridge, but gave them up when she pursued her doctorate.
"The day I finished there was a big sign that read `Congratulations' on the porch, along with my racket and golf clubs," Lange said, laughing.
However, she has yet to pick them up. She hopes to play "as the children get older."
"My priorities have shifted," Lange said. "Maybe my house is not as clean at times and there's not the smell of chocolate chip cookies in the air, but I have no regrets."
Apparently, neither does her husband, Bill, a Roanoke Realtor.
Lange credits him with backing her decision to join the work force at a time when many of her peers chose to stay at home.
"When I was younger, a lot of my friends didn't work. I did. Now, 22 years into my career, I'm a lot further along than I'd ever be."
\ Audrey Wheaton has always been able to spot the rainbow after a storm.
"You can do things to make people happy," she said. And, she has proven that through years of Wheaton tireless giving despite her own hardships.
For instance, she set aside her differences with her ex-husband and visited him before he died of diabetes Jan. 1.
Four days later, her niece by marriage, Leann Whitlock, was found slain.
She was there to help her daughter, 32-year-old Donna Whitlock, through the pain of both losses.
Wheaton has been foster mother to Carolyn Moore, now a 30-year-old certified laboratory technician at Bowman Gray Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., who came to her when her foster home was closed 12 years ago. Wheaton, a former social worker, had developed a friendship with Moore when Moore was 7.
Wheaton also has dealt with the near-loss of her son, Keith, who suffered from a serious intestinal dysfunction when he was only 12 weeks old. Thanks to numerous operations, he is now a healthy 23-year-old law student at West Virginia University.
Wheaton has also cared for her mentally retarded sister, Gillie, for the past nine years.
She is the mother of two stepchildren, 33-year-old Terri Wheaton of Roanoke and 43-year-old Walter Wheaton III of Petersburg.
Wheaton, this year's Mother of the Year for business and professions, has been married to Walter Wheaton for almost 25 years. For 22 of those years, she helped him run his plumbing and heating company in Roanoke.
On three different occasions over the past 25 years, she has worked for the YWCA of the Roanoke Valley as a Y-Teen director and as center director at the former Orange Avenue YWCA. She also served as interim executive director of the association for five months last year. Currently, she is the associate director of the YWCA of the Roanoke Valley.
"I love what I'm doing," said Wheaton, "The Y and W's in my blood."
No wonder. Her mother, Mary Jeffreys, was the first black president of the YWCA of Roanoke.
Apparently, being selected mother of the year also is in Wheaton's blood. Jeffreys was 1976 honoree in the community-affairs category.
"Everyone tells me I'm just like my mother," she said. "She was active right up until the time she died at the age of 78. She always said she'd rather wear out than rust out. She'd go to four or five meetings in the same night. I'm similar."
One recent evening, for example, Wheaton returned from a brief trip to Richmond only to attend a volunteer meeting and a church gathering on the same night.
She is a deaconess and Sunday school teacher and president of the Helping Hand Club of First Baptist Church on Jefferson Street.
She also is a member of the Roanoke Valley Big Sisters program, the Women's Advocacy Coalition and the Zeta Phi Beta sorority. She has served on several volunteer boards, including those of the Harrison Museum of African American Culture, the Women's Center at Hollins College and Planned Parenthood of Southwest Virginia Inc.
Doctors have suggested that Wheaton has a heart condition and should slow down, "but I get anxious," she said.
Wheaton, who has been described by her family and colleagues as cheerful, even in the face of adversity, attributes her strength to four sources: "I start and end each day with prayer. I have good, good friends - three or four I can call on any day or night. My husband is very supportive. And I can say without hesitation that my children love me."
"I'm a rainbow nut, and my children are always bringing me things with rainbows on them," she said. They even call her when a rainbow appears in the sky.
"I think, long after I'm gone, when my children see a rainbow, they'll think of me."
\ "I keep saying I'm going to slow down, but something always comes up," said this year's Community Affairs Mother of the Year, Dolores Mitchell.
"I'm just not the country-club type. I'd rather be active [in volunteer work]."
Mitchell, the mother of two grown children, Donna and Mark, Mitchell and the grandmother of two, has been working with children for at least 20 years.
For the past seven years, she has been a counselor for troubled children through Youth Support Services, an all-volunteer agency.
She has committed one day a week to the project, except in 1988, when her schedule was interrupted briefly by a mastectomy.
"Within weeks of her surgery, she was back at work. Her fellow counselors witnessed courage and determination to get on with the mission of YSS. On the other hand, her clients never even realized that my mother went through this trauma," wrote her daughter in the nominating letter.
"[The mastectomy] was such a shock at first," recalled Mitchell. "But I decided to continue to do what I'd been doing - to take care of my family and help children in trouble. I was very fortunate that [the cancer] was caught early."
As for her work with delinquent youngsters, Mitchell said, "I just feel it's something that has to be done. If I can turn just one around, it's worth it. It's very rewarding."
A friend encouraged Mitchell to join Youth Support Services as a counselor when she left the 4-H program after 13 years.
"At the time I said, `No, I'm going to rest,' " said Mitchell, adding, "I sat around about a month before I gave them a call."
Mitchell has also been a leader of the Roanoke County 4-H Horse and Pony Club and a member of the county's 4-H advisory board.
A lover of horses, she has worked extensively on behalf of the Roanoke Valley Horse Show for many years.
Mitchell's other community service roles have included: Cub Scout den mother and Girl Scout leader; Sunday school teacher at Oak Grove Church of the Brethren; steering committee member for the Roanoke Valley Children's Theatre; and docent for the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts.
Mitchell once helped her church adopt a welfare family, a project that provided education and employment for a single mother of two children.
She also has tutored learning disabled children at the Shedd School and has given after-school sewing lessons to pupils at Raleigh Court Elementary School. Last year she gave three sewing machines to a Virginia Tech extension program that teaches latch-key children in the public housing developments how to make their own clothing.
Mitchell also has a yellow belt in karate that she earned while her son took lessons in the 1970s.
Last year, Mitchell was inducted into the Roanoke County Senior Hall of Fame for her work with troubled youth.
Mitchell is vice president of the Athenians, a non-profit arts-and-sciences group that works closely with Center in the Square.
Her connections there allow her to take her son's two children, Brandy, 11, and Brian, 13, to the center frequently. "It's the highlight of the week," said Mitchell.
Right now, she hopes to spend more time with her husband, Wesley, who retired as vice president of Paine Webber Inc. in January.
Mitchell, who never pursued a career outside of her home, describes her volunteer work as "like having a full-time job."
Now that her husband has extra time on his hands, he jokingly refers to himself as her secretary.
Mitchell sees that as a cue to slow down.
"Volunteerism is like snowballing. You get into one thing and then get into something else," she said. "Right now, I'm not looking for any new projects. My husband will be glad I'm learning to say `no.' "
\ Alice Trout Hagan likes to dig in the dirt. She calls it therapy.
"I just love to dig in the garden and do flower arrangements," said Hagan, this year's Mother of the Year for arts and sciences.
As a member of the Roanoke Valley Garden Club for the past 15 years, Hagan has designed several floral displays for the valley's annual garden week tour.
"I grow my own flowers, and I bum a lot from friends," Hagan said with a laugh.
She also has served as a Garden Club of Virginia judge for the past 10 years and has helped raise money to restore period gardens at historic homes throughout the commonwealth. For the next two years, she'll be chairwoman for many garden club flower shows across the state.
Hagan also is involved in a variety of other cultural activities, and as she puts it, her "plate is full."
She is the historian at St. John's Episcopal Church, where she has done research in preparation for the 1992 centennial celebration of the building.
"It's important to preserve our heritage. So much of it is lost," she said. "Our church is an old church that has been hand-tied to community life in Roanoke for so many years."
Hagan, who has been hand-tied to the church for 40 years, also is vice president of the Episcopal Women's organization and a former member of the church vestry.
She's a member of the Colonial Dames and the Roanoke Valley Historical Society, affiliations she considers ironic since "I was never interested in history in college."
A Sweet Briar College biology graduate, she worked as a lab technician for four years before marrying Dr. Hugh Hagan II of Roanoke, who died in 1980.
She has four grown children - Catherine, Ellen, Lisa and Hugh III - and four grandchildren.
Right now, she describes her schedule as very hectic.
"In fact, I'm behind in everything in my life," she said.
This Mother's Day, don't expect to find her catching up. She'll be at St. John's, explaining the history of the church to an adult Sunday school class.
\ Ann Burch Seddon doesn't just go to church on Sunday.
She has lived it - devoting almost all of her leisure time to Greene Memorial United Methodist Church as a lifetime member and a leader of its youth department for the past 30 years.
"I believe in God. And I really enjoy being with kids. I never wanted to do anything but teach - it just seemed so natural," said Seddon, a Cave Spring Junior High School teacher who also has taught Sunday school for the past 25 years.
Seddon said she hopes her daughter, Laura, 27, will fill her shoes when she retires from the church classroom.
This year's Mother of the Year for religious activities also is a youth counselor whose Christian pursuits have taken her to New York, New England and Brazil.
Her 25-year-old son Paul is a youth counselor, as well.
Seddon's husband, Thomas, a buyer for General Electric in Salem, also has been a youth counselor and supports her activities whenever possible.
Seddon, who was a member of Greene Memorial's administrative board for 25 years, serves on its education committee and is the church's Young Adult Ministries coordinator.
"I can't remember a time when I was not involved in church," she said. "I feel that God is working in my life. I work well with children and that's one of the talents I need to use," she said.
One of her favorite youth endeavors is the Summer Enrichment Program Inc., a day camp for disadvantaged youngsters in Roanoke's West End. Seddon is president of the program's board of directors.
Her other community projects have included RAM House, the Salvation Army soup kitchen and Habitat for Humanity.
As a young mother, Seddon was a Girl Scout and Cub Scout leader and gave her children what her daughter described as "an all-American upbringing."
"It was just understood that we'd go to church and Sunday school," said Seddon. "Raising children is the hardest job in the world - you need all the help you can get. A church family is very important to give a child security and self-esteem. I felt like my faith has helped me. I believe in God, and I believe it's important to give back to this world."
Seddon paused and then expressed a sentiment that had been echoed by the other Mother-of-the-Year honorees: "I feel like I have been very blessed in my life."
by CNB