Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 25, 1995 TAG: 9505260009
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-18 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES ED HARRIS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In the Roanoke Valley, she has witnessed the development of major highways, the bringing of water and electric power to rural homes and the way subdivisions eat at private farmlands.
Spickard's journey began in a small Luck Avenue Southwest house, since razed for the old Double Envelope building. She was barely a year old when her father died of tuberculosis. She and her mother moved to Bonsack with relatives. They later moved back to Roanoke to an apartment on Second Street, next to what is now the Roanoke jail.
When Spickard was 5, her mother remarried. They moved to a large brick farmhouse near Rainbow Forest Baptist Church in Botetourt County with four step-brothers and four step-sisters.
Spickard said she learned to enjoy riding horses while living on the farm, and it was a common sight on Sundays to see her riding sidesaddle to church.
Her first school, New Haven, burned down when she was in the first grade and she was transferred to a school at Coyner Springs. She said the highlight of her formal education was living in the dormitories of the old Daleville College preparatory school.
Spickard married in 1916, and she and her husband, George Melvin Spickard, moved in with her mother on a farm located where Lake Forest subdivision now sprawls.
Spickard learned how to churn butter, milk cows, drive horse teams, and harvest crops. She soon discovered that she would "rather be working outdoors" than doing anything else.
Spickard, who has hearing problems, has vivid memories of hauling wheat to a Vinton mill by horse team and crossing mountain streams to lead cattle to the slaughterhouse near Tinker Creek. On such occasions, she always rode the lead horse.
An additional part of their family farming business was delivering butter, eggs, chickens, hogs, and orchard fruit to customers in downtown Roanoke. Because these were all-day excursions, livery stables were available near the market.
Life on the farm for Spickard and her family was not always easy, she says. She also recalls dealing with mud roads, carbide lights, bedroom stoves and the lack of modern conveniences such as electricity.
But, says Spickard, there was a lighter side of life.
Sunday picnics, parties, family reunions, card playing, croquet and ball games were regular events, she recalls. Spickard also enjoyed traveling to Roanoke by horse and buggy to watch circus animals parade down Jefferson Street on their way to the old fairgrounds.
When the Spickards sold their farm in 1948, they and their four children experimented with a small fruit stand on U.S. 460. Two years later, they built a country store, Colonial Grocery, specializing in salt fish, dried beans and animal feed. They ran the store until 1960, when her husband's health failed.
In addition to helping at the store and with her family, Spickard says she helped register people to vote and worked the polls Election Day.
After her husband of 59 years died in 1975, Spickard traveled, visiting New England, the Pennsylvania Dutch country, Colorado and Niagara Falls. These trips, she says, reaffirmed her belief that "there ain't no place as good as Virginia."
Spickard's longevity has created a legacy. Three surviving children, 11 grandchildren, 11 of 12 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren anchor the family reunion tables.
In addition, Grade Creek Lutheran Church, where Spickard joined in 1910, boasts five generations of Spickards.
Spickard has always enjoyed reading and has "probably read more than all my children put together." Her passion for reading, especially about history, she says, sprang from her grandfather's stories of the American Revolution.Other lifetime interests for her have included gardening, sewing, and needlework. The latter she learned from her mother who was a skilled seamstress. Spickard, in turn, has passed on these art forms to her own daughters.
Spickard says she is "grateful for a long, happy and healthy life." She credits this to always keeping busy with her family and personal interests.
Although she still enjoys reading and playing Scrabble and cards, at this stage of her life, Spickard says, she enjoys babies and families most of all.
She is still on the move, though, splitting her time between homes of her children in Botetourt and Southwest Roanoke counties.
There are few regrets, for "it has taken me 100 years to grow up," Spickard says.
by CNB