Resources on Wingard Family

I never knew my grandfather, George Thomas “Tom” Wingard, Sr. He died eleven years before I was born. I always enjoyed listening to my Dad talk about his father, a man of strong Christian character. Tom Wingard was born August 26, 1892 at Elmdale, the Wingard family farm in Montgomery County, Alabama. On December 27, 1922, he married Dorinda Thompson (1894-1980). They met at a church fair. My grandmother baked a pie he liked, and life together began. This picture of my grandmother is from the late 1940s. Life was hard for my Grandfather and Grandmother, especially during the Great Depression. In 1939 they moved from Montgomery County to Forrest City, Arkansas, my Grandmother’s hometown. My Uncle John provided me…

(Today would have been my Mother’s 87th birthday. I wrote this tribute ten days after her death in 2008.) My Mother was not given to self-disclosure. Health updates, news about her activities, and reminiscences on her long life came only by my persistent personal inquiry. She was a quiet, godly woman, and conversations with her quickly turned away from herself and to her desire to know how Lynne, her grandsons, and I were doing. I never heard my Mother brag. She came to womanhood during the Great Depression and World War II, and was never at home with the moral climate and self-absorption of much of my Baby Boomer generation. When she prayed aloud, it was with the language and…