We learn at the end of this volume that Mary Allen Jolley died, at the age of 95, just 16 days after delivering the manuscript to the Livingston Press. That is a shame. She would have derived a good deal of satisfaction from the reception of her honest, unadorned memoir.
The story is told straightforwardly, in the first person, as if she and the reader were sitting drinking tea. Not stylistically elegant, or ambitiously crossing genres, it rings true and begins with her birth on August 8, 1828. Her childhood in Sumter County was modest but not desperate. The house had no electricity, refrigeration, or indoor plumbing. The family was nearly self-sufficient, with a large vegetable garden and smokehouse.
Throughout her memoir, Jolley actually stops to tell the readers the lessons they might draw. Here, the lesson is that she received unconditional love and it made her feel confident and secure all her life. Unfailingly optimistic, she reminds readers if they did not have this gift, to find a role model to learn from and failing even THAT, observe the flawed people in your life and learn what NOT to do.
Ms. Jolley had a long, satisfying and varied career in public school teaching, in community economic development, educational development, at family resource centers and in racial reconciliation. She worked in Washington D.C., in Charleston at the Trident Technical College, and at the University of Alabama. At each job, at each locale, she pressed for innovation, urged cooperation among fellow workers, or rivals, for the common good, often quietly allowing someone else to take credit, and learned from failures.
Some moments and some individuals, stand out from the rest. Jolley worked with and greatly admired Congressman Carl Elliott, who was famous for arriving at the university broke and working his way through, living in truly Spartan circumstances. Rarely negative, Jolley tells us Elliott went to President Denny for help and was refused. Denny said Elliott “did not have the kind of clothes you should wear at this university” and advised him to go back home, work, save and return. Elliott stayed.
Carl Elliott would later be instrumental in passing the National Defense Education Act, lose his seat to George Wallace’s racist political maneuverings, and be vindicated when he won the first “Profiles in Courage” Award.
The University administration under Joab Thomas and Mack Portera also receives praise. In the ’80s, when unemployment in Tuscaloosa County was the highest in the state, they helped save the Rochester Plant and bring the JVC plant here.
Jolley’s personal life, not the center of the narrative, contained more drama than one might imagine. She caught and recovered from tuberculosis as a young woman, and fell in love fairly late in life with a Jesuit priest who received a papal dispensation. They married and lived happily for many years. Hers is a story worth telling and reading.
