The Birthday
Dollie Hartman
July 23, 1898 - December 6, 1992
On July 23, 2000, Dollie Hartman's birthday fell on a Sunday. This story was used for the bulletin that day.
It was 102 years ago today that Joe and Sarah Harmon had a baby daughter. They named her Dolly. Maybe they meant to call her that or maybe they misspelled “Doozey”. She was certainly both. She was a doll, a precious woman to be enjoyed and treasured, and she could be a doozey, a strong woman with strong opinions that she wasn’t afraid to express strongly. When she spoke, people didn’t just listen, they held their breath.
Everybody has their favorite Dolly Hartman stories, but how would she want to be remembered on her birthday? Would she want us to remember the 86-year-old member of the church softball team who could always get a base hit? Or the 88-year-old marksman who thought nothing of sitting in her bed and shooting a rat running along the far kitchen wall with her husband’s .45 revolver? Or a defiant 90-year-old standing on the porch of her isolated house in the holler, watching visitors leave who didn’t think she should be there by herself?
Perhaps she would want us to remember the kind woman who moved in with people in times of crisis; never asked, just showed up and stayed. Or perhaps the 83-year old who wandered in the woods and picked a huge bouquet of wildflowers for Mamaw Hope’s funeral because, “That’s what Anna would have liked.” Maybe she’d like us to remember the sight of her white head barely sticking out over the dash of her old car as she headed to town, a sight that sent the neighborhood children fleeing to their yards in terror and caused the more prudent drivers to pull into the nearest driveway.
She might not want us to remember any of that, now that she’s had a few years to look at things from a different perspective. Maybe now she’d want us to remember a different Dolly: a Dolly that took a long time to learn some important lessons. There’s at least four things that she’d want us to remember and learn from.
She’d want us to remember when she wrote a letter to the church exhorting us to be friendlier and more open to visitors: we can learn to speak the truth and to stand up for our convictions. She’d probably want us to remember her visiting Ada in the nursing home to encourage and cheer her: we can learn that you’re never too old to care for and help others. She’d probably want us to remember her tears at her surprise 89th birthday party: we can learn humility, gratitude, and the importance of church, community, and family.
And perhaps the most important story she’d want us to remember was when her son Billy was killed. When we went to visit her she told us, “Everybody thinks I won’t be able to make it by myself, but I’ll show them. I can do it. I’ll pull everything together and be all right.” Then she lowered her voice and said, “I did something last night that I’ve never done before: I prayed to God and Jesus to help me. I’ve always just depended on myself until now.” She was 87 at the time. That’s a story you may not have heard but a lesson that she would want us to learn before we’re old, a present from Dolly to you on her birthday.
