A Random Act of Kindness
I awoke with a long to-do list last Saturday morning, but when I saw a pretty dusting of snow outside our window, I stuck my bare feet in my shoes, grabbed my fuzzy fake fur coat out of Mama Sue’s chifferobe, and headed outside in my PJs, camera in hand. I told myself that the list would wait; with sunshine predicted, the snow would not. When I came back inside half an hour later, I was shocked that I had taken 168 pictures. How could I help it? I saw 168 beautiful scenes.
This is number 93.
When my desk was beside a bigger window, I used to enjoy watching cars pull over to read the historic marker in our front yard. It wasn’t there when we bought our house and it is still hard for me to believe that we have one in our front yard. Let me tell you why it happened and how.
We bought our house because it was just what we needed at a very low price. It is still hard for me to believe we were able to buy it, too. When a friend first suggested it as a possibility, we didn’t even look at it, being convinced it was way out of our price range. A lumber company bought the farm it was on. When they wanted to get rid of the old fixer-upper house, we were happy to oblige with our ridiculously low offer, which they took.
We had heard that a former Federal judge named John Jordan Gore had lived here in the past, but our main interest in buying the house in 2003 was that it was big enough for our family, Ray’s daddy, and (at the time) the entire Notgrass Company operation all to be under one roof.
I have told you before about the circumstances around our joining the Jackson County Historical Society. Soon after we joined, the organization was informed that it would henceforth receive $2000 per year in perpetuity (that means for a long time until the trust it comes from runs out of money) in honor of Judge John Jordan Gore. The gift came from Elias Skovron, a man in his 90s who lived in Nashville, Tennessee. He wanted to honor Judge Gore because of kindnesses Judge Gore had performed on his behalf in the 1930s.
Elias Skovron was a young Jew in Poland in the 1930s when the Nazis were beginning their reign of terror in Europe. Knowing that he would almost certainly die if he did not get out of the country, Skovron tried to get a passport, but was unable to do so. He asked his aunt who lived in Nashville to help him. Skovron’s aunt contacted her friend Judge Gore.
Long before Cordell Hull became Secretary of State under President Franklin Roosevelt, he and John Gore had been law partners in an office above what is now one of my favorite antique stores in downtown Gainesboro. Judge Gore contacted Secretary of State Hull on young Skovron’s behalf. At the end of the letter, Judge Gore invited Cordell Hull and his wife to visit him at his home (which is now our home! How cool is that!?).
In time Secretary of State Hull wrote to Judge Gore that Skovron had been granted a visa. Skovron moved to Nashville that summer. He married and became a successful businessman. He left his large estate to eleven charities and left $200,000 to the U.S. government, in gratitude for the country which “gave me the gift of liberty and life through Judge Gore and Cordell Hull” (I copied this quote from Sons of the Cumberland: The Early Years of Cordell Hull and John Jordan Gore by Mark Dudney, page 75).
Our local historical society contacted the Tennessee State Historical Society, asking them to approve an historical marker to be erected in front of Judge Gore’s home and decided to use a portion of the first annual gift from the Skovron estate to purchase it. Our family, elderly members of the family who lived here before us, members of our local historical society, and our state senator at the time (who herself spent part of her childhood on this farm as the daughter of a sharecropper) participated in a ceremony in our front yard when the marker was erected.
This week my mother got a letter from Norma, a girl I went to church with throughout my childhood (well, she’s not exactly a girl now, since we are the same age, but you know what I mean). She said that she was home from church with a cough on Sunday morning and, while she was at home, she thought of Mother. She talked of missing Mother at church now that she is here with us and she thanked her for the sewing Mother has done for her. I’m glad Judge Gore was remembered for his kindness and I’m glad that Mother was remembered for hers. One of the sweet lessons you can teach your children is to help them to notice and remember acts of kindness and to take action to honor the person who performed them.
She opens her mouth in wisdom,
And the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
Proverbs 31:26
Curious about what the marker says? I took this photo for you yesterday.
