Miss-Delectable
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http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2006/05/28/local/doc4478ca805a828589592287.txt
For 19 city blocks, Bonita Harris walked, carrying two small American flags in her right hand.
She kept her head down.
She stared at the sidewalk and the tops of her white and pink Skechers. She wore both her hearing aids.
At each intersection she stopped, turned her head left, then right, before taking her next careful step.
The 58-year-old Lincoln woman didn’t see the roses or the iris or the front porches of the bungalows or the towering shade trees or the big church along 33rd Street as she headed north for the cemetery.
Bonita had measles when she was 4. It took most of her hearing. Later, her eyes went bad.
“I’m legally blind,” she explains, sitting on her afghan-covered couch inside the yellow house she shared with her mother before they took her to the nursing home.
Her eye disease keeps her from seeing anything but what is right in front of her blue eyes, Bonita says.
“I have tunnel vision.”
That’s what she had Thursday, heading for the cemetery in the afternoon heat to plant her flags before Memorial Day and all the crowds.
She wanted to stay out of other people’s way, she says.
Her brother Lloyd used to drive her to Wyuka to decorate the family graves, but he died Jan. 20.
So after lunch last Thursday Bonita decided to go alone.
“Something hit me,” she says. “I was thinking about my dad and my uncle. I just wanted to get there.”
She said goodbye to Bo Jo, her talking bird. And to Fuzzy, the white cat, and Wuzzy, the calico.
She didn’t hurry.
She stopped at the post office to mail a letter.
She turned in the gates on O Street and walked along the edges of the wide brick lanes. She got lost once before she found Section 18.
Back at home, the next day, she holds the scrapbook she fashioned from all the clippings and photographs her mother stored in boxes in the basement.
Each page is decorated with small stars, the kind teachers once licked and stuck on the pages of well-learned lessons.
On the first page is a newspaper clipping. First are the photographs. Her grandparents. Her father, Harold Q. Harris. Her four uncles. Richard. Barton. Elmer. George.
This Family is Helping to Win the War, the headline below says.
Everyone but Uncle Richard came home, she says.
He was stationed in the Lorraine Province in France. After he was wounded in battle, they brought him back, but he died in the hospital in Washington, D.C.
The date was March 18, 1919.
He never saw his baby girl. They named her Frances Lorraine, says Bonita.
She died two years ago.
Bonita’s daddy died in 1971.
She has pictures of their headstones pasted in the scrapbook. And a blown-up black-and-white photograph of Uncle Richard’s casket, draped with flags, a wreath with a ribbon hailing “Comrade” beside it.
She’s been filling the pages for 25 years.
“I’m not done yet,” she says.
When she found the graves Thursday, Bonita was worn out.
She stood in front of her father’s headstone in her blue jeans and her white T-shirt, the one with the waving flag on the front.
Her dad never talked about the war.
“I wish he would have. But he didn’t.”
She never knew her Uncle Richard.
“I wish I did.”
It was quiet, Bonita recalled on Friday.
She stood there and remembered. Then she stuck a flag in the ground beside the two markers that said veteran.
They went in easy.
She walked to the Wyuka office and called a cab.
A stranger saw her. She noticed how hot she looked, how tired.
She offered Bonita a ride to her yellow house, 19 blocks away. They talked all the way to C Street.
The stranger called the newspaper.
I want to tell you about a woman, she said. And what she did to honor the dead.
For 19 city blocks, Bonita Harris walked, carrying two small American flags in her right hand.
She kept her head down.
She stared at the sidewalk and the tops of her white and pink Skechers. She wore both her hearing aids.
At each intersection she stopped, turned her head left, then right, before taking her next careful step.
The 58-year-old Lincoln woman didn’t see the roses or the iris or the front porches of the bungalows or the towering shade trees or the big church along 33rd Street as she headed north for the cemetery.
Bonita had measles when she was 4. It took most of her hearing. Later, her eyes went bad.
“I’m legally blind,” she explains, sitting on her afghan-covered couch inside the yellow house she shared with her mother before they took her to the nursing home.
Her eye disease keeps her from seeing anything but what is right in front of her blue eyes, Bonita says.
“I have tunnel vision.”
That’s what she had Thursday, heading for the cemetery in the afternoon heat to plant her flags before Memorial Day and all the crowds.
She wanted to stay out of other people’s way, she says.
Her brother Lloyd used to drive her to Wyuka to decorate the family graves, but he died Jan. 20.
So after lunch last Thursday Bonita decided to go alone.
“Something hit me,” she says. “I was thinking about my dad and my uncle. I just wanted to get there.”
She said goodbye to Bo Jo, her talking bird. And to Fuzzy, the white cat, and Wuzzy, the calico.
She didn’t hurry.
She stopped at the post office to mail a letter.
She turned in the gates on O Street and walked along the edges of the wide brick lanes. She got lost once before she found Section 18.
Back at home, the next day, she holds the scrapbook she fashioned from all the clippings and photographs her mother stored in boxes in the basement.
Each page is decorated with small stars, the kind teachers once licked and stuck on the pages of well-learned lessons.
On the first page is a newspaper clipping. First are the photographs. Her grandparents. Her father, Harold Q. Harris. Her four uncles. Richard. Barton. Elmer. George.
This Family is Helping to Win the War, the headline below says.
Everyone but Uncle Richard came home, she says.
He was stationed in the Lorraine Province in France. After he was wounded in battle, they brought him back, but he died in the hospital in Washington, D.C.
The date was March 18, 1919.
He never saw his baby girl. They named her Frances Lorraine, says Bonita.
She died two years ago.
Bonita’s daddy died in 1971.
She has pictures of their headstones pasted in the scrapbook. And a blown-up black-and-white photograph of Uncle Richard’s casket, draped with flags, a wreath with a ribbon hailing “Comrade” beside it.
She’s been filling the pages for 25 years.
“I’m not done yet,” she says.
When she found the graves Thursday, Bonita was worn out.
She stood in front of her father’s headstone in her blue jeans and her white T-shirt, the one with the waving flag on the front.
Her dad never talked about the war.
“I wish he would have. But he didn’t.”
She never knew her Uncle Richard.
“I wish I did.”
It was quiet, Bonita recalled on Friday.
She stood there and remembered. Then she stuck a flag in the ground beside the two markers that said veteran.
They went in easy.
She walked to the Wyuka office and called a cab.
A stranger saw her. She noticed how hot she looked, how tired.
She offered Bonita a ride to her yellow house, 19 blocks away. They talked all the way to C Street.
The stranger called the newspaper.
I want to tell you about a woman, she said. And what she did to honor the dead.
