I always called her "little lady" only because she was small in stature, very much like my mother. But she was a big influence in many people's lives and she had one of the biggest hearts I have known, again very much like my own mother.
Her name was Hildegard Chilinski Bonds. She was officially my step mother-in-law, but in reality she was like another mom to me.
When I married her stepdaughter, who was the youngest of the children, she accepted me without hesitation.
I will admit I was a little intimidated by her, much more than Karen's dad, Jessie.
Hilda was born in pre-World War II Germany. And, like most Germans I have met, she was straight forward and said what she felt.
She pulled no punches. She asked straight questions and she expected straight answers. She took no guff from anybody and when she told you something she expected it to be done.
But when you entered her family you were there to stay. She gave her love unconditionally. I may not have liked all that she did or said, but I certainly respected her advice and the many things she did for me.
She lived a remarkable life.
She met and married an American G.I. named Clay Rowan from Attalla. That's how she came to the United States. Later, when her first marriage ended, she married Jessie Bonds, my wife's father.
The first union produced six children — Nancy, Clay Junior, Julie, Ronnie, Tina and Ricky. Jessie's two children — Susan and Karen — brought the total count to eight.
"We'll, we had eight children and then we got a television set," Jessie and Hilda used to joke when people would find out there were that many youngsters in the family.
Hilda knew I majored in history in college and her tales of World War II kept me spellbound.
She was born in the town of Wurzburg, a city of about 150,000 people. Like most large cities in Germany during World War II, the bombs fell periodically during night raids by the Allies.
On one such night, Hilda got separated from her mother. The frightened little girl frantically searched for help. It was dark and only the flash from the bombs lit the sky.
She found a building with people huddled against the wall. She couldn't see their faces, only their outlines in the darkness She hunkered down and fell asleep.
When she awoke it was light and as she looked up at the people in the building, they were all dead. She had spent the night in a room full of corpses. It took almost a week for Hilda to find her mother.
Then there was her father, who was an engineer and had been sent to the Russian front. Hilda and her mom had not been told that he had been captured and was in a Russian prison camp.
When the war ended, he did not return home. They presumed he had died. Almost a year later, he walked through the front door.
"We need to write a book," she told me one day.
"We will one day," I said. A promise I won't be able to keep.
She loved Gatlinburg and went almost every year after she finished with her tax preparation business in April. She never said, but I think it probably reminded her of Germany.
My wife and I were fortunate enough to be invited to join them last year. It was a fun week. We went bear hunting every day up in the mountains above Gatlinburg. Every day we saw a bear.
That's how I want to remember Hilda — strong, healthy, looking for bears.
She passed away with all her children around her after battling cancer the past few months. As she took her last breath, a tear ran down her cheek.
"She saw Jesus and then she left us," Tina said. That's what I believe, too. She was ready to go. She knew Jesus would be waiting to take her hand. And if she thought Gatlinburg was beautiful, can you imagine what she thinks about heaven?
She had asked me before she passed to write a little article to thank all those who helped her during her final battle. Here are some of those people:
Stringfellow Hospital, Jacksonville Rehab, the Cancer Unit at Fort McClellan with Dr. Charles Lattuada Jr., and Dr. Noel C. Scidmore, Wiregrass Hospice with Cheryl, Keith, Sarah, Laura and Shannon, her church family at Leatherwood Baptist Church and her former church family at Gladeview Baptist Church, her many friends in her neighborhood in Saks and the many customers she served when she operated Bonds Income Tax and worked at Gregerson's.
If you knew Hilda, you loved Hilda. She never met a stranger. She will be missed by everyone who knew and loved her. And that's a whole lot of people.
Post a Comment