Aunt Ricki in Salado for her 90th birthday in 2015
My Aunt Ricki – aka Reba Nell Berry Migues – died last week (Nov. 22) at age 94, and the world became a sadder place, at least for a time, because abiding grief and sadness are last things Aunt Ricki would want for her family; and thank God that family includes me and mine.
I was blessed to spend some time with Aunt Ricki not long before she died. She was delirious and seemed frightened by her dreams as she refused to eat and drink in those last, long days of life. She did, however, hold hands with what seemed to be undiminished strength; same as Mom, Ricki’s sister, Martha (Ditty) George, who died almost a year ago (Dec. 12, 2018) and Aunt Lorraine (Bobo) Stevenson,who died April 29, 2013.
No three women loved each other more than these three daughters of Eva Clemond Stevens Berry, a church musician and piano teacher, and Cecil Zenas Berry, a World War I veteran, mechanic and carpenter of Salado, Texas.
The Berry girls were close in age and close to each other all their lives, even when life left them in different parts of the country. Reunions always were joyous and marked by good food, laughter and tall tales. Their nicknames were all affection, and their favorite stories told of Salado capers at school and church, where Mama Eva played piano and expected her girls to behave on the “Amen row.” Their roles never changed: Ditty the do-gooder, Ricki the rascal, who once tossed her little sister’s doll down a water-well under construction; and Bobo the baby, so often the target of Ricki’s pranks.
They were children reared by traditional country values in a town where everyone knew everyone else – and everyone else’s business. They often found themselves in the same schoolroom, even though they were in different grades. They steered clear of the highway that ran through town, waded in Salado Creek whenever they could, and were admonished not to explore that limestone cave near the Shady Villa Hotel (later known as the Stagecoach Inn) owned by their grandparents, Charles Wilkins and Mary Evelyn Hill Stevens. (Ricki, of course, just had to find out what was in that cave. Turned out it was mostly daddy longlegs spiders by the hundreds.)
The Berry girls and their parents moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1942, and never again lived in Salado, though they visited often those who stayed behind. Daddy Cecil had gone to South Texas in 1940 attracted by construction jobs at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. He became a permanent employee after the base was commissioned in 1941, nine months before Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Ricki, always the outlier, attended Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, after graduating from high school in 1943. She joined a sorority, and though she did not complete a degree, she came away with a lifelong regard for higher education – and was well known for her spunk. She once told off a fellow student – a Marine Corps officer – for asking too many questions in history class. (That officer, by the way, was my father, Marshall George. Long story. Some other time.)
Ricki married a handsome Navy ensign, Jay Patrick Migues, on May 13, 1945, and began bringing her Central Texas rural values and love of education to a new generation of six children: My cousins Sharon, Kem, Steven, Alvin, Loraine and Janine. From Jay’s home in Kinder, La., to New Orleans and back to Corpus Christi; and, then, finally to Fort Worth, Texas, Ricki oversaw a bustling household not only of family but also of friends and relatives. The front door was always open and there was always welcoming refreshment and tireless hospitality at the Migues home, wherever it happened to be.
Ricki’s Protestant evangelical upbringing segued easily into the Roman Catholicism of her husband as she was baptized with the first three of her six children in New Orleans. Her household was pious without being pretentious. Ricki taught primary grades in Catholic schools while befriending with respect the nuns with whom she worked.
Ricki excelled at homemaking, but she also had a mind for business, having married a man whose lifelong ambition was to be in business for himself to sink or swim on his own. Ricki and Jay thus imbued their children with core values rooted in personal ethics, education and entrepreneurial independence. From miniature golf to Pennyrich lingerie, real estate sales and other home-based businesses, Ricki pulled her weight and more in partnership with Jay, who died July 15, 2006.
Ricki to the end of her days was quick to laugh and smile and, especially, to embrace those whom she loved and others she’d like to know better. She could be steely, even stubborn, when it came to doing the right thing or anything the best way. She endured a life of not being able to hear well, but it never dampened her grace or mischievous wit.
My favorite memories of Aunt Ricki reside in the months we spent living with the Migues tribe in Corpus Christi from the late fall of 1953 until Dad returned from Korea in the spring of 1954. Mom had just given birth to my sister Sue in Oceanside, Calif. We moved to Texas to await Dad’s return. Sharon and I were in school at Sam Houston Annex, a two-roomer converted from a military surplus building. Kem wasn’t in school, yet, and Steven was in diapers.
What follows is an excerpt from a work in progress, a portion of my life that Aunt Ricki and my cousins shaped in profound and, perhaps, everlasting ways.
Saint Patrick’s, Corpus Christi: “I was enthralled and, ultimately, captivated. A seed was planted …”
The Migues girls said grace at mealtimes, but it was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
It may have been our first meal together after Mom, Sue and I moved in. Aunt Ricki and the girls said grace. They started with the sign of the cross. No sentimental folderol, though at age six I wouldn’t have been able to say it that way. Thing is, it made more sense to me than what I’d been taught, this cross thing and the short prayer: “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which of thy bounty we are about to receive for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.” Then, again, the sign of the cross: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
My six-year-old mind did know how to say, Wow!
It was a dignified prayer, more formal than anything I knew; and, it was liturgical in a way that was, to this six-year-old Methodist kid, exciting and exotic. The sign of the cross was a sacred ritual, even though I didn’t have words for it at the time. It seemed holy in such a way that I wondered whether I was allowed to do it. I’m not sure I was even aware that my cousins were Catholic or even what Catholicism was – but the way they prayed was magnetic! Yes, I was assured, it was OK. I jumped right in, meal after meal. I loved making the sign of the cross! And it took no time to learn that cool prayer.
Grace before meals was just the beginning. Aunt Ricki, Sharon and Kem often said the rosary at bedtime: Our Father, Hail Mary, Hail Holy Queen! And there were beads! And something, honest to God, I’d never seen before: a crucifix. I was stunned by the explicitness of that little body on an ornate cross. I could almost see it writhe. I didn’t have to be told that it was to be handled with care. Sharon did let me know that it was not a necklace and that I shouldn’t wear it to school.
I was enchanted by the practice of religion at home. It was novel and exotic to little-boy me. It seemed so grown up, because Aunt Ricki said the prayers, too. It was astonishing to me that adults and children could pray together. During my tender years, I had never said a prayer with my mother or my father. In my limited experience, it always seemed as though adults prayed their way and we kids prayed ours.
I never said any of this to anybody. I didn’t tell my cousins I thought the prayers, the rosary and the sign of the cross were cool. I just imitated them. No flattery intended, but I’m sure they saw that I wanted in on this thing they did at mealtime and bedtime. It wasn’t long before I was on my way to my first Mass at Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church. (Mom didn’t seem to be interested in church in the months we lived with the Migueses.)
Mass at St. Patrick’s was pre-Vatican II, and it blew my mind: Chanted Latin, asperges, incense, vestments all a-swirl. We sat near the back, but that didn’t keep me from seeing as much as possible. I must have been bug-eyed as the priest and his acolytes came up the center aisle from the altar sprinkling water this way and that. The congregation genuflected in waves as the priest went by. There was kneeling and standing and sitting. Sharon tugged my sleeve when it was time to sit down and made sure I knelt at the right times. This was nothing like any church I’d ever been in. I was enthralled and, ultimately, captivated. A seed was planted at St. Patrick’s that would show itself, first, as a tender stem 12 years later when I was confirmed at St. Timothy’s, an Anglo-Catholic parish in Fort Worth; and, then, almost 11 years after that, when I was ordained priest in The Episcopal Church.
Mom, Sue and I were with the Migueses for Christmas 1953 while Dad was stationed in Inchon, South Korea. I asked just one thing for Christmas that year: a rosary. Dad sent me ornately printed silk pajamas. Somewhere, there’s a photo of me in those pajamas, my hands held prayerfully together, holding my Christmas rosary. I was one happy kid that morning. I’d been given all I wanted in all the world.
Thank you, Aunt Ricki.
I love you.
The pelican papers 