Barbara Junior Mixson
Remembering

Preface by
Larry Morris Mixson

In January of 1994 my mother, Barbara Junior Mixson, sat down and begin to write her life story.  What inspired her to do so I don’t know.  Two decades earlier in 1975 she had typed up my grandmother Mixson’s story which she gave me and my siblings a copy.  Perhaps ever since typing up that story she thought about typing up her own but was to busy living to do so until 1994.  Mother, unbeknownst to me until many years later, kept several diaries and journals over the years, many in simple spiral bound school notebooks.   For whatever reason, on that cold January day in 1994, at the age of 62 she sat down at her desk, took out a new blue spiral bound notebook and a blue ballpoint pen, for she was taught that such things were always written in pen, and she begin to write. 

And then she begins starting when she was born in 1932 writing about each year, with the last entry December of 1993.  I am sure she did not write in one sitting, it probably took her weeks, probably several months.  Barbara had an excellent memory at the time, but she refreshed her memories from old photos passed down from her mother and photo albums she had made over the years.  She saved all sort of things from her high school days, old love letters to Dad.  So she wrote about each year in a factual manner, “we went there”, “we did this”, “we visited so and so”.  Seldom expressing any feelings or emotions about what happened although occasional she expresses some inner feelings.

By 1994 Dad had bought a PC running Windows 3.0 which he mostly played games on but it also had a word processing program on it which Mom figured out how to use.  In the few years before she retired, she had used a dedicated word-processing system at the Physics Department where she worked, so she knew a little about computers.  Between her, Dad, and more than few phone calls to me, she figured out although she had to write the steps how to start the program.   After she finished she, printed out copies which she gave to each of her children.

Click on Page to continue

After typing up Rosalie Mixson's Remembering mom wrote up her own history.   These are the things she remembered.