My Aunt Sis was the middle child of Grover and Sylvia Aiken Hill. Grover and Sylvia raised three , pretty, strong-willed daughters in LaBelle – Dorothy, Mildred and Esther.

The family lived downtown in an apartment above their blacksmith/auto repair business. One day Dorothy and Mildred had gone to play with the Hampton girls, and by supper time their mother had still not come for them. Their father arrived to walk them home. “I thought we were in trouble when Daddy showed up,” Mama told me. “He didn’t have much to do with us. As we walked home he held our hands and told us we had a new little sister named Esther. We were surprised.”

The little girls asked their mom where she got the tiny new baby, and she said, ‘I found her in a palmetto patch.’” Dorothy and Mildred searched palmetto patches hoping to find their own babies.

Grover and Sylvia Hill raised three , pretty, strong-willed daughters in LaBelle – Dorothy, Mildred and Esther. [Photo courtesy Patricia Speir]

Aunt Sis grew up and fell in love with a good looking boy named Jack Lewis. A few months ago, I asked her about her wedding. “We were married at Mama and Daddy’s house,” she said. “Jack wanted Bill Maddox to marry us. They were best friends, and Bill was Sheriff, so he could legally marry people. But his mother, Mrs. Lewis had a fit and said we had to be married by a preacher. So I was married by a Baptist preacher who I had never even seen before.” We laughed together. She was 103 years old, and the memory was still fresh and clear in her mind.

Over the years four blond children were added to Jack and Mildred’s family, Johnny, Joe, Tricia and Cary. We cousins grew up best friends in the fields and ditches of Belmont neighborhood. Our families often vacationed together at Lake Placid . We swam in the lake till we were pruney. In the evenings Jack played guitar and sang "The Green Grass Grew All Around" with all 20 verses as we sat on the floor at his feet grinning and trying to keep up.

Jack and Mildred both had a keen sense of humor and loved a practical joke. Jack called his mother-in-law once pretending to be a telephone company employee. “Mrs. Hill, we are preparing to blow out the lines, so you need to cover your instrument to keep the dust out of your house.” Phones were new to my grandmother, so she was very concerned. “What should I cover it with?” she asked. “Your bird cage cover would work nicely,” replied Jack, choking back laughter. Her phone stayed under the bird cage cover the rest of the afternoon. 

Every year on Joe’s birthday the family took off for Lake Placid to cut a sand pine Christmas tree. Jack turned left on hilly Old SR 8, near The Bear’s Den, drove until he spotted just the right tree, and since there were few fences and no PRIVATE PROPERTY signs, stopped and chopped it down. Mildred decorated with whipped Ivory Flakes snow just as my mom did.

Her granddaughter Kim Phillips Bulla still remembers, “Grandma didn’t want us to squeeze her hand-made snow, but we couldn’t resist pressing it flat between our fingers when she wasn’t looking.”

Mildred worked in the Hendry County Tax Collector’s office, serving as Tax Collector for ten years. She and my mother dressed up, wore lipstick and high heels, but they also liked to fish for bream with a cane pole and pick a mess of peas to shell and cook. If one of us got hurt, we were cared for but not coddled. They were strong and did not easily tolerate weakness in us. And we better say, “Yes ma’am.” And “No, sir.”

Tricia and I sometimes accompanied our mothers to work, and she was sitting behind her mama’s desk one day when Booty Powers, the town marshal brought in a drunk lady who was threatening to kill somebody. The jail at that time was upstairs over the Tax Collector’s office. Booty locked her in a cell to sober up. An hour later water was running out of the cell, across his office and downstairs to the Tax Collector’s office. The lady was washing her long, black hair in the toilet and caused a back up.

Jack was Superintendent of Roads for the Seminole Indian Tribe of Big Cypress and Brighton Reservations. He often took his family to the Big Cypress with him. I joined them one weekend when Tricia and I were about 12 years old. We attended the Friday night movie at the Indian school and Sunday School at the Baptist Church.

Aunt Sis reminisced about Jack’s death (1968) recently. “I don’t remember much about the funeral,” she said. “Except that a bunch of Seminoles came. It was held at the Methodist Church in LaBelle, and they were too shy to come inside. But they followed the procession to the cemetery, and Elizabeth Billy, who was a good friend of mine, asked me if the coffin could be opened for them to see Jack. I asked the undertaker, and he opened the casket. All the Indians filed by to see Jack one last time. They loved him.”

In the late 1990s, Aunt Sis developed wet macular degeneration. She was going blind and would need to make lifestyle changes. She took a class on preparing for blindness, sold her home and enlisted her kids help to move to an assisted living facility in Ft. Myers where she would not be a burden to her family. She had a cute apartment with a screened patio and a view of the pool. Her art hung on the walls, her hand-crocheted afghans draped over couch and chairs and her cats curled up on the foot of her bed.

Soon after she got settled, Mama and I visited. After having lunch in the dining room, Aunt Sis asked me to play the grand piano that dominated the great room. I sat down nervously to do my best with "Over The Rainbow."

“Do you know I’ll Fly Away?” Aunt Sis asked. “I have Willy Nelson’s Gospel album and just love it.” Heck yeah, I could play "I’ll Fly Away!" I pretty much butchered it, but she and Mama clapped and seemed to enjoy it. Another old lady got up and left.

Aunt Sis traveled the world and on the streets of Paris accidentally got swept up in a group of demonstrators and was separated from her tour group for over an hour. Which didn’t bother her in the least. She was fearless.

Aunt Sis has been an inspiration to me. When I lost central vision in my right eye, after spending a week being scared witless, I thought about my aunt and how she handled blindness. If I lose vision in my good eye, I will try to be brave and maybe make a joke now and then like she did. I will quilt, crochet and paint with bright colors and write funny things … as long as I can.

Maybe to the age of 103.