SisterScene Ancestry Stories & Photos
LOUISIANA WIDOW BROKE UP HER FAMILY FOR SURVIVAL DURING GREAT DEPRESSION
DAUGHTER REMEMBERS MOTHER ON 100th BDAY
By: Robyn Marie Underwood, Lafayette, LA
Marie Cox Underwood, aka Sister. My father (James alia Happy) eldest sibling. We called her Aunt Sis. Because of the Great Depression my grandmother had to “farm out” most of her 8 children, because she could not feed them. So my Aunt Sis moved away from Lake Charles, LA to live with Great Aunt Colette and her husband UNC Prof George Lane on Franklin St. THE IMPACT OF THIS STORY ON MY FUTURE FAMILY. In high school (1980-1984, St Louis High, Lake Charles, LA) I dreamed of going to UNC, Chapel Hill. I requested the UNC materials at the counselor’s office. Ms. Robert’s, our counselor ordered the 1983 UNC admissions packet and I wondered at the fall colors and campus of rolling hills. Never applied (until I did for grad school years later).
My children are both graduates of UNC, Chapel Hill. Our Durham home sits on New Hope Creek, the high taxed, little crowded town of Chapel Hill is on the other side. I am proud to have raised our children in the city of Durham, home of HBCU, NCCU. And not far from the fairytale safe, well-fed existence of my Aunt Sis and Great Aunt Colette. I wanted to name my daughter Colette, but my husband preferred MARIE! And so it goes, lol. SisterScene’s Young Co-Founders Marie and Brianna are both UNC scholarship students. And Emily Cox and Meleata Pinto, their mom’s are both alumnae. Salute to Aunte Marie aka Aunt Sis!
My mother Marie Underwood, née Noelie Marie Cox in 1921. It would have been her 100th birthday today, September 27, 2021. Despite her maiden name, Cox, she had a strong French heritage from her mother, a Resweber from St Martinville, Louisiana and her dad, who came from Plaucheville, LA and whose mother was from an old Huguenot family in Southeastern France. She earned her undergrad degree from the University of North Carolina, where she lived with her aunt and her uncle, who taught English there. She had learned a lot of French from her grandmother, née Noelie Perilloux, and later went on to get a masters degree in French and English literature, as well as a masters in Social Work, all from LSU. She enlisted in the Navy during WWII, and was later an officer in the Air Force alongside my dad. She taught junior high and high school French and English (and sometimes Spanish) for many years in the Houston public schools. She had a lifelong fascination with language, and we always had several dictionaries by the dinner table - you know, in case there was an etymological emergency during a meal. She was a great, simple French cook. She adored my dad, who was positive, confident, and assertive as a complement to her self-effacing qualities. He almost always took the lead, but despite her sweetness and polite demeanor she knew her own mind, and married late (in those days) as a 27 year-old self-supporting woman with a post-graduate education. She never got a joke unless it was explained to her, then she would laugh after having thought it over. The oldest girl in a family of eight children, she only had one child, me. Her greatest joy in life was helping to raise her grandchild, Donny Attilio, when I was at LSU law school. Mom, I miss you.
Response: Cousine, EMILYCOX: Beautiful testimony to your mama’s life! I have some beautiful vintage French literature, illustrated encyclopedias Aunt Sis passed to me. She was always interested in my studies and who and how I wanted to be in the world. She saw me and I remember her well.