The Story of Hattie Malone

Hello. This is Mary Lou Bristol, writing my very first post for our Bristol Epistle. Today, the Thursday of Easter week, almost fifty years ago, I was a young housewife, mother and full time art teacher in a regional high school in rural northwest New Jersey. My husband Patrick and I and our seven year old son Timothy lived in a very modest apartment and Timothy was getting over the chickenpox. Our life was very busy but simple.

For months, the ladies of our small Gospel church had been saving Leggs eggs. At that time, ladies‘ panty hose were packaged in these large, pastel colored plastic eggs. They looked like large goose eggs. The brand was Leggs, thus the term “Leggs Eggs.” We stuffed these eggs with candies, jellybeans and little notes of encouragement from the Scriptures. They were to be Easter treats for the residents of a low income area nursing home. One lady in our group was in charge of taking and distributing these gifts to each individual resident in the nursing home...not just taking them to the home, but personally connecting with each resident.

But suddenly, that Thursday morning brought an unwelcome surprise. I received a telephone call from the lady in charge of this outreach project, informing me that she had become ill, and could not do the distribution. She further explained that she had sought help from all the other ladies, and none were available to help. As she informed me, I was her last hope, the eggs needed to be distributed that very day, and if I couldn’t do it, it would not happen. I looked at Timothy and could still see the scabs from the chicken pox on his face. He was no longer contagious but he looked awful. What should I do? Truthfully, I wanted to say no. But, somehow I found myself saying yes...begrudgingly.

I cleaned Timothy up as best I could, got in the car and picked up a large box from the lady’s front porch. Then we headed to the nursing home. Neither Timothy nor I were happy about this venture, but I assured him it wouldn’t take long and we were doing the right thing. When we arrived, I explained Timothy’s situation and the director agreed that the two of us could visit the residents and hand out the eggs. We walked together down each hallway, handing out the eggs and wishing the residents a Happy Easter.

At the very end of the last corridor, an aide came out of the last room on the right side, and said “You don’t need to go in there, you can just give it to me.” I asked “is the resident sick?“ “No,” she said, “she is deaf and blind.” Her words stopped me in my tracks. I told her we would like to go in. And we did, and there I met Hattie Malone.

Let me share with you that I had learned sign language and was interpreting for the deaf at our church each Sunday morning. Suddenly, it hit me that God had led me to this encounter with this lady. She was a diminutive woman sitting in a chair, hands folded on her lap, eyes closed, with neatly braided hair and her head down. I touched her arm, and her head came up. I gently took her left hand and opened it to palm up, and began spelling into her hand “Hi, my name is Mary Lou.” She smiled broadly, with an audible giggle. I asked her: “What’s your name?” She spelled her name by signing with her right hand, Hattie Malone. I introduced her to Timothy, and she took his hand and shook it, with a big smile on her face.

We sat and ”talked” for a while, and then she asked: “Will you come back to see me?” I said “of course I will.“ And that was the beginning of my decade long relationship with this amazing woman. I visited her every week. I came to know that she was exactly my mother’s age, had been born deaf, became blind from a condition called Usher’s Syndrome, and that her husband and grown daughters had abandoned her. She was all alone. As the years went by, the nursing home administrators trusted me to take her on outings away from the facility. She visited many times in our very modest apartment and shared meals with us.

One day we drove to the Alderney Milk Barn, the best ice cream place in the area, to get ice cream cones. I asked her what kind of ice cream she wanted, and she replied, “chocolate, of course; what kind are you getting?” I said “just creamy vanilla.” Then, to my surprise, she said: ”chocolate like me, vanilla like you.” I asked her “how did you know?” She told me “I touch you and hug you, that’s how I know.” We had never discussed our race. I was amazed.

She once shared with me that she thought people were stealing from her monthly allowance. She did not even know how much she was receiving, or in what denominations, but she could sense when the pile In her box got thinner. I learned that it was twenty dollars a month, and that they typically gave her five singles, a five dollar bill and a ten dollar bill. I helped her identify the denominations, and she devised a method of folding the bills to indicate their value. Her money was kept under her bed in a small box. Eventually, she asked me to keep her funds for her, to thwart those who were stealing from her. She used her money to buy treats for herself. She loved Vienna sausages in a can as well as cookies. I would have bought them for her, but, no, she wanted to buy them with her own money. She wanted to experience at least a degree of independence.

Hattie had a very sweet spirit. She bore no ill will or anger towards her family or her circumstances. She loved the Lord and believed in Him with all her heart. She grew up in the segregated South, had very little formal education, and had been trained to sew on a machine through the generosity of the White Cane Society. She sewed her own clothes, and made me many smocks that I wore until they were threadbare while teaching art at my regional high school. She even made stuffed animals. In the beginning, I could not believe she could operate a sewing machine, but her work was meticulous and a wonderful example of her tenacity and ability to overcome obstacles. Once my friends saw her work, they gave me material for her personal use. They couldn’t get over the fact that she had made the smocks that I was wearing. She even cut out her own patterns from brown paper bags.

Let me add that at one point I asked the nursing home administrator if I could become Hattie’s advocate, but since I was not family and she still had a daughter living out of state, the answer was no...even though the daughter never ever visited her. I reluctantly, with a heavy heart, accepted their response. “The laws the law,“ I said to myself.

Several years later, my friend called me in a very agitated state, and shared about an article in the local newspaper reporting that Hattie’s nursing home had just been shut down for violations of state regulations and mismanagement of funds. I had been with her a week before. The article stated all the residents had been moved to other facilities in the county. I tried calling the nursing home, but no one responded. Legally, I had no right to know where she was. What really bothered me was the thought that Hattie may have believed I had abandoned her. Imagine her situation. No one at the home could communicate with her, she did not know where she was going, and just the thought of her anxiety made my heart sick.

I tried to locate her, but there were many area nursing homes, and the newspaper article did not say to which homes the residents had been moved. All the homes I knew reported there was no Hattie Malone. Many years later, after my family and I had moved to another part of the county, and my son was in college, my friend called and told me that she had seen an obituary in the regional newspaper, just a brief report that Hattie had passed away. It occurred to me that all those years, she might have been living close by. I was heartsick. A short obituary could never have described this truly amazing woman of God. My heart was heavy, but I was very thankful that she was a big part of my life for over a decade. And now, she was with her Lord, healed and whole.

Easter brings hope, Easter brings joy, and new life. And I am so thankful that the Lord caused my path to cross with that of Hattie Malone. You see, God often works small miracles at Easter time. I learned so many life lessons from Hattie. She taught me so much about being strong and overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles. She showed me how to persevere with a positive attitude, even when faced with great adversity. I will never forget her. I pray that one day soon, God will bring a Hattie Malone into your life.

Blessings to you and your loved ones this Easter.

Mary Lou