For Memories' Sake

Grimes’ family history collected as labor of love

Courtesy Image Teenager Mae Ellen Grimes, second from left, appears in a photo with her father, “Munce” Grimes, left, her brother Frank and her mom Roxie Ritchey Grimes. Ellen’s son-in-law, James Huffman, collected family history to discuss with her as her Alzheimer’s worsened. He’ll speak on the Grimes family at noon Wednesday at the Shiloh Museum.
Courtesy Image Teenager Mae Ellen Grimes, second from left, appears in a photo with her father, “Munce” Grimes, left, her brother Frank and her mom Roxie Ritchey Grimes. Ellen’s son-in-law, James Huffman, collected family history to discuss with her as her Alzheimer’s worsened. He’ll speak on the Grimes family at noon Wednesday at the Shiloh Museum.

James Huffman says his mother-in-law "was not a big fan of mine at the time I came in to the family. She had not wanted me to marry her daughter (Jean) because I was a preacher. But we got to be good friends because I would torment her all the time."

Huffman also became Mae Ellen Grimes' biographer and unofficial family historian. He'll speak about "One Family in Benton County: Eyewitnesses to Arkansas Statehood, the Civil War and the Coming of the Railroad" at noon Wednesday at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History's monthly Sandwiched In program.

FAQ

Sandwiched In

‘One Family in Benton County: Eyewitnesses to Arkansas Statehood, the Civil War, and the Coming of the Railroad’

WHEN — Noon Wednesday

WHERE — Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, 118 W. Johnson Ave. in Springdale

COST — Free

INFO — 750-8165

Huffman, a community church preacher in Fayetteville, is former chairman of the Arkansas History Commission, explains Susan Young, outreach director for the museum. But Huffman says that has nothing to do with his interest in the Grimes family.

"My mother-in-law was diagnosed with Alzheimer's several years ago," he says. "I was still working for Ozark Guidance at the time, so I was talking to some of the professionals there who had a great deal of experience dealing with people and families moving into different kinds of dementia -- picking their brains because I had not been down that road before.

"To keep (Alzheimer's patients) engaged in conversation, you often have to get them to go back down the memory trail," Huffman says. "You can keep them in the here and now, talking to you, by allowing them to go back as far as their memory will go back -- and usually they have a lot better memory about that long-ago time."

So Huffman started doing his homework and discovered the Grimes family came to Benton County about 1835. As he began to amass information, cousins came out of the woodwork with photos, newspaper clippings and stories -- along with requests for a compilation of what he'd learned.

The result was a book about his mother-in-law's life and her family, titled "A Pretty Girl From Little Sugar Creek," available on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle edition.

"I would tell her, 'I'm going to write a book about you,'" Huffman remembers. "I didn't start out with that in mind. I just started out to keep her mind alert."

Mae Ellen Grimes died in 2009, before the book was finished. And even though she often greeted her son-in-law with "I'm mad at you" -- although she usually couldn't remember why -- she was, he says, "a marvelous, marvelous woman."

-- Becca Martin-Brown

[email protected]

NAN What's Up on 09/12/2014

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