Mildred Elaine Evans
Mildred graduated from Grainger High School in Kinston.
Her nickname in high school was “Mird”.
In those days, you could go back after graduation an extra year to get
secretarial training, which she did. Mildred "Nama" was a bookkeeper.
She worked for Mallard-Griffin part time while her children were
younger and full time at Frank S. Love and Co. from which she retired.
She worked to help her family financially until she got married. She eloped to marry James L. Worthington January
18, 1943. She went home and told
Mama Sadie and Daddy Hallock that she was going to go live with James.
That was how she told them that she had gotten married.
Her and Daddy and my aunt Annie Doris and her husband Lionel drove to
Oregon where Daddy was being deployed overseas during WWII.
She enjoyed reminiscing about her trip to Oregon. She was a very private person. She used to keep a bundle of letters that Daddy had written
her during the war in a desk drawer (Daddy Hallock gave her the desk when she
graduated from school). When we
were little, my older sister Jelaine (who must have been about 8 or 9) was
sitting on the couch reading some letters she had from a pen pal.
Mama came in and saw her with all the papers spread out on the couch
and thought she had her letters from Daddy.
She immediately got her letters from Daddy that she had saved all those
years and burned them all. Would
really have liked to know what was in them. Mama was the heart and strength in our family.
She made sure that we always had what we needed.
She made sure all three of her children graduated from college and paid
for it herself. There wasn’t
anything she wouldn’t do for us. She was an excellent cook. Daddy
always had a garden where he grew okra, squash, beans, peas, peanuts,
strawberries, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, and beets. He and Mama would freeze vegetables every summer.
When we were little, she would pay us to sit on the porch and shell
butter beans, peas, and snap string beans. She
also loved her flowers. She had
beautiful irises and daffodils. When
we were in elementary school, she would always send us to school with a
handful of flowers for our teacher. She
loved to play bridge and taught my sisters and me how to play.
I remember when I was in junior high school I had a science exam the
next day that I was worried about. She
always told us to study and then put the book and notes under our pillow at
night. She had gone to her bridge
club and when she returned she brought me a bottle of bubble bath that she had
won. In the early 1980s, Mama found out she had emphysema (she
smoked for years). She enjoyed
coming down to her and Daddy’s cottage at Atlantic Beach on weekends.
My sister and her girls and me and my kids would go over to the beach
on Saturdays. She loved to visit with the grandchildren and we would go
shopping and take the kids to McDonald’s or Burger King. By the late 1980s she had become so sick that she
couldn’t go to the beach anymore. We
would visit her on weekends, taking her for ice cream and occasionally to the
mall (she didn’t like for people to see her in her wheel chair).
The Christmas before she died, we had one of the biggest snows ever.
My sister’s family and mine road through the snow covered roads to
Kinston to take dinner and celebrate Christmas.
On January 4, 1990, she passed away.
Mildred married James Leonard Worthington, son of Grover Cleveland Worthington and Lady Bird Cunningham, on 18 Jan 1943. (James Leonard Worthington was born on 18 Mar 1915 in Kinston, NC, died on 8 Aug 1997 in New Bern, NC and was buried in Aug 1997 in Westview Cemetery, Kinston, NC.) 
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