EPILOGUE

If you ask folks around here what they remember about 1945,

A child might say, “That was the year my daddy come back from the war.”

A mother is likely to look you in the eye and declare that polio could not keep us down.

And the Hickory Daily Record will say it was the year that the Miracle of Hickory closed its doors.

If anyone knows about them things, it’s me, Ann Fay Honeycutt, for sure.

But if you ask me what I remember,

I will say it was the year Franklin D. Roosevelt died and I got one of his flowers.

I will tell you that yellow rose give me the courage to do the right thing even if it was hard.

I will say it was the time in my life when I learned that all of us is fragile as a mimosa blossom.

But the miracle of it all is,

When push comes to shove, we can be just as tough as Hickory.

It mostly hurts at first. After a while it starts to feel better.