Mr. DON LOLLIS TALKS ABOUT HIS GRANDMOTHER AND HIS FATHER

2024 07 06 ... His Grandmother Lida Lollis

  It was not unusual, especially in the fall and summertime when I was 10 or 12 or a teenager in Ware Shoals, SC, to ride my bicycle by my grandmother’s house, and she’d be sitting on her porch, reading her Bible with her glasses on. She couldn’t see good, and she’d be out there in the sunlight where she could see her Bible better.

  

The Pentecostal church was next door to her, and she could walk there in a few minutes and be at the church. She was a tremendously dedicated Christian lady, and she’d tell us stories, occasionally, about some things that happened in her life. Our foundation, for sure and certain, from that time to this time, was Ms. Lida Lollis, my grandmother (Oct. 18, 1871 — Feb. 11, 1962). Down through the years, I’d hear different things about my grandmother, how impressed that people in the church were and even in the neighborhood.

  

I was grown and married, and my wife, Sarah, would accumulate stuff and decided one Saturday she’d have a yard sale. This guy that was reared next door to my grandmother, he and his wife came to see if Sarah had anything they wanted to buy. He and I sat on the front porch, and he started telling me, “Don, when I was just a kid and a teenager, we didn’t have air-conditioning back then. We just had a little old fan in the window. The side of the house I slept on was right next to where your grandmother lived, and I’ve laid there many a night and heard your grandmother praying and calling out people’s names. And I’d hear her call out my and my mom and dad’s names, asking the Lord to be a blessing to us and to help us.”

  

You know, back then, times was really hard for a lot of people. About all available worked on a farm and made a little bit of a living there, or you worked in a cotton mill, and I think back then it was as low as 50 cents an hour they were paying people. And her husband left. I think he was gone for years; he come back, stayed a few days, and was gone again — that would be my grandfather — and we never heard any more after that. In other words, he didn’t have the backbone or the will to stay with her and help the family. But my grandmother — buddy, she was there from the moment you were born till the time she passed away. 

  

One other guy I attended church with down there, told me about my grandmother. He said, “Don, my mom would get sick, and she wouldn’t go to the doctor; that wouldn’t be the first thing she did. She’d give me some names and tell me to go around that little mill village and tell the ones she attended church with to remember her in prayer… Always, the first person she’d mention, every time, was your grandmother, Mrs. Lida Lollis.

Don’s Father Babb Lollis

  

My dad eventually became a born-again Christian, but instead of attending the Pentecostal church in Ware Shoals, SC, where my mom did, the people he worked with invited him to church, and he went to the First Baptist Church. His sister complained, saying, “He needs to where we go.”   

  

My Pentecostal grandmother, Lida Lollis, said, “No. He needs to go where the Lord has sent him to. Just so he goes to church.” Dad had been an alcoholic, but he ends up at the First Baptist Church, a deacon and a Sunday School teacher down through the years.

  

When I was married and workin at Michelin, I’d go home, have supper, sit around a while, then I’d go out and walk a couple miles to get exercise. I was coming back in, and I looked across the street, and these two guys, my dad’s friends, were on the other side of the street, coming down through there. He had been their Sunday School teacher. They were walking along, talking. So they motioned for me to come over. So, I went over and said, “What’s going on?” 

  

They had changed pastors at the First Baptist Church, and they didn’t care too much for the new preacher. I said, “What y’all need is Dan Compton back.” He was the pastor there and had moved on, and he was a really good man and a good minister. And you know what those two guys said? They said, “We need Babb Lollis back, too.” My dad. That’s how much love and respect they had for their friend who’d been an alcoholic.   

  

The only thing on my dad’s mind had been going to the mill and working, going to the liquor store and drink to get drunk, go to bed at night, and then, get up the next morning and go back to work… We had very little. We lived off my mother’s little check she made by working in the textile mill. My dad would go with his check every Thursday to the liquor store and pay the liquor store off for the liquor that he had charged through the week, and what they handed him of what was left from that check was very little. So, basically, we lived off what my mother made. 

  

Dad woke me up one Sunday morning in my bedroom. I raised up and said, “What are you doing in my room?” He said, “I’m looking for a tie.” I said, “For what? You gonna hang yourself with it?” He said, “Naw. I’m going to church. There’s about three friends that I work with up there in the mill, and they stay on me all the time about going with them to church.” 

  

His mother lived right beside the Pentecostal church where she went. But he didn’t go there. He went to the First Baptist, where his friends went. Over a period of time, he become a Sunday School teacher; he become a deacon; and he was tremendously respected by those people. The only thing that bothered me about it was I wish he had done that when I was growing up because I would have done much better in life by having a good Christian father.

  

My dad became an example to us — me and two sisters. We became born-again Christians. My older sister Ann has passed away. Me and my sister, Varnell, are in church as often as we can be. And all of that come from my grandmother and her example to us all.