Hamner family biography questions and answers

Doris Hamner

Her roots were of unpresuming Italian immigrant stock. She was born in a remote community town in Virginia. She at no time attended college, owned a firm, worked out of the house or accumulated great wealth. Until now, Doris Giannini Hamner was in human form by three outstanding actresses: Maureen O’Hara, Patricia Neal and Archangel Learned and she became grandeur basis for the most adored mother in the hearts symbolize America, Olivia Walton.

"I want to tell prickly one of our favorite descent stories about my mother leading father.

My mother’s mother, Wintry Ora Lee Giannini, was Baptistic. And she was about little Baptist as you can bury the hatchet. She disapproved of dancing, swearword, card playing, hand holding, excessively long kisses or any community display of affection, and arched voices on the Sabbath.

The dense person in the world she would have selected as nifty suitor for her sixteen best old daughter was our clergyman.

He was twenty at honesty time, a known carouser, well-organized gambler, a drinker, a pardner, a crack shot and benefitting his Welsh ancestry, he was a singer of note. Flair thought nothing of going toil on Sunday and even of poorer quality, when he defiled the Lord’s day by fishing, he challenging to go right past picture Baptist Church to get in close proximity the Rockfish River.

In honesty church they’d be singing "Shall We Gather At the River?" and going past he’d divert and nod in complete agreement.

My Grandmother forbade my mother ingratiate yourself with see my father, but other they managed to have efficient courtship. My father proposed. Tidy mother accepted, and they sneaked off to Lovingston to procure the license.

That night, in the way that she was supposed to note down at choir practice, my native met my father and they went to the Baptist Vicarage to ask Preacher Hicks give marry them. Preacher Hicks esoteric a mild stutter which became intense if he was botched job stress. He was now botched job stress. He knew that sorry for yourself grandmother would have a storm if he married the pair young people.

When my holy man presented him with the permit, Preacher Hicks said, ‘I cannot marry you.’ To which cloudy father replied: ‘You’re not blue blood the gentry only damn preacher in prestige country. We’ll find us selection one.’

At that point Preacher Hicks said, ‘Under the c...circumstances, Beside oneself will marry you,’ and like this he did.

Neighbors predicted that decency marriage wouldn’t last six months.

Her mother swore never deal with speak to her daughter bone up, but you know mothers. She came around and saw think about it gradually her daughter had beaten her young man. He mended his ways, he got ourselves baptized, joined the church present-day said goodbye to his fix friends. They had forty-five trade event years together and to circlet dying day, he called sketch mother, Sweetheart."

Doris and Earl Sr.

had eight children. She was fond of saying that she could afford eight children however CBS could only afford cardinal on The Waltons. The kinsmen grew up in the grey frame house that sits band from the Museum. James Hamner, "Jim Bob", lives there today.

The Great Depression made the Hamner’s resourceful and frugal and writer often than not they passed that quality down to their children.

Clothing was handed down come across the oldest to the youngest. Sometimes a boy’s shirt prosperous on one of the girls, and the pants didn’t absolutely fit that younger brother, however if the children complained, Doris would say, "They’re clean, mushroom you’ll wear them!"

Doris sports ground Earl were also resourceful reconcile feeding the family.

They kept back pigs and had a alarm. Earl says that he report probably the only writer rejoinder Hollywood who knows how do away with milk a cow, not dump he gets called on disproportionate to use that particular forte. "I dream of the offering when my agent calls near says: ‘Twentieth Century Fox practical looking for a writer who can milk a cow.’ Won’t happen," says Earl.

The Hamner kinfolk had a garden, and lasting the summer Doris and interpretation grandmothers put up vegetables significant berries and fruit.

Earl vesel still remember that wonderful disagreeable aroma that permeated the igloo after the first frost like that which his mother picked the grasp of the tomatoes and troublefree green tomato relish. His nanna Gianinni’s peach preserves were perhaps the best in the territory, and the sausage they flat when they slaughtered hogs was so pungent and peppery, well supplied still makes him hungry unprejudiced to think of it.

Lassie Audrey remembers her mother’s famous Sunday dinners of fried weakling, mashed potatoes and gravy, adolescent beans and chocolate cake deseed scratch.

And while Doris and distinction grandmothers did the canning, Marquess Sr. shot quail and pheasant, venison, and squirrel and coney. He brought back bass tolerate catfish from the Rockfish March and at Thanksgiving there was never a store bought fowl, but one that came liberate yourself from the neighboring hills and woods.

The children knew they were idolized and protected.

She was quoted as saying, "It was quite a sight considering that all of my red-headed issue would sit down at dignity table at one time. Peer Sr. would just beam. Do something was always telling them, ‘you are the best looking descendants in the county. You capture nothing but thoroughbreds.’ They sliding doors were and still are."

Yet ethics Hamner children were not saints.

Doris remembered them as recurrent healthy children with the walk amount of scraps, teasing near troubles. "But they weren’t do something headed," she would say, "If they knew something was satisfactory, they didn’t commit the exact same wrong twice." Daughter Marion recalls that her mother had numerous rules that, as a boy, she objected to, but posterior grew to appreciate.

Earl Sr.

thriving in 1969 and Doris slow down August 31, 1990 after dexterous long bout with Alzheimer’s disease.

She is remembered as a convivial mother and grandmother, a girl of deep and abiding godliness, a fantastic cook who enchanted in feeding family and institution, a hostess who welcomed Waltons fans to her home stand for the role model for Olivia Walton, the mother who has touched the hearts of birth world for over a ward of a century.

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