Jim Carney's Mother's Day tribute to his mom

Beacon Journal reporter Jim Carney posted this Mother's Day tribute to his mom on his Facebook page:

A few words about my Mom.

Her name officially was Willie Madge Slate. She was born in AprIl 1922 in Honaker, Virginia. Her Dad died when she was seven and the family was split apart with brothers Carl, Ralph and Brack going to live with an uncle in Maryland, her little brother living with Uncle Dot Slate, and she and her sister Gladys living with their mother, Sophia Slate.

She went to nursing school in nearby Bluefield (West Virginia), and joined the Army as a nurse, where she met my Dad, Bill. They married and had three kids -- Patsy,  Ralph and me.

Willie Slate Carney

She was a funny woman who had a terrific laugh. She stayed home with the kids till 1966 when she went back to work at Rockynol. She was great at basketball and cooking things like Swiss steak and liver and onions. She liked to have a smoke and a Scotch and water and sweet tea on the front stoop in the summer.

She cried at John Denver's “Country Roads” and wrote poetry when no one was around. She and my Dad would get weepy after a few drinks when their kids were all gone as they listened to Randy Newman on vinyl.

She loved her grandsons and had a special drawer where she kept her candy for them. She had a faulty thermostat and fans on all summer, even while the AC was running. She didn’t learn to drive till she was past 40. She loved her soaps when we were kids and made us lunch every day when we walked home from King School. She loved looking at birds and babysitting her little grandsons.

She was devastated when Patsy was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and died two years and two months before Patsy in February 1995.

As time has passed, the joy of her love and presence has only grown, even as memories fade. I plan to listen to “Country Roads” on the way to the cemetery today.

God bless all mothers of all time.

“Country Roads” has become the unofficial state song of West Virginia. It is sung in Mountaineer Field and elsewhere after every West Virginia University sports victory. Transplanted West Virginians sing it in bars all over this country.

The city council of Bluefield, West Virginia, where Jim’s mom went to nursing school, is leading a push to make “Country Roads” the fourth official state song, joining “The West Virginia Hills” by Ellen Ruddell King and Henry Everett Engle in 1885, “West Virginia, My Home Sweet Home” by Col. Julian G. Hearne, Jr. in 1947 and “This Is My West Virginia” by Iris Bell in 1962.