Eunice Sarah Franklin born in Houston, Texas, 30 August 1913, Died 4 September 1998 in Chicago, Illinois.

I had the family over for dinner Christmas Eve, and I mentioned how when we were younger we would have Christmas brunch at grandma’s. She’d fix scrambled eggs, bacon, ham, grits, fried apples and biscuits. Didn’t matter if you didn’t like scrambled eggs, you ate what was put on your plate!
And all the food had to be eaten and the kitchen cleaned before anyone opened any gifts!
As my grandma got older the task of holiday gatherings fell to my mother, despite the fact that she was the middle daughter and now I am the matriarch of the family holiday dinners.

Grandma Eunice was a very talented woman, she was a tailor and a furrier. That woman could, would and did take newspaper or brown butcher paper and create a pattern in the morning, sew up a dress for herself to wear to a formal event in the evening! She was just that good! You better believe she would not walk into an event and see her dress on someone else!

She tried to teach all three of her daughters to sew but the only one who showed any skill or interest was my mother, who passed it on to me. Neither of my two sisters were interested.
Sometime between 1941 and 1942 Grandma Eunice moved from Galveston, Texas to Chicago. After a period of time she purchased a two flat on Chicago’s westside across the street from the Garfield Park Conservatory. She was a single parent providing a strong, secure home for her daughters and their families.