To Destroy or Protect: Statues and Monuments
And the argument for the importance of historical preservation
My grandmother was a sweet Cherokee woman whose height I had matched, for sure, by the time I was 11 years old. She was born into Oklahoma poverty, just 15 years after statehood. She spent time in Indian boarding schools where she learned to speak fluent English and behave like a proper lady, skills that would become increasingly valuable as the former Indian Territory was taken over by the white world and white ways.
The amazing thing about my grandma was if she had an agenda you wouldn’t have known it. She was soft-spoken and her smiles were abundant. We lost her in 1987, but her lessons have not been forgotten.
Grandma kept a Bible, which served double duty to preserve our family history. She bought it in the mid-1950s from a door to door salesman. In the middle of its black leatherette encased pages are designated spaces for notes, military records, births, marriages, etc., and she kept up with all that and more. There are short diary entries of her children’s milestone’s and achievements, as well as entries regarding her grandchildren’s births and illnesses.
Kept between pages in the Book of John is a piece of paper that is falling to bits, and in her purposefully pretty cursive handwriting it reads: “To Whom it may…
