Day 47: In 1979...

"...at the age of 80, Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux began to write the story of her life. She wrote innocent tales of her past, tales of her grandmother and of a distant Aunt Clara who chewed tobacco and could spit in a cat’s eye.
Every morning she went into the kitchen of her white two-bedroom house in Manhattan, Kansas, where she had raised eight children. She sat down at the table and, aided by scrapbooks, letters and photographs, she wrote. Day after day, week after week, she wrote in longhand the story of her life, noting down the watershed events: births, deaths, one marriage, three wars, one flood, as well as the things that just struck her fancy, like the first time she saw Lawrence Welk. Having told the events of her life, she began then to write about the world that she never spoke of. Her feelings and thoughts.
Jessie Lee wrote all of this for a teacher, Charley Kempthorne, at his Harvest of Age, a program for senior citizens. Her writings were published by the local college and entitled The Life of Jessie Lee Brown From Birth Up to 80 Years. About 30 copies were printed for her family and friends. That was 20 years ago. Family, friends, and strangers are still reading her 208-page book now entitled Any Given Day: The Life and Times of Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux: A Memoir of Twentieth Century America [Warner Books, 1997].
Since writing her first memoir, Jessie Lee has written two more books. The latest, Granny’s Ramblings of This and That Two, was published in 1993. That year she wrote to the teacher who encouraged her to tell her story, “Thank you so much for not giving up on me,” she wrote. “I am not a writer, but my poor efforts have made a great difference in my life.”
If Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux isn’t a writer, who is? Everyone’s life is a book. Jessie Lee told her story. And Warner bought her story for one million dollars."

In the age of 80! And it's in Manhattan, Kansas! What a co-incidence!

Now that's persistence, keeping hope, and optimism!

Some more revisions:

http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1655035-An-endless-failing-pursuit-temp-title1

Don't forget my other short story:
http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1567145-Prince-Vingo-Imperfect-love

53 days...