April was also the month we lost my mother, Alice Elsie Welch Collins. She died April 15, 2018 at age 98.
Mom was born August 22, 1919 in Grand Parish, Louisiana, the tenth child of John Ira (John) and Ardella (Della) Waits Welch. She was living in Monticello, LA at the time of the disaster known as the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. The river reached a width of sixty miles. Her father died in August 1933 when she was just fourteen. The family broke apart, and she moved to Memphis to live with relatives. That is where she met and eventually married my dad, Marion Collins, in 1937. With mom’s help, I published her story, My Journey, in 2009. To view a digital copy select the button below. In My Journey, she wrote the following:
We shared our home with many folks along the way and always made room for anyone needing a lift in life. The Lord gets the praise for the blessings he has given us…The Journey has been a long one and although we have had a few bumps along the way, we made it and now we are almost there.
She, like my dad, are greatly missed, but her journey did not end. It continues through her four children, thirteen grandchildren, many great grandchildren, nephews, nieces, and others whose life she touched.
