Lenora Summers Church

Lenora "Nora" (Summers) Church

Today marks the anniversary of the death of one of my great-grandmothers, Lenora Susan (Summers) Church, who passed away on 07 July 1965.  In her later years, she stayed in the homes of her daughters, including my grandmother, Nellie (Church) Kuhn.  The only memories I have of Nora are from the time period when she stayed with Grandma.  We lived across the road from Grandma, so I was over there a lot - especially since Grandma's house was surrounded by maple trees that were great for climbing!

Grandma had set up a hospital bed in a first-floor bedroom that was in a front corner of her house - the corner that was closest to all of those maple trees.  Mom didn't want me to visit as much once Nora came, thinking that noise I (and sometimes my cousins) made would disturb Nora.  However, Nora told Grandma that she enjoyed hearing us kids and that there was no reason not to let us continue playing there.

The one thing that always stood out in my memories was that Nora wore her hair in a really long braid; one of those things that seemed so cool to me back then.  The other thing I remember is that she was "hard of hearing" - although I've since learned that her hearing improved considerably when something was going on that she didn't want to miss!

Nora had married Eli Church on 20 November 1896 in Calhoun County, West Virginia - but until I started researching family history many years ago, I never knew why I didn't remember my great-grandfather at all.  Turns out there were two reasons:  he died when I was only 2.5 years old, but prior to that he and Nora were divorced.

Nora never married again.  Even though she was very religious and read her Bible faithfully, she always said she would never go to heaven because she was divorced (as recalled by some of her grandchildren during the 1999 Church family reunion.)

Nora was buried in the Limestone Presbyterian Church Cemetery on Rt. 250 at Limestone, West Virginia.