1931-2024
Mama’s Last Dance
Truth be told, Frances Macy never did dance. She left all the fox-trotting, tennis clubbing, bible thumping and tall tale tellin’ to her flamboyant sweetheart of over 80 years. Patiently standing in the wings, Frances persevered, or at least preferred an apron, an artist pallet or a flat of impatiens over Phil’s stage lights.
Still, Frances was the keeper of an indomitable spirit and a few secrets. She could hoe to the end of the row and sought beauty in every corner of her tiny world. Equal parts feminist, environmentalist, transcendentalist - words not yet fashionable when she was quietly excelling as a mid-century coed at Edmond, Oklahoma’s Central State College. There she readily nailed two degrees in 3 years, did most of Phil’s homework and still graduated with honors and money in the bank. Her daughters will attest that she alone insisted that they could do and be anything imaginable – even while raising them during an era still considered to be a Man’s World. Frances found God in nature and was moved to protect the small patch of whatever ground she claimed. Making any setting more beautiful and inviting, she was a Master Gardener and folk artist who could readily transform a modest space with a fresh can of green spray paint and a Boston fern. Her gardens became legend and magazine fodder. As a seamstress, she won awards fashioning designer frocks for her little sister’s Best Dress Collegiate competition for a National Magazine. Her acrylic landscape masterpieces won prizes and stole hearts.
Frances Nell Miller Macy was born on February 18, 1931, and christened Helen Pauline, (to the ever-indecisive Lois Miller and her tenant cotton farming husband/ rural league baseball hero, Arley Miller) in dust bowl Oklahoma – on the coldest day of the year. Helen was a name never used and instead she was called Frances. Therefore, 18 years hence, Frances had to officially change her proper name at the state capital building prior to filing a marriage certificate. The eldest of three daughters became the designated straw boss during cotton harvest, reading tutor for younger siblings, Gloria and Virginia, and able farm hand betwixt. At 96 lbs. soaking wet, Frances designed her own ball gown when crowned ’48 Crescent Tiger Football Queen and then borrowed $300 from her uncle to attend college the following autumn. Only then did she enjoy modern conveniences like indoor plumbing and electricity. She would be the first of her clan to go beyond 8th grade and she notably won a scholarship to attend prestigious girls’ school, Smith College in Massachusetts but couldn’t scrap together the money to travel so far from her humble Okie roots.
Married for 73 years, Phil and Frances Macy figured out early on that two were better’n one against the bleak odds of rural Oklahoma. That and both being children of alcoholic fathers and hell-for-stout mothers, they were two drifters, off to see the world, circa 1951.
The couple did a 7-year tour of duty in California where Frances finally learned to drive out of necessity while Phil was sailing the high seas as an officer on US Naval carrier ships. After relocating to St. Louis in 1961, Frances became an awarding-winning educator, while keeping a spotless home to entertain many church friends.
In 2006 Frances was honored as Crescent’s Distinguished Alumnus. Still, she never learned how to ride a bicycle, ski down a mountain, dance a waltz or use a typewriter. She preferred reading Pulitzer Prize winning books, donning Clairol home hair dye, and planning their family road trips to State Parks and historic Battle grounds. Always the scholar, she would read aloud from The Oxford History of the American People as they careened ‘cross America in a second-hand Cadillac De Ville. In later years, the generous backseat also held a young prodigious banjo picker and her sister, thumping on her big-belly twelve string.
Frances changed lives in First Grade classrooms, Methodist Church basements and on Logan County farmsteads. In our mind, she’ll always be the reason God made Oklahoma. At sunrise, Friday, November 29, her two daughters opened the bedroom window, and she finally flew.
Her direct legacy includes Robin and Amy Macy, granddaughters Miller Mae and Emma Joella Tennant, Sisters Virginia Miller Reeves and Gloria Adams.