A special find on Mother’s Day:

As most know, my mother, Barbara Mccollum passed away in a house fire a couple of years ago and almost all of our family history was lost other than some partly damaged photos and a couple of burned instruments.
This Mother’s Day morning I was looking for a photo of my mom to place on my altar and I found something very special taped to the back of one of her baby pictures.
It was her actual Baby Ring which was placed on her hand when she was born! I have shared a picture of it here.
It was so tiny that I guess it simply escaped anyone’s notice all of these many years, but what a treasure for me to find on Mother’s Day!

My mother was an amazing woman and she led a full and amazing life. She was a movie star, (starting as Darla in the Little Rascals, and going on to be in 40 full length feature films.) Her girlfriend was Shirley Temple, and Clark Gable used to take her to football games. Howard Hughes tried dating her, and her boyfriend in High School was Joel Grey who played in Cabaret. She was a Hawaiian dance teacher for most of her life and was a fashion model as I was growing up, In Hawaii, she became a school bus driver.
She was a fantastic seamstress, and she made many of my clothes as I grew up, and she was the best cook I gave ever met!

My mom was 5′ 2″ tall and never weighed over 100 pounds, but she was a fierce protector of me and my two brothers. I remember the time that she took on a Hawaiian gang who were terrorizing my middle brother because he was white. And then there was the time when a disruptive 200 pound guy got on her school bus and started threatening the kids. When she intervened and he went to take a swing at her, she ducked and pushed him toward the bus door, and then when he was in position, she pushed the automatic door opener and literally kicked him out of the bus. After that, she became famous on Oahu as the “Blue Eyed Don’t Mess With Girl”.
Anyway, the stories about my mom could fill many books, but today I would simply like to acknowledge her and let her know that I miss her.
Mom,