- My name is Marie.

I was born in Beckley, West Virginia, and we lived in Helen, West Virginia.

It was a very small coal camp.

I would say maybe 500 people lived there.

It wasn't a bad place to be brought up.

Of course, we didn't have much people back then, didn't have very much, but there was a store that was in the little town, and there was also a place where they kept the men that weren't married.

And that's how my dad met my mother.

My dad's name was Ernest.

He was always good to us children.

We always had food on the table and a roof over our head, so he took good care of us.

My mother's name was Christine Haga.

My mother was really a, a sweet person as I can remember, because by the time I was nine she had passed on.

I never had a picture of my mother and my dad together.

I did this with cutting my father off of another picture and putting him on here with my mom.

I had four brothers and two sisters, and I had one brother that was older than me and I was the oldest girl.

There was a lot of children that lived in that cold camp.

We had one school for grade school.

All the children in the coal camp and some of the other coal camps surround it, came to that school in the winter time, if we had snow on the ground, there was no way to get up the hill to the school.

The older boys would climb up to the top of the school and throw a rope over and pull all those little ones up.

It was a very small house, four bedrooms, and there was a lot of kids in your bed with you.

And we all slept in the same room, boys and girls.

The girls had to get dressed in a different place and you couldn't, there was just no way to take a bath unless she took a bath in a tub and there was no bathrooms.

The only thing that we had was a toilet, and that was on the porch.

There was three railroad tracks and you lived in between two of them.

So you can't imagine just how dirty it was.

And we had a bath every night, but she took bath and bath water.

Of course, somebody else had been in there before you.

It wasn't very good, can tell you that.

When I was nine, my mother passed away and we had to either be put in an orphanage where they were gonna separate us or somebody in the family would have to help with us.

My dad had decided that he didn't want us separated.

He asked my grandmother would she take us, and she told him she would if his sister, which was Aunt Glen would help her with us.

And she said yes.

So that's how we got down there to Tennessee.

Oh, my grandmother, she was a sweet little old lady.

She wasn't very big.

She wasn't any bigger than I am.

We all loved her to death because she was so good to us.

Everybody loved grandma.

Life with her was really good.

My grandmother's house was a very old farm home.

Her husband had passed on.

He was killed in a coal mines there in Saudi, Tennessee.

When we moved in with my grandmother, the girls lived on one side of the chimney and the boys lived on the other side of the chimney and that we all slept in one bed again.

But we made it.

The school that I went to when we moved in with my grandmother, when they called it bury school.

Lots of times if you miss a school bus, you better be prepared to walk to school, because my grandmother didn't believe in missing school.

If you took the long way round, you would've been walking about six or eight miles through the shortcut.

We walked about three miles and on the way, we had to pass through a barb wire fence, which had a bull in it.

And then after you got through the barbed wire fence where the bull was, there was moonshiners that you passed by and you'd be yelling at you.

The best memory was that I was there with all my cousins and all.

We always were close.

I mean, I whole big family, we all got along really good.

It was in 1950 that my grandmother's home burned down.

We were in the woods cutting wood, and we seen smoke coming from the house.

We knew there was a fire then, but there was nothing we could do it.

There was no way to get water to put it out because it was such a big house and we could, we ran to the house and my grandmother was already there and they was holding her to keep her from going in to get things out of it, but nothing we could do about it.

It just burned to the ground.

After her home burned down, my dad built another house back in its place.

After that, aunt Glenna had built her house in Saudi, they were in the process of building it.

Same time daddy built grandma's house back.

She took me in and I lived with her forever.

I guess I was a junior in high school.

And then that's when we moved back to West Virginia.

Oh, I cried.

I didn't wanna go back.

I really didn't.

But my dad insisted he didn't wanna separate him.

So I had to go to Mark Twain High School, and that was back at my senior year.

After I'd graduated from high school, I started working in a 10 cent store.

They call it five and dime.

Then I said, well, this is not for me.

So I went to college for a year and a half, and in the meantime, I had met this guy and we had a fling and got pregnant and he offered to marry me, but then he backed out of it.

I had a daughter.

I was 19 years old when I had her.

She was a sweet baby.

She was pretty baby and things just didn't work out.

So I decided I was gonna raise her on my own and I had to get away from where I was because there was nothing there.

That's when I left West Virginia again and came down to Hampton Roads.

When I first moved down here, I was staying with a couple that lived in Portsmouth, Virginia, and that's when I started working at Whataburger.

That was a very busy place too, believe me.

Pardon?

Yes, you agree.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Kept you busy all the time.

And that's when Bob came along and kept trying to get me to go out with, I was at the window.

I took the orders.

He kept coming back and every time he came back he would ask me, wanna go out with me tonight?

No.

Didn't wanna go out with him.

Didn't even know who he was or anything.

So I kept telling him no.

But he kept coming back until I finally said, okay, I will.

On my night off on our first date, eight, he said, we're gonna get married.

And I said, we're gonna do what?

And he said, yeah, we're gonna get married.

And I said, but I don't know you.

He had told me his name was Stanley Fal Binder.

And then I said, no, it, it can't be your name.

And he said, no, it's Bob Jones.

And I said, no, that's not right either.

So I didn't believe him.

He, he had me food, but then he had to show me his driver's license.

So I believe it.

And it was about two weeks, I think, before we got married.

Each of us had to wait until we got paid.

We didn't have enough money to get married on until we got paid.

That's what he looked like when I met him, like a little boy.

He was so young.

We both were the house on Winchester Drive.

We lived there for 28 years.

This is me and my four children.

Verna the oldest, then it was Annette, then Linda, then Robert was last.

When the kids do things, you know, if they broke something or I knew it was an accident, you know, I never got upset or excited about it.

Worldly things don't mean nothing.

I'd rather have them happy than me be mad at 'em and yelling and screaming.

Where is this?

Over at Virginia Beach.

We used to take the kids over there and let 'em play.

I like go swimming.

I love to play softball.

This was at ETT when this picture was taken.

I worked at ETT for 25 years.

My clock number was 1 1 3.

I was the hundred and 13th person hired at that plant at the time.

They opened it up.

One of my friends made this poster up and had it planted all over the whole plant where everybody got a good laugh out of it.

Frequent Hardee's fast food restaurant for the senior citizen discount, throwing my PE cans at no cars.

They cost cost too much.

That was when we went to Minnesota and I crawled up in the court.

He said, get up there.

I'll take a picture of you driving the moose.

This was a camping trip that we took and he, he wasn't too happy about that.

Why?

Because it was, he hated going camping.

He didn't like outdoors.

Yeah.

This was, this was a tractor that we had bought.

It lost its wheels and we had to put 'em back on.

But that old tractor was a good one.

This was 41 years ago that we took this trip overseas and we did a fast trip to Germany, Italy, Spain, and France.

That was his dream of having a Corvette.

I don't know why, but because it drove like a tank.

It was a pretty car, but the only time I ever drove it was when I had to, I had a lot of happys.

He taught me a lot.

I would never have learned how to do things on my own if it hadn't been for him.

We always worked together on everything.

It didn't matter what it was.

He had a motor to apart.

I was right in the middle of it.

Helping him put it back together, tearing it up, tearing it down, didn't make any difference.

I know he loved me and I loved Jim.

We had a good life.

We were married 63 years.

I had it.

It's hard living without him, that's for sure.

- Jones just miss him so much.

- I, I know we all have to die someday, but that shouldn't have been his day.

He was my everything.

You know, I can remember after my mother died, I wasn't hugged and kissed and loved and, and according to him, neither was he when his dad remarried.

And I guess that's why we loved each other so much because neither one of us had love shown to us as we were growing.

Our love was so strong for each other.

Always made him pay for when I'm make him something to eat and bring it to him.

We'd be out on the porch and he'd say, can you make me a sandwich?

And I'd say, sure.

And I'd go make a sandwich.

I said, but you gotta pay for it.

He'd say, how?

I'd say with a kiss.

Of course, most people don't think about life asking you buy, but it does.

They don't stop and think anymore.

Everything is go, go, go or do, do, do or something.

But they don't know to slow down and enjoy it if you don't enjoy it while you're here.

Believe me, it's, it's hard when it's gone.

I am not afraid to die.

And I don't know how our other, other life will be.

I don't know if there is another life after death.

I just hope so.

And I hope that he's waiting on me.

- Oh, - What makes me happy is to be around family.

We've - Got my look.

You.

That's cool.

He does.

He looks good.

- He's a pretty dinosaur.

My children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren.

I live for them.

That's my whole purpose is for my family.

Hey little man, she washed.

Hey little man, look.

Got a bath.

I sure was.

I come to see that little man.

Don't you go sleep on me.

You gotta talk to me something.

You never know what tomorrow brings.

So you just live each day at a time.

- What is it?

Yeah.

He had a - Live a good life.

Be, be loved and loved.

Do you have any regrets?

None at all.

None whatsoever.

No, I don't.

I never regretted a minute of any of our life.

Never - Watch - Me, - Gigi.

Yay.