'Baby Grandma' starts new list

With 10 children, 140 grandchildren and more, it's time to get ready for next Christmas

Marvel Hickson, nicknamed Baby Grandma by her many grandchildren, with her dog Buddy, sat in her daughter Vicky’ Graves cozy kitchen on Friday.

Marvel Hickson, nicknamed Baby Grandma by her many grandchildren, with her dog Buddy, sat in her daughter Vicky’ Graves cozy kitchen on Friday.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

— Marvel Hickson, nicknamed Baby Grandma by her many real and adopted grandchildren, may have had the longest Christmas list in Decatur.

The 82-year-old mother of 10 children and grandmother of 140 uses an Excel spreadsheet to make sure everyone in her family receives a Christmas gift and a birthday phone call each year. She has a total of 64 grandchildren, 68 greatgrandchildren - plus one on the way - and seven great-great-grandchildren. And those are just the children that were born into the family.

Over the years, Hickson has welcomed many more people into her home and embraced them as family

“We’ve had to get used to sharing her with people,” said her daughter Becky Arnold.

“If somebody didn’t have a place to go for a holiday, they came to her house,” added her daughter Vicky Graves.

No one is sure exactly where the nickname Baby Grandma came from, but it has spread far and wide. During the years Hickson worked for the Decatur School District in the cafeteria and middle school office, she became known to all the school children as Baby Grandma. Whenher grandchildren came through the cafeteria line, they would call her Baby Grandma. Their friends started calling her Baby Grandma until she became known by that nickname to all the students.

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Young Marvel Hickson

“She’s like a celebrity when you go to town with her,” Arnold said.

The petite woman with a warm smile looks much younger than her 82 years. A busy life filled with love has kept a youthful spark in her kind eyes.

Large families are a tradition and have remained a tradition in the Hickson family. Hickson, whose maiden name was Ronfeldt, grew up in a family of six children, three boys and three girls.

After World War II, Hickson played in a band with her father and siblings, performing for local dances. At one dance, a young soldier named Lester Hickson, who had just returned from the war, stuck his picture in her pocket while she was playing the fiddle.

“I didn’t even look at it until later when we got home,” she said.

The soldier kept coming back to the dances and once, at a box lunch social - similar to a pie auction - paid an unheard of sum of $80 for the lunch she and her mother packed. Lester and Marvel married two years later, in 1947. Their union would last for nearly 50 years, until Lesterpassed away a few months shy of their golden anniversary.

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Hickson Family

Many mothers, with only a few children, are run ragged caring for their charges, but Hickson said she never remembers having any trouble.

“I don’t ever remember having a problem. Back then it wasn’t nearly as hard. We all lived on the farm and the older ones helped with the younger ones,” she said, explaining that her mother lived nearby and always kept the children when she was in the hospital delivering a baby and that her mother-in-law sometimes came to help afterwards.

“Mom never lost her cool,” recalled Graves, even when her little brothers came home covered up to the eyeballs in mud or brought a pony into the bathroom.

“I might have sent them outside, but that was about it,” Hickson said.

The family lived in Iowa and Hickson would take all the boys and work in the bean fields or pick up corn left behind by the combine. Arnold said she once saw her mother repair a combine by replacing a broken link in the chain with her hairpin. The repair worked and the hairpin was still holding the chain together when the family sold the machine years later.

“My memories of my mom were that she wasalways working - cooking, canning or doing laundry,” said Graves.

Arnold remembers getting off the bus and smelling her mother’s home cooking and how hard it was to wait until her father got home to eat supper.

“All five of us girls have always said we want to be the kind of mom our mom was,” said Graves.

“I’ve always said I want to be half the woman my mom was," Hickson added. "If I could be just half the woman she was, I knew I’d be all right. My mom was special.”

Hickson’s children grew up and eventually the family migrated to Arkansas. Six of her children live within a five-to-six-mile radius of her home in Decatur, and one year a total of 13 of her grandchildren were attending Decatur Schools. In addition to those who live locally, Hickson’s grandchildren are spread over the world, living in six states as well as England and Japan.

With so many on her Christmas list, Hickson starts making Christmas presents for the following year the day after Christmas. It takes a pickuptruck-load of fabric and sewing supplies to complete all the gifts, Arnold said. This year she gave all her married daughters and granddaughters the recipe for her home-made chicken noodle soup, alongwith homemade aprons and rolling pins.

She always makes sure to call her children and grandchildren on their birthdays and sings them Happy Birthday over the phone.

Having such a large and close-knit family has its advantages. When one family member faces a tragedy or challenge, the others are there to pull them through. When Hickson suffered a severe illness and landed in the hospital a few years ago, it was the support of her children and grandchildren that pulled her through.

“It’s my family that keeps me going,” she said.

News, Pages 2 on 01/11/2012