Author’s book looks at a past era

By WAYNE QUESENBERRY/Staff

As a child in Bland County more than 60 years ago, Geraldine Lambert Coffman learned how to preserve food for the long winter months. Today, she is carefully storing her memories of that bygone era on the pages of a book for all time.
“Growing up Poor, But Richly Blessed” is Coffman’s account of her childhood in the 1940s and 1950s. It details life on the farm and such rural activities as church, school, family visits, holiday celebrations, hog killing, apple butter making and clothes washing.
“The idea was plotted when my children were small,” noted Coffman, a retired registered nurse now living in Williamsburg, “and they’d ask me what it was like growing up on the farm. I got to thinking that when my generation was gone the younger generation wouldn’t know what it was like then.”
Coffman describes life in a time without electricity, indoor plumbing, tap water and many other amenities considered necessities today. She also provides many more details of a simplistic yet difficult era.
“Life was so different back then,” Coffman pointed out. “My feelings are ambivalent. A part of me is saddened that people won’t share these experiences but the other part of me is joyful at knowing they don’t have to experience them.”
In the early 1990s, Coffman began jotting down memories as they came to her. She retired from Eastern State Hospital in 2001 and became more serious about the project.
“I’d worked on it for about 10 years in bits and pieces,” Coffman stated. “I’d be in church or somewhere else and something would jog my memory. I’d jot it down.”
Working from her notes for a year and a half, Coffman typed them all into story form and saved them on a disc. She revised them and had her sister to proof read them before submitting the finished product to Campbell Copy Company in Harrisonburg for publication.
“I don’t call it a book,” remarked Coffman, “because chapter doesn’t follow chapter but it contains many small stories about growing up on the farm in Bland County.”
“Growing up Poor, But Richly Blessed” was written in memory of her parents, Luke Sheridan and Ruby Farmer Lambert. It was dedicated to their descendants.
The initial 100 copies of Coffman’s memoirs quickly sold and a second printing was ordered. Word of mouth was her only advertisement and copies are only available from the author for $8 plus $2.50 postage.
Coffman’s mailing address is 707 Adams Road, Williamsburg, VA 23185-5201. Her e-mail address is .
“I’m not making a profit off the books,” Coffman said. “I sell them for what it cost me to have them printed.”
Following the success of her first book, Coffman has a second one at the printer’s now. She titled it “Precious Memories, How They Linger” which is a continuation of her experiences plus remembrances from her siblings, nieces and nephews.
Coffman has one brother, Luke S. Lambert of Wytheville; and two sisters, Janice Lambert Rhodes and Joyce Lambert Call.
“I was a little more organized on the second one,” Coffman commented. “I had a composition book that I wrote everything in. This book is a little more expensive because I have more color pictures in it.”
Coffman’s next project will be a children’s book about the experience of children visiting their grandparents on the farm. It will include such adventures as gathering eggs, feeding the chickens and shelling corn.
“It’s based on us taking our children to visit my parents,” she pointed out.
Writing her memoirs has provided Coffman with lots of time to reflect on her childhood. It has given her valuable insight.
“As I look back on my younger life, I don’t think that we grew up poor,” Coffman added. “We were economically deprived because money was scarce but we weren’t poor. Poor is a state of mind. You are only poor if you think you are and when we were growing up we didn’t know any different. We had loving parents and I was richly blessed.”
Wayne Quesenberry can be reached at 1-800-655-1406 or .