Peggy Head turns 90

Peggy Head has built many memories during her nine decades on earth. I have known her for about half of those years. With retirement we have shared events and excursions. One of our first excursions took us east to Jerome and Rohr where Peggy lived as a child on the cusp of World War II. Together we visited the fields that were once filled with the barracks of the Japanese Internment Camps. As we traveled, I learned that she met her husband, Wilbur Head, on a blind date during the years she studied to become a nurse.“We dated a long time before we married. The nursing school did not want us to be married before we graduated,” she said. They married in 1955. A year and half later he was shot when he went to get gas. The bullet went through the trunk of the car into his back. “It was a gun the size used to kill elephants,” she recalled.Wilbur, a former Marine, went to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Little Rock. She stayed in a room and got a job at Baptist Hospital so she could visit him every day. “He was there for six months. We realized he could not return to the house where we lived. It had steps. He was paralyzed and in a wheelchair. Wilbur asked his daddy if he could have half an acre to build a house. His daddy agreed. We got insurance money for the loss of his legs.”“We got our little house built. The Ellen brothers did our house. They had an electrical business. One of them asked Wilbur if he could do repairs. They hired him to do small repairs. Ladies brought him their toasters, coffee pots and purses, and he repaired them. Wilbur worked there fixing things for every woman in El Dorado,” she laughed.Now when something breaks, Peggy thinks, “Wilbur could have fixed it, but now I have to buy another one.”After Wilbur returned from the hospital, Peggy said, “I decided I wanted a baby. I just loved little babies. I asked a doctor at the hospital, ‘Do you have anyone who is willing to give up a baby? I sure would like to have a baby.’”“Sure enough we had a baby. I took him home when he was four days old. We paid the hospital and doctor fees, and, of course, the lawyer fees. That night, I had about fifty people come to the house to see him.”“Whenever Scott was three years-old. I asked the doctor again if he had another mom who wanted to give away her baby. “The doctor took the baby to his office, and I picked him up there. I didn’t tell anyone that I had adopted him that day. I didn’t want that many to come and see the baby.”The two boys mostly grew up in the little house next to Wilbur’s parents. “Mrs. Head was a big help. She would keep them when I was at work. I took some time off at first, but not a lot. We had to pay for the house. They were good babies,” she said.The Heads had 46 years together before Wilbur passed. Through the years they attended church riding in Wilbur’s specially fitted van.One Sunday Joe Williams, a church elder at Marrable Hill Chapel, asked Peggy to be the nurse at Victory Bible Camp because the one scheduled could not make it. Peggy agreed. “That afternoon I came home, trimmed all of my shrubs, fixed food for Wilbur to eat and left for camp.” She served as a camp nurse for many years.So many things to remember from 90 years. We hope you have many more, Peggy.