Community Heroes Series
From the September 2003 issue of Alabama Living magazine

At what age does a person know that they are meant to share words, to write thoughts and feelings down for public consumption? For LaVale Kennedy Mills it began when she was a child. "Before I could read and write I wanted to be read to, and at about the time I learned to read, I knew that someday I wanted to be the one who put those words together," said Mills.
Such is the way it goes for many creative types. Sure, it sounds like a cliché, but it's true. Talk with an artist, a writer, or a career artisan of any type, and you're likely to hear the same thing. The interest and the creative spark was there all along.
According to LaVale - and I will refer to her by her familiar name because to do so expresses her affability and the way she makes you feel that you've known her for years - she came from a family of journal-keepers, and to journal her thoughts and feelings and experiences was a natural occurrence.
"My grandmother Kennedy wrote poetry and my grandfather Kennedy had notebooks and journals that were filled with words and experiences. My mother, Estelle Kennedy, also journals. It's all in my family; it's just something we do. We just like words, I guess," she said, smiling. And how glad we are that she does.

Today a vast majority of people journal without successfully having their writings published. Of course it goes without saying that for some there is no desire to be published. They simply journal for their own enjoyment. In the online communities, there is now a popular way to journal called blogs or blogging where Internet users can read the journals or diaries of people who are willing to share their lives on the World Wide Web. If we ponder the fact that there are innumerable people like Ann Franks, the young victim of a world gone mad during World War II, whose journal would someday come to mean so much to so many people, we can’t help but see the value of stringing words together.
Ann once wrote, “Sometimes I very much doubt whether in the future anyone will be interested in all my tosh.”
But if not for the sharing of our human-ity with others, we would not be as enriched and compassionate as people.
There is something time honored about the printed word that sets it apart from all the rest. It is a testament to our existence and a way to share our experiences or ideas with others. So, while some prefer to hold their writings close, many more have the same desire that prompted LaVale to share with the world her touching and humorous life perspectives. From others we find commonality and we know we’re not alone, Hopefully we also learn a little along the way! This is a tale of a journey from the desire to share to the achievement of print... Here is LaVale’s story.

The journey to journaling
Growing up in the Hamilton area and attending Hamilton High School, LaVale, as many of our communities homegrown populace can attest, had the great fortune of taking English classes with two of our area's most renown English teachers, Mrs. Gladys Jennings and Mrs. Ruth Palmer. It is doubtful that anyone born and reared in the Hamilton area does not know of these two ladies and their ability to bring out the very best in their students. They have inspired and directed far too many to count. They put a spark where none existed and have encouraged those with a love for the language arts to reach for the stars. Such was the case with LaVale.
"Mrs. Jennings would encourage me by saying that I really had a way with words. Those compliments and encouragements from her would just thrill me to death… and Mrs. Palmer, well, there's just not enough words to describe how encouraging she was to me" said LaVale.
"But as a grown woman I have to say that the most influential person in my life and someone that must go at the top of this list is my husband, Ruble. First of all he's just so proud that I write, and he encouraged me to reach for those stars that Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Palmer had hinted about all those years ago," LaVale continued. "I am blessed to have him.”
But LaVale hid the yearnings she had for writing and journaling for many years.
“For ten years I worked as a teacher’s aide in Marion County. Although I loved the student’s I often found myself a bit stressed. I went to a doctor, and he told me I needed to pick up a hobby of some sort as a stress reliever. So rather than knitting or crocheting I picked up a journal and started to write.”
The first story LaVale wrote was about the 1950’s TV show, Howdy-Doody. One evening in1983 as she was preparing dinner she heard the TV on in the room where her family was gathered.

It was a show about the great classics of early TV, and as she walked through the room, she heard a boisterous voice ask, “What time is it, boys and girls?!” The next thing she knew she was shouting, “It’s Howdy-Doody Time!” It was then that she was flung back to a time when she was six years old and would sit daily in the waiting room of a large hospital while her father took treatments for leukemia “He was sick for three years and that could have been a miserable time for me, but my parents did a marvelous job of keeping the hurt away. They made sure that I got to watch Howdy each day, and we all laughed a lot over that show. “I hadn’t thought of it in many years, but after that moment in 1983, the memories were all there with me again,” she reminised.
In fact, her first story was titled, It’s Howdy-Doody Time, and she wrote of her father through the eyes of that six-year-old child.
n 1986 a friend of LaVale’s, Royce Cayson, took the “Howdy” story to the Itawamba County Times where publisher, Rubye Del Harden and Editor, Lisa Gray, read it afterwhich they hired her to write a weekly column for the paper. Shortly thereafter she was asked to consider a career change and work for them full time. “I went home to pray. The next morning I decided to resign as a teacher’s aide and work for the paper. That was the second best decision I ever made. The first best decision I ever made was marrying Ruble,” she smiled.

It’s Pub-li-ca-tion Time!
When Lavale went to work for the Itamwamba Times in 1986, she told her husband that if by 1990 she was still working there that she was going to put all of her columns into a book.
In 1990 Ruble asked if she was still going to do it. “Do what, I asked him,” she chuckled. He reminded her of what she had said back in 1986 and encouraged her to put her columns into a book. “I mentioned how much that would cost, and Ruble, who is a man of few words said, "Well, I guess you've just got to figure out how much a dream is worth." Profound.
With the support and encouragment of her family and friends LaVale gathered her weekly Sunny Side Up columns (whose title was influenced by her dad’s favorite way to eat his eggs) and took them to a local printer. Her first book, Peach Orchard Revival, was hot off the presses in 1990 and ready to meet her public. Having published them herself meant having to sell and promote them as well. “The day the book came out was National Library Week and over 120 people came to the library in Fulton, Mississippi to meet me,” she said. “The communities were all supportive and many held book signings, teas, and speaking engagements to publicize the book”, she recalled.
Peach Orchard Revival pays homage to the simple joys and small, but humorous incidents of her family’s daily lives and as LaVale is quick to point out, if you have made her happy, then she’s probably written about you at one time or another. “I don't deal with controversy and bad times in my life because that would not be uplifting. I am an optimist with a big old pair of rose-colored glasses and that's the way I deal with life and the way I share with others,” she said frankly.

Confessions...
LaVale’s readers often identify with the topics she writes about. One particular column outlined her experience on a riding lawn mower, which she wrote in fairy-tale style, called Once Upon A Riding Lawn mower. It chronicled the time her husband wanted to teach her to use the riding lawn mower. “I didn't really care to learn,” she said with a wink, “but he teased me to get on, assuring me that there was nothing to it, as long as there is not a drastic shift in weight! Well, you see, I’m a big girl, and no matter how I sat on that thing there was gonna be a shift in weight! It was a catrastrophe waiting to happen,” she laughed. “I went into the house, after I had mowed down our rose bushes and declared that once upon a riding lawn mower was enough...and the story was born!”
Lavale’s second book, Confessions of a Smother Mother, came out in 1996, and like Peach Orchard Revival it too sold out.
Revival was such a success that it was adapted for the stage and presented in various local theatres in several counties.

So what’s cooking next?
Lavale is currently working on a cookbook/storybook entitled Cooking Up a Story, which will feature recipes from friends and family and the stories behind them. Let’s just hope this fairytale cookbook doesn’t feature sauteed frog-legs!
As for her general occupation, LaVale was promoted to Publisher of the Red Bay News in 1993 and has been with Harden Publishing for almost eighteen years. “I love working there. The people are just wonderful! I pray every day that my articles will be uplifting and will serve the community well. It is an awesome responsibility to be a community newspaper because you are responsible to every reader,” she said.
LaVale is also available for public speaking engagements and offers insights to her success with a down-home feel. Her approach is fresh, honest, and decidely uplifting.
For booking information you may reach her at The Red Bay News by phoning 256.356.2148.

Of all her successes, LaVale is most proud of her family. “I want to mention my sweet girls, Michelle and Dawn, my wonderful son, by marriage, Matt Wilemon, my precious granddaughter, Anna Caroline and of course, my Ruble. I am a blessed woman,” she smiled.
So too, LaVale, are your readers! We love our Queen of the Vignettes who makes us laugh at ourselves as we laugh with her. She makes us smile. LaVale sums things up simply by saying, “It has all been a very humbling experience because all I ever really wanted to do was write. All I ever really wanted to do was just string words together.”

Kay Marshall is the Internet Projects Coordinator and editor for TEC

Home Safety Tips

Safety Around Power Lines

Keeping Baby Safe At Home

Seasoned Citizen Section

Recipes

TEC Woman

Local Hero Series