BY TERI R. WILLIAMS | PHOTOS BY DAPHNE WALKER Running with Joy Family tragedy opened the door for anger and bitterness in Joy Weaver’s life....until she learned to forgive and let go through journaling and living a healthy lifestyle. It was Saturday. A brown Oldsmobile pulled into her greatgrandmother’s yard, but the three little girls kept on playing. There was no way they could have known that their lives were about to be changed forever. Joy was ten years old, the oldest of the three. Her sister Jeannie was nine, and Marla was seven. All three were in school at Lyons Elementary and lived near Center Community with their single mother, Linda Sue Jernigan, and great-grandmother, Mary Jernigan. “Mama worked hard, but we were poor,” said Joy. “I remember eating cereal with water instead of milk and my great-grandmother scrambling hamburger meat to make it go further because we didn’t have enough to make hamburgers.” Joy didn’t like the man in the Oldsmobile.* In fact, she’d disliked him from the moment her mother first introduced him to her and her sisters. Even when the man brought crayons and coloring books, Joy refused to so much as touch them. A lot of things happened in the time between that first meeting and the day the man came to her house for the last time. “My mama always had bruises. There were a lot of beatings,” said Joy. “When I’d hear him slap her and hit her, I would try to push the door open to help Mama, but he would hold the door shut and say he just wanted to talk to her.” The signs were all there. Her mother’s friends and family tried to warn her. But like so many others, Joy’s mother thought the man would change as he promised again and again. “A woman with long black hair once came to talk to Mama,” said Joy. “I heard her tell Mama that she was once the man’s girlfriend, and she had to have her jaw wired shut after he broke it. She warned Mama that no matter what the man promised, he never changed. I remember hoping Mama would listen to her and tell him to stay away.” Finally, Linda’s brother and a friend decided to take matters into their own hands and gave the man a beating to send him a message he wouldn’t soon forget. “After that, Mama told him they were through,” said Joy. But the man persisted. Was it a game of chase or hide and go seek they were playing? Joy doesn’t remember. But the sound of a gunshot is something she will never forget. It was March 3, 1979, three days after her mother’s 28th birthday. “I can show you exactly where he parked in the yard that day,” said Joy. Certain memories from the days that followed hang like pictures in a gallery on the walls of her mind. The next time Joy saw her mama, she was lying in a casket at the Ronnie Stewart Funeral Home. “I can remember standing on the porch of the funeral home,” said Joy, “and all these people coming. A lot of them worked with Mama at Pinegrove Apparel. She was such a happy person and so easy going. Everyone loved her. “As if the murder and funeral weren’t tragic enough, then came the trial. The lawyer thought it would help if me and my sister Jeannie testified,” said Joy. “I still remember the smell of the courtroom.” It’s a smell that pulls her back into the witness stand to the moment the lawyer instructed her to point to the man who shot her mother. “I guess the lawyer thought it would help our case if he 92 Toombs County Magazine
20204RD
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