‘Someone who made a difference’
Pam Johnson recalls meeting the late Gladys Spivey at the Tabor House Museum.
“When I first started here years ago I was coming in to take care of the plants, that was my main goal,” she said. “Gladys was sitting in this little rocking chair just as calm as could be and I thought to myself that I would be able to relax around this woman. They gave me a tour of the house and I was frantically writing notes down and I went back and said, ‘Gladys, I’m supposed to be outdoors, not indoors!’ She said, ‘Honey, you just don’t know – you’ll get used to it.’ And I thought, ‘What’s she trying to tell me?’
“She was a sweet lady, the kindest loving person, and very knowledgable.”
Gladys Elizabeth Dotson Spivey, who passed away at 87 in June, served as the recording secretary and chairperson of First Families of Gilmer County, and also volunteered to help people research their ancestors. However, it was her role as mentor and friend that was fondly remembered Friday when a Stellar Pink Dogwood Tree was dedicated in her honor and memory at the Tabor House.
The plaque at the base of her tree reads simply, “In memory of someone who made a difference – Gladys Spivey.”
Susan Noles noted how she made that difference in the community.
“Gladys was the type person that I used to tell people, if she wasn’t kin to them in Gilmer County, her husband (Weyman) was,” she said following the dedication. “I didn’t know her before her husband passed away, but she’d call me and we’d go to all the different cemeteries. She’d want to go visit all her grandparents, and I want to tell you that Gilmer County has lost a lot of history with Gladys. We had a genealogy meeting the other day and the girl, Tricia Henson, which is one of our First Families, was saying, ‘Where’s Gladys when we need her?’ Because she could answer all the questions.”
Noles spoke of their relationship.
“When I first came to the (genealogy) meetings, I didn’t know anybody,” she shared. “Before my husband passed away she knew I was having a hard time, and one morning there were flowers delivered to my house from her, just because she was thinking about me. Gladys has been a friend and I’m telling you she never had a bad thing to say about anyone, or anything that I ever heard. We love her and we miss her.”
Barbara Dover called Spivey “a friend and mentor.”
“Personally, she was like a sister to me,” she related. “We’d go porch-sit and try to solve the problems of the world, and I think she could’ve done it! She said, ‘Barbara, we need to get a before-and-after picture of downtown so everybody knows what everything used to be, because it sure isn’t the same today.’”
Lydia Bassetti said Spivey had a presence in the community, and elsewhere.
“I think about what God’s going to think when he first meets her, because she’s going to talk him to death!” she believes. “It’s hard to describe, but you can almost see her hugging him and him hugging her in a welcome. Because she’s such a good soul – she was really good to me. She had such history inside of her, but you don’t sometimes realize the value of a person until you get in tough times, and she was always there.”