Posted on Sun, Apr. 20, 2008

A mother's pearls

Jan Tevepaugh had little but memories of her mom, until this simple necklace arrived

ELIZABETH LELAND

T. ORTEGA GAINES/Observer staff

When Jan Tevepaugh first saw her mother’s pearls, she said it was “almost overwhelming to see something that was hers.” For Christmas last year, her son and daughter gave her a copy of this photograph of her mother wearing the pearls.

A TREASURY OF PHOTOGRAPHS

Jan Tevepaugh's story is one of the most rewarding Jay Denmark says he has heard since he discovered negatives of photographs his grandfather shot from 1918 to 1956. Most were taken in his Raleigh studio, though some are from the coast. There are videos, too, including one of Amelia Earhart christening an airplane in Raleigh.
Denmark came upon the negatives by accident. He happened to meet an older photographer in a store one day about three years ago and the man told him he had them in storage. There were about 25 boxes, 70,000 negatives, meticulously recorded.
"It's a bygone era recaptured and brought back to life," Denmark said. "It was like these people had been stored away in a warehouse and are now coming back again to life and are being seen again."
To see some of the photos, go to www.denmarkphoto.com. Click on Historic B&W Photo Store.

DAVIDSON --

She pictures her working at the sewing machine, stitching a new Easter dress for Jan, delicate rose pink with white lace.

It was shortly after Easter the year she made the dress, 1970, when her mother told Jan she was sick. She had a disease Jan had never heard of. Whenever Jan didn't know something, her mother always made her look it up in the World Book.

I'll go look it up, Jan remembers saying. How do you spell leukemia?

Her mother didn't answer, and Jan believes it was because she didn't want Jan to find out what it meant. Few people survived leukemia then. Jan's mother lived only a few months longer. She was 47 when she died in June 1970. Jan was 11.

Losing her mother was so traumatic, it was years before Jan could talk about her. Talking about her brought up painful emotions that were easier kept buried.

And so Jan clung to her memories. She remembers her mother bottle-feeding a newborn calf, and rushing Jan to the hospital when Jan had spinal meningitis, and gardening and cooking and teaching Jan to sew.

After her mother became sick, Jan sewed a new dress all by herself and she remembers wearing it to the hospital in Winston-Salem to show off.

It was the last time she saw her mother.

It wouldn't be fair to say Jan spent the rest of her childhood without a mother. Three years after Betty Jo Davis died, Jan's father remarried and Loyce Davis stepped in and became a mother to Jan and to her brother, Martin, and 35 years later, she is still a mother to them.

Loyce was a lot of fun and did all the things Jan expected a mother should do.

Still, as much as she loved Loyce, Jan missed her mother.

She grew up, married and had children of her own, and that's when she missed her mother most. She missed having a connection with her as an another adult. She regretted that she didn't know more about her to share with her son and daughter.

2 gifts make a connection

Jan doesn't remember exactly when, maybe 10 years ago, maybe more, her uncle brought two gifts from Raleigh, where her mother grew up. They had been stored for years in Jan's grandmother's house.One big box held Jan's mother's wedding dress. With it was a worn envelope with three words in cursive in her grandmother's handwriting:

"Betty Jo's pearls."

Jan's mother's pearls.

She slipped the necklace out of the envelope, and felt a physical connection with her mother in a way she hadn't felt in years. The pearls were a part of her mother she never knew, like a hidden clue to her past.

They seemed so special, Jan was afraid to wear them. She worried she might break them. It was enough to hold them and admire them, then she tucked the necklace away in a safe place, waiting for a special time to take it out again.

The time came years later, in 2006, when her daughter, Beth, had her senior pictures made at North Mecklenburg High School. Beth was named after Jan's mother, Elizabeth Josephine, Betty Jo.

Jan gave Beth the necklace to wear and told her the story of how she came to get the pearls.

Mom, Jan remembers Beth asking, don't you miss your mom?

Always.

Finding the old photos

A few weeks before Christmas last year, a cousin from Raleigh telephoned Jan. Denmark Photography Studio had posted old photos on its Web site, including portraits taken of people in Raleigh between 1918 and 1956.

There was a photo, the cousin said, of their grandfather and one, she believed, of Jan's mother.

Jan found the Web site and typed in her mother's name.

The mother she had grieved for most of her life appeared as if by magic on the computer screen. She was younger than Jan remembered her, with high cheekbones and a lovely smile. Her hair was brown, no gray in it yet, and she wore a pretty dress belted at her tiny waist.

It was Beth who noticed another detail in the photograph.

Mom, those are the pearls!

She wore them draped daintily around her neck, the largest pearl in the center graduating to smaller pearls at the nape of her neck, the way Beth wore them for her high school picture.

Jan had spent a lifetime nurturing a relationship between her children and the grandmother they never knew. In one magical moment, three generations connected over a string of pearls.

STORY BEHIND THE STORY

When I asked Jan Tevepaugh last month if she had photos of her mother, she went to an old file cabinet and pulled out wedding portraits. In them, Betty Jo Davis is wearing the pearls. Until that afternoon in the basement with me, Jan had never noticed them.