By Leah Lewis
My parents LeRoy (95, USAF veteran) & Claudine (89) have been in love for 70+ years — a real-life love story that’s survived wars, segregation, and so much history. Their one wish now is one last trip to their hometown, Mexia, TX, to say goodbye. I’m trying to make it happen so my mission is to share my parents’ love story with others enough to take my elderly parents to their historic home town of Mexia in the great state of Texas for a week this summer to celebrate their unbreakable platinum love story of my veteran father LeRoy Henderson, 94, and Claudine Henderson, 89 blossomed for over 70 years. That of which has been written by two news outlets calling for people’s admiration of my parents’ unwavering love for each other! Like in an article by The Press-Enterprise, they highlighted both parents coming from humble beginnings as a field worker picking cotton, had a dream to do, and become something more than what the cotton fields of Mexia held for him and ultimately our entire family tree. They speak about how his dream carried his actions and how my parents still chased that dream through all of life’s challenges of segregation all through history just coming out of the great depression as children, Jim Crow, Korean, and Vietnam wars, Watts riots, earthquakes, JFK assassination, the Great Wall of China falling, Pearl Harbor and most recently the coronavirus just to name a few occasions they have lived through. Just speaking about it now brings tears to my eyes!
Mom and Dad want to see Texas one more time before they lose each other to time and I promised that I would get them there as a celebration of life and the monumental love that has lasted a lifetime. This is a true love story that has lasted seven decades. So many folks have asked how have you done it? It’s a complex answer which requires time and observation to see and understand how to accomplish such a task with grace and dignity intact. All of which we thank them for as we learned to love and live through their ways as a family. But taking upon the responsibility of their wellbeing onto our collective family has not been easy on us. Our trials and tribulations through the years have been unavoidable as much as they are tremendously taxing on many areas of my families life. All of which has made this dream trip for my parents an exceedingly farther away milestone.
I’m doing this for my parents to give them a gift on behalf of my family and myself with the help of the observers of this love story. Just as they’ve blessed us. A thank you and recognition for their troubled life and my fathers service to the United States as a retired Air Force veteran. I’m asking for exposure and/or donations for my ‘gofundme’ for help with a week’s stay, gas, food and beverage to finance my parents trip to Mexia, Texas where myself, my brother, and an assigned caregiver from the VA. It’s on us to make it happen because they’ve lost their ability to be fully independent given their age and walking ability and are unable to achieve their once believed concrete plan for their last goodbye. This mission really has a hold on me and means so much to me, I want to give my parents the love I have for them and essentially give them their flowers before the headstone. I feel it only makes sense to be the guide of their story and give them a happy ending my parents deserve. It would feel absolutely wrong not to try my hardest to flourish their love and make the most out of their twilight years since they are unable to accomplish this long time dream trip on their own, physically and financially. I believe in the Lord and the kindness of warm hearted observers of this love story to share it, donate and help in any way possible to make their last embrace a moment in history. I know the Lord will bless my parents to have a blissful drift.
My other mission is to raise money to buy mom a new mattress and the carpet for her bedroom. I would also like to make some repairs around the house such as fixing the back fence. Stopping the water leak and the parents bathroom sink and the leak in the front yard.
