Maida Blanche George

Maida Blanche George was born November the 12th, 1957 at Kilmarnock Clinic to Marvin Lewis George and Savilla Alease Bush.

Maida grew up in the George Home-place with her grandfather, Gordon D. George and great-uncle Lloyd George. Her mentally disabled Aunt Jenny also lived with them, Jenny had the "mind of a child" and was a playmate to Maida. Later Marvin moved the family to the Redd House about a mile down the road.

Maida went to Wicomico School and the Seventh Day Adventist School in Kilmarnock. She started public school in 9th grade at Lancaster High School and graduated in 1976. She went on to Smithdeal-Massey Business School in Richmond and received a junior accounting degree.

Maida married Mark Franklin Dameron on November 25th, 1978. They were married at Morattico Baptist Church in Kilmarnock, VA by her uncle, Gordon D. George, Jr..

Mark and Maida built a house on Enon Hall farm. Maida worked as a trust officer at Chesapeake Bank in the late 70's and early 80's. She stopped working when Catherine and Bryant were born and did not go back until they were in Middle and High School. She worked at Kilmarnock Antique Gallery from the mid 90s into the 2000's.

Most the work Maida did in her life was not for pay. She devoted a lot of time to helping her parents when they were in bad health. She became certified in peritoneal dialysis and gave Marvin daily care for as long as the treatment worked. She also spent a bunch of time with Alease at the Lancashire Nursing Home visiting and feeding her when the dementia began to make swallowing hard.

Maida was involved in church life from her time at Morattico Baptist as a child and at White Stone Baptist too. She taught Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. She was a member and leader of the WMU and started a program called "An Extra Helping Hand" that gave away diapers, clothes, cleaning supplies and personal hygiene items to needy community members. She also volunteered time to Scouting. She even got a Troop organized in White Stone.

Maida had a heart-attack on the morning of July 20th, 2015. She was transported by ambulance the Rappahannock General Hospital and hours later taken to VCU Medical Center in Richmond by helicopter. In the helicopter her heart stopped and she had to be resuscitated, when arriving at the hospital she was put on a machine to circulate and oxygenate her blood. She was unable to recover and passed away at half past noon on Sunday, July 26th. Her funeral was held at White Stone Baptist Church that Wednesday with burial at Morattico Baptist Church.

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To hear Mom tell it she grew up fairly poor. The house she first lived in was built by her Great-Grandfather, Luther George's, widow - Alice Columbia Jett. The house did not have running water in the bathrooms and Mom remembered taking baths in a metal tub. She said that when she was young she liked to play store and that Grandmama would always open cans from the bottom so that Mom could stock them in the play store. She also talked about playing hospital but the catch was that you really had to be hurt, so she and her cousin William would ride their bicycles into the fence.
When I think about growing up myself a lot of my memories revolve around the water. Dad was usually gone from Sunday night to Friday night on the fish boat and Mom would keep us entertained. We would collect periwinkles and fiddler crabs, sometimes she would let us bring them inside and try to keep them for a few days, usually the periwinkles would crawl out of whatever bucket we were keeping them in and get loose in the house.

Mom would buy chicken necks so that we could tie them on strings and use a net to try and catch crabs that where hanging out on the dock pilings. She liked taking us hook-line fishing. She would buy fried chicken and potato wedges from The Buoy in White Stone along with a bag of earthworms. Then we would load up the paddle boat and go around the point to fish while we ate dinner. It seemed like one of the best spots was where Papa's old dock used to be. Mom knew which trees to line the boat up with to put us in position.

She liked taking us to swim. We had a membership at Windmill Point and spent a lot time at the pool down there. Sometimes we would swim in the creek too. Down in front of Mama Lou and Papa's house there was a little bit of sand beach that we would use. Every now and then we would swim in front of our house, even though it was a little muddy. One time when I was 5 or 6 I was playing in an inflatable rowboat off of our dock. I was jumping out, swimming around and climbing back in to paddle around. All of a sudden Mom yelled me for me to get into the boat and stay in. She ran up to the shed and came running back with a shotgun. She pointed to the snake swimming near me and shot it. It blew the snake up in air, but didn't kill it. It swam up to shore where she shot it again, this time killing the snake.

Every summer we looked forward to going to the Outer Banks. We would stay at the Beebe's cottage in Kill Devil Hills. Most years it was just Mom, Catherine and me, but sometimes Darlene, Margaret & Lesley, or Beth Moore and her kids would join us. Mostly we just played on the beach, but Mom had certain places she also liked to visit that became traditions like Brew-Thru and Newman's Shell Shop.

Mom kept up with the garden while Dad was away on the boat during the week. When she picked peas she would trick Catherine and I into helping shell them by telling us that everyone we opened would be a chance to see something that no one else had ever seen before. I think that may have been something she got from her mother, because I remember the same thing happening down at Grandmama's house.

I think Mom really loved Christmas and took a lot joy in decorating the house for Catherine and I to enjoy. Several years when we were young she would cut live cedar or holly and wrap it in red bows to make window dressings for the house even though we had no neighbors to see it. Catherine or I would take her wooden train with the letters N-O-E-L and rearrange it to say LEON and wait until see how long it took her to fix it.

Mom was a wonderful cook. At Christmas time she would bake for a whole week. Cream-cheese brownies, fudge, peanut butter cookies, sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and applesauce cakes were all regular items. Before they built a bigger kitchen there would not even be room for all the Christmas baking so she would have to store it in Tupperware under dad's dresser in their bedroom. Birthdays usually meant a 5 layer yellow cake with chocolate frosting. The summer I turned 10, she taped dimes to toothpicks and covered the top of the cake with them. Other favorite baked goods were cookie cakes and pound cake with almond glaze.

Mom made great vegetable soup seasoned with deer meat and many vegetables from her own garden. Her meat loaf was super moist, I never understood why people made fun of meatloaf because hers was so good. She cooked all the wild game Dad brought home; broiled quail, fried dove and barbecue goose in the Crockpot. Her fried rabbit was always tender on the inside and crispy and flaky on the outside. When good ducks became scare she even figured out how to make dipper tasty by preparing it as duck ala orange.

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Sources:

Virginia, Birth Records, 1912-2014, Delayed Birth Records, 1854-1911
Virginia, Marriage Records, 1936-2014
U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current

Dameron/George Family History

12 NOV 1957 - Kilmarnock, Lancaster, VA
26 JUL 2015 - Richmond City, VA