My Bad-Ass Mom

Memories on Mother's Day

In the old photo files I keep near, always hoping to organize them better, one of my favorite pics is a black-and-white image of my mother from 1946. (I call it The Leg-Shot.)

She is leaning against the right-front fender of the family sedan, just outside my Grandmother Hunt’s home at the corner of 16th and Holly, over on the Eastside. This post-war snapshot was made two full years before I arrived on the scene, and well before my younger brothers Shawn and Kris would show up. (In the background, you can see Lockeland Baptist Church in its heyday. To the right, just outside this frame, the old Holly Street Firehall still stands.)

Ellis Reeder Hunt, 1946

My Mom and Dad had both been students at the old East Nashville High School, though not at the same time. Mom had been a cheerleader there, at the same time Richard Fulton (later the Mayor of Nashville) was captain of the East High football team. After her graduation at East, she went on to Peabody College across town where she became the first college grad in her family. There she prepared for her long and distinguished career in public education. She would teach at Schwab, Inglewood, and Rosebank schools, among other assignments in the old city or county systems in their time, later on in the Metro Schools. She retired at Rosebank.

In many (or maybe most) ways, my Mom was way ahead of her time.

She became a very early member of Metro Council, elected in 1967 after my Dad passed. (He was on the last Nashville City Council, before the Metro Charter was adopted, which he supported, and then the first consolidated Metro Council, inaugurated in 1963. Dad died in 1967, prompting a special election in our old Eighth district. Mom beat five men outright - no run-off required.

By this time, Ellis Reeder Hunt was a single mother of three boys, and I quickly learned in those early first years that we were a family in serious upheaval. The grandparents (Hunts and Hoopers) helped enormously, and so did some very special family friends in our Rosebank neighborhood, including the McClains on Rosebank, the Parsons and the Akins, on Crescent Hill Road. It may take a village to raise a child, but for the Hunts in 1967, I remember how it took a neighborhood that cared for my bereft family. It also took one stout-hearted Mom to lead us through.

The story unfolded from there, and someday I may write about more of it. For now, it is Mother’s Day 2024, and there are new generations of our Hunt clan whose present-day Moms deserve celebrating, too.

© 2024 Keel Hunt