Resilience is working hard for what you want and when it doesn’t pay off, thinking outside the box, and sticking with it. It is falling but getting back up, failing but not quitting.

“You know once I think about it, it’s perseverance. I just don’t really think she [Viola Bobb Waldron] had a concept of stopping. It was just like not in her DNA to stop. I don’t even know if she realized that but I think the woman would still be working today. I’ve never seen her until she started getting sick, I’ve never seen her stop, never seen the woman stop. And never seen her not self-expressed. She still will curse me out. The woman she’s like really just no-nonsense. She absolutely is no-nonsense but will persevere through anything.

She’s just done so much in this life. Thank you for this interview because it allows me to kind of live through some of these memories that I haven’t thought about in years. She took care of my grandfather on my dad’s side when he passed away. She’s taken care of so many people that were sick that needed a place to stay, that needed to be sponsored. It was just like her winning formula literally was, “Yes I will handle it. No matter what you throw at me, what burden you will put on me, it doesn’t matter. I will make a way.”

Talking to my aunts and my mother and my uncles she grew up dirt poor, like dirt poor, like farm dirt poor. She married my grandfather who I think he was a conductor on a railroad. Basically started being a foreman and a manager so he was in terms of Guyanese and what black folks were allowed to do he was actually well off. But, my grandmother was dirt poor.”

To read and listen to Robin’s interview about his grandmother Viola Bobb Waldron click here:

https://realblackgrandmothers.com/testimony-robin-callender/