In tribute: Viola Large stayed busy throughout life

CLOVIS - Recently orphaned and joining her siblings in a state barely older than herself, opportunities were limited in 1940 for Viola Large.

She was then all of 16 years old, but already with hardships behind her and years of hard work ahead, coming to Clovis from a Texas sharecropper family and with a limited formal education.

One of her sons - who would spend decades writing on race and social inequality for the Seattle Times - recalled some of the sacrifices, lessons and love from his mother, who "always tried to give her sons what they needed."

"I remember that she was always working. I would wake up some mornings to the sound of a broom, swish, swish, swish. Mama was washing the porch. Washing, not just sweeping," wrote Jerry Large in memorial service remarks last month for his mother, who passed at 94. "I can see the brown bucket she filled with water and Pine Sol. I can still smell it."

Jerry Large and his siblings have many cherished memories of their mother, including her home cooking, her personality and wit as well as her work ethic.

And the single mother of three stayed busy with her work, whether in fields, houses or restaurants, in drilling her boys on the times tables and Bible verses or in making lye soap from scratch for the home. Jerry Large said it was all to bring up her children as good people with opportunities she never had.

"The energy and effort she put into raising us, it's pretty much what she dedicated herself to," he said in an interview Thursday with The News. "She did everything she could to make sure her children had a better life."

And that was no small feat in pre-Civil Rights-era Clovis, which had pronounced racial divides, he added.

"Certainly, when I was growing up, there was no question about the dividing line; there were lines and people kind of knew them. Some of those people that my mother worked for were also very kind and generous to her ... But the fact remains that if you were black at that time, in most of the country and certainly in Clovis as well, your prospects were going to be limited," said Jerry Large, who recently retired from almost four decades writing in Seattle.

"I think it's come a tremendously long way, but there's still a long way to go. It's a difficult process because it requires people re-thinking what they think they know."

Educating people proved important for Jerry Large, as his own education was important for his mother.

"The summer before I entered junior high school I asked her for an encyclopedia set. It was going to be my first time in an integrated school and I wanted to be well prepared," he said in his memorial remarks. "This was before the internet, and the blue-covered World Book Encyclopedia she bought cost more than she'd ever spend on herself ... it paid off in school."

Starting in seventh grade, Jerry Large would accompany one of his uncles on janitor duty at what was then the Clovis News Journal. He started working there the day after graduating high school and would continue through school breaks while earning a journalism degree at New Mexico State University.

He told The News that his early experiences underscored the importance of sharing stories and perspectives that might not otherwise be widely known. While elements of his mother's own early life story - a journey on the Great Migration and her father's untimely death in Texas - are not unheard of, neither are they often broadcast.

"My mother's story is one of those that you don't hear often," he said. "It's really important for journalists that they're able to represent the entire community and to know the entire community, and also to tell the stories."

Viola Large is survived by her three sons, her sister Ida Bailey, numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren and nieces and nephews.