Eulogy For Katie Harvey

Katie Harvey

Ecclesiastes 3:1-3:14

It was on a Wednesday, the date was March 30th, 1927, the place was Huntsville, Alabama, that God sent a little bundle of life and potential to Lovee and Bessie Baker. She was the seventh of nine children to arrive and they called this latest bundle of joy, Katie.

We are here today because that bundle of joy touched our lives in various special and unique ways and that same bundle has returned to the wonderful God who created her. She has completed that cycle of birth, life, death and return to God. It is a journey that we shall all one day complete.

Katie knew the joy of being a daughter, a sister, a mother, a wife, a grandmother, a great grandmother, a friend, a good cook, and a gift to the world from God above.

Katie was the work of God’s creation, and as beautifully as God created her to be, she has returned to her Creator. She now stands before God, to give an account for the life that she lived, as we must all one day give an account.

The Bible tells us, there is a time and a season for everything under the sun. A time to laugh and a time to cry, a time to hope and a time to give up, a time for joy and a time for pain, a time to be born and a time to die.

Katie made us thankful that there was also a time to cook and to time to eat her cooking. Her great granddaughters said her macaroni and cheese were the best. Michael and Bessie said whenever they came over to eat, she would send them home with containers of food. Katie tried to pack as much of her love as possible into the food she cooked. That’s one of the ways she let you know you were special to her.

We will all have many experiences throughout out lives, but there is one experience we can be sure of all sharing in. That one experience that is common to us all is death. It is as common and as natural as all the other things done under the sun.

We all have a certain number of days to live and our joys and struggles are different. But in the end we all come to the place that is called death, and from that point we look back and see what happened during our lives. Who was this person that the world knew as Katie Harvey?

We are shaped by the times in which we are born. Katie was born in Alabama in 1927 which lets you know very quickly that she was going to have to be strong inside to become more than just a survivor. She grew up knowing what segregation and discrimination was with a first hand view. She was in the heart of Jim Crow laws, with signs for whites only, and signs for coloreds. But no sign could keep her from becoming a proud black woman.

She knew the meaning of poverty being in a family of nine kids. When many kids were thinking of what it would be like to be in junior high school and high school, Katie left school at the end of third grade in order to work to help the family. She worked folding clothes for others. That was not a lot of money in exchange for an education that she never had. But it was the nature of the times in Alabama.

She became a self taught woman through the school of just living. Who knows what she would have done if she had the same start as others, because Katie had a remarkable memory throughout her life. She could remember places, dates, and numbers with great accuracy. She made the most of the short education she received, by becoming a life long learner and being observant of what was going on around her.

Katie did not dwell on what she had not received. She made the most of what God placed around her. She had a great sense of humor that could make you laugh and keep your spirits lifted up. She had a spirit of independence as a strong Black woman. She did not wait around waiting for you to do something for her, if she could do it herself, she was going to go ahead and do it.

There was not a lazy bone in her body. She was a hard worker. When she would go over to Michael and Bessie’s home, they would hope she would be relaxing, but if they stepped out for a moment, the clothes were going to get washed. If she saw something needed to be done, she didn’t say, that’s not my job. She just did it.