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September 2, 2010
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Family’s reunions span more than a century
Published August 21, 2009
When Samuel and Vera Thomas Wilson met as students at Reinhardt College in North Georgia four generations ago, they planted the seeds of a Wilson family tradition is now bearing fruit for students attending the college in their name.
“They were my mother and father and they were the first of four generations that have gone through Reinhardt College,” said Marvin Wilson, 74, a part-time bagger at Publix in Loganville. “I attended Reinhardt College, my son and daughter-in-law met at Reinhardt College when they went there and now my granddaughter is attending.”
But it was when he began working at Publix in 2002 that Wilson found a way to give back to the community in his parents’ name.
“I found that Publix would match scholarship funds up to $5,000, so I started a scholarship in my parents’ name at Reinhardt College and Publix matches my contribution,” Reinhardt said, adding this year the family tradition had come full circle and it was his granddaughter, Abbie Wilson, who was the recipient of the scholarship.
Traditions are big in the Wilson family and they combined the presentation of this scholarship at the college last week with another big tradition — the Wilson family reunion that has been going on for the past 101 years.
“The first reunion was started as a birthday party for my grandmother Alice in 1908, when the surviving members of their 12 children and their families decided this would be an annual reunion,” Wilson said. “For many years it has been held in the Dry Pond United Methodist Church, where many of the family are buried in the adjoining cemetery. But this year it is being held at the Jefferson Convention Center — there will be something like 350 people there with all the children and grandchildren too.”
But for Wilson, the family reunion is just part of the story. This year’s event began with a mini reunion with his seven siblings, all of whom are still alive, at Hickory Flat in Cherokee where they grew up. And then Friday it was onto Reinhardt College where five of the seven attended for the presentation of the scholarship that was created in Wilson’s parents’ memory. The scholarship provides financial aid to qualifying students who are descendants of Wilson’s parents or children of West African missionaries, children of ministers or students who plan to become ministers. This scholarship is representative of another Wilson family tradition — that of service.
“My family is very patriotic,” Wilson said. “Together we have 143 years of service in the military as well as 13 years of service as missionaries in West Africa.
“We also have several Methodist pastors including one who was first a prisoner of war under the Japanese before coming back at the end of the war and becoming a Methodist minister.”
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