Resident of The Buckingham Exemplifies National Grandmother Achievement Day
February 9, 2024
Grandmas have always been with us. Okay, technically they’ve only been around since the third generation of humankind, but now we’re picking nits. (Picking nits sounds like something grandma would say, right?)
Did you know that February 11th was not only the day of “The Big Game,” it was also National Grandmother Achievement Day? That’s right, in between the nachos, beers, guac, and whatever else you had for the game, it was a time to properly celebrate, honor, recognize, and flat out show your gratitude for grandma, without whom you wouldn’t even have been watching the game on your flat screen.
Because there are literally thousands upon thousands of grandmas living in senior living communities, we’ll celebrate them all by recognizing one: Mamie McCullough, an 84-year-old resident at The Buckingham, a senior living community in Houston, Texas.
How cool is Mamie? Well, as her six grandchildren know, she is a motivational speaker and author of six (6) books! Her overarching message is also the name of one her books: I Can. You Can Too! She sounds like one cool grandma.
We’re told that Mamie’s childhood in South Georgia was one of poverty. Born in the brief time between the end of the Great Depression and the beginning of WWII, she worked picking cotton and harvesting tobacco. And thank goodness for beans, because sometimes that’s all there was to eat. She survived those times, and 25 years ago, as a mother of three, she also survived breast cancer.
“My childhood motivated me to want more for myself,” said McCullough in a press release. “We all go through rough patches in life, but it’s about what we do with it. Even when I got the diagnosis I remained intact. I was emotional, of course. I cried, but I felt peace, knowing that God had everything under control.”
Today McCullough is a resident of The Buckingham — where they offer independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing, and memory care — but there was a time when she was a schoolteacher in Georgia. Then she was a school principal. And she even served as the president of the Zig Ziglar Corporation, during which she authored her books.
“Life is not about where you start it is about where you go,” she said. “My goal in life is to help others, and I feel like I’ve done that through my teaching and motivational speaking. We don’t know what somebody else is going through, so it is always important to be kind to one another. I am lucky to have lived a good life and have a good retirement here at The Buckingham.”
Not every grandma has a past like Mamie’s, but they all have a past, and whether you call her grandma, nan, nana, gran, granny, meemaw, nani, mormor, or something else, National Grandmother Achievement Day is a day to tell your grandmother how proud you are of her. Even if her biggest achievement is being your grandma it’s certainly worth appreciating.