International Women’s Day: The Viking Spirit
Sherrill & Bros. founder Marcia Sherrill wrote the following piece in celebration of International Women’s Day.
To celebrate I look to the two women who have inspired my own crazy journey-this is a tale of working women.
I started young, marshaling my two derelict brothers (aged 5 and 11 at the time) into a scheme so purely magical in selling to our neighbors at Christmas that none could resist. My older brother labored shooting mistletoe out of our trees, we then bundled the twigs up with Red Satin Ribbon and taking our Red Wagon we went door to door selling. Needless to say we sold out and Fast.
I would go on to launch with my mother a Sewing Supplies catalog called SEW WHATS NEW! And then onto fashion for 40 plus years. My Mother was always my top champion-even in the days when we feared they would close down the factory for late payment, or when we lost our label and fought to get it back.
Mother married my father as a recent graduate from High School at lake Minnetonka. He was a dashing young soldier fresh from the Korean Conflict- and he was hell-bent on finding as he asserted “The biggest, blondest woman he could clap eyes on to.” Well that apparition was my momma and fast as all get-out he headed back to Birmingham, Alabama with his fiancé in tow. Little did she realize that he was the very handsome, youngest son of a family mired in local society and desperate to fit in and that she would be dubbed immediately The Gold Digger. After a nasty scene where my grandmother
called the President of Eastern Airlines to book my Momma on a flight back to
Minneapolis. Daddy was having none of that and glasses and books and vases were thrown by Daddy and my Oh-So-Devoted drunken Grandmother. Momma stayed. She became quite the local sensation as a model and young socialite. Some 14 years later after both Grandparents had died my father went for the first of many stints at the fancy, local psychiatric facility-even his year of heavy drinking and my mother found that she would have to be the breadwinner. She started humbly, teaching sewing classes in a
nasty mall on the far, far outskirts of town. Even as her boss taunted her with constant cruelty she became the Southeastern Director of Education for Singer. She then hopscotched over to Southern Living editing many books on quilting, sewing and decorating. She had a national column in one of their magazines.
She saved us. He could not and would not work-until many years later. He was too depressed in both a clinical and emotional sense having lost a favorite brother and then both parents in a matter of weeks.
She continued to soar and the Gold Digger never failed in her love for him or her children…all of us would go to work by age 14 and she made us seem lucky to have great jobs and to champion her Norwegian work ethic. She stood beside when I founded a company with my ex-husband that would make me somewhat famous with such items as alligator belts and exotic skin handbags and so may other endeavors…a book about Breast Cancer hat had me finishing the editing as she discovered that she had it…how had the book not warded it off. But she kept working. She was happy to clean the factory with me, draw handbag shapes that eluded me and pack and ship
orders that were late due to our precarious financial situation-even selling in our store to local Atlanta ladies-who-lunch.
She never blamed my father or us though she had endured years working three jobs to pay the mortgage.
Now some of that intrepid, love-to-work ethic brushed off on my daughter Anabelle who decided young that she like mother and grandmother would pursue a creative career.
At Tulane Anabelle worked hard years to become an architect and is now happily working two jobs. Maybe it’s the genes ad maybe not but three generations of Sherrill women have worked damned hard and all world find that their work just like a man’s could define him. Define them as fearless workers who embraced their passion. Vikings all!
