Arts, Crafts, Music, & Events of Breckinridge County Issue 13, June 2016 | Page 60

Afternoon in May with Mary Bruce Beard
PART I
By Leslie Galloway

I felt so honored to spend an afternoon with Mary Bruce Beard. We
sat and reminisced about her life on her wonderful back porch
overlooking what was left of the Beard farm. Her porch overlooks her
beautiful garden with statuary and old stones from buildings that once
stood nearby. Brucie's roots run deep to this spot just as the flowers still
growing in her garden, originally planted by Lucy Beard around 1875. The
word “haven” kept coming to mind as I finally got to see what beauty lie
behind the fortress of shrubbery around her beloved home. As I record
this voice of a southern lady, the sounds of her windchimes drift and
make the moment vivid.
“Brucie” as she was called from a young age, was born in 1927 to
Cyrus and Sylvia Beard. She grew up on a family farm that was granted to
her father's ancestors for service in the Revolutionary War or War of
1812. Over time 400 more acres were added to what became over 1000
acre farm, which covered an area from Harned to Kingswood in
Breckinridge County, Kentucky.
Brucie's elementary education was at the Harned School, which was
a two room school where she remembers Jane Thompson being her first
grade teacher. Miss Jane happened to be a sister to Brucie's best friend
“Mott” and Bill Thompson who later wrote some books on Breckinridge
County history.
She tells a lovely story about when she started school in the first
grade at the age of 5. Evidently she would get sick every day after lunch
and Miss Jane would have Brucie's older brother walk her home (only ½
mile). After a few days of this Brucie's Mom told Miss Jane that she
wasn't sick, she was just accustomed to taking an afternoon nap. So Miss
Jane started making a pallet on a small stage that they had and let her