I’ll Meet You in the Morning

I'll meet you in the morning by the bright riversideWhen all sorrow has drifted awayI'll be standin' at the portals when the gates open wideAt the close of life's long weary day“That’s my song,” says 91-year-old Estelle Orr, unhesitatingly. “I’ll Meet You in the Morning.”And for 40 years of her life, Mrs. Orr has been meeting us in the morning at Ridgeview Health Services. That’s right—40 years. Mrs. Orr was hired in 1968 “when a Mr. Davis” was running the nursing home facility. “There wasn’t any CNA’s, you just worked. I took care of patients,” says Orr.The active, sharp-minded woman has been a resident at Ridgeview for just over a year now. “I hope to stay that way until the Good Lord says come home,” she says, raising her eyes heavenward and lifting her hands like a referee signaling a made field goal.I'll meet you in the morning with a 'How do you do?'And we'll sit down by the river and when rapture of the plane is renewedYou'll know me in the morning by the smile that I wearWhen I meet you in the morning, in the city that is built four squareMrs. Orr was raised on Fall City Road in Manchester. She was schooled at Curry and Mt. Zion Baptist and worked on a farm. “We had to work,” she says. Mrs. Orr also remembers riding the school bus and washing her clothes on a rub board. “We went down to a spring. That’s where you’d wash ye clothes.”She remained a faithful member of Mt. Zion for the balance of her life, though it wasn’t always easy to get there. “I went to that church for a long time. Back then, you didn’t have no paved roads.”At sixteen, Mrs. Orr married Bill Estes. “People got married real young back then.” Estes worked in a saw mill and did carpentry work until his death in 1966. The marriage bore two children, Ray and Billy, both of whom are retired servicemen. Billy, the younger, is retired from serving 23 years in the Navy (but decided to go back into service with the Army); and Ray, the older, is also retired from serving 23 years in the Navy. Billy lives in Walker County and Ray lives in Tennessee—“about eighty miles from the Grand Ole Opry,” says Mrs. Orr.Two years later, Mrs. Orr met John Orr, who at the time was working at Marshall Durbin poultry company. “Somebody told him about me,” she recalls. “He called me and we got to goin’ together, then we got married.”The couple was married for 28 years before John Orr died in the late 1990s.I will meet you in the morning in the sweet by and byAnd exchange the old cross for a crownThere will be no disappointments and nobody shall dieIn that land when life's sun goeth downThe Orrs moved to Elkhart, Indiana for a stint before returning home to Walker County. Mrs. Orr has fond memories of the small town in southern Indiana. “We lived there four year,” says Orr. “I wanted to stay, but my husband wanted to come back home. I just liked it up there.”But Walker County was home, and fate had it that the Orrs would make it their lasting abode until the Good Lord called. Now Mrs. Orr, twice a widow, spends her time enjoying games at Ridgeview and singing old Gospel songs that she learned at Mt. Zion and waiting for heaven.I'll meet you in the morning with a 'How do you do?'And we'll sit down by the river and when rapture of the plane is renewedYou'll know me in the morning by the smile that I wearWhen I meet you in the morning in the city that is built four squareOne day, she’ll exchange those dirty clothes she used to scrub by the riverside for a robe and a crown. There’ll be no disappointments, as she stands at the portals and the gates open wide.And all sorrow will drift away. 78