Love for the Unlovable

By Edith E. Forsythe

It was the early morning hours of November 8, 1966 as a young mother attempted to calm her drunken husband. Despite her best efforts, he exploded in anger, slapping, punching, and then kicking her. Unable to move, Josephine Blackwell lay bleeding, dazed, and stunned, unaware that the worst was yet to come. As her three children cowered in fear, Josephine’s husband shot her, rendering her without an arm and clinically dead for over twenty minutes where she ultimately encountered Jesus in heaven. Unfortunately, this was only the first of three divine encounters as Josephine and her children endured continued violence and abuse over three decades.
In a raw and emotional retelling, Edith Forsythe candidly details her memories of her mother, an ordinary woman with an extraordinary testimony of God’s love and faithfulness. While describing the seemingly endless suffering Josephine was forced to endure at the hands of an abuser, Edith discloses how her mother still managed to teach her children about love, faith, and true forgiveness. Included are newspaper articles and police reports related to the domestic violence incidents as well as family photographs.
Love for the Unlovable is the true story of one mother’s experiences as she endured constant abuse at the hands of a husband and father determined to leave lasting scars along a dark path of violence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: May 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781489727046

Edith E. Forsythe

Edith E. (Blackwell) Forsythe is a Christian, mother, and wife who served in the US Army. She owned and operated a convenience store in Tennessee for seven years, and has worked in the convenient store business for over thirty years. Today she resides with her husband and two German shepherds on twenty acres in Alabama.

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Copyright © 2020 Edith E. (Blackwell) Forsythe.

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Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New

International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by

Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version.

ISBN: 978-1-4897-2703-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-2705-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-2704-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020909403

LifeRich Publishing rev. date:  05/16/2020

I

dedicate this book to our Mother, a woman who planted the first seed in my heart of GOD’s great love for us. Whom persevered and survived years of daily abuse caused by Alcoholism and Domestic Violence. Whose level of forgiveness, compassion, strength, and self-sacrificed did not go unnoticed by her children. GOD, bless you Mother, you are truly loved and missed, someday we will meet again and rejoice together in Heaven.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

1     Mothers Background

2     Mother’s First Encounter

3     News Article on Shooting # 1

4     Short Summary of Police Report

5     Mother’s Recovery

6     Court Ruling

7     Attorney Acquired

8     Iowa Dram Shop Law

9     Childhood Memories

10   The Old Barn

11   Mother Fights Back

12   Virginia Trailer Park

13   Our Father

14   Small Hairy Dogs

15   Father’s Side of the Family

16   My Bathroom Mirror

17   Other Memories of Father

18   The (NDE) Documentary

19   My First Prayer Answered

20   Our Mother

21   Mother’s Second Encounter

22   Mother’s Visit

23   Father’s Passing

24   Rickey’s Memories – The Phone Call

25   Rickey’s Memories – The First Visit

26   Rickey’s Memories - The Next Day

27   Rickey’s Memories – The Other Family

28   Rickey’s Memories – Bad News

29   Rickey’s Memories – Mother’s Shooting

30   Mild Stroke

31   The Lasting Effects of Abuse (Edith’s Scars)

32   Mother’s Third Encounter

33   The Other Hospital

34   The Funeral

35   Conversation With Mr. Koerber

36   Conversation with Mr. Mccoy

37   Domestic Violence

38   My Final Thoughts

Rickey’s Final Thoughts

Preface

A journey where we bring the reader through traumatic events of one woman’s life with simplicity and honesty. A story of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary testimony of GOD’s love and faithfulness. One woman’s determination to teach her children about love, faith, and true forgiveness. During her life, this woman had three separate encounters with GOD in a span of thirty-four years.

The first encounter was in 1966, involved in a shooting, she had a life after death experience (NDE). Her name was Josephine Frances (Tolbert) Blackwell, our Mother. This is the first time her story is being shared with the public, outside of her children and close family members. Our Mother’s encounters with JESUS are her memories told through me in this book. I used the exact descriptions and details, in her own words, that our Mother used when relating the story to us time and time again.

Over the course of our Mother’s lifetime her testimonies never altered. I have also added some history and background of our family and childhood from my own experiences and memories. Also, inserted, in his own words, was some of my oldest brother’s memories. I wanted the reader to have some insight into our daily lives in those years and the impact that the abuse had on our lives from childhood to adults. I don’t know why GOD reveals himself to some and not to everyone. I’m not sure why GOD chose my Mother. But in telling our Mother’s story, I hope I touch someone’s life, giving them hope and faith, in a day and age where it is so much needed, but there is so little of it.

Acknowledgements

Rickey Blackwell-Canton, Ohio

Heidi & Donald Blackwell – Louisville, Ohio

Mason City Library – (Archives and History Department)

Retired Deputy Jerry M. Koerber – Of the Cerro Gordo County Police Department

Retired Dr. Robert E. McCoy – Lake View Iowa

Cerro Gordo County Police Department

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1

Mothers Background

Just thirty-nine days before my birthday, on the early morning of November 8, 1966, already half asleep as we were tucked into our beds, Momma left our room. Turning to her right, quietly and slowly making her way down the dark hallway entering her bedroom. The two bedrooms separated by one adjoining wall and a short hallway. Crawling across the bed to her side, trying not to make any noise, for fear of waking up our Father. Before her head touched the pillow, our Father had woken up. In his drunken state, he violently jerked and rolled his body out of the bed. Stumbling around, he started cursing and yelling. She crawled back out of the bed and turned the light on, she turned toward him, attempting to calm him down. This only intensified his agitation as he moved aggressively toward her. She tried again to calm him by talking to him, but he was intoxicated from drinking excessively earlier that evening. Exploding in anger, slapping and punching her several times, the force of the blows knocked her down on the floor in between the closet and the bed. While she was leaning up against the bed in a semi sitting position, he began kicking her. Unable to move, bleeding, dazed and stunned…………

Born Josephine Frances Tolbert on July 15, 1940, she was one of seven siblings, born to Walter H. Tolbert and Josephine E. Sickles. Her memories she shared with me and my siblings over years of her childhood wasn’t extensive.

My Mother told me that my Grandmother was a hard woman, who never showed much coddling or affection. I have no memories of my grandmother. I was born in 1962 and she died in 1967, from cancer. The only memory I have of my Grandfather was of him sitting in a chair with a Bible. My Mother shared one of her memories with me of my Grandmother, being angry at my Grandfather, she locked him out of the house for hours on that one cold, winter day without a coat. But she didn’t remember why her Mother was mad at her Father. For over thirty years he took a bologna sandwich to work every day for his lunch. My Grandmother was sixteen years old when she married my Grandfather. He was approximately seventeen years older than my Grandmother. My Grandparents eventually divorced. Several years after that, in 1967, she passed away from Stomach and Cervical cancer at the age of forty-seven.

My Mother told me that her Father would give her and the other six children a dime each day, to purchase milk for lunch at school. One day instead of buying milk, my Mother, and the other siblings, decided to put their milk money together to spend at the local store. Giggling with excitement, and anticipation, the seven agreed to purchase a pack of cigarettes, and tried smoking.

Around the age of three to four, Mother and her six-sibling’s health was put at risk. Not realizing the danger, their Father brought an old foam mattress home. My Grandmother expressed against the children meeting the foam. They all started playing on it. Not long after that my aunt, Ethel, got Polio, the family was under the assumption the Polio was a result of that old dirty foam mattress. The Health Department quarantined the entire house. Polio is a highly contagious viral illness. It is a transmitted by person to person through infected fecal matter entering the mouth. Polio can also be transmitted from saliva through contaminated food or water. The illness can result in paralysis, difficulty breathing, and in severe cases, sometimes death or leading to possible future medical complications.

Mother related another story to me about one my aunt’s when she was younger. She had eaten food directly out of an aluminum can that had been placed lidless in the refrigerator for an extended period. The utensil was also left sticking up out of the can as it sat lidless in the refrigerator. Which also made my aunt very sick.

Tragedy struck their household July of 1951, when one of their siblings, a sister, close to birth was stillborn. Tragedy struck again in their lives, when their younger brother’s, Eugene Tolbert, died in a drowning accident at Summit Lake, Ohio, on August 2, 1973. He was just nineteen years old. Years later, with cancer taking our Grandmother. Their oldest brother, John Tolbert passed away after years of battling with painful, crippling arthritis through his entire body. He was a very kind-hearted, loving man.

My Mother and Father met and dated, then got married on February 17, 1962, she was twenty-two years old. This was her first marriage. My father was twenty-eight years old. This was his second marriage. During their marriage, she gave birth to four children, and had miscarried two babies during pregnancy, before carrying them to full term. They had resided in numerous states over the years. Ohio, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia. Ohio being the first and last place where they made their permanent home. My parents remained together for fifty-seven years, till my Father’s death in September of 1997 at the age of sixty-three. My Mother never remarried.

Josephine Blackwell had seven pregnancies with Lloyd Blackwell. The Children of Josephine and Lloyd Blackwell in order by birth. The first their son Rickie, born in 1961. Rickey and his wife, he met in South Korea when he was serving in the US Army. They have two children and two grandchildren. Rickie and his family reside in Ohio.

Second. Born in 1962, Edith (me) and my husband Joseph, I have one son, Angelo and a daughter, whose name is Brandi. Expecting my first grandchild from Brandi. Me and my family reside in Alabama, except for my son, Angelo, he lives and teaches in China.

Third. Born 1964, Donald and Heidi Blackwell, they have two children and one grandchild. Donald and his family reside in Ohio.

Fourth and last child born to my parents was after 1964. Bore two children and one grandchild.

The remaining three pregnancies were stillborn or miscarried late into the pregnancy.

Both our parents passed before the great grandchildren were born.

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Photo taken by Josephine Sickles, who is now deceased

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2

Mother’s First Encounter

Let me remind you as your reading this I can only tell what she shared with me over the years. GOD first revealed himself to my mother when she was twenty-six years old, that was in November of 1966. Our Father was 32 years old. We lived in an old two-bedroom house that was located on a farm.

Our father was employed as a siding installer for a building supply and construction company in Mason City, Iowa. Our parents had met many people, friends, and acquaintances in the short time they lived in Iowa. This is how our parents met one of their friends’ and his wife through work. The four made plans to go bowling and hang out on Tuesday night. Me and my two brothers along with the couples two small children were dropped off at a babysitter’s house and would pick children back up before 11:00 PM. Our Father immediately started drinking alcohol. They bowled several games and decided to leave there and go to a tavern in town. It started getting late so Mother and her friend told the men they were going to pick up the children from the babysitters house but men didn’t want to leave, so our Mother told them they would come back for them after they picked up the children. But when they came back to pick up the men, they were already gone.

They searched for the guys but couldn’t find them, so our Mother drove her female friend and her children home. Opening the door to our home our Mother noticed that the guys had made it back to the house and one was on the couch, sleeping. Either they had gotten a ride or took a taxi to our home. My Mother settled on the conclusion it was a taxi. She carried us three children into the house one at a time and put us to bed. She slowly headed to her own bedroom.

Dazed, bleeding and stunned. Unable to get off the floor. She tried evading his violent outburst by bringing her arms up in front of her face to block his blows and protect her body. Out of control, he snapped. Staggering as he turned, a few feet away, fumbling for the closet door handle, yanking it open in a rage, he grabbed his 12-gauge pump shotgun, jerking it out of the closet. Turning and staggering as he approached my mother, within no more than a few feet from her, raising the gun, aiming at her, he pulled the trigger. The blast of the gun was very loud and deafening as It slammed into our Mothers body, echoing through the house. BB’s from the spent shell bounced and rolled. Scattering across the floors in all directions. Pulling the pump back to eject the spent shell, he pulls the trigger a second time, as the shotgun jams. Picking her up off the floor, he begins shaking her, with darkness surrounding her, passing out as he tossed her on the bed.

I was startled awake by loud blast. I sat up in the bed looking around. I could hear many small objects moving fast down the short hallway as some of them rolled into our bedroom across the floor, going up under our beds and crib, as they connected and bounced back off the walls, scattering