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Hattie Lee Hampton Jefferies

    
 
  Born: May 13, 1913    Died: February 19, 1964    
  Hattie Lee Hampton Jefferies was born in Cave Springs, Alabama. Hattie was the third daughter of Matilda and Percy Hampton. She moved to Sheffield, Alabama with her family. She married her first husband, Reason Thompson, at age seventeen. In 1947 her sister, Osceola brought her to Seattle to treat an illness. Hattie was quiet, a hard worker, involved in church, loved beautiful, expensive clothes and often did thoughtful deeds for others without making a fuss. She tried to give her baby sister what she didn't have. She was sensitive and would not fuss and fight. She liked to go out, loved entertaining the family and was very fond of her nieces and nephews who behaved very well under her supervision.

Around 1939, Hattie was struck by lightening at home in Sheffield. Mabel and Lloyd were sitting on the front steps when the storm started. Hattie called for them to come into the house. When they came in, the lightening had already struck Hattie, and she was lying behind a bedroom door. In a panic, Matilda called for neighbor, Mrs. Russell. Mr. and Mrs. Russell came to the house and Mr. Russell picked Hattie up from behind a door and said "My goodness, she's limber like a dish rag!" She was about to lay down on the bed when a lightning bolt struck her. The family doctor, Dr. Ruffin came over. The neighbor, Fannie Mae heard Matilda hollering her mother Ira Hawkins came to the house to help bringing fresh milk from her cow to massage her. Then the doctor and others packed her in ice. She was unconscious for 4 hours. After her recovery, her sister, Ossie came from St. Louis and took Hattie to St. Louis.

In 1947 Hattie was working in the lunchroom at the "white school." Every year the school administered tubuculosis tests to the employees. Her test was "positive" and Matilda called Ossie (now living in Seattle) to tell her that hattie was going to be sent to the TB hospital in Decatur, Alabama. Ossie said not to do anything until she heard from her. Three days later, Ossie pulled up in a cab, and took Hattie to Seattle where further test showed that she did not have TB. In Seattle, she met and married Eugene Jefferies. Her only child, Lloyd, died at age twenty. Hattie died from ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). She died on February 19, 1964, exactly one year before Christine Grimes was shot and killed at Sterling High School in Sheffield.