Joey’s Poem
By Margery McCurdy Plummer

As I drive up Tyree Springs Road toward the intersection with Portland Road, I always notice Virginia Hornberger’s house, but day by day it shows more signs of deteriorating as old houses not having the company of occupants usually do.

This spring I would like to see the long wooden flower boxes that used to be on the porch filled with bright petunias and with friends and neighbors sitting there and visiting. I don’t think it will happen.

Virginia is fondly remembered by many people for many reasons, but one thing I knew about her that perhaps not many people knew was that Virginia was a poet.

Many times when I would take clothes to Virginia’s to be altered, I visited with her. We talked of family and friends and the usual happenings around a small town.

One day she told me that she liked to write poems. She said that when something “hit her” she just wrote it down on a scrap of paper or an envelope or whatever was handy and kept them in a box. Many of her poems concerned religion or the wonders of nature or of family. I could relate to her “box.” For years I kept a big suit box under the bed, then made myself a cardboard “filing” box, then moved on to a metal filing cabinet for my “stuff.”

One day Virginia showed me a poem she had written about Joey, her grandson. Joey had been born with multiple mental and physical challenges whose severity increased as time passed. In addition to these handicaps, Joey was born blind and was mostly unaware of normal life all around him.

After a time, it became apparent that it would be impossible to care for Joey at home. A home was found for him where he would be cared for lovingly among other children in similar circumstances. The home is appropriately named Mercy House. The children and adults there are treated as nearly as possible as though they were leading normal lives. For them their lives are normal.

I typed “Joey’s Poem” for Virginia and took it to the White House Print Shop where it was beautifully reproduced.
Joey is in his forties now and knows nothing of the poem hanging in this home for family and other visitors to see.
After Virginia’s death, her family took her poems from the box where she had kept them, had them printed and put between covers for her family members.

Virginia was humble and more or less kept her poems a private part of her life. How proud she would be if she knew that her works were now being read and appreciated. The following is the poem that Virginia wrote for her grandson, Joey.