BY LAUREN KIRK

PHOTOS BY COURTNEY SEARCY

FEATURED IN VOL 7, ISSUE 2: Legacy

When we arrive for lunch, Virginia Conger has already set three places at the table with a brilliant white linen tablecloth, and she quickly scrambles to create a fourth place set for the extra guest I’ve brought along with me. She mentions that during Bob’s career she never knew if he would be bringing one person or ten people to dinner each night, and how glad she is for the company these days.

While many know her as the wife of late Mayor Bob Conger, and grandmother of current Mayor Scott Conger, she is also my neighbor. The one with the infamous rum cake that she frequently donates to ComeUnity Cafe (she kindly shared the recipe with us, though good luck replicating it exactly). The one who can commiserate with my stories of municipal management, and who never withholds kindness nor the truth from me.

We spend the afternoon enraptured by her stories of growing up on a farm just outside the town of Toone, meeting Bob and navigating political life, years of teaching school, community service, and raising a family. We end the visit with a tour of their home that was custom built in the 1950s and expanded in the 1960s, the only space Bob ever designed using his architecture degree. She gives us the origin stories of various pieces throughout her pristine home, including a secretary cabinet that crossed the Cumberland Gap in the 1800s and the origin of a hole in a bedroom door from her children’s rambunctious days that she refused to let the painter fix, insisting that even 50 years later, it’s still their responsibility. It’s almost as if we’re traveling through her own personal time capsule, with the collection perfectly preserved yet still expanding; a story behind every framed photo, ceramic mug, and even the vibrant carpet colors still covering the floors of her children’s former bedrooms.

When I ask her about her legacy, I expect a typical answer related to her role as Jackson’s First Lady, her many years of community service as an educator, volunteer, and parishioner, or being the matriarch of her family. What I don’t expect is a return to her origins instead. That to her, legacy is not about all that she or her family has accomplished, but instead where she started. Growing up poor, tending to her family farm, learning the value of work ethic and responsibility. I’m shocked by the emotion this elicits in me, that a woman with such an impressive life over 91 years views legacy much more simply than what we’ve been taught it means. That legacy is more than what is listed on your resume, or how many associates you keep. It is the character you build over time, and having pride in your story, especially your humble origins.

I’m mostly struck by how I see myself in her words, both of us poor country girls with ambition. While I’ve spent my life trying to escape that place and person, she’s spent her life growing from those roots, never forgetting who she is or where she came from. Legacy, a small farm in Toone.

She sends us home with handmade blankets and muffins, insisting that we visit again soon. What she doesn’t realize she’s sent us home with is invaluable perspective. A gentle reminder to focus less on accomplishing a legacy and more on becoming one, starting with our roots.

Rum Cake

1 package of butter cake mix

Wearing long sleeves in the summer fields

1 small vanilla instant puddin

Memphis bound, but home on the weekends

4 eggs

A year of silence, paid tuition

½ cup oil

An English degree, and political ambitions

Mandarin orange juice (½ cup)

A year in Tulsa, 300 days on the road

½ cup rum

First Lady, grandmother, caretaker, surrogate mother

1 small can mandarin oranges

Nearly 60 years in the same home

1 cup chopped pecans

Legacy, another story told.

LAUREN KIRK is a proud member of the Neighbors Club, place-maker for the City of Jackson, and co-owner of Turntable Coffee Counter with her husband Anthony. When she's not sipping coffee or running the city, she enjoys walking her dogs, Jack and Marley, through Midtown, writing poetry, or getting lost in a novel from Light Trap Books.

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