Mickey Starling
reporter3@greenepublishing.com
In the late 1800s, Madison County had plenty of raucous activity that has been duly noted. But, the county also boasted of a rich spiritual life that flourished in the midst of the harsh life of those days. A prime example is the life of Lizzie Olive Thomas, whose Madison upbringing eventually inspired her to serve as a missionary and teacher in Japan.
Thomas was the niece of M.H. Waring, Sr., who was appointed postmaster in Madison in 1889. Thomas came home from her job with the Sunny South, a weekly women's publication that was connected to the Atlanta Sunday papers, shortly after Waring's appointment. She had received word that Waring had come down with a bad case of the grippe (which we know as the flu) and she came home to give him a hand. She also continued writing for the Sunny South during her brief return home.
Thomas landed an impressive position with the paper due to personal letters she had written to one of the paper's editors. The letters were published and when the editor received a promotion to a New York newspaper, Thomas was offered the job. She protested that she wasn't qualified, but the editor responded with “I pay the salary and you should come right on,” which is exactly what she did.
In the midst of her busy writing career, Thomas was actively involved in teaching Sunday school classes at two area churches in Atlanta. One afternoon, Lucy Carpenter showed up at her door and took her to lunch. Carpenter was an art teacher at La Grange College and had happened upon a missionary couple on a recent train ride. They informed her that they were forced by illness to retire from their service to the Methodist Girls School in Hiroshima, Japan. Carpenter thought immediately of Thomas as a fitting replacement for the couple. “If I am needed, I dare not refuse,” said Thomas.
Thomas spent the next six years at the school, teaching Bible, english and music before the exhausting task gave her a nervous breakdown. Thomas returned to America and continued writing and establishing a Christian women's organization in Jacksonville, Fla. Thomas worked herself a bit too diligently, causing her doctor to dare her to go into an office again. After amassing a number of pets, she retired briefly to the suburbs before getting a “call” to join forces with a dirt farmer in Alabama.