The first ‘Adopt a Student’ mom in McCook

Olelia Ann Stubblefield

Olelia Ann Hartsfield was born in Cottage Grove, Kentucky 90 years ago this Sunday. Who, you might ask, is Olielia and what does she have to do with Southwest Nebraska? Well, Olielia, after attending Dunbar High School where she was a cheerleader and no doubt, an excellent student, happen to marry one Wilker H. T. “Mickey” Stubblefield and ended up moving to McCook, Nebraska where he would play baseball for the McCook Cats.

There is much, much more to Olelia than being Mickey’s wife, and her story is a story of giving food and comfort to young black men who came to McCook to play sports for the McCook Junior College. In the 50’s and 60’s there were no dormitory rooms for male athletes which meant they were living in apartments and quite on their own when it came to meals and a place like home away from home.

The first young man to show up for dinner was Fortunato Mendes who hailed from Providence, Rhode Island. She remembers that he worked for Joe Uhrich in the men’s department at DeGroff’s, plus at M & E Café while attending school but still came for meals at “Miss Stubbs” home. He went on to become a lawyer and worked in D.C. for a time.

The list is long: Al Fox, Jerry Dunn, Joe Casmer, Charles King, Bill Overton, Mel Tarpley. Some she remembers only their first names but they all were welcome at her table as long as they knew the rules, no alcohol in her home and no disrespect or using bad language. Some, like Joe, keep in contact still today. One young man confided to her that he ran from practice to his apartment to shower, then ran to her house so he could be the first at the table.

I asked her how in the world she could feed those extra mouths (and hungry ones at that for they were football, basketball and track stars) when she already had 12 mouths to feed of her own. (13 when her nephew, Ron, came to live with them.) She told me she grew up with a mother that could take “one potato and feed five people till they were full”. She explained how she would take a nice fat hen and could cut it into 15 servings. (Having cut up my share of farm raised chickens, she and I agreed that today’s store-bought hens wouldn’t make the grade.) Then if it was summer, she would add the vegetables from the garden and if not, bring out the multitude of canned goods she put away each year.

Her mother’s words rang true in Olelia’s heart: “Always food for another one. Always room for another one.” She downplays what she did for those young black men, but I think that it was more than she realized. Her home was their home and despite being “grown-ups” away at college, they were still homesick kids in reality. She became ‘Mom Stubbs’ for them all.

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