“Help me build a mountain from a little pot of clay, hey, hey, hey.”
-Tom Jones

My grandma was a single mom with a son and daughter and spent 34 years loading boxes at a potato chip factory.

My mother was a single mom with a son and daughter and by her mid 30’s was loading boxes at the same potato chip factory. 

When guys talked about their fathers being tough Teamsters, I told them that my mother and grandmother were tougher as they were Teamsters too.   The rumor was that Jimmy Hoffa personally organized the potato chip factory.

Mom had to have some Teamster-style toughness to break out of the family’s economic cycle.

She did not seem fit to take the movie role of Hoffa away from Jack Nicholson.   A better part would be Hoffa’s party-loving friend. 

When mom died last week, both the Cincinnati Post and Cincinnati Enquirer did great stories about mom, but the headline for the Enquirer described her perfectly.

It said “Fun-Loving Ollie McNay loaded chips to be a nurse.”

Mom was a single mother with 2 children, in her mid 30’s when she decided she wanted to be a nurse and did it.

It wasn’t until I was older that I realized what an incredible feat that was.  

No financial aide, no student loans.  No mentors. No role models. 

She found a profession she loved.  From the day she started, until 27 years later when a work-related injury ended her career, she never wanted to do anything else.

Her car always looked like a billboard for various nursing related causes.

What inspired her? What motivated here?  She never said.   There weren’t any career counselors coming to potato chip factories and recruiting potential nurses.  It is something that came from within.

She had a desire to make a better life for her and her children.  It wasn’t something she talked about; she just did it.

I never thought of my mom and her childhood friends as role models, but they were.

I realized at mom’s funeral that all of her friends started life in the poorest section of town.  None of them are there now.   Just like my mom, they struggled up the economic ladder.

Many of their children, like myself, made a higher climb.

The trick is not to be a Donald Trump who jumped from being a millionaire to a (self proclaimed) billionaire.  The trick was being Donald Trump’s parents who jumped from poverty to being millionaires. 

Mom did not jump to millionaire status but she grew up in a housing project and died in one of the most affluent cities in Kentucky.   A big move.

Parents are best when they are role models and not preachers.  Mom was a little wild and crazy.  In fact, she was a lot wild and crazy. The lessons we learned about challenging conventional norms could be lost behind the stories of her climbing on stage and tackling Tom Jones at a concert.

But since her children challenge authority, have good work ethics and are a little bit wacky, mom’s lessons must have gotten through.

Even though we don’t lust after Tom Jones.

 I’m not sure about my sister but Tom doesn’t do it for me.   

When mom died, we honored her memory by setting up the Ollie McNay Nursing Scholarship at Eastern Kentucky University.   It will go to a non-traditional student also struggling to be a nurse.

It will allow mom’s memory and spirit to live on and help people like her.

Anyone interested in donating can send a check to the:

Ollie McNay Nursing Scholarship, EKU Foundation, Eastern Kentucky University, CPO 19A, 521 Lancaster Ave, Richmond, KY  40475

Almost everyone thinks their mother was special and everyone is probably right.  I’ll miss mine and already do.

As her neighbors can attest, mom was never quiet about anything, but following her dream was something she did without publicity or fanfare.

As her idol Tom Jones said, she was able to make a mountain from a little pot of clay.

Hey, Hey, Hey.

Don McNay is President of McNay Settlement Group where we want our clients to reach their dreams like Ollie did.  You can write to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or read other things he has written at www.donmcnay.com.  His award winning column is syndicated on the CNHI News Service.