Tender heart born of warm, yet wavering, start to life

MORRISVILLE -- When Alberta Council was born at home in 1918 weighing less than 3 pounds, the doctor set her aside to die.

That was apparently the custom for such tiny infants then, but an optimistic older sister wrapped her in a blanket and placed her in the oven of the wood-burning stove in their country home. The fire had burned out, but the oven, still warm, incubated the baby.

After such a dramatic debut, it was hardly surprising that Council gave everyone she encountered the benefit of the doubt.

She didn't criticize and didn't judge, opting instead to see the best in everyone.

"She always had an excuse, like maybe they misunderstood the question or maybe they had a bad day," said her daughter, Nancy King. "My husband called her na•ve."

Shortly before her death, Council and her daughter were driving to the airport when they reached an intersection. King, at the wheel, thought she needed to yield to oncoming traffic but realized she had a lane to herself when the driver behind her immediately laid on the horn.

King was indignant. Her mother, however, saw it differently.

"Wasn't that nice of him," she said, "letting us know we could go now."

Two days later, on an August night, Alberta Council went to sleep and never woke up. Doctors said her heart just stopped. She was 89.

Council, born in Wake County, was named Alberta Roosevelt by patriotic parents. She acquired the nickname "Teddy" for obvious reasons. Her sister, named Margaret Hoover in honor of another president, later changed her name, but Council stuck with hers. She would never have hurt her mother's feelings by changing her name.

Raised in Morrisville, Council was 19 and pregnant with her second child when her husband, Bruce Council, died of pneumonia.

Seven months pregnant, she moved back to her mother's home. For the next two decades, she labored on the family tobacco farm. She milked the cows and fed the hogs. She planted tobacco, plucked worms off by hand, chopped and looped it, hand-tying the tobacco leaves on a stick. Those sticks then hung in the tobacco barn to cure. Come harvest time, Council was known as the fastest tobacco "looper" in the community.

"I never saw anybody that could outloop her," King said.

In the 1960s, she got her first car -- a brand-new blue Nash Rambler -- and began driving to downtown Raleigh to work at the Hudson Belk department store. She started during the Christmas season, when holiday shoppers' tempers could flare. Council's tender sensibilities were offended when frazzled customers snapped at her.

Observing her anxiety, a supervisor offered a position in the stock room, where she stayed for 27 years until she was 69.

In 1967, she moved in with her daughter and son-in-law. In her free time, she read inspirational novels, Christian-themed stories full of hope. And she pined for Elvis.

He was her one indiscretion. People would tease her about his suggestive gyrations. But she loved to hear him sing, blushing each time she saw him on television or in movies.

On her kids' side

Council lived a simple life, seeing the best there was in others and going each week to church with her son, Claybon.

Every Sunday she would compliment her pastor at First Baptist Church of Morrisville. "I enjoyed your sermon very much," she'd tell him.

Only at her funeral did he learn she was just being polite. Her advancing deafness made it unlikely she heard much of his sermons.

This summer, she watched on television as her son, Claybon Council, pitched to local baseball phenom Josh Hamilton in Major League Baseball's Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium. Council used to be Hamilton's American Legion batting coach back when Hamilton was a boy. Hamilton, who now plays for the Texas Rangers, fulfilled a promise from long ago when he invited his former coach to New York.

Alberta Council watched the action unfold with her daughter, who seated her two feet from the television to ensure she could hear as well as see.

Sitting that close, she was able to make out the announcers calling her son a "71-year-old man."

That did not make her happy.

"Now everybody in the world knows how old he is," she cried.

It's not that she was vain. Tenderhearted as usual, she was concerned the focus on her septuagenarian boy's age would hurt his feelings.

"I think she thought they were saying it in a negative way, and she never said anything negative about anyone," her son said.

For the record, Claybon Council was not offended.

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Alberta Council is survived by a son and daughter, four grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

Life Stories