By Beth Cassidy
Enterprise Record

Cornelia Smith sent a booklet about the sesquicentennial of Courtney Baptist Church to some church members with a sticker on it that said, “Thanks for the hard work,” but after decades of selfless giving to everyone around her, maybe it’s she who needs to be thanked.
But getting her to talk about everything she has done for others in her 85 years is like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree.
What she does like to talk about is Batry, her husband of 61 years, who died in 2006. She still remembers vividly the day she and Batry were going to get married.
“My mother had been real sick with cancer, and we were not expecting her to live. I had been dating Batry since I was in seventh grade, and he was stationed in Texas, and I wrote him a letter telling him Mother was sick and we had to put our wedding off. Well, when I told Mother that, she pitched a fit. She said not to put our wedding off on her account, so I wrote him another letter and told him we would get married as planned.
“Well, Batry came home on furlough, and he didn’t seem very excited, and I said, Did you not get my letter? Mother said not to put the wedding off on her account. And he said, ‘I wish I’d known that. I could have bought …