Two children alone in a rented house on Grand Avenue, feeding themselves, getting themselves to school and weathering storms in a cave they dug into the side of a gully. It sounds like the plot of a novel, but it is the true childhood of Lila Pennington Ryals, and at 91 she told it herself in a memoir about growing up in old Fairhope. What Would Mama Do is a story of loss, grit and fierce sibling loyalty, and a vivid portrait of a small Eastern Shore town that has since changed almost beyond recognition.
The book, titled What Would Mama Do, Growing up an “Almost Orphan” in Fairhope, drew attention in early 2024, when Ryals spoke about it before audiences in Fairhope. Readers who have picked it up describe a narrative that moves them to both laughter and tears.
An “Almost Orphan”
Ryals’s mother died just days before Lila’s ninth birthday. Her father, who did not want to care for the last of his six children, left Lila and her younger brother, Buddy, largely to their own devices. At 9 and 7, the two children were responsible for feeding themselves, managing their own health care, getting through school and keeping themselves safe.
Their father worked and lived in Mobile and rarely checked on them in the house he had rented for them on Grand Avenue. In the book’s telling, the siblings got through their hardest moments by asking themselves a single question: What would Mama do? Their strong faith and their love for their mother guided them toward ways to endure.
Asked why no one in town reported the neglect, Ryals explained the realities of Fairhope at the time. “You have to remember the population of Fairhope at the time was 1400 people and we lived on a road with only 5 houses,” she said. “We didn’t want people to know we were alone for fear of being separated so we kept to ourselves.”
Living Off the Land in Old Fairhope
Much of the story unfolds during the war years, and the landscape of that era is almost a character in its own right. The woods, the gullies and the bay are everywhere in the book. The children learned to live off the land and earned a little money doing chores for neighbors. When storms came, both literal and emotional, they took refuge in a cave they had dug out of a cliff in one of the gullies near their home.
Those gullies are part of Fairhope’s geography to this day. The town sits atop a bluff overlooking Mobile Bay, and over time rainwater carved deep ravines through the sandy clay soil as it ran toward the water. Longtime residents still remember when those ravines were wild places where children roamed freely, long before the neighborhoods, shops and traffic of the modern city.
The Fairhope of Ryals’s childhood was a very different place. The town had been founded in 1894 as a single-tax colony by followers of economist Henry George, who believed land should be held in common and leased rather than owned outright. The Fairhope Single Tax Corporation still holds much of the land in the city’s core. In the early decades, Fairhope attracted reformers, artists and educators, including Marietta Johnson, whose School of Organic Education drew national attention for its progressive approach. But it remained a small bayside village, with dirt roads, a municipal pier and a population that could fit into a modest auditorium.
Coming of Age in the War Years
The World War II era transformed the upper Gulf Coast, and even a sleepy town like Fairhope felt it. Across the bay, Mobile became a major wartime industrial center, as shipyards turned out cargo ships and warships and Brookley Field grew into a large Army Air Forces supply depot. Tens of thousands of workers poured into the Mobile area, housing grew scarce, and the pace of life on the western shore quickened dramatically.
On the Eastern Shore, the changes were quieter but real: rationing, blackout concerns along the coast, sons and neighbors leaving for military service, and families keeping close watch on news from overseas. For two children already fending for themselves, those were uncertain years made harder by the absence of any adult safety net. That the siblings kept their household going through that period, while staying in school, speaks to a resilience that readers find both astonishing and moving.
Hearing the Story From the Author
One of the remarkable things about the book is how clearly its author remembers. When Ryals spoke about the memoir at the Fairhope Public Library, listeners were struck by her sharp memory of her childhood. Bombarded with questions, she answered each one in detail, painting a picture of her youth and of the historical Fairhope she grew up in.
She was also scheduled to speak at the Fairhope Museum of History on March 30, 2024, at 1 p.m., as part of the museum’s March Speaker Series. The museum, housed in the historic former city hall building on Section Street downtown, preserves the story of the single-tax colony and the town’s growth, making it a fitting venue for a firsthand account of life in Fairhope generations ago. Its speaker programs regularly feature local historians, authors and longtime residents; readers interested in future talks should check with the museum for its current schedule.
A Story of Perseverance
Without spoiling the book, it is fair to say that Lila and Buddy faced countless challenging events. The adventures, good and bad, are told with compelling imagery. What stands out most is the siblings’ doggedness and their devotion to each other. They protected one another, kept their secret, and found ways to survive when adults did not step in. The bond between a big sister barely out of early childhood and a little brother who depended on her entirely gives the book its emotional center, and it is the thread readers tend to remember long after they close the final page.
Ryals’s faith, her pain, her hope and her ability to survive at such a young age run through every chapter. Readers have called the story inspiring and heartening, and at least one reviewer suggested someone ought to write a screenplay, calling the story “Hollywood-worthy.”
Memoirs like this one carry particular value for local history. Official records capture census numbers, property deeds and council minutes, but they rarely capture what it felt like to be a child in a particular place and time: where children played, how neighbors helped or didn’t, what people ate and how families coped with hardship. First-person accounts fill in those gaps, and as the generation that remembers the Depression and World War II grows smaller, such books become irreplaceable.
The Author Today
Ryals lives in the Bluff area of Fairhope and, at the time the book was being promoted, still walked miles every day. She is known around town for the red Alabama ball cap she always wears. Readers who spot her are encouraged to say hello, and perhaps to tell her how much her story meant to them.
Her life story connects two very different Fairhopes: the tiny village of dirt roads and gullies where she and Buddy fended for themselves, and the busy, much-visited city of today, with its flower-lined downtown, galleries, restaurants and waterfront parks. Few people can describe both from personal experience.
Where to Find the Book
- Title: What Would Mama Do, Growing up an “Almost Orphan” in Fairhope
- Author: Lila Pennington Ryals
- Length: About 300 pages
- Where to buy: Amazon and Page & Palette, the independent bookstore in downtown Fairhope
Page & Palette, a family-owned bookstore that has been part of downtown Fairhope for decades, regularly champions local authors and hosts book signings, making it a natural home for a memoir so rooted in the town’s past.
Fairhope has long nurtured writers, and the town’s literary community has included nationally known authors as well as many local memoirists, historians and poets. Ryals’s book adds a rare voice to that tradition: a native daughter writing from living memory about the town before it became a destination.
Exploring Fairhope’s History
For readers who finish the book and want to learn more about the town Ryals describes, several resources are close at hand:
- Fairhope Museum of History: Exhibits on the single-tax colony, early settlers and the town’s development, along with periodic speaker programs.
- Fairhope Public Library: Local history materials and regular author talks and community programs.
- The bluff and bayfront: A walk along the bluff, the municipal pier and the bayfront parks offers a sense of the landscape that shaped Ryals’s childhood, even if the wild gullies of the 1930s and 1940s have largely given way to neighborhoods.
- Marietta Johnson Museum: Housed in a historic building of the School of Organic Education, it tells the story of one of Fairhope’s most influential early institutions.
Small towns often keep their most powerful stories in the memories of their oldest residents. Lila Pennington Ryals chose to write hers down, and in doing so she gave Fairhope a record of courage, faith and love that will outlast all of us. As one admirer put it, she is a hero.