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time that Mamaw was “a Martha and Mary all wrapped up in one.”
    Mamaw could practically quote the entire Bible. One of her favorite verses was Isaiah 41:10, in the old King James Version:
    Fear thou not; for I am with thee:
    be not dismayed; for I am thy God:
    I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee,
    yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
    I can still hear her saying those words with great emphasis.
    Papaw would later write that he could see how God welded their bond of love and how there were now thirty-nine of us who came from their great love. Almost all of us worship at the same church each Sunday.
    As Mamaw and Papaw got older, Papaw’s health declined first. After he cared for Mamaw for so many years, the time came for Mamaw to take care of Papaw, and she did so with grace and love. She read him scriptures and cooked his favorite meals.
    Their love was an awesome example of never giving up, even when your dreams have no hope of being realized. Papaw stood by Mamaw through some very dark days, and in doing so left our family a legacy of steadfastness and commitment that I will always appreciate and remember.
    PAPAW PHIL: HE STARTED SMALL—AND KEPT ON GOING
    When Papaw Phil was in college at Louisiana Tech, he was a great football player. He was so great that when he decided to leave the football team because it took too much time away from duck hunting, a guy named Terry Bradshaw took his place. Terry Bradshaw became a Super Bowl–winning quarterback, and now he is on TV talking about football. He’s so famous that he even does things like commercials for weight-loss products. I’m just saying that to make the point that Papaw Phil was really good, and if he had stuck with his football, who knows? Maybe he would have won the Super Bowl and would be in weight-loss commercials today.
    But football was not Papaw Phil’s passion. His passion was duck hunting. That was probably the last thing he thought about every night and the first thing he thought about every morning. What he really wanted to do with his life was to hunt and be really good at it. But I’m sure he wondered how he would ever support his family if he did get really good at it.
    Papaw Phil had a gift for knowing what ducks are supposed to sound like and figuring out how to build duck calls to make those sounds. So he started dreaming about being able to support his family selling the duck calls he made. He started with just one kind of duck call, and he worked on it and improved it over the years. Then he made another kind and another.
    There’s a reason people call Papaw Phil “the Duck Commander.” He spent a lot of years learning everything he could about ducks. He knows how they fly and what their habits are. He knows the differences between diving ducks and perching ducks and dabbling ducks. He knows which ducks have good meat to eat and which ones don’t. But most of all, he knows about duck sounds, becauseevery type of duck makes a different sound, and males make different sounds than females. His ear is amazing. It’s a gift not many people have, and he used it to make his dream come true by making the most accurate duck calls on the market.
    He did not make the perfect duck call on his first try. He made one after another after another, tweaking and refining every one until he got it just right. He never allowed himself to get frustrated with a duck call that was not perfect just because he had spent a lot of time working on it. If it was not exactly right, he just kept fixing it or started over. Making those first great duck calls took a lot of patience and perseverance.
    For Papaw Phil, being able to support his family by selling duck calls did not happen fast, and our whole family had to work in the business in order to make it successful, but it did happen. He reached a point where he was able to provide for his family—and he’s in pretty good shape today because of those duck calls!
    What I’ve