I wish that staff writer Leon Alligood, of the Tennessean.com, had questioned or included questions of Lillie Harding Vertrees Odom's growing up in the early part of the 20th century.
Her father, Peter Vertrees was 75 when she was born and died when she was about 11.

I would like to know more about her mother, whose only mention was that she was Black.
Was her husband Black?
And by extention, how about her nurtured son?

My point here is that the writer is too dismissive with her modern family history; choosing to go from her father's 19th century trials and tribulations as a cook and bodyguard in the confederate ranks to her 21st century statement that it is the United Daughters of the Confederacy filling the void in her life since becoming a widow - rather than her few Black friends.

Why are the UDC "more" like sisters to Lillie?

That's the story I want to know.
What in her own life, 90 years in the yellow house on Bledsoe street, led her to those conclusions?

Peace,
"Guided by the Ancestors"