Mary Anne Rice Lefoldt
Jackson
Mary Anne Rice Lefoldt was born in 1949 in Jackson, Mississippi. Her mother was born in 1914 in Tyler, Texas. Her maternal grandparents Charlie and Comana Unis came from Mount Lebanon, the predominantly Christian region of what was then Syria, through Galveston to Tyler around 1913 or 1914.
Her father was born in 1910 in Hemlaya, in the Mount Lebanon region of Syria. He immigrated through Rhode Island to the US in 1920. He and his family went first to Detroit, Michigan, then south to Jackson because her grandmother Yesmine disliked Detroit and had relatives in Mississippi.
Once in Mississippi, Mary Anne’s grandfather and father peddled. Eventually, like so many other Lebanese in the state, they opened and ran grocery stores. Her father’s were on Lynch St., Pascagoula St., and Farrish St. in Jackson. Despite moving to the US when he was ten years old, and living into his eighties, her father “talked with a broken accent until the day he died,” Mary Anne recalled.
Her mother and father met at the first Lebanese convention in Jackson in 1935 and were married in 1936. Her grandparents, Yesmine and George Ryas, were charter members of the club, and Mary Anne remains a member today.
Mary Anne learned to cook Lebanese food from her grandmother and her mother, who cooked Sunday dinners for the family until she was around ninety-six years old. In the audio on this page, Mary Anne talks about going to the Cedars of Lebanon Club as a child and learning to do traditional Lebanese dances, like the dabke, to traditional Lebanese music.
She also remembers her family being denied membership to the country club and the Junior League in Jackson—organizations that have traditionally lent themselves to social and economic advancement—as a result of their Lebanese ethnicity and Catholic religion.
Mary Anne and her husband, Larry, have three daughters, none of whom married Lebanese men but who still go to the Cedars of Lebanon Club occasionally. “They appreciate their heritage,” Mary said, “and they always tell everybody they are Lebanese.”
This interview took place at the Cedars of Lebanon clubhouse in Jackson on Friday, October 13, 2017.
AUDIO (Click to listen):