Sponsor Message Up until her death in 2005, the woman known affectionately as “Mamaw” played a pivotal role in Vance’s life. As a boy growing up in the small industrial community of ...

“It occurred to us that towards the end of her life, Mamaw couldn’t get around so well, so she was sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm’s length of whatever she needed to ...

If anything, I played her down. I mean, she was very much a larger-than-life character. It would have unbalanced the movie if I was the real Mamaw [laughs], so I was trying to find the essence of ...

“Mamaw’s entire life—and the trajectory of our family—may have changed for a baby who lived only six days,” he writes. Blanton died in 2005, at the age of 72, when Vance was only 20 and ...

As he did in his memoir, Vance credits his grandmother “Mamaw,” with helping him overcome a harrowing childhood. “I had a guardian angel by my side. She was an old woman who could barely ...

He was grateful for his Mamaw’s steady presence even as she struggled ... for the chance to fulfill what Vance believes was their life’s purpose. Instead, my mother was 720 miles away ...

But his mother was trying to steer a car during one pivotal clash with Bonnie Blanton Vance, the matriarch known to all as "Mamaw." "There was a lot of screaming ... "To coast through life was to ...

But his mother was trying to steer a car during one pivotal clash with Bonnie Blanton Vance, the matriarch known to all as "Mamaw ... "To coast through life was to squander my God-given talent ...