What The Grandson Said
Aaron Griffin, one of Bessie Blount’s grandsons, has been quoted in multiple profiles of his grandmother. His recollections provide the most personal and direct window into who she was as a human being rather than as a historical figure.
The detail he provides of her living situation — a modest one-bedroom trailer stacked with papers and instruments — is a vivid and somewhat sobering image. She had not made money from her inventions or from her consulting work. She had not accumulated material wealth. What she had accumulated were papers, instruments, knowledge, and the record of her work.
His description of her attitude toward rejection — “OK, I’ll show you” — is more than a biographical anecdote. It is a characterization of a fundamental disposition toward adversity: not devastation, not defeat, but redirection and determination.
His account of her diagnosing his brother Nicholas’s vision problem through handwriting analysis — when Nicholas was twelve — is both a personal family story and a demonstration of how completely she had integrated her professional expertise into her daily life. She did not put her handwriting analysis away when she was with her grandchildren. She was always practicing it, always observing, always drawing conclusions from what she saw.
The image of the elderly Bessie Blount building an automatic eye dropper from paper clips and rubber bands while in retirement is the final note in the story of an inventor — someone for whom the response to encountering a practical problem is not passive acceptance but creative design.
She never stopped.