ELIZABETH WILLIS

TRANSCRIPT %u2013 ELIZABETH WILLIS
[Compiled November 22nd, 2010]

Interviewee: ELIZABETH WILLIS

Interviewer: Dwana Waugh

Interview Date: August 7th, 2010

Location: Shelby, North Carolina

Length: Approximately 85 minutes

DWANA WAUGH: This is August 7th, 2010. Dwana Waugh is interviewing%u2026
ELIZABETH WILLIS: %u2026Elizabeth Willis.
DW: Okay, and when were you born?
EW: I was born at Earl, North Carolina, Cleveland County.
DW: Okay, and when?
EW: 1931.
DW: Okay, thank you. [Laughter] And we are at Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Cleveland County in Shelby, North Carolina. I think, just starting, if you could talk a little bit about your childhood, your early childhood, and what it was like growing up in Earl, North Carolina.
EW: Oh, okay. [Laughter] Okay. I was the second of eleven children, and Earl, I remember our childhood, we stayed right near the highway and a railroad track, so we had the train, the railroad. On the farm, Mama and Daddy always farmed, and they raised corn, cotton, and other things that they needed on the farm. At that time, they were renting from somebody else, so we stayed there for a long time. I remember as a child, we would have to walk to school. We had to walk to school, and that was about, I guess, three miles to where we were going to school.
DW: One way?
EW: One way, and in the cold wintertime, of course it would get real cold. Sometimes a teacher would pick us up and take us on to school. We went to Earl School until our sixth grade, and then we had outside activities when we were on the playground. We didn%u2019t have a gym or anything; they did all the basketball playing or whatever, on the outside. We did our little recesses with play stations, making our own play stations, like building houses. [Laughter] DW: And did you use real wood?
EW: No, no, you just used--make a line and say, %u201CThis is my part.%u201D [Laughter] DW: Okay.
EW: A group of us. We jumped rope, skipped rope, jumped plank. We made our fun then. I was at Earl until I was sixth grade. Then we went to Camp High School. It was Camp; it was a (03:00) school, first grade through high school, and I graduated Camp High School. Now, in school there, they did have a gym that they could play basketball in, and [pause] I went in the sixth grade. My sixth grade teacher was Mrs. (03:26), and she promoted me to seventh grade. She had sixth and seventh grade.
DW: Was that common to go from Earl School to Camp in that way?
EW: No, we moved. Oh, I didn%u2019t tell you that. We moved to that area. My daddy bought a farm over there, found a farm, and he bought a farm over there and we moved to that area.
DW: Okay.
EW: Then we rode the bus. We could ride the bus then. By then, they had buses, so we rode the bus to school.
DW: Okay. Were you as far as three miles from the school?
EW: We were about a mile-and-a-half from that school. [Laughter] DW: Okay, a little closer if you did have to walk.
EW: It might not have been quite that far. I%u2019m thinking that from where Celanese is now, down to Earl. It might not have been quite that far, but to me it was. [Laughter] DW: Yeah, more than a couple of blocks is--. [Laughter] EW: But then, going to school, I was higher in classes and higher in grades and we started doing other things. The girls weren%u2019t allowed to play basketball. [Laughter] My parents didn%u2019t allow us to play basketball. The boys did, but we didn%u2019t. The activities then were like basketball; they didn%u2019t have football and all the other things but basically basketball in the county. We had glee clubs. We were in the glee club festivals that we joined. We won a couple of awards for our glee club. Then, we went to other schools for the glee club festivals, and we usually walked. What other things did we do? In high school, we had home economics, English, social studies, French, math, science, and of course, in the science we started doing the experiments. We had science experiments and all of that.
DW: Did y%u2019all have a lab?
EW: We had a lab, yeah. Yeah, we had a lab. [Laughter] Our science teacher had a snake in an aquarium, and one of the boys let it out one day. [Laughter] DW: That would not have been pleasant. [Laughter] EW: Anyway, she wasn%u2019t afraid of it; she got it back in there. Of course, we were outside when he let it out, and she didn%u2019t let us back in the room until--we were outside at recess. Then, the children went out by themselves. The teachers didn%u2019t have to go with us out to recess.
DW: Oh, okay.
EW: And we played baseball or whatever on the outside--games, made up our own games.
DW: How long was the recess?
EW: About thirty minutes.
DW: Do you remember some of the games that y%u2019all made up?
EW: In high school, it was different from elementary school. Like I said, baseball, but we didn%u2019t make that up. Oh, I can%u2019t think of any games that we played. Nothing but baseball and tag, hopscotch, but high school was a little different from elementary.
DW: You were saying that you couldn%u2019t play basketball. Was that just in your family?
EW: In my family, my parents. One of my sisters, my fourth sister, loved to play basketball, and she had [pause]--I don%u2019t know what was the cause of it, but she had--I can%u2019t think of what the ailment was, but they didn%u2019t want her to play basketball. Because she couldn%u2019t play basketball, they didn%u2019t allow any of the girls to play.
DW: Oh, okay.
EW: That was just their rule. I graduated from Camp High School as valedictorian of my class.
DW: How many students were in your class?
EW: You can%u2019t imagine. [Laughter] Ten. [Laughter] DW: Wow!
EW: We had the smallest class in the school, the smallest class that ever graduated there. There were ten of us that made it. Now, we started out with more than that in the eighth grade, but because they consolidated from other schools, they consolidated from the elementary schools from Earl and Patterson Springs to Camp. So when they all came together there was more than that. But then, when the girls got pregnant, they had to drop out, so a lot of that was going on and that kind of thing, people moved, whatever, and we ended up with eight people in the class. No boys, all girls. [Laughter] DW: Wow. [Pause] Wow. That%u2019s pretty--yeah, that%u2019s pretty tiny. Have you kept up with your classmates?
EW: Yeah, we have school reunion every two years. I didn%u2019t go this year, but we have a school reunion every two years. There are still four of us living.
DW: Oh. How did you feel about going to school? How important was school to you?
EW: School was important to us; Mama saw to that and Daddy did too. School was important. We had to go to school. They made provisions for us to go to school. They had to fix our lunches because they didn%u2019t have lunchrooms and that type of thing then. They had to fix our lunches, and they saw that we had our necessities like books and pencils and paper and all that stuff. Mama wanted to go to school when she was growing up, but she couldn%u2019t go farther than sixth grade, and Daddy didn%u2019t go farther than sixth grade. They wanted us to have a thing that they didn%u2019t have a chance to have, so they saw to it that we got our education. They encouraged us to go on to college. If you notice, in that I said I graduated in 1950, I went to college in %u201952. My oldest sister was already in school, so they couldn%u2019t send me at that time. The sister under me, she went to school for nursing. She was getting help for that, so I had to wait two years before I could go. When I went to college, my first semester--Daddy painted; my daddy painted; he was a painter and a farmer. I mean, he painted houses, buildings. He was a painter and a farmer. When I went to school the first year, they had quarters then. After the second quarter started, which was winter time, he wasn%u2019t getting to paint like he normally did, so he wrote me a letter. That%u2019s the only letter Daddy has written me: %u201CI%u2019m not going to be able to keep you in college for the next quarter,%u201D so I started praying that God would help me to find a job because they had campus jobs. The dormitory matron came to me one morning and she said, %u201CI notice you get up and go to breakfast every morning. How would you like to have a job in the dormitory?%u201D so I said, %u201CThat%u2019s what I%u2019ve been praying for.%u201D [Laughter] Of course I wanted the job. I didn%u2019t ask her what it was, but the job was sweeping the sidewalks. She said, %u201CWhat you have to do is sweep the sidewalk because the one who was doing it is quitting. She has paid her tuition for the next quarter and she doesn%u2019t want to do it any more.%u201D I said, %u201COf course I want it.%u201D She said, %u201CYou need to sweep the sidewalk. Get up early in the morning before the other students get to stirring, and get your work done, and by that time you%u2019ll be having time to go to breakfast,%u201D so I did. And the second year after that year, the ones who were working had a chance to decide whether they wanted to work on the campus, and I picked the library. So, from then on, I worked in the library, and that%u2019s one of the ways that I got my first job, by working in the library. And I had taken music; I took music classes. That%u2019s the way I ended up with music. I got my first job by having music experience and working in a library.
DW: Okay. Well, I wanted to ask you how that had come to be, but when you were sweeping sidewalks, do you remember how early you had to get up and how often you had to do it?
EW: About five-thirty, and I didn%u2019t have to do it no time but every day. Every morning, I had to do that. And instead of complaining about it, I looked at the bright side. I enjoyed the early morning. There was nothing--the sun hadn%u2019t started shining. The birds, you only heard nature, God. [Laughter] The birds singing, the crickets or whatever, so I made a joyful time out of it instead of complaining about %u201CI%u2019ve got to sweep the sidewalks.%u201D
DW: That%u2019s a good attitude.
EW: While in college--I was at Fayetteville State--I was treasurer of my class my senior year--and I was in the Zeta Phi Beta. I joined the Zeta Phi Beta sorority. I was on the choir, participated in the college choir. My last year, my choir director wanted to use me as the choir pianist, but then a lady came in during her freshman year who could play, and she told me %u201Csince you%u2019re going to be here only one year, I%u2019ll train her.%u201D I could understand that; she%u2019d have her four years and me, one. And I was going to have to do student teaching during that year too, so I knew that was going to be a hard job for me because it was going to be a lot of practicing.
DW: How did the student teaching work?
EW: They had a school on the campus, so we could either go on campus to that school, and that%u2019s where I went, called (15:09), and it was an elementary school. So I did my teaching experience with a second grade and a third grade teacher. Part of the semester, we took two different teachers and different classes, so since I was primary, I did second grade and third grade, but not at the same time.
DW: Okay, okay. So the school was--we have said that you went to Fayetteville State, the school, (15:44) was part of Fayetteville%u2019s school system?
EW: Children from Fayetteville went there. We stayed about ten miles from Ft. Bragg. The college was about ten miles from Ft. Bragg. Students from there came there.
DW: Was it an all-black school or integrated?
EW: All-black. This was all-black, before the integration.
DW: Yeah, okay. Well, I wanted to go back just a second to when you were at Camp School, you said you were involved in the glee club and home economics and going to different schools. I guess I was wondering about the after-school scene. This all happened after school, and you would go to different schools then, or was it during school hours that you would--?
EW: Yeah, after school.
DW: Okay, okay.
EW: But it had to be during the daytime because it was outside. They didn%u2019t have any gyms. [Laughter] DW: So you needed the natural lights.
EW: And the only activity was basketball, no baseball, you know, competing. They would play baseball, but the only thing they competed with other schools was basketball, and Camp won a lot of the games. Camp, and I remember Camp, and what%u2019s that one up in--? [Pause] I can%u2019t think of the name of the school right now. My memory is--and I%u2019ve found that out since I%u2019ve been sick--my memory is not as good.
DW: Is it Cleveland?
EW: No, it was up in the upper part of the county. We didn%u2019t play Cleveland, because we were county. County schools played the county schools. I don%u2019t remember playing Cleveland.
DW: Did you, after school, go see other students? Did you hang out with other students when you were in high school, after school, from other school systems often?
EW: No, no, it was basically a community thing. We did in the community.
DW: Okay, so it was just the people you lived around.
EW: Well, the community was pretty big. You walked everywhere you had to go, so it wasn%u2019t like now, you jump in the car and go where you want to go, you walked. But we visited one another, not during the week a lot because during the week we were working. Weekends or on Sunday we visited.
DW: I know your brother, Mr. Smith, was talking about baling cotton a lot.
EW: Yeah, yeah.
DW: So everyone in the family had to do that, bale the cotton and work on the farm?
EW: No, the girls didn%u2019t go to the gin. They carried the cotton to the gin to get it baled. He didn%u2019t tell you that?
DW: No, no.
EW: We had some families around us who would compete every year. That might be what he was talking about, to see who could get the first bale of cotton. Then, when the bale was picked and put on the truck or whatever, they carried it to the gin to get it ginned and baled into bales. Now, the girls didn%u2019t go to the gin; the boys did. They could go with Daddy, but we didn%u2019t ever go to the gin. [Laughter] They made their own molasses with their own cane for making molasses, but they would take it to the molasses mill, they called it, the cane, and make molasses. We grew about everything that we ate; he probably told you that too. Corn, you take the corn to the corn mill to make cornmeal. Wheat, they took it, I guess, to the wheat mill to make flour, but they grew everything and they had these gins and mills and whatever to prepare the food for the flour and the meal the way it%u2019s supposed to be, and the molasses into molasses.
DW: Did you have a favorite job? Of those jobs, were any of them a favorite? Or least favorite?
EW: Not really. I was a slow cotton picker, so I usually had to be the one to go home and cook lunch, to cook the dinner. So they complained about that, some of them, that I got to leave and cook, but when I went home to cook dinner, I had to find whatever we were going to use and go to the garden and get it and prepare it and have it ready for them by the time they got there. That was a pretty big job with that many people.
DW: Yeah, yeah, I imagine. [Laughter] Did you fix the same kind of dishes a lot, or, like every day?
EW: Yeah, whatever we had growing in the garden.
DW: Okay, okay.
EW: Basically, whatever we had growing in the garden. The only thing that they bought were things like sugar, [pause] what else? Vinegar, things that they didn%u2019t grow. Salt, pepper, and that kind of stuff, but basically things that they grew on the farm, we didn%u2019t--. And they grew their own hogs, raised their own hogs, so they had their own pork meat, and every year they would have a cow. They had more than one cow to give milk, and every year, we%u2019d hope that one of those cows was going to be a bull because they would keep the bull to raise to have meat. So they raised their own meat. We had chickens, so we had eggs. Chickens and eggs; they grew their own chickens and eggs.
DW: Do you remember ever having to kill any of the animals?
EW: Yeah, the chickens, I did. [Laughter] I remember one time I was trying to kill a chicken with the ax, to put him on the block to cut his head off, and I missed it and he jumped up and ran. [Laughter] So we had fun back then too. I remember Mama saying one time--her saying was--when it rained, we%u2019d be so glad it rained, and when the rain would stop she%u2019d say, %u201COkay children, let%u2019s get out here and work in this yard while we%u2019re resting.%u201D She meant resting from the field. She found something for us to do. Then, our yards didn%u2019t have grass like they do now. We had to take a brush broom and sweep the yard.
DW: Oh.
EW: And Mama always liked her flowers, so she always had flowers, and that%u2019s what she was saying, work in the yard, work in her flowers. She had beautiful flowers.
DW: Did you do a lot of picking them, or did they just stay in the yard mostly?
EW: Stayed in the yard mostly. And then they had their own orchard. Apple trees, peach trees, cherry trees, plum trees, blue plum trees, pear trees; they had their own orchard that they set out after they moved there. Some of it they bought and some of it, people gave them sprouts, but they had their own orchard--grapes.
DW: So you had pretty much everything you could want, right?
EW: Right, right, right. So when they built the house, they built the house from wood that was on the farm. Somebody cut the trees and they made lumber out of it and they built the house. It was through FHA, so FHA provided a person and teach Mama how to use a freezer and freeze her vegetables, can her vegetables. They taught her how to do that, about using a pressure-cooker and all of that, because that was new to them.
DW: So you didn%u2019t have those things when you were at Earl?
EW: Before we went there? No, we didn%u2019t. They preserved it some way.
DW: Did you do any canning before you moved?
EW: Yeah, they canned before we went there, but it was not canned like that. I don%u2019t really know what they did before then, but they canned some of it. Some of it, like potatoes and things, they took it to the potato house, a potato house in the community, and they kept them. Some of them knew how to hill potatoes and keep them for the winter.
DW: How to heal them?
EW: They would have some kind of--dig in the ground and put a hill over it so that they could get in there and get them in the wintertime. They had ways of preserving their food for the winter.
DW: And this potato mill would be something anybody in the community could go to?
EW: Yeah.
DW: And the hill was like a--?
EW: It was a house, not a mill.
DW: Oh, okay.
EW: And they kept their potatoes in--they carried them in potato boxes, so they kept all of theirs in a certain spot.
DW: And the hill? Is it something like a blanket kind of thing?
EW: Yeah, like a--what do you call these Indian things that%u2019s--?
DW: Teepees?
EW: Like a teepee. They had it like a teepee; it peaks up like that. Then, on a certain side, it had to be on a certain side, I don%u2019t remember whether it was north, south, east, or west that they had the door to open and get in it.
DW: Wow, interesting, yeah. But the FHA kind of changed that?
EW: FHA changed that, yeah. FHA stepped in. What they did, was a neighbor next door was renting, they had big ol%u2019 cherry trees before ours got big enough to get cherries off of; they shared a lot. We had white neighbors, but they were good neighbors. [Laughter] They shared a lot and we shared with one another what we had. Mama taught her how to do the things that FHA was teaching her: how to can, how to freeze, how to do those things. People then were--well, you always have some that%u2019s the other way, too, but we always had white neighbors. Even when we were at Earl, the people above us were white and they were very nice people.
DW: And the same in Shelby, as well when you moved?
EW: We were in Earl.
DW: Okay, well, after you moved, you still had white neighbors?
EW: Yeah, that was at Shoal Creek--here. [Laughter] In this community.
DW: Okay.
EW: So we%u2019ve been here--I think Daddy moved about--what year was John born? [Pause] %u201944, so he must have moved--yeah, he moved in January and John was born in October. So we%u2019ve been there ever since, and some of us built on the farm. I did, Joe did--we%u2019re neighbors.
DW: Oh, that%u2019s nice.
EW: And Gene, my brothers, they%u2019re on the farm.
DW: When you were younger, was there something that you knew you wanted to be when you got older? Did you have any dreams of--?
EW: Going to college?
DW: Yes.
EW: They always instilled that. Mama instilled that in us because she wanted to go to school, like I said, and she could only go the sixth grade. Mama%u2019s parents, her daddy was a lot older than her mama, about forty years, really. He had two families. He had the first family and the second family. There were eight of them, and her mama died first. Their mama died first and he died a year later, so that left--the oldest one was about seventeen--she got married. There was a minister who had worked at their church, and he wanted one of them, and Mama was the one that they sent to Shelby to live with them. That%u2019s the way she got to Shelby, so she worked for the (29:50), and she couldn%u2019t get to go to school like she wanted to. She took in washing, and Mama had to stay out of school, doing the washing and whatever, so she got married at an early age. She was seventeen when she got married. My daddy was twenty-two.
DW: Was it common to get married, in your parents%u2019 generation and your generation, young?
EW: Yeah, yeah.
DW: At what age would you have been considered, as a woman, to be an old maid?
EW: I don%u2019t know. [Laughter] I don%u2019t know what they considered an old maid then. But they got married at early ages, most of the ones that I know, my mama%u2019s friends and whatever. They got married at early ages and had a bunch of children.
DW: I guess it was helpful if you lived on a farm to have a lot of kids to help out around.
EW: Yeah, I guess so. [Laughter] I don%u2019t think that was the reason they were having them, though.
DW: Oh, okay. [Laughter] Well, that%u2019s another story. [Laughter] EW: They didn%u2019t have as much to do as they do now, especially in the wintertime. There was always something to do, even in the wintertime, but when it got cold, certain seasons, well, people just clustered together more then, I guess, and ended up with babies. [Laughter] DW: I guess that%u2019s a way to keep yourself busy. [Laughter] EW: But we had an enjoyable childhood, growing up. Mama and Daddy always saw to it that we went to church. Even when we were over there we came to Shoal Creek. When we were there we came to Shoal Creek, so we%u2019ve always come to Shoal Creek Church. That was one thing that they had instilled in us: you%u2019ve got to go to church and you%u2019ve got to go to college. All of us did go to college but one, and she didn%u2019t want to wait her turn. You know, I said there was a wait-your-turn? She didn%u2019t want to wait her turn, so she ended up doing domestic work, and she enjoyed it. She moved to Pennsylvania and worked with a wealthy family up there. They treated her like a family member, so she did that. Some of the boys went in the service. Gene, my brother, Gene, went in the service, and he said when he took that test, he got all of his math questions right, and they picked him to work in the post office. That%u2019s the way he got his post office job when he came out of service. He worked in a post office. He retired at the post office.
DW: Was that a common--could blacks work at the post office at that time?
EW: At that time they could. This was after service, remember, and they began to fight for their rights. We fought for the country, so we deserved some rights. Yeah, it had gotten opened up where they could go to the plants and work in the mills and the plants where it used to be just white. Basically, the thing for black people, if you weren%u2019t a teacher or a doctor or something like that, and hadn%u2019t gone to college, was the farm, working at some white person%u2019s house if you were in the city. Then it started opening up for the plants and the mills and things after the war, because they wanted to work in the mills. We fought for the country, so the country deserves to give us something.
DW: In working in the mills, do you know what kind of jobs you would be placed at? Would you be working right alongside whites at that time?
EW: Oh, yeah, yeah.
DW: Okay.
EW: Yeah, they worked side-by-side. The ones that I understand. I never did work in the mill or any plant or anything, but my some of my brothers did. Now, Gene, the one that was in the post office worked one year at PPG, and I had two brothers to work at Celanese. They worked side-by-side.
DW: I wanted to go back and ask you, you said you couldn%u2019t pick the cotton as fast, so you had the job of cooking for the family. Did y%u2019all usually have leftovers or there were no leftovers with thirteen?
EW: You remember we had hogs, pigs? The pigs got the leftovers. They got the leftovers. We called it slop. Leftovers and corn that they had grown.
DW: So it was a fresh meal? You had to do a fresh meal every day?
EW: Every day. Now, Mama cooked breakfast and I usually cooked lunch, and we ate whatever was left for supper. Usually, we didn%u2019t have very much for supper, like, cornbread and molasses, maybe, or cornbread and milk. We didn%u2019t have very much for supper. The biggest meal was dinner, lunch.
DW: Is that something that you still, to this day, will have a bigger lunch and a smaller dinner, or did that change over time?
EW: That changed when I was working, but now it%u2019s changed back to a bigger lunch, smaller dinner, depending on what I%u2019m doing that day.
DW: That%u2019s interesting. Did you have anything special on Sundays that that was a special day, or did you do cooking on Sundays?
EW: Yeah. Well, in the beginning, Mama used to cook on Saturdays. They didn%u2019t believe in working on Sunday, you know. [Laughter] She%u2019d cook most of her meal on Saturday then, like her cakes and her pies and things that would last, and maybe she%u2019d cook vegetables and meat on Sunday, but we had big meals on Sunday.
DW: Do you remember going into downtown Shelby much when you were younger?
EW: No, only at Christmas time. At Christmas time when we got about, I think it was about--the oldest ones of us were about--my oldest sister was--I was about ten, so she must have been eleven, they carried us to town for the first time to pick our own toys. We thought it was Santa Claus bringing them. [Laughter] We found Santa Claus one time. They took those toys. They said, %u201COkay, Santa Claus is going to come back and get them.%u201D They took those toys and took them to the neighbor%u2019s house and they kept them until Christmas time. [Laughter] Christmas was a big occasion. We didn%u2019t get that much,
but just a little something was okay with us.
DW: Yeah. Did churches do anything special for Christmas time for the kids?
EW: Oh, they had just programs and whatever. Not until later, and then they started giving gifts on the Christmas trees and things like that. Basically, it was just a religious gathering celebrating Jesus%u2019 birthday, and that%u2019s the way we looked at it. Sometimes we would go caroling in the community. Not until later did we start receiving gifts from under the Christmas tree. People would draw names at church, bring a gift and put it under the Christmas tree and whatever, and share gifts, and then they got so they would have gifts for the children%u2026
DW: %u2026Okay%u2026
EW: %u2026put under the tree. So that%u2019s the way we did it then.
DW: You said church was really important. You had mentioned the programs for Christmas. Did the church have a lot of programs throughout the year to keep children interested?
EW: Easter was highly celebrated. Everybody wore white on Easter. [Laughter] Celebrating Jesus%u2019 resurrection. We had Easter programs, Easter services, Mother%u2019s Day, Father%u2019s Day. Everybody had to say a speech for Mother%u2019s Day and Father%u2019s Day. Children%u2019s Day, we had Children%u2019s Day back then. They%u2019ve cut it out now. You don%u2019t have Children%u2019s Day no more, but we had Children%u2019s Day. We had to do our speeches and whatever for Children%u2019s Day.
DW: What kind of speeches would you do?
EW: There was always books with poems and whatever in them--poems for Children%u2019s Day, poems for Mother%u2019s Day, books for Mother%u2019s Day with poems in them, books for Children%u2019s Day with poems, Father%u2019s Day.
DW: So it was something to keep you interested and keep you active in the church.
EW: Right. And then they would have dinner. They would have dinner after the program. Or was it before the program? I don%u2019t remember, but anyway, they had dinner.
DW: Did you enjoy coming to church when you were younger?
EW: Yeah, I enjoyed coming to church, and I started--my music teacher in the community taught music, and she taught me; I took music from her. I started playing for the church when I was about fifteen, I guess. I started playing for the youth choir. We always had a youth choir, and I played until I went to college. Then, when I came back in 1960, after my daughter was born I played again, and I%u2019ve been playing up until now.
DW: Okay. Now I%u2019ll fast-forward a little bit. You were saying the only jobs for black people changed after the war, but mostly teaching or you might work in the mills later. Did you know when you were younger that you wanted to be involved in the schools?
EW: Oh, I always wanted to be a teacher. My parents tried to get me to go to school for a nurse. They said nurses%u2019 jobs would always be open. [Laughter] But I didn%u2019t want to be a nurse. I always enjoyed being around children. I always enjoyed children, and I wanted to be a teacher. My sister that was right under me said it was going to take me a long time. %u201CThat will mean I%u2019ll have to be out of school for four years.%u201D She%u2019s the one that went to school for a nurse, and she went and worked in Charlotte for a year. Her job was working at a doctor%u2019s office, and she was the elevator person. One day the doctor asked her, %u201CWhat are you doing on this elevator?%u201D She said, %u201CI%u2019m working so I can go to school to be a nurse,%u201D so he sort of tipped them off and told them, and they would add extra in her little--whatever they was taking the money up in, and she earned enough money to go on to nursing school. She got ahead of me. She finished before I did. She%u2019s in California now, and she went on to get her nursing in--what is it? The one that puts you to sleep.
DW: Oh, anesthesiology?
EW: Uh-huh.
DW: Wow.
EW: But she always wanted to be a nurse and I always wanted to be a teacher. My oldest sister graduated as a seamstress. She was only in there two years.
DW: How did you come to decide to go to Fayetteville State?
EW: One of our church members, one of our friends was going to Fayetteville State--two of them--two of our church members. Mrs. (44:05), you know Mrs. (44:06)?
DW: No, ma%u2019am.
EW: She goes to church here. She was one of the pianists too. But her sister was going to school there, and I knew those two people were going to be there, so I applied to go to Fayetteville State. It was cheaper than North Carolina Central and A&T and--. [Laughter] And of course it was a teacher%u2019s college at that time, so I wanted to be a teacher, so that%u2019s where I went and I enjoyed it.
DW: Yeah, yeah. And you said you were a Zeta, or you are a Zeta. How did you come to get involved with that sorority?
EW: They had three sororities there: Deltas, Zetas, and AKAs. Of course, if they knew you made pretty good grades, they would ask you to come to their groups. I was interested in Zeta or AKA, but the Zeta people got me. Deltas, I didn%u2019t like because they socialized too much. [Laughter] DW: Did y%u2019all do a lot of stuff in the community as a group?
EW: Yeah, we did--well, I belong to it here; we had a group here. It%u2019s inactive right now, but we did things when we were active in the community.
DW: You said by working, from the sweeping job to working in the library, was how you got your first job. How did that come to be?
EW: I got my first job because I worked on the college campus in the library, and I took music. See, the principal wanted somebody who knew music and who knew library. I was the only one in the class that had both. [Laughter] DW: That%u2019s some luck. [Laughter] EW: I was the only one in the class who had both, and of course my grades were pretty good too, so--. [Laughter] So I got the job. When I went there, she gave me the library. I had third grade and was responsible for library. Library was in the classroom, so it was just a shelf with some books on it. It wasn%u2019t like the libraries now. Children would come in and check them out at a certain time of day. Of course, there were two of us that was working with the music. At that time, the PTO there at the Short Journey School--it was called Short Journey--the PTO sponsored a music teacher, so the other lady worked as the music teacher that was sponsored by the PTO, and I assisted her with the glee clubs and things like that. She was from Elizabeth City, and we were roommates, by the way, in that little city of Smithfield. We stayed at a teachery, they called it, so we were roommates. She lived in Elizabeth City, and she was, like, home every weekend because she had a family. She had a husband and a child, and that child she left at home with her husband. So the first year, she got a job at her hometown and she went, so then I was the music teacher. [Laughter] We taught children coming to us for taking music because the PTO was paying for children to come and take music, and we had the glee club.
DW: So, music wasn%u2019t sponsored by the school system?
EW: No, no, it was sponsored by the PTO.
DW: Now this was in Johnston County?
EW: Johnston County.
DW: Okay. How long did you end up staying with that job?
EW: Let me see [pause]. About two years and a half.
DW: Okay.
EW: Because I left in %u201959. I got married, got pregnant, and then, you had to quit if you got pregnant.
DW: Huh.
EW: Then, you had to quit school. You had to quit and start all over again finding you a job if you got pregnant. So, I got pregnant, and I went to New York and stayed a while with my husband and that didn%u2019t work out, so I ended up coming back home and my child was born while I was home. I got a job in Shelby--I mean, in the county--so I%u2019ve been here every since.
DW: What made you decide to teach primary grades instead of secondary grades or high school, or was it at that time did it--?
EW: Oh, at Fayetteville State they only had primary and elementary.
DW: Oh, okay.
EW: They didn%u2019t have high school, teach high school. It was just a two--so I took primary.
DW: So, when you came back and found a job, were you able--I guess this didn%u2019t apply to you--if you were pregnant and you had a baby and you had to quit and reapply, if you ended up getting a job in the same system, could you pick back up your benefits?
EW: Oh, I could have gone back, but I didn%u2019t really want to go back to Smithfield if I could get one here. This was my hometown, [laughter] so I did get a job here.
DW: With this job, what did you end up teaching first?
EW: Yeah, I had first grade. I had second grade when I went to Philadelphia School. I worked at Philadelphia School, and I had second grade. I had gone for an interview at Shelby, with the principal at Shelby--Cleveland--so he talked to me and he knew my daddy. I talked about my daddy and all this, and then he said, %u201CWell, I don%u2019t have an opening,%u201D and I had--I dreamed dreams. I had dreamed a dream that when you go to that first place, you%u2019re not going to get hired, but somebody%u2019s going to tell you where to go. One of my former teachers met me in the hall and said, %u201CThey have an opening at Philadelphia School. Mr. Pass is looking for a music teacher,%u201D and I found Philadelphia. I didn%u2019t know how to get there, but I found it. I went up there that same day, so he sent me to another music teacher to audition before that music teacher to see how well I played, so he gave him that I knew how, and I knew enough music to do the job, so he hired me.
DW: So, in Cleveland County, did the PTO still sponsor the--?
EW: No, no. No, I was hired as a teacher. I was hired as a teacher, and I had-- second grade teacher that first year. But we didn%u2019t teach music like we did up there. Music was, like, being responsible for the glee club, and that was basically it, and playing for the chapel or whatever.
DW: Oh, okay. And then here, it was more like a class that students would come to and learn different things about music, or sing?
EW: To sing, yeah. They had an opera every year, so I was responsible for doing the opera music. It was more like the school activity thing. And the glee clubs, remember I told you we had glee clubs? We would prepare them for glee club festivals, and they would really participate against one another to see who%u2019s going to be the winners. Of course, my group won quite a few, but it was not like a class, but more like an extracurricular, like basketball or football.
DW: And that was here in the county?
EW: Yeah, yeah, they had the operas. They called it opera. They gave an opera every year, and the glee club festival, so that%u2019s what we planned for and practiced for.
DW: And this was all while you were teaching?
EW: No, see the children were coming from different classes, so they would come in and practice, and somebody else would take my class while I was working with them. We shared.
DW: I was going to ask you, what was the teaching like? Could you describe a typical day of teaching your second graders, what would you do, and how many students you had and things like that?
EW: Can you believe I had thirty-six one year and didn%u2019t have no assistant. We were full-time teachers. We didn%u2019t have no assistants in the beginning. I had thirty-six children one year. I%u2019m thinking that was the second grade. Somebody asked me one day: %u201CHow many children do you have?%u201D I said, %u201CThirty-six.%u201D They said, %u201CThirty-six?%u201D [Laughter] They said, %u201CHow many children do you have of your own?%u201D [Laughter] I said, %u201CI just have one of my own,%u201D but they became my children.
DW: Wow.
EW: But anyway, afterwards, we got an assistant, so we had assistants to help us with those children.
DW: That%u2019s a lot of students at one time.
EW: Yeah, and the number in your classroom decreased as the time went on. So, we had, like, twenty-five or twenty-four, with an assistant.
DW: When you say the number decreased, do you mean that in the fall when the class was started?
EW: No, no. No, in the beginning, like in the beginning, in the county system, if you had thirty-six children in the second grade, then you took all of them. All the children in that particular school in a certain grade went to one teacher. We only had one first grade teacher, one second grade teacher, one third grade teacher, one fourth grade teacher, up to sixth grade, I think it was that they stopped that. So that%u2019s the way it was, only one teacher per grade, and if you had that many children, then you were responsible for all of them. Later on, the county or the state or whoever, made it so that primary teachers would have assistants, because of the little children. They needed more attention and they needed whatever help, so they had assistants, so I had help. Then my superintendent came to me and wanted to know, he said, %u201CI noticed that you had on your diploma that you%u2019ve had library experience, and we%u2019re going into consolidation and we wondered if you would go on and finish you certificate in library. Well, I had been wanting to do that all the time, so I agreed. I said, %u201CUnder one condition: if I don%u2019t like it, then I can come back in the classroom,%u201D and he gave me that condition because he said, %u201CYou%u2019re doing so well in the classroom that we wondered if you would consider going into the library,%u201D and of course, I got to do both then, teach and do with the books. I always enjoyed books.
DW: At this time was the library a separate room all its own, or was it still in each--?
EW: No, no. Let me see, was it--? When I was at Short Journey it was in my room, my classroom. It was just in a little corner, shelves in the little corner. When I went to Philadelphia, seems like it was in a separate room, so at a certain time of day, I had to be in the library and children checked out the books at that particular time of day. It wasn%u2019t a big place. It was just a little, small place for the library. All the teachers could take them in and check them out. I just got them ready to put on the shelves, and ordered them and received the orders and all of that. But then, after I went to school for certification for library, finish my certificate in library science--I had already started working on it. That%u2019s where I met my husband, at North Carolina Central. [Laughter] The man I married, I mean. [Laughter] So I had already been working on my--and they recognized that whenever they looked at my [pause].
DW: Credentials?
EW: Um-hmm, so I took up on it and I enjoyed it because I got to do, really, both then. I was teaching the children and I was working in the library.
DW: Was it hard work?
EW: It wasn%u2019t hard work because I enjoyed it.
DW: It was what you wanted to do.
EW: Yeah, right, right, and I enjoyed both of them. Now, I missed the classroom when I first went into the library because I missed the relationship with the children all the time.
DW: So, I just want to make sure I have this right. When you went to Fayetteville State in 1952 and graduated in 1956, and then started working at Short Journey--.
EW: I started working at, yeah, Short Journey in 1956.
DW: Okay, and then you got married and moved to New York in 1959.
EW: Oh, I was there only a short while.
DW: Oh, okay, okay. So, then you came back. What year was it?
EW: I was there really for two or three months.
DW: Oh, okay.
EW: By that time, I had used up all of my money that I had saved, paying rent and stuff like that, and my husband didn%u2019t have a job. He was, well, one of those kind of people. I wrote my daddy and told him and he sent me enough money to get home. He said, %u201CThis is going to be it, and if you let him spend this, I%u2019m not sending for you,%u201D and I knew he meant it, so I came home. I didn%u2019t hear from him any more. I left him there, intending to go back after the child was born. I didn%u2019t hear from him no more until about four years. I didn%u2019t know where he was. [Laughter] So that was that. Then he came and stayed a while and left again, so I didn%u2019t go through with that. I didn%u2019t put up with that.
DW: Yeah, that was a smart decision. [Laughter] EW: So I practically raised Adrian on my own, with my parents. But God has been with me; he looked out for me, provided jobs for me.
DW: Yeah, and that%u2019s great how it happened that you managed to get the job at Philadelphia.
EW: Yeah, yeah, and then I went from Philadelphia to Piedmont. I worked at Piedmont one year, and by that time they had started the integration of the schools. That next year was the year I had to work four libraries, getting ready for accreditation of the schools, and I think I wrote that on that paper I had. I had Casar, Polkville, Lattimore, and Boiling Springs. They way we did that, we had one day every day at each school. During the week, we had one day out of the week, and on that fifth day we had to rotate it. One school got two days one week, and the next school got two days the next week, but everybody got one day. It only took us one year to work that accreditation up. We had helpers; we had library helpers. We had to work on the books and get the books ready for the shelves and everything, and that%u2019s basically what it was. Some of the schools had people who were in the library but didn%u2019t really know what to do. They weren%u2019t librarians. In one of the schools I had, it was that way. I had to go back and do, especially the books like the biography books, which is 920 and 921. She had done them different, so I had to go back and do all of those books over. I had to set up the card catalogs and do them right in some of the schools because they didn%u2019t have librarians. They just had teachers who were checking in the books and checking them out and doing the best they could.
DW: Yeah, yeah. Was this accreditation part of the whole school-wide, or just for the libraries?
EW: The whole county.
DW: Oh, okay.
EW: The whole school had to work on something.
DW: Oh, okay, and the library was for the county.
EW: The library was where they had to go and set up the libraries and everything. The first library was at Philadelphia. When I first came out of college, I worked at Philadelphia, and it was in a mobile.
DW: And all the while, when you started going back to school, at North Carolina Central, that was while you were still teaching at Philadelphia.
EW: Yeah, I went in the summertime.
DW: Okay, okay.
EW: I went in the summertime.
DW: Okay.
EW: It didn%u2019t take me long, because I had already started, you know. I don%u2019t think it took me over a couple of years to finish my certificate for library science. When we were working on consolidation and they gave us the four schools, then the next year we all had one school. I went back to Lattimore full-time, and that particular year, we were getting books for the high schools. They were getting the high schools, and we were getting books for the high schools. I was on the book committee to select the books for the high schools at Crest and Burns.
DW: How did you decide which books you would choose for the schools?
EW: We had catalogs and things to pick out books, and they had ways of suggesting the good books and the better ones and all of this, and of course you had suggestions from publishers and whatever. We had had it in library science, some of the better books, and we studied that when we took library science, the books that you should have in your library, the special ones that you should have on your shelves. That was part of our training.
DW: So, when you first started teaching, the Brown case had already happened before, I guess, while you were still in college. Did that, at that point, make a big impact on how you were trained as a teacher on the first couple of years of you teaching, just knowing that desegregation was coming?
EW: I don%u2019t think it had anything to do with me because, remember, I said we had white neighbors; we always got along with white people. Mama trained us that way. She was mixed herself, so that was no thing in our family. People were people, regardless of what race you were, so we didn%u2019t have a problem with that.
DW: But did the schools--was that a big consideration in the schools, that, or how your professors taught you, was that a big issue that desegregation was coming and you had to learn how to deal with either going into white schools, or white students coming into black schools?
EW: No, see I was already in the school system, so that didn%u2019t affect me.
DW: Okay.
EW: I was already working. But now, some of them, when I went to Piedmont, there were some children--I went there for one summer with the Head Start program--there were those people who would--and that next year, I went there for full-time teacher. There were two teachers, two black teachers that were sent the first year, and I went the second year, as a black teacher to Piedmont, in the library. I only had trouble with one teacher, and I know she was prejudiced but I overlooked that. %u201CDo unto others as you would have them do unto you.%u201D [Laughter] When I was working at Polkville that year when I had four schools, I had an assistant, and one of my assistants got pregnant. She was going to have to stop, and the principal came to me one day and said, %u201CWe are going to get you another assistant,%u201D and said, %u201CHer daddy is the head of the Ku Klux Klan. Would you hire her or would you recommend her?%u201D I said, %u201CYes. I would not look at what her daddy does to determine whether she should have a job or not. She may not be that way.%u201D [Laughter] DW: And everything worked out fine?
EW: He didn%u2019t hire her, but he wasn%u2019t going to let me say not to hire her. [Laughter] He didn%u2019t hire here. I think he was looking for an excuse for me to say it, but he had to make that decision himself. [Laughter] He didn%u2019t hire her, but I never met the lady. You can%u2019t go by somebody, even your family, you can%u2019t go by them to say how the child is going to be. Things were changing and times were changing.
DW: Yeah. Was the principal white?
EW: Yeah, all the principals were white but the first one I had, but I had some good principals. When I went to Lattimore the first time, the principal told me, %u201CWe%u2019ve got a librarian.%u201D In other words, I was supposed to do what she said do. She was supposed to select all the books. My supervisor came to me and she said, %u201CYou%u2019re the librarian. You are going to (1:09:46) for library. You know what to do. You stand your ground,%u201D and I did. [Laughter] I knew I had her to back me. [Laughter] Then my principal said at one of the PTO meetings: %u201CWe%u2019ve got the best librarian in the county,%u201D and I thought I know I%u2019m not the best, but I%u2019m glad you think so. [Laughter] DW: That%u2019s a good endorsement.
EW: Yeah, so we got along fine, but I had to prove myself, that I could do the job.
DW: Did you have any conflicts with the other person who had been the librarian?
EW: Oh, she wanted to do the job, yeah. She wanted to tell me what to do, but I let her know too. They had told us in library science: %u201CWhen you go into some of these schools, they%u2019re going to have those old books, and they%u2019re going to want to keep those old books,%u201D like Alice in Wonderland, whatever. %u201CFind a newer copy of it, a more upgraded copy.%u201D So I went through there and I pulled out some of those old books that she thought we should have kept. Oh, she complained about that to the principal, like I didn%u2019t know what to do, but by that time he knew that I knew what to do, so he didn%u2019t pay her no attention. Yeah, they wanted to tell you what to do, but you had to stand your ground. Nicely, but not--. I had one of the fourth grade teachers to come to me since I%u2019ve been retired, and she%u2019s been retired, both (1:11:34), and she came to me and she said, %u201CMrs. Willis, I appreciate what you did to help me when I was in school, when I was working at Lattimore,%u201D because one time a parent came--there was a black parent, and she had a classroom right next to the library, and that parent went straight to her room without going through the office like they were supposed to, and blessed her out in front of the teachers because of something that her child had brought home. I mean, in front of the students.
DW: Yeah.
EW: So she came right to the library, crying, to me. It so happened that I didn%u2019t have any students in there--it was early morning before the class had started. So she said, %u201CI appreciate that. You helped me out a lot.%u201D Well, we had one little student one day--they had moved from New York or somewhere upstate--that was stealing money in her classroom, so I started missing money in my pocketbook. I kept it in a filing cabinet like that, and I started missing money, so I started just putting a dollar in there just for lunch, enough for lunch, and I started watching the days when I was going to miss that money. It so happened on the day that she comes to the library. Her class was not the only one, but then we talked one day, and she said, %u201CI%u2019m missing money in my classroom too. We%u2019re going to catch who it is and we%u2019re going to work together.%u201D It was a little black boy. So I just put that dollar in there in my pocketbook that day and put my initials on it. [Laughter] He got it. [Laughter] I told her what I had done, so she found it. She caught him with it and carried him to the principal. He called the parent and the parent came and said that she did that; she put that same initial on there. Now, my initials were my name, and she did that. The little boy had to be the one to tell the truth. He had to tell the principal the truth, but it%u2019s things like that that I would stand up for the teachers, whether they were black or white. I was responsible for the equipment when we started getting equipment in; I%u2019d assign teachers equipment. Some of them would misuse theirs, take somebody else%u2019s out of their room, and I had inventoried all of it, given it a serial number. Not a serial number; they had the serial numbers already, but given it another number, its own number. So the teachers would come to me. They wouldn%u2019t complain; they%u2019d come to me. I said, %u201COkay, teachers, we%u2019ve got to have inventory,%u201D and I%u2019d go to the classrooms in the area where they said, and I%u2019d find it every time because I had it on the card, the identity for that particular piece of equipment. I said, %u201CThis one doesn%u2019t belong in your room;%u201D it belonged to so-and-so and so-and-so, and get it and take it over there and give it to them. [Laughter] DW: A way to keep in control of everything.
EW: Yeah, yeah, where you%u2019ve got to be up front, and some of them wouldn%u2019t do that. They would just decide to take a tape player or a record player or overhead projector or whatever, and of course, they couldn%u2019t catch up with them. When the schools consolidated, and I don%u2019t want you--oh, I%u2019m talking on the--. [Laughter] I won%u2019t say this, then, but anyway, we kept up with everything. I kept up with everything at Lattimore, and when the schools consolidated and they shipped some of our equipment somewhere else, I sent the card. We called it a shelf list card. I sent the shelf list card with that piece of equipment with the identity number and everything on it.
DW: Wow, yeah, that%u2019s good.
EW: That%u2019s what we were supposed to do, but I don%u2019t know if all the librarians did that or not.
DW: Yeah, I wanted to ask, and I think you%u2019re kind of getting at it, the changes you%u2019ve seen in the school system, I guess, with teachers and with students over your career. What kind of--from the fifties to the nineties, did you notice many changes?
EW: Oh, there were a lot of changes. Basically, it was books that we had, and then we got started getting a lot of equipment. We got a program, I%u2019ve forgotten what they called it now, that was federal, that would provide money for equipment like overhead projectors, filmstrip projectors. Every teacher had an overhead projector, a filmstrip projector, tape player, a record player. Everyone had to have one of those, and then they had sound filmstrip projectors that everybody shared. We got to get more equipment. Then, when I got to the new school, we got the system where they--you didn%u2019t have to write on the back of the book, the spine of the book or whatever, used the little tapes that they put it on there; we had computers. It went in the computer system and you did everything on computer--checked out books with computer.
DW: Yeah. Did you notice a lot of changes in the students, how they acted in school and their needs in school? Had that changed since you first started teaching?
EW: Yeah, yeah. Children, when I first started teaching, were more obedient. They respected teachers more, but the longer I taught, the difference I could see in that, the respect for teachers. They respected you--some of them are going to always respect you. Like that one I told you about with going in the classroom, the parent going in the classroom in front of the child; this is where it was coming from, and the integration, I think, had a lot to do with that. There were some teachers, one teacher that I remember was a second grade teacher, she noticed that a child in her class, a white child, would not stand beside--when they got ready to hold hands or play a game, a circle game or something--she didn%u2019t want to hold a black child%u2019s hand. They had to take her out of her room and put her in another classroom because she didn%u2019t want to respect her as a teacher. It wasn%u2019t anything but the parents putting it in them, but basically, there was just a few of them, not very many. Children learn to get along real well, regardless of what color they were.
DW: Yeah, yeah, but the respect among the students seemed to be, the lack of respect seemed to be growing a little, but the race relations between the students seemed to--?
EW: Yeah, the more they were together, the better it got. I don%u2019t know what%u2019s going on now, but I can tell when we used to go to ball games and things like that, that they don%u2019t seem to take race as much as they did a long time ago. They get along very well, it seems like.
DW: I guess, to kind of wrap up, I wanted to ask you, having lived most of your life here in Cleveland County or here in Shoal Creek, what do you think has been the most significant changes that have happened in the county over the past forty or fifty years?
EW: Okay, there%u2019s been a change from--I%u2019m not seeing it in the other races, but I%u2019m seeing it in the black races, the negative type things that they%u2019re getting into. The drugs, all of this kind of stuff. It seems like it%u2019s more in our race, and it might not be; it might be because I%u2019m around them more, but it seems like it%u2019s more in the paper. I%u2019m looking at the paper too, and seeing all of this; it%u2019s in both races, but it seems like it%u2019s more in our race.
DW: What do you think might be a cause of this trend?
EW: Parents. The bottom line is parents. [Laughter] Like I told you about that parent going into the teacher%u2019s room and not respecting her; why, she shouldn%u2019t have done that.
DW: Would something like that have happened when you were going to school? When you were at Camp, would--?
EW: No, no, no. Basically, we did what the teacher said do, and if not, they wrote a letter home [laughter] or they whipped you. Now, I think that%u2019s one of the things--corporal punishment was taken out of the schools. They could whip them in those days, and now, you can%u2019t hardly touch them. There was a time when they said you can%u2019t--not even hug a child. A teacher couldn%u2019t even hug a child [pause] because a child might not want them hugging them. So, it has changed. I don%u2019t know how it is now, because I%u2019ve been out of the school system about ten years or longer. 1994, I%u2019ve been out how many years? %u201994, %u201904, [laughter] sixteen years.
DW: Yeah. Well, do you have any hopes for the future of the county or the future of the schools, anything that you think? Well, I guess, any hopes that you have for the area?
EW: I think if they%u2019re working on that social thing that%u2019s out there in the community now. Do you know what I%u2019m talking about? If they can get that lined up, I think the schools would be all right.
DW: The social--?
EW: These different kinds of people bringing different things into the schools--drugs.
DW: Oh. Yeah.
EW: And I think that%u2019s got a lot to do with it. That thing that comes out in the paper, who shot who?
DW: Oh.
EW: What is it they call it uptown? [Pause] The drug scene will be the thing now. If they can get that under control, I think it will work.
DW: Yeah, okay.
EW: And they%u2019re from one community to another one. You get them out of one area, and they%u2019re somewhere else. They%u2019re going right somewhere else. Instead of cutting the policemen, they ought to be adding some more. [Laughter] They ought to be adding some more to their group so they can keep up with them.
DW: My last question is, for someone who might come to listen to this interview, what would you want them to know about you and your life and your family and Cleveland County that you would want them--if someone comes to listen to this fifty years from now, what would you want them to know?
EW: Oh, I think Cleveland County is a beautiful place to grow up in, but we%u2019re going to have problems anywhere we go. The things that we used to hear about New York and New Jersey and wherever, it%u2019s right here now. [Laughter] So, we have to--parents, churches, community, togetherness, whatever, to get these people on the right track.
DW: Yeah.
EW: And I think they%u2019re doing a pretty good job of it in Shelby, according to the paper.
DW: Yeah. Well, that%u2019s good.
EW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DW: That%u2019s good. Well, is there anything else you would want to add?
EW: No.
DW: Okay. [Laughter] EW: Not that I can think of.
DW: Okay, well, I really appreciate you doing this. Thank you.
EW: Well, I hope I%u2019ve helped you, and I know I%u2019ve talked stubbornly or whatever.
DW: No, no, you did well.

END OF INTERVIEW
Mike Hamrick, November 22nd, 2010