>> This is James Newberry,
and I'm here with Edith Gray on Friday February 2nd,
2018, at the Sturgis Library
at Kennesaw State University.
We're going to give this try a second time.
[NOISE] Thank you for being here, Ms. Gray.
And, do you agree to this interview?
>> Yes, I do.
>> Well, thank you so much. So we'll
just start at the very beginning.
Could you state your full name?
>> Mary Edith Gray.
>> And what was your maiden name?
>> Bottoms.
>> And what's your birthday?
>> March the 26th, 1925.
>> And where were you born?
>> Canton, Georgia.
>> And you mentioned that you'd like to tell
us your husband's name and his birthday?
>> Yes. His name was Arthur Richard Gray.
He was born in Indianapolis,
Indiana for one year.
He lived there. His birthday was June the 16th, 1925.
>> So y'all were very close in age?
>> Yes.
>> Three months.
>> For three months, I was boss. [LAUGHTER]
>> So Ms. Gray, could you tell me your parents' names?
>> Any and Margaret Bottoms?
>> And what did they do for a living?
>> My father was with American bakeries.
He sold bread and
he had to wear white uniform all summer long.
And in those days,
we didn't have a washing machine.
Mother had a black pot outside,
and every Monday morning,
she would wash his uniforms,
and she had to iron them all,
and he worked six days a week,
though, until he was 65.
>> Well, you said so did he go door to door?
>> No grocery stores.
And every night, he had to count his money and
send in and pay for everything that he got the next day.
>> And you said your mother washed his uniforms?
>> Yes. We didn't have a washing machine to begin with.
Then we got a washing machine later on.
>> And did your mother work mostly in the home?
>> Yes. All the time in the home. Took care of us.
>> Now, how many siblings did you have?
>> I have two sisters. I'm the middle daughter.
>> And what were their names?
>> Alen, was two years older than I am,
and Betty is eight years younger than I am.
>> Tell me a little bit about your childhood
and growing up years with those two sisters.
>> We didn't have many toys.
We use a Sears robot catalog to make my paper dolls,
and to make furniture for the paper dolls.
And I remember one Christmas
we went to my aunts and I got a banana for Christmas.
I did not know we were in a depression,
because I was happy,
my family was happy, and
I didn't know until years later.
Mother made all of our clothes.
She made my underwear and everything during those days.
And looking back on it,
I realized that we were in a depression. [LAUGHTER]
>> Did you notice that other people had
more money or less money than your family?
>> Not when I was younger.
>> Did you have a big extended family?
>> Yes. Mother had five brothers and sisters,
and then, there were nine in daddy's family.
And so it was a large family.
>> And how often would
you get together with those family members,
those cousins and aunts and uncles?
>> I would visit them every summer.
>> So tell me about the house you grew up in?
>> It was a wooden frame house,
four rooms with a hall down the middle.
We didn't have a funiture to begin with.
We had just a wooden stove to cook on and a heater.
And then later on we got a furniture in the house and
daddy added on a room on the back,
and it was larger and more comfortable.
>> And was your house in
town or was it out in the country?
>> No. It was in town.
We were about a half a mile, I guess, from school.
I walked to school every day.
>> And how large was Canton in those days?
>> It was very much small.
It was smaller than it is.
It's large now, but it was smaller, 7/8,000, maybe.
And I went to Canton High School,
and I was an honor graduate
from Canton High School in the Beta Club,
and Richard went there too, of course.
>> Well, tell me about Richard.
>> You want to know when I met him? [LAUGHTER]
>> Please.
>> He he grew up in Kentucky after he was one years old.
His family moved back to Kentucky, which was their home.
And he lived on the farm until he was 11 years old.
And he said he didn't want to be a farmer.
So from the time he was in the sixth grade,
he wanted to be a doctor.
And he went to a one room schoolhouse,
until he was 11 years old.
And so when he finished medical school,
his teacher wrote him a letter,
and said that he had gone farther than
any person that she had ever taught.
And when they moved to Georgia, he was 15.
All the youth sang in the choir at
First Baptist Church on Sunday night,
and I can't carry a tune,
but I set up there with them.
And so we looked up and was said
this handsome young man
in the back of the church on Sunday night.
Of course, we all loved a new man in town.
So that's when I first met him.
That Sunday night, but he dated other people first.
But I didn't date until I was 16,
but he was the first guy
I ever dated that came to my house in a car,
and got me my first date.
>> Really. So what did you do on that first day?
>> I don't remember.
We went to the movie store.
But as I grew up, I never went to the movie.
I never remember going to the movie growing up.
But after I started dating,
we'd go to the movie in town.
>> Now, what age
were you when you went on
that first date with him? Do you recall?
>> I was 16.
>> Would you have been able to
go on a date earlier than that?
>> No.
>> And what did your parents think of him?
>> They liked him.
>> And after you went on that first date,
what course did your relationship take?
>> Well, we both dated other people,
some during that time.
But this was before he went into service.
So his father had a hatchery.
He was the first to have the first hatchery in
Cherokee County and he raised broilers,
he had a million broilers at one time,
and raised the hens
that laid the eggs that he used in the hatchery.
So he was a real entrepreneur,
a visionary, and he had very little formal schooling.
But he went very far in life.
But when they were hatching,
the baby chicks at the hatchery,
someone had to be there to make
sure if the electricity went off,
you had to keep the incubators moving.
And so somebody had to spend the night there.
So Richard would spend the night there,
and then he'd skate to my house,
and we walked to town to the movie,
then he'd skate back
to the hatchery afterwards to spend the night.
>> Was he roller skating?
>> Roller skating, yes.
>> What a wow. So he didn't want to waste one second.
>> Well, we didn't have.
Things were ration during that time.
And tires were ration,
gas was ration, sugar, shoes.
I remember the margin that
we used was white and you would
add yellow coloring to it.
So wasn't like the margin we have now,
but it was very different during that time.
>> So you're saying that Richard,
he would roller skate as opposed to driving?
>> [inaudible]
>> Yes. Because of the gas and the tires ration.
So he was still pretty young,
16 or so but he had a lot of responsibility?
>> Well, probably at that age,
he was probably 17.
Lots of responsibility.
>> And you said he always wanted to be a doctor.
Did he ever explain his reasoning behind that?
>> He didn't want to be a farmer.
[LAUGHTER] He had done enough of that,
but he always wanted to be a doctor,
and I knew that from the very first.
>> Well, tell me about his family
and the home that they lived in.
>> Well, they lived in a lovely place at Holly Springs,
and he had lots of responsibility.
Even on Sunday night when we dated,
he would have to milk the cow
before he could come have a date with me.
>> There's always something to do.
>> Always something to do.
>> So you talked about this rationing that was going on.
So clearly, while you were still in high school,
the war had started?
>> Yes.
>> So let's talk a little bit about the late 1930s.
How much did you know about the war going on in Europe?
>> I guess I didn't didn't keep up with the love.
We just had a radio,
no television back then.
And I was interested some in it,
but not like I have grown to be later on.
>> And was the radio going all the time or did
your family gather for certain hours to listen?
>> You could turn it on at any time,
but probably just at certain times.
>> Do you remember
any particular programs on the radio
that you listened to, or news announcers?
>> No. I don't remember any.
>> So let's talk
about your memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
How did you get that news?
>> Every Sunday afternoon, the teenagers
would meet at the drug store on the corner,
and we'd have an ice cream comb or coke or something.
An I was there that Sunday afternoon.
And I suppose he was too,
and we heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor.
So we knew that was going to really change things.
And this was in '41,
and I graduated in '42.
And he had another year.
In Kentucky, he had gone to Primer School.
So he was a year behind me in high school,
but our classes were very close together, friendly.
So anyway, when he became 18,
he was drafted and he went down to Atlanta to sign up,
and when he got there, he decided he'd signed up
for the Navy instead of going into the Army.
So that's the reason he signed up for the Navy.
>> How do you think you made that decision?
>> I don't know why he made that decision.
>> How close were you with him at that time?
>> We were dating pretty regularly about that time.
>> How did you feel about him being drafted?
>> Well, I knew it was going to change everything.
And of course, every family in
Canton had somebody in service.
So it was just a norm at that time.
>> Did you feel any fear?
>> Yes.
>> And you had two sisters,
so no brothers to be [inaudible]?
>> No brothers to be left [inaudible].
>> Let's talk about your graduation.
So you said you graduated from high school in '42.
>> In '42, I was news editor of
the Green and Gold paper in school,
and very happy time.
Lots of close friends
that we stayed close to all these years.
And Richard and I went
to Atlanta to the Beta Club Convention.
He was a member of the Beta Club too at the hotel.
I forget where we stayed,
but we had our first picture made together at
the Greyhound bus station.
[LAUGHTER] So anyway,
when he went to service,
I wrote him every day.
And I think that kept him going.
But he went to Great Lakes first,
and then he went to St. Auburn's in
New York and worked in the operating room.
So when he was going to be sent overseas,
his parents and I were going to
New York to see him because he couldn't come home.
And at the last minute,
for some reason, his parents couldn't go.
So his sister who was 14-years-old,
much taller than I was,
they said she could go with me.
I had never ridden a train.
So Wanda and I rode a train to New York,
slip in a birth,
and he got us a room at a private home there in New York.
And so every day, Wanda and I would go into
town and sightsee while he worked.
And then he would meet us downtown at night,
and we'd go to a show or something together.
And we were there four, five days, I guess.
And so on the last night
that we were going to see him,
Wanda had not taken any comfortable shoes to New York.
I had taken some cloth sandals,
and so she had gotten blisters on her feet,
and we had walked to the zoo that day, I think.
And we went back to the train station to meet Richard,
and we were supposed
to meet him in front of a restaurant.
I learned one of my lessons
that has stayed with me all my life.
Be sure you know where you're going to meet
somebody and what time.
We waited in front of
a restaurant for an hour and he didn't come.
There were millions of
white little sailors all over the train station.
And Wanda said, "I cannot walk another step."
And so she went out front
and leaned up against one of the big columns,
and she said, "I can't do it," and I said,
"I can't leave town without seeing Richard again."
And so I went back in,
and I was at the top of an escalator and I looked down,
and he was standing in front of a different restaurant.
He had been waiting on one floor.
We were waiting on the other floor.
And anyway, we got together and
had dinner and went back to the house that night.
And so he went up to the room
and visited with us for a while,
and he stayed there after midnight.
And that night he asked me to marry him,
and it was D-Day,
June the 6th, 1944.
>> You were very young still at the time.
>> Yes, I was 19.
>> So what did you tell him?
>> I told him yes. [LAUGHTER]
>> I know that happened a lot.
People would get engaged
right before someone was going to leave.
Well, what was motivation for that?
Why do you think people did that? Or why did you do it?
>> Well, I was in love with him.
And it probably gave him some security,
I don't know, to think
somebody be waiting for him when he came home.
So anyway, so we left the next morning.
We saw him after midnight and
then we didn't see him the next morning,
and he went to the Pacific.
And he was on a aircraft carrier,
and he saw the flag light raised at Iwo Jima.
He was at Okinawa,
and they would bring the wounded back on
the ship for them to take care of.
And he helped very many people at sea.
He played taps for them when they had the burial service.
And so he had quite a life.
>> So let's talk about his service.
Was he a medic?
>> Yes, he was.
>> So did he mostly stay on board ship?
>> He stayed on board ship. He did not get off.
>> Did he have specific memories or did he share stories
of wounded soldiers and
what he had to do in those situations?
>> I don't remember any particular stories,
but I would write him every day.
We used airgrams,
which we fold up paper and they could be censored,
and his mail had to be
censored to me too during that time.
And he came in
August of 15th of '45.
He was home on leave.
And of course, the war in Europe was over
in April and May that year.
And we went to Atlanta to get my wedding rings.
And as we were coming home
from Atlanta with our wedding rings,
we heard on the radio that the war with Japan was
opened over on August of 15th, '45.
>> So did he have to go back?
>> He had to go back, and he was put on another ship.
He served on the Bunker Hill,
to begin with, and then the Bayfield.
Bayfield was a transport ship.
So they had to go back and bring
the soldiers back from the Pacific,
and he got home in April of '46.
And we were married June the 2nd of '46,
three months after he got home.
>> So I want to go back just for
a little bit to the trip to New York.
How did you feel going to New York?
I assume it was your first trip too.
>> It was my first trip.
Well, I've been to Florida maybe,
not much else,
because my family did not travel.
And to look back now
and realize that mother and daddy let me go.
Of course, they thought I was going with
his parents to begin with,
to let me go with Wanda.
I had to ride a bus to Atlanta to catch the train.
Never been on a train.
That was amazing that they let me do that.
>> What was life like on the train?
>> I enjoyed it. They had good food,
and then we slept in births,
and it was a new experience.
>> Were you able to sleep overnight?
>> Yes. It took all night to get there.
>> And who else did you see on the train?
Was it a lot of soldiers or civilians?
>> More civilians. I didn't see
many soldiers on that train.
>> Do you remember the stops along the way?
>> No.
>> And when it came into New York,
where did it arrive? Do you remember?
>> The name escapes me right now.
It's where I met him at the restaurant.
>> The Grand Central?
>> Yeah. Grand Central station.
>> So that must have made quite an impression?
>> It was. The whole New York made an impression.
But we would find our way around and sightsee,
and we saw more shows.
We saw the valleys.
>> That must have been very exciting.
So you got engaged and then he went to the Pacific.
And so you came back to Canton?
>> That's right.
>> And what did you do at that point?
You were graduated. What did you do?
>> I went to business college first,
and then I came back and
a neighbor up the street said there was
an opening at the main offices for Canton Cotton Mills.
And so I went there and got the job,
and I was secretary to
the secretary of Canton Cotton Mills.
They had two large mills. They made denim.
I don't know that it had anything
connected with the army,
and I had to analyze the payroll.
I had to list everybody, their job description,
how much they bade an hour,
so they could do how much money was spent
on each job in the cotton mill.
And so I have always loved figures.
And I always want to balance everything to the penny.
And a penny still means a lot to me.
[LAUGHTER]
>> So how long were you working at that job?
>> I worked there, well,
until he got out of service, let's see.
Two years, I guess.
He came home one time on furlough.
I didn't know he was coming.
He was standing out in the foyer
at the cotton in the office.
I looked up, he had a mustache.
By that night, he shaved off the mustache. [LAUGHTER]
>> He must have seen the look on your face.
>> He did. [LAUGHTER]
>> So you were working there for two years.
Do you remember your hours? When would you go in?
>> I would work in the daytime.
>> And how much money did you make? Do you recall?
>> A hundred and something dollar a month.
>> Did you save it or did you spend it all?
>> I saved some. I bought
a radio with a record player in it,
and I bought our cedar chairs,
and that was all that we had when we got married.
But I saved some. I bought
war bonds and he bought some more bonds.
He would save, send
some of his money home to his mother,
and she'd buy bonds with it.
But we didn't have very much when we got married.
>> And what was the benefit of buying war bonds?
Why were people motivated to do it?
>> To help the army. To help the government.
>> Would you see any money back from that?
>> Yes, you could cash them in,
which we did later on.
>> Okay.
So you're working there for two years,
was it mostly men that you were working with?
>> Men and ladies.
All the young men had gone.
They were older men that worked there.
And it was very wonderful place to work.
It was the headquarters of both cotton mills
and never had any problem there.
>> And you said you were secretary to the secretary?
Was that secretary a man or a woman?
>> A man, of the Jones family and
they were very outstanding and in fact,
they owned just about everything.
>> So your husband, Richard,
he comes back in 46 and you got married in June.
>> June the 2nd, 46.
>> Tell me about your wedding.
>> It was at my house.
Mother had had major surgery about a month before.
So I was working and I had to get ready for the wedding,
get the house in order and
because she wasn't able to do that very much.
But we just had a small family wedding and had
a friend play some music and I had a friend to
sing and his brother loaned us
his convertible to go on
a honeymoon for two weeks, which was wonderful.
But he went out and made sure
that nobody wrote on the car.
They had to have a cardboard,
if they wanted to ride anything,
they rode on a cardboard and they
put 10 cans on the back of the car.
And so we just had a little reception at the house.
And when we left, people
followed us all the way to Marietta.
We were going to Atlanta to the Biltmore for
our first night and people were still following us.
And so we turned to go towards
Carsle to lose them and we lost them.
And then we turned around, we went back to
the Biltmore and stayed one night.
And then we went through the smokes
and went up to Kentucky to meet all his relatives.
They were all up there.
So we were gone for two weeks.
>> So you met his relatives on your honeymoon?
>> Yes.
>> And how was that? And how was meeting all of those?
>> That was fine. They were his aunt and uncle.
And then we came home and
his parents were going to be gone.
So we stayed in his parents house for
two or three weeks with
his one younger brother and sister.
And Richard was working
for his father that summer and I was still working.
And so we had that and then
we stayed a month or two at my house
before we went to Atlanta and he had gotten in
Emory and who went down to find a place to live.
All these soldiers, you could not find
an apartment to rent and we thought
his father was going to have to put a down payment on
a house and we'd have to rent
out some of it to make the payments on it.
But the last minute,
they moved 100 trailers to the campus of Emory.
They were about maybe 18 feet long,
just tiny, no bathroom,
our first year of marriage and we had to use
a community bathroom and a community laundry house.
So we lived in that trailer for a year.
It was like a playhouse.
We had a little ice box.
We had to buy ice.
We had a little fuel oil,
pump up thing for the stove and we opened
up the sofa in the back and that
took up all the bedroom in the back.
That closets were about this wide and we had
a little sofa in the front and a
little fold up table and two chairs.
And so we lived that way for a year but the people
we met there were lifelong friends.
>> Were they service people, X-service people?
>> Yes. They were veterans that were there.
And then after a year,
they built Thompson Hall
which was sufficiency apartments,
one big room with a little kitchen,
maybe four by six
as you walk through going into the room,
a bathroom and one little closet.
And we lived there for six years in that one room.
And and so I made
a cover for the sofa and I did the drapes.
I made Richard a Corduroy Sport
jacket and we lived
there and he he would study in the room.
We had my radio.
He he bought me earphones and a long extent recard,
so I could walk anywhere in the apartment while he
studied and I could listen to the radio or whatever.
And so that was great.
So we went to the fox.
They had pops concert on
Sunday afternoon that you didn't have to pay to go to.
So we didn't have any money so the first year,
we had street cars out to Emory didn't have buses,
but after that, we had buses,
but we'd ride the street car down to the pops
concert and go for free and that was great.
>> So I assume most of his time was studying.
>> Who was studying? He had
to start on his undergraduate work
so he finished it three years going around the clock.
He worked at Central PAD
Emory Hospital to make a little money.
At that time, you had to alter
clave everything and nothing was disposable.
You saved everything.
So he worked up there and made
a little money during that time.
We want the GI bill,
but we'd get on it for the tuition and then we'd say,
he wanted to go to medical school so
we'd save it for medical school.
And so we lived on what I made.
I probably made $175 maybe a month in Atlanta.
>> What were you doing?
>> I was secretary to the Onono of
all equipment company and took
short hand and during that time,
it was a manual typewriter at that time.
And did all riche's papers on a manual typewriter.
And they had to be perfect.
If you made one error,
you had to start over again.
So he wrote papers in medical school,
and I would had
to be perfect with all those footnotes on there.
>> So this job you were doing,
where was that company located?
>> It was downtown in Atlanta.
And I would drive the bus downtown Atlanta.
And so we stayed
in this efficiency apartment
until he finished medical school.
We didn't have any children
until his junior year in medical school.
And we had Diane. We gave her a corner of the room.
We put a folding screen,
she had a baby bed and a bath-net.
And we lived there until she was 18 months old.
When she was eight months old the girl next door,
kept her and I went back to work for
a year to get us through medical school
and the girl would put her to
her own bed for her nap
because you could hear through the walls.
So she would take a nap
in her own bed and then she'd keep her till I got home.
And so we did
have a washing machine and
dryer downstairs and ironing board.
So I could go down there
and get out of the apartment some.
>> So there was some relief. [LAUGHTER] I want to
quickly ask about those trailers
that they had brought in for people to stay in.
Do you know who brought those in?
Was that the university or the Navy or something?
>> I'm sure the university had
to get them in. They were everywhere.
And one of the friends that we met down
there after we came to Rome,
we live next door to them [LAUGHTER] so it was wonderful.
>> And you said people had a hard time
finding places to live?
>> Yes.
>> Did they have a hard time finding jobs?
Did you have any difficulty finding a job?
>> No. I think I got mine through an an agency.
But all the wives were
working and the husbands were going to school.
>> So when did Richard finish medical school?
>> No medical school, 53.
He finished college in 49 in medical school in 53 at
Emory and then he went to Grady for
five years to major in surgery.
And that's when we moved down to
Clark Howell near Georgia Tech, which was low rent.
We paid the lowest rent you could pay $18 a month.
But he was only making $10 a month.
[LAUGHTER] And the second year he made $20 a month.
The third year, $30 a month,
the fourth year, $40 a month,
the fifth year we were in
the new gradies and he made enough of us to live on.
But we had saved every penny we
could we never went to a movie,
we didn't go out to eat.
I made all the clothes for the children
and cooked everything from scratch,
we ate lots of spam instead of ham.
So we lived on a shoestring.
>> Now, you were making all these clothes,
is that something you had learned from your mother?
>> Yes. I took homemake in high school,
but once I started sewing,
she couldn't please me.
Everything had to be perfect,
had to be matched just right.
And I would look at a ready made dress
and I'd put some patterns together and copy it.
So I was making all my dresses back then.
>> Are you a perfectionist?
>> Perfectionist. I think so.
Probably so. [LAUGHTER]
So when he had finished up at Grady,
what were your plans?
>> Our family wanted us to come back to Canton.
They did not have an anesthesiology there.
His training had been
under with the use of an anesthesiologist.
So we came to Rome,
Georgia, to go into practice.
He went in practice by himself.
When we came to Rome,
we were not in debt a penny,
except for his office equipment.
We had survived.
We had not borrowed money from the families.
They would come down to Atlanta,
his family would come down.
They take us to Ship Ahoy.
I'd have shrimp, and I think that's
the reason I like shrimp so much now.
[LAUGHTER] But that's the only time we
went out to eat was when they came
down to take us out to eat.
>> What was the name of the restaurant?
>> Ship Ahoy.
>> I don't know if it's still there or not.
>> So going to Rome was just a choice that you made?
>> It was a choice.
>> It wasn't because there was
an office there that offered him a job?
>> No. He wouldn't have practiced by himself.
But there was an anesthesiologist that
would put his patients to sleep. That was the main thing.
>> And did he do surgery at his office or at a hospital?
>> Well, at a hospital. He might have
done some in office,
some minors thing, but he
did major surgery in the hospital.
>> And how did he build the practice?
>> At that time they didn't have
any emergency room doctors.
They just had nurses.
So if someone came in and they
needed a doctor, you had to go,
and he would take call for some of the other doctors
that were older that didn't want night work.
So he build up his practice.
He was in practice by himself
six years before he got a partner.
And he just made a name for himself.
>> And did you work at that time after you moved to Rome?
>> No, I did not work.
And we joined First Baptist Church in Rome,
and they were having
Vacation Bible School when we moved there,
and I took the children there.
And then we joined and have been there since then.
He was a deacon and a life deacon.
I was a deacon and I'm a life deacon now.
I taught Sunday school and I was
the children's director there for many years.
And when I was single at Canton during the war,
I played the piano on Wednesday night for prayer meeting.
I'm not a very good pianist,
and I had to select the songs that I
could play [LAUGHTER] and I
taught nine-year-old girls during the war at church.
>> So in Rome,
you had Diane in Atlanta?
>> I had both boys in Atlanta.
>> And what are their names?
>> Arthur and Philip.
>> So you had three children?
>> Three children. Diane was
always a little mother to those boys.
>> Really? [BACKGROUND]
>> I always wanted a brother and I never had a brother.
So when Arthur was born,
I didn't believe Richard when he told me we had a son.
At that time,
you didn't know what you were going to have.
And so he had to get the thing from
the nursery with the name
on there and bring it and show it to me.
[LAUGHTER]
>> And you had your children
there in the hospital in Rome?
>> At Emory.
>> I had them all at Emory.
>> Why did you choose Emory?
>> The children were two, four,
and six-years-old when we went to Rome.
>> I'm sorry, you were already in Atlanta,
never mind. That makes sense.
So I want to quickly ask you
about your home that you
have there in Rome today, that you're still in.
When did you all build that home?
>> When we came to Rome, we went into
an apartment for about eight months.
And then our friends from Emory, the Webster's,
he was a dentist that had lived in
the same apartment in Atlanta,
they said, the house next door to us for sale.
It was five-years-old.
It was build in '53, I think.
And said the couple were getting
a divorce and it was five-years-old,
and I said, You've got to be kidding.
We've been in school for 12 years.
We can't buy a house.
But anyway, we worked it out.
Richard had worked for a doctor in
Atlanta one month after he
finished Grady and made a little money.
And so that doctor gave him a loan,
the person that owned the house gave him a loan,
and then we got a loan through
an insurance company to buy
the house that we're in now in '58.
>> Do you remember how much it costs?
>> Thirty-five thousand.
>> And could you describe the house for me?
>> It has three bedrooms,
a living room, a dining room,
a den, and a playroom.
It had a screening porch and
we turned it into a sun room.
And then we finished up a room upstairs
or the playroom that can be another bedroom.
So we have two half baths and two whole baths.
>> And tell me about your family today.
So you have three children and tell me about them,
your grandchildren and great grandchildren.
>> Diane is the oldest,
and she married to Sir Farmer.
He is the best son-in-law you would ever have.
Can do anything.
When they come home furlough,
I always have a to-do list.
[LAUGHTER] But they were in Africa for 12 years,
10 or 12, then went to France,
and then went to Germany.
And they have three children.
Jason is a lieutenant colonel now in
the army in Rwanda, Africa.
Naomi is married to a lieutenant colonel.
He's working on his PhD in
Pittsburgh right now. He's in the army.
Katherine is a missionary in Togo,
West Africa, and is married to Alan Niles.
They were married in 2006.
All three of her children got
married within six months of each other.
I don't know how they did it.
[LAUGHTER] Let's see.
Arthur is in Macon.
He's an anesthesiologist,
and his wife is from Macon.
And she has three brothers who are doctors,
and she thought I'll never marry
a doctor and I'll never come back to Macon,
but she did it both.
She was at Emory when he was there.
He went to Emory undergraduate.
And then he has a son in
banking in Macon, a son in Dallas,
Texas in finances, stocks, and bonds,
and then a daughter in marketing in Macon,
and then Hampton's in Calhoun transition right now.
And then Phil is a family practice in Calhoun, Georgia.
He did his internship residency
at Florida Hospital in Rome.
We were very surprised that he chose to come to Rome.
And he was divorced
after several years. Had four children.
He married a lady with one child,
and then they've had one child.
So they have six children.
And Glenn has just finished McAfee seminary in Atlanta.
Aaron is a pastor near Charlotte, North Carolina.
Taylor is in Atlanta in business.
He's married with a little child.
And Rachel finished here at Kennesaw a year ago.
She's working in Dalton right now.
And Drew went to West Georgia,
and she's working down in that area now.
And Nolan is a junior at Calhoun.
He'll finish in a year. He wants to be a veterinarian.
I don't know how it'll work out.
>> That was impressive. Well, very good. [LAUGHTER]
>> But I've got
13 grandchildren and 16 great grandchildren,
and one more on the way.
Naomi is having another baby in April.
>> Wonderful.
>> So I keep
all the names and the birthdays down in a book,
and I send them a card and a little money,
but it's getting expensive.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Sort of a community. [LAUGHTER] Well,
Miss Gray, is there something else you'd
like to add here at the end before we finish up?
>> I think I've covered
the main things that I wanted to cover.
>> And well, I'd ask why do you think it's
important to share this story?
>> Well, it's so different from the world today.
We didn't have television.
We didn't have computers, iPhones.
The children gave me an iPhone for Christmas.
So there's a challenge now.
I do play Bridge once a week.
It keeps my mind going.
So I have some close friends,
and even though I live alone,
I'm at church every Wednesday and every Sunday.
We never had any problem with our children.
I always went to church when I was growing up.
So my children have
always knew they were going to Sunday school in church,
even when they were teenagers.
That's when lots of people are unique,
but no problem there.
So they've all been great.
All the grandchildren are great.
Nobody's been on drugs or gotten in trouble,
and I really feel blessed.
>> Well, that's wonderful. And I
appreciate you sitting down and talking to me today.
>> Well, I appreciate
sharing the story of Richard and myself,
and I hope that it will inspire and bless other people,
that they will have a dream, follow that dream,
work hard, serve others,
and keep God in their life.