Dad's Family

Both sides of my family have been long-established residents of Georgia. I'm an interesting blend of English, Irish, German, Dutch, and Native American blood. The English and Irish have a turbulent history, and Germany and Holland have a sketchy past as well. I'm laughingly decided that these opposing sides facilitate internal struggle and explain why I often feel pulled in two directions at once.

My father Samuel Everett was born to Charles Everett (Papa) and Barbara Joan (Granny) Thompson in Atlanta, Georgia. Dad was born on April 19th, 1959, two years after his brother Charles Alfred (Chuck). The family lived in a tiny house on Howell Mill Road, not far from where Papa grew up off of Belleview. Granny's parents lived just a skip away on Antone Street and were visited often. This area is just off of I-75 and is within a stone's throw of Georgia Tech. This close proximity fostered an innate allegiance to Tech that still persists within the family. According to my research, the neighborhood first sprang up during the 1920s to provide affordable housing for employees of the nearby Atlantic Steel and rail yards. There was a street car track that ran along Howell Mill and into downtown Atlanta, and by the late forties, there was a fire station on the corner. The street cars would have been gone by the time Dad and Chuck ran along the street. I was always fascinated with trying to envision my father's childhood in the city. I cannot explain why the thought always appealed to me. I would take cues from the snapshots I had seen and imagine the whole thing in perfect black and white.

Baby Everett

Granny with Chuck, Dad, and Sharon (Marion's daughter)

One-year-old Everett

Dad and Chuck

Papa was born to Emmett and Ellen Thompson on April 6th, 1932 and has always been known as "Bo". Emmett owned his own concrete business and sold sand dredged from the river. The couple married when Ellen was six or seven months pregnant and Papa was born shortly after. He was premature and very sick, weighing only a pound and a half at birth. An early, unknown incident left him blind in one eye, and even in his earliest pictures, my grandfather is wearing thick glasses. I'm sure there were happy moments in Papa's childhood, but I am generally aware of the negative points. Papa was forced to work an early morning paper route to earn money while his younger brothers (Jack and Edy) were handed everything on a silver platter. There was a great deal of speculation as to why Papa was treated differently from his brothers, but there will never be an answer. Knowing my grandfather's mild, extremely likable manner, it is hard to believe that anyone could feel so harshly towards him. I have never felt comfortable asking too many questions about Papa's childhood.

Granny was born to Ruby Beech (Nanny) and Alfred Protho (Daddy Al) Garrett on October 8th, 1934. Her older sister Marion had arrived two years earlier and was her father's "little princess." Granny, on the other hand, was a tomboy through and through. She was very close to her grandmother and formed a special attachment to her great grandfather, Grandpa Morgan. I remember Granny telling the story of Grandpa Morgan's trip from Holland with his new wife. It was a Romeo and Juliet scenario with disapproving families. Grandpa Morgan was a Dutch Jew, while his wife was Protestant. They traveled here to make a clean break and begin their lives together. Granny had to attend speech classes when she attended Grove Park Elementary and said that it was due to acquiring Grandpa Morgan's accent. Nanny worked at Firestone during a time when most women stayed at home, and I think that it was because she enjoyed having nice things. I remember seeing pictures of her dressed to the nines with her red hair neatly in place, and as a child, I wanted to obtain the same regal look. I know that the Garretts were the first house on the street to obtain a television set, due largely to the fact that Daddy Al was sloshed when he purchased it.

Alfred and Ruby

Alfred and Marion

Granny's fourth birthday

Grandpa Morgan

Granny, Nanny, and Marion

Nanny

I remember Granny saying that World War II changed a lot of things. She and Papa would have been young during the war, but old enough to sense the shift in a way of life. She remembers things being simpler before the war and more industrialized afterwards. Even through a child's eyes, life seemed more carefree before war cast its shadow on cities and towns across the nation.

Granny and Papa met each other at a football game, and Papa might have been one of the players on the field. He attended Fulton High School and Granny attended O'Keefe. Granny's friend was there with Papa's brother Edy and instructed her to pick one of the guys for a date. Granny picked Papa, unaware that he was Edy's brother. The two were close friends before they began seriously dating each other. They were married in September of 1952. Granny has often told me that she and Papa weighed the same amount on the day of their wedding. She states that she was a bit chunky growing up. She might have been plump, but she wasn't fat by any stretch of the imagination. I always felt that she was a bit too hard on herself, but the notion was probably enhanced by the fact that her sister had an unbelievably small eighteen-inch waist. I was oblivious to size or anything else and used to admire Granny's pictures. One in particular used to hang in Daddy Al's bedroom, and I would gaze proudly at the sixteen year old with dark brown hair and spunky green eyes. The newly weds lived in an apartment complex and used to visit the elderly owners who resided below them. Granny lost a baby boy before having Chuck five years later. I'm not sure when Papa announced his call to the ministry, but I think the boys were young. His family used to tease him unmercifully, and Granny used to fume over Jack and Edy playing keep-away with Papa's hat.

Papa and his boys

When Granny, Papa, and the boys visited the Thompsons, Papa's father (Pawpaw) would leave the table and shut himself away as soon as dinner ended. As a result, Chuck and Dad never really knew their paternal grandfather. Granny and Pawpaw Thompson were never very fond of each other. Granny's resentment was largely due to the poor treatment of her husband. She also resented the snide comments Pawpaw made about Jews. Granny's old loyalty to her Dutch great-grandfather stuck hard, and she has always found it hard to forgive slights against someone well loved. Pawpaw had health problems and died when Dad was still young. As he began his final struggle, Pawpaw Thompson kicked his favorite sons out of the room in no uncertain terms. After years of ignoring his eldest son, he finally called for Papa as he lay on his death bed. He died before Papa could get there, and I've always wondered if Pawpaw Thompson came to an important realization too late to make amends.

Papa, Granny, Chuck and Dad at Nanny Thompsons

Dad and Chuck spent a great deal of time with their maternal grandparents, and I have pictures of them playing happily with Nanny's pekingese-looking dog. As I have my own memories of Nanny and Daddy Al, I will avoid providing too much information at this juncture. They will reappear throughout my documentation. Dad and Chuck were brought up to be well-mannered, but that didn't prevent them from getting into occasional scrapes. They once busted the windows in a neighbors garage and had to replace them. Dad was accident prone and must have kept my grandmother hopping. He once had a close shave when trying to run underneath a swing. The swing came back and caught the top of his head. He also fell off of a fallen tree and gouged his leg with a stick. Incidents like these have continued through the adult years in the form of flipped cars, another stick to the leg, and various construction-related injuries.

Dad on steps

Dad with Nanny

Playing with Nanny's dog

The Thompson family

Dad

Nanny and Daddy Al moved to Flowery Branch and lived out the rest of their lives in the area. Granny, Papa, Chuck, and Dad moved north of Atlanta in the early seventies when Papa accepted the call to Antioch Baptist Church. My grandparents still live in the house they built more than thirty years ago, and I would trust its stability more than my own dwelling. Dad loved being in what was then rural Forsyth County and would hop on his dirt bike and go exploring. Chuck was older and less outdoorsy and had a harder time adjusting. It was more difficult for him to leave friends, and I think he felt partially that he was now surrounded by people who were just a bit backwards. Both boys attended Forsyth County High School and had their fair share of adventures. Dad blew up the toilet in the science wing with a fist full of manganese. He had his fair share of wrecks and climbed out of a car that had flipped end over end down an embankment. My father was athletic, playing varsity football, soccer, and running track. Sometimes I feel that my talents more closely resemble those of my uncle. Chuck was musical and plays the piano very well. He learned to play by ear, which is a trait I am sometimes envious of. He played tennis and went to college with the goal of becoming a journalist.

Before I began writing this paragraph, I called my Dad to ask him why I could only remember his antics from high school. I asked him if he could provide any stories to counteract the wild memories I have of his high school days. He laughed and said, "Do you mean did I ever do anything that was sane?" I guess that about sums it up, and I suppose it's an accurate portrayal of the time. He was part of the group that locked an offending member of the soccer team outside in nothing but his birthday suit. The same players used to simultaneously flush all of the toilets every time a particular teacher was in the shower. Dad used to race up and down 400, which was a new road and rarely used. He owned a super fast Camaro that rattled the windows of the house and eventually sold it, knowing that he was likely to get himself killed. One night Dad and Chuck were the passengers of a driver who lost control on a bridge in Roswell. The car narrowly escaped plunging into the river. When the boys arrived home, Granny had woken up and been unable to go back to sleep. She was waiting up and told Chuck and Dad about a dream she had in which they had shown up soaking wet and covered in mud. I imagine a stunned silence followed. It was the only time Granny had an experience like that, but Nanny was notorious for them. Family legend says that she had a kind of sixth sense about her. She supposedly knew when people were going to die and when everyone feared the worst about me and Mom, Nanny assured them that we would both be fine.

Dad and Uncle Chuck

Dad's graduation picture

Whether it involved kicking in car doors or wrecking a car, sometimes Dad's temper seemed to have few limits. The picture I have painted of my father is probably less than stellar, but it's part of a past that is long behind him. He remembers walking through the den one day to find his mother crying at the window overlooking the back yard. He instinctively knew that it was because of him. I think things largely settled when he met and married my Mom, but that's another story.

Beginnings

If I begin with the very beginning of my life, I must first address the fact that I was born on January 14th, 1985. This was fourteen weeks before my projected arrival on April 19th, so needless to say, my birth was anything but ordinary. My mother did not have a twenty weeks ultrasound, so doctors missed the fact that she had placenta previa. This resulted in early delivery. Mom was losing blood at the same rate that she was receiving transfusions, and for a time, both of our lives hung precariously in the balance. Mom was eventually stabilized, but it was several days before she was well enough to see the 2 lb. 2 ounce girl she had brought into this world. My chances of survival were slim, hovering around 5%. My father had been informed that even if I beat the odds, severe brain damage would leave me completely debilitated. I have no memory of those early days, but pictures tell the story of a baby that could fit in the palm of your hand. There are images of a tiny figure in an incubator, almost indistinguishable beneath tubes and medical tape.

It seems that I didn't appreciate the oxygen supply that was so essential to my underdeveloped lungs. My mother would later describe moments where I would grasp the tube with little fingers, become very still, then jerk with all of my might. It is hard for me to believe that the fragile being in those photographs is me. It was three months before I was allowed to go home. Even then, I wore a monitor to alert my parents when I stopped breathing. My mother had long-since returned to work, and I began staying with my paternal grandparents during the day.

There is a worn stuffed rabbit that resides on a shelf in my closet. It still tinkles out "Here Comes Peter Cotton Tail" and stares at me with friendly brown eyes. He was my first constant companion during those long weeks of isolation. I sometimes think about those first three months in such an institutional setting. There was attention from nurses, the continual hum of a medical environment, and visits from my parents, but yet how lonely this world must have seemed. Even now, my heart goes out to the NICU babies whose closest friends are the machines that keep them alive. I still bear marks on my ankles, wrist, stomach, and head from tubes and IVs, but the most interesting reminder is one that is seldom noticed. Despite the fact that he was performing emergency heart surgery for patent ductus arteriosus, a knowing doctor looked into my future and saw a self-conscious teenage girl. His knife traced the curve of my shoulder blade instead of creating a line down the center of my chest. I don't know his name, but I would love to shake his hand. He not only gave me the gift of life, but presented me with my favorite scar.

And so, I began.