Hold Tight, Sweetheart

In their exuberance at spending the first year of their marriage at the University of Texas, the two high school valedictorians named me, their first child, U.T. . They finally earned their college degrees in Mother's home state, Kentucky, after the birth of three more children and much moving from jobs to school. Not long after the Great Depression hit, my father lost his job in the oil business and began trying to make a living as a traveling salesman. We moved to McKenzie, a town of about 2,600 people in west Tennessee. Mother, preparing to be a minister, attended the Cumberland Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Bethel College, one of the first theological seminaries in the country that admitted women. My father left home for good in 1936; we children experienced both disaster and fairy tale generosity. Mother received her divinity degree at the age of 68 in 1960.