Memories from a Federal Working Girl

By Patricia Shirley

Patricia always wanted to work for the federal government. After a visit to the White House when she was nine years old, she was "hooked." Patricia grew up in rural Orange, Virginia, where her family owned a small farm. There, with her parents, Willis and Helen Shirley, three brothers, three sisters, and Grand and Pappy, her paternal grandparents, she was told if she worked hard she would succeed. That there was "no one out there better than she," but to always remember she was no better than anyone else. She began her federal career as a file clerk working for the US Food and Drug Administration. After a year, she accepted a position with the US Navy where she worked as a draftsman and report preparer. Continuing her federal journal, she accepted a position with the US Air Force where she worked as the division secretary for the chief of the division. Seeking an increase in pay and more responsibility, she accepted a position with the Office of Secretary of Defense as a legislative assistant, interacting with congress members and their staffs. After a short period, she was offered a position in the international and intelligence law division, interacting with our intelligence agencies: CIA, DIA, and National Security Agency. Patricia continued to progress in her career accepting a position with defense research and engineering, first working with and interacting with our NATO allies and then with the Defense Science Board where she became executive assistant to the director. After the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Patricia accepted a position with the administrative office of US Courts as an administrative analyst planning training sessions for judges' secretaries. Patricia ended her federal career in 2008 after forty years of serving our government.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645697466

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Memories from a Federal Working Girl

Patricia A. Shirley

Copyright © 2019 by Patricia A. Shirley

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

There are good ships and there are wood ships,

the ships that sail the sea; but the best ships are friendships and may they always be.

—Ted Kennedy

To Willis and Norman,

We miss you dearly.

Acknowledgments

For

Turner Rawlings and Lucy Walker

Luke Rawlings and Harriet Quarles

James Richardson and Sara Taylor

Flossie Jane Richardson and Beverly Shirley

Without whom, there would be no me.

And my parents

Willis Shirley and Helen Rawlings

Foreword

Ialways wanted to work for the federal government. I think I was hooked from the time I was nine years old when my fourth grade class went to Washington, DC, for a visit. It was during the Eisenhower administration, and one of the stops along our tour was the White House.

I grew up in the ’50s and ’60s. The schools in Orange, Virginia, where I grew up were segregated, as were all the schools in the South. In 1965, the town of Orange decided to comply with Brown vs. Board of Education and integrate our local high school. They began with the eighth grade class and the junior and senior classes. Black students had been attending a four-county school located in Rapidan, Virginia, about twenty-five miles away for most of the students in Orange County.

Now, we would have an opportunity to attend the local high school. I assumed that all the black students in Orange would jump at the chance to attend a school closer, but I was wrong. There were several reasons most of them did not. They wanted to continue with the class they started with, and there was the apprehension of attending an all-white school. Many of the students, black and white, already knew each other. We were neighbors. Families had been connected for years, blacks working for white neighbors. Some of the whites had even taken black lovers. My great uncle was first cousin to the lady who owned the general store in our neighborhood. She claimed him as a relative in their later years. We wondered why he always visited her. We would go to the store for staples, and he would be sitting there chatting away like the other family members. (It wasn’t until later that we found out why he was able to do that.)

It ended up there was only five of us who opted to join the senior class. Two black students joined the junior class. There were about twelve black students who entered the eighth grade class. My younger sister, Janet, was among them.

The school was integrated with little or no fanfare. There were a couple of incidents that stand out in my mind, but nothing major. There was my office practice teacher, who accused me of cheating. We had mini boxes of items to be filed: letters, memos, and other office correspondence. One morning, we had all these items on our desk and she decided on a pop quiz. I just moved my box to the top of my desk so I would have room to complete the quiz. It never darned on me there was material in the box that could be used to answer questions on the quiz, and I am still trying to figure out how you can cheat at filing.

The other incident was a bit more subtle. I was in government class and the student who would be selected salutatorian for our class was sitting in front of me. We had a quiz in that class. I received 100 percent. Edna received 80 percent. My teacher was an older woman, wise and diplomatic. Since my voice was only a whisper during that time, she asked if I would sit in front of Edna so that she could hear me better. I just smiled and said of course. I knew what was going on. But my dad had always told me, You can’t tell people who or what you are. You have to show them. The next several quizzes given, my score was still 100 percent. Nothing else was ever mentioned. I, along with the other four students, graduated with our class.

A few weeks after graduating from high school in June 1966, my mother asked me to accompany her on a job she had recently accepted. The job was cleaning the home of one of our Caucasian neighbors.

This was one of a few jobs open to people of color in Orange, Virginia, where we grew up. You could work on your Caucasian neighbor’s farm: become a janitor at one of the local elementary schools, department stores, or any of the other places of business that required cleaning.

Anyway, off Mother and I go to the neighbor’s home to clean (this was one of several homes they owned, so no one was there except us). Upon completion of cleaning the dining room floor, while down on my knees, I announced to my mother, This is not for me!

My next foray into the work world was as babysitter for another Caucasian neighbor’s new baby. After spending the day listening to the grandmother and great-grandmother talk about how the baby was charming me, I had had enough. It seemed to me that I was the one doing the charming since the baby seemed to really like me. Well, that didn’t work out either.

Next stop was the local town factory—Clara Statt. Since I didn’t have a driver’s license yet, my brother dropped me off to fill in an application.

Oh boy, was I ever proud! I dressed in the fashion of the day—a brown sleeveless sheaf with black wedge heel shoes and I carried an envelope purse. I thought I looked pretty good. I walked in, smiled, and announced that I was looking for a job, preferably in the office. They politely gave me an application, and I filled it in and handed it back to the receptionist. I must have been overdressed or something. I never heard from them.

I continued my job hunt—optimistic as ever. On one of my visits to the University of Virginia’s Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic, my physician, who was the head of the clinic, mentioned to me that I should apply for a secretarial position in one of the many clinics in the hospital. I left there so excited: Why hadn’t I thought of that? This was a sure shot. Dr. Fitzhugh suggested it, and if I mentioned his name when I went in, naturally I would get a job. Everyone knew who he was.

So off I went—this time dressed in a light-blue cotton/linen A-line dress, black patent leather pumps, and carried a black patent leather purse (envelope of course). My hair was styled in a Jackie Kennedy bouffant. After all, it was the ’60s, and we were all Jackie fans. I waited and waited. Soon I would hear something. I was sure of it. According to all the manuals, I was dressed appropriately. The only thing I wasn’t wearing was white gloves. Nothing, I guess I was overdressed again.

Was I naive or what? Here it was the ’60s, the height of the civil rights movement—in a small Southern town, what was I thinking? And Dr. Fitzhugh was just as naive as I was. Either that or we were both stupid.

I remembered going to a local drugstore in the summer of 1964 and picking up a newspaper with the headline Civil Rights Bill is passed. I guess I thought because it had passed, everything was now going to be equal. (Hey, what do you expect? I was a sixteen-year-old teenager, full of herself. I read books. I was smart!) Besides, I was one of five blacks who had just graduated from an all Caucasian high school. I was supposed to find a job!

The summer of 1966 was spent like my other summers: cooking, sewing, canning, playing softball and volleyball, badminton, croquet, attending Sunday school and church, and visiting our grandmother on Wednesdays and Sunday afternoons.

The best part of summer was going to the Bookmobile. It came every other week to the general store in our neighborhood. This is where I was introduced to Ian Fleming’s James Bond.

The first James Bond book I read was From Russia with Love. It was a bit risqué to say the least. I thought, I don’t know if Daddy would approve of me reading this. Anyway, my sisters, brothers, cousins, and I would get as many books as we thought we could read during those two weeks and meet at Grandma’s to discuss with each other what we had read.

Summer turned into fall, and I still hadn’t found a job and had no money for college. During that time, there wasn’t a community college or trade school nearby that you could improve on the skills you had acquired in high school.

I wanted to head to Washington, DC, but I sensed that my dad wasn’t thrilled about that prospect. I figured I was eighteen now and should be able to go out on my own. I was dreading having this discussion with him. I knew he would say no, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. All I knew was that I did not want to scrub floors and clean any of our neighbors’ homes. Fortunately, I didn’t have to have this conversation.

Sometime during that fall, I heard from someone in the county school board office, the Negro Representative to the school board or some other county official, that there was a state school for persons with disabilities, minor, or otherwise (I had developed a vocal impediment. When I was about nine, it was discovered that I had small benign tumors growing on my vocal cords. The tumors caused by vocal cords not to come together in the way normal vocal cords come to together in order to make sound. My voice came out as a whisper) and that I was eligible to attend this school if I wanted to go. Of course, I wanted to go! I would be on my own and could start to be a grown-up.

This school, still in existence, is named Woodrow Wilson Center. It is similar to a community college or trade institution. They offer courses in accounting, business administration, auto mechanics, welding, nursing, food services, upholstery, woodwork, arts and crafts, furniture making, and several others.

It was suggested that I enter the business course. The school is located across the Blue Ridge Mountains in a small town named Fishersville located between Waynesboro and Staunton, Virginia, approximately an hour’s drive from Charlottesville, Virginia, and an hour or so from beautiful Lexington, and Natural Bridge, Virginia.

I was so excited. I spent most of the fall and into the Christmas Holiday putting my wardrobe together. I was looking forward to my journey of discovery, learning and growing.

I was to begin classes during the Winter Quarter, starting in January of the following year. The course was designed for one year which meant I would graduate the following December.

My parents were excited for me, especially Daddy. I was finally doing something.

He and Mom and two of my sisters drove me to the school campus. My courses consisted of business math, business law, English composition, typing, and Shorthand I, II, and III. I had taken a typing course in high school and failed, I could never pass a timed typing test (ten minutes as fast as you could type with a minimum of five errors). I guess being the only minority in the class was zapping my confidence.

Campus life was fun. There was a chapel for all faiths. Activities included pottery (I made a ceramic water pitcher and a coffee pot), painting, music, movies, crafts, table tennis (got to be really good at this), volleyball, tennis, archery, a rifle range, and a boathouse (canoes, rowboats). There were theme parties (Roaring 20s, Halloween) and just about any other activities that would be part of college life. There were field trips and outings to nearby Natural Bridge and Luray Caverns.

At Woodrow Wilson, I excelled in all my classes, so much so that my business law professor asked if I had ever considered law school. It was a very good first six months. I grew in knowledge, independence, and confidence.

I had gone home for spring break in April. I had always been a big girl, 5'7", weighing 165–175 pounds when I went off to school. Coming home that April, I now weighed 155 pounds.

I phoned my mother from a phone booth in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I had taken a bus from school. It was around noon time. I told her there wasn’t a bus leaving Charlottesville until 4:00 pm, but not to worry, that I would just sit there in the bus station until that time. It wasn’t a big deal. I was an avid reader, and I had my books.

Around 1:30 pm, I started to get hungry and decided to get a cheeseburger. I was sitting on one of those stools at the lunch counter when someone poked me in the side and said, Are you ready to go home? I was thrilled. Mother had phoned Daddy at the local elementary school where he worked and told him I was waiting at the bus station. He immediately dropped everything and drove and hour to pick me up. He was pleased that I had come for spring break. Not much for giving compliments, instead of saying that I looked good, Daddy just said, You sure have been taking care of yourself while at school. I smiled and said, Thanks, Daddy!" He was really glad to see me and so were the rest of the family.

It was good to be home. Having always been close to my father, we had to play catch-up. He and I stayed up and talked until almost midnight. He wanted to know all about my few months in school, what I had done, places I had been. I told him everything, even about seeing the movie The Ten Commandments. He said he wished he could have been there. He had always been interested in everything we did—taking us to school dances and football games. He was even my date for the junior/senior prom when I was a junior in high school. My father was not a formerly educated person, but he was smart and had lots of know-how which he referred to as horse sense.

Some nights when we were all sitting around doing our homework, he would take one of the volumes of the encyclopedia from the book shelf and begin to read. If there was a word he couldn’t pronounce or he ran across something he was reading and wasn’t quite sure he got the meaning, he would ask one of us. We learned together. When I was having problems with geometry my senior year in high school, he found me a tutor.

He was superintendent of our Sunday school, vice president of the PTA at the elementary school where we had all gone to grade school, and a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was a farmer, and he was the janitor at the local all-white grade school.

Spring break went by quickly. He took me to visit all our relatives in the neighborhood. We went to visit my grandmother. When it was time for us to leave, she packed a lunch for me, a fried chicken leg and large slice of chocolate cake. She thought I had gotten too thin. I put the lunch in the car and walked over to see my mother’s brother and his wife.

While I was inside talking to my aunt, Daddy and Uncle Bucky were sitting outside—he in the car and Uncle Bucky on a tree trunk chatting away. I came out to tell him I was ready to go. He was taking me back to school and we had a two-hour drive ahead of us.

When I got to the car, Daddy had eaten the chicken leg that Grandma had packed for my lunch—said it just smelled so good he couldn’t help it.

Back at school a month or so later, things were going along swimmingly. Daddy, Mom, my younger brother, and Uncle Monroe paid me a surprise visit. A group of friends and I were sitting at a table in the recreation center. I was so pleased to see them I almost knocked over a couple of friends when I looked up and realized they were there. My friends laughed at me and teased me and said I was a daddy’s girl.

I went home for July 4th holiday. When it was time to go back to school, Daddy asked if I minded taking the bus. He said he just didn’t feel like driving. I was disappointed, but not upset. He teased me about what a bad daddy he was can’t even take the girl back to school. I just smiled and said, That’s okay, Daddy. We will do it next time.

I took the bus back to school. I usually phoned home every Sunday. I phoned home on Sunday after I returned to school, and Mom told me Daddy was going to the hospital the next day and that he had to have an operation. I just about lost it, so she put him on the phone to calm me down.

He told me he was fine and that he was just going for tests. I calmed down and went about my usual Sunday afternoon activities. Daddy was supposed to be in the hospital about four or five days. I phoned on Thursday night, but they wouldn’t let me speak to him. His doctor told me he was in recovery and that I could see him on Friday.

Feeling pretty good, I solicited my friends to go with me to Charlottesville. We would get a pass to leave campus on Saturday morning to go visit him.

I had had a dream when I was ten years old that I awoke one morning and Daddy was dead. I never told anyone about this. I remember that morning clearly. I got up and washed and dressed and went in search of him. When I saw that he was fine, I went about my day. I just watched him closely from then on.

In 1963, he had gone to the veteran’s hospital in Richmond for a hernia operation. He was in the hospital about a week. It was quiet at home. It was like we were lost. He was always there. He had only been away from home one other time that I remembered, that was the time he had driven to Newtown, Pennsylvania, to pick up furniture from his sister, Sara.

She was getting remarried, and her new husband already had a home that was furnished. Aunt Sara’s first husband had died from a heart attack at thirty-nine years old.

Around 7:00 am on Friday, July 14, 1967, a nurse knocked on my dorm room door and handed me a note saying that Daddy died at three that morning. I thought this woman had lost her mind. I told her she was crazy and that she didn’t know what she was talking about. Poor lady was beside herself. She had assumed that Daddy had been sick for a long period of time and that we were all expecting this. But that was not true.

My beloved father had died suddenly from complications after surgery for lung cancer. While doing farm work on our family farm a few months before, he had fallen off the tractor and hurt his leg. No one thought it was a big deal. He had been wearing a knee brace and it hadn’t bothered him much. After an autopsy, we learned that there had been a blood clot that had traveled to his lung. He had regained consciousness right after surgery and told his doctor to tell my mother he would phone her when he got out of recovery. He never woke again. This farmer, janitor, Sunday school teacher, PTA vice president, NAACP member, my dad was gone. He was forty-five years old, twenty-eight days before his forty-sixth birthday.

I was nineteen years old, and I thought my whole world was falling apart. I went home for my father’s funeral and to be with my family. I wasn’t even sure if I would return to school.

What a gloomy place our family farm had become. We were lost.

Who would take care of us? Our whole world revolved around him. It was he that had given us older ones the talk, took us to Friday night football games, where he would climb to the top of our town’s Porterfield Park to scream and cheer louder than we did. I would hear someone scream, All right, boys, let’s get that ball moving! Look back and up to see that it was Daddy, smile, and turn around to continue jumping up and down with the rest of the crowd. No one had to remind us on Friday nights to get our chores done early, feed the pigs, milk the cows, and gather firewood.

It was he who had driven us to the future homemakers ball and the harvest ball. There were times when I wasn’t sure who was more excited.

We weren’t the only ones who would miss him. It was he who cleared our neighbors’ driveways during snowstorms. He was the go-to guy for many things in our neighborhood. Our male cousins and Mother’s younger brother who was only a few years older than we were looked up to him. They were comfortable talking to him.

I remember one incident while he was clearing a piece of property that my grandfather had given him where he thought he was going to be able to build a home for us when my teenage cousin and a friend stopped by just to see what was going on and pitched in to help. It had been a Friday night and they were dressed to go out, but they saw Daddy with a rake, and the next thing I knew, they were clearing the land, too.

My younger uncle told me of an incident where Daddy had asked him to drive our family truck to haul furniture or something that he needed moved while Daddy drove our family car. He said he told Daddy that he didn’t have a driver’s license, but that Daddy had said to him, Don’t worry about it. You will be fine. I will be right behind you. If we get stopped, I’ll take responsibility.

We were poor but didn’t know it. We lived a middle class life. We had everything we needed and more. We were fortunate and blessed. Daddy left no outstanding debt. The few bills he had, he paid before he went to the hospital.

Mother was forty-one years old and was not working. There were seven of us; five of my siblings were under sixteen. Daddy had a small insurance policy. She sold the farm animals.

This would hold us over until Daddy’s veteran’s benefits started.

Looking back, I don’t know how she did it. Three years later, she would purchase a piece of property in her name and have a three-bedroom home built for her, my two younger brothers and sister (by then, everyone else was either in college, the military, or working). I once asked her why she never looked for male companionship. She looked at me as if that was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. She gave a simple answer: No one was coming between me and my kids. I had no reply.

At some point, during my time at home, my nine-year-old sister wrote a poem about what she thought Daddy would like us to do. One part she had written just said, I know he would want us to go on without him—this from a nine-year-old. I knew then that I would go back and complete my studies.

In the fall of 1967, a new student reported to business school. He was tall—about 6'2. I saw him sitting in a chair with his legs stretched out in front of him, said hello, and proceeded to class. He was what black folks called light skinned. Caucasians would say he was fair." He was so fair that he would blush red when he laughed, was embarrassed, or angry. Because of this, he was nicknamed Redd.

Redd was smitten with me. He was in the accounting program. He was bold enough to ask his instructor to introduce him to me. He had been a college basketball player who had injured his legs in an automobile accident and had come to the center to recuperate.

I was a little intimidated by him. I hadn’t gone to college. He was sure of himself (he was twenty-two). During the course of our conversation, he told me his brother and sister-in-law were coming for a visit in a couple of weeks and asked if I would go out to eat with them. Here I was nineteen years old had been living away from home almost a year and had never been on a date. Would you believe I actually phoned home to ask my mother if it was all right if I went out with this guy?

I got a pass to leave campus, and the four of us went out. It was my first date, and I wanted to make a good impression—wanted to show these people I was a sophisticate and not the little country girl that I was.

We got to the restaurant, nice place. I don’t remember what restaurant it was, though. Redd’s brother and sister-in-law had already completed college. His brother was working somewhere in the DC area, and she was teaching junior high at a school in the district. Anyway, here we are in the restaurant. We selected from the menu. While we were waiting for our orders, Anna, his sister-in-law, proceeded to butter the crackers that were on the table and eat them (don’t think they had bread baskets, or maybe just not at that restaurant). I sat there in awe. I thought this has got to be the classist thing I’ve ever seen. I had never seen or heard of anything like this before!

So I did what she did. Anna was beautiful. She was from Kentucky. She made a joke about Kentucky, how it used to be known for its fast horses and beautiful women—and now was known for fast women and beautiful horses. We all laughed. My first date turned out to be wonderful, and Redd and I became an item around school. We attended all the social functions together. We got put out of the movies for kissing. We were young and not paying attention. We were sitting in the front row, right next to an exit. The chaperones were known for popping in. We were told to cool it. But most of the students knew we were caught. The school wasn’t that big, so we were teased for about a week. Redd and I continued seeing each other while I was there. He was just beginning his course. He would be there another year.

I completed my courses and graduated on schedule in December. As part of the completion of the course, we were given the opportunity to take the Clerical Administrative General Civil Service Exam right there on campus to apply for federal employment. I took the reading comprehensive part, plus the typing and stenography. I passed the exam and was given a rating of GS-2 Clerk Stenographer Trainee. I returned to the family farm after graduation. Redd and I continued our relationship. I was coming up twenty years old and had never held a job before.

I had taken a driver’s education course and gotten a driver’s permit while in school. My mother was thrilled. Now she and I could go out while the others were in school.

One Friday, shortly after returning home from completing my training, she decided she wanted to go into the town of Orange. So she and I piled in our old ’56 Chevrolet Station Wagon and off we went. New to driving, I was all over the road. I managed to stay in my lane but was a bit shaky. I gained more confidence as we drove along.

As we were parking in the shopping area parking lot, we ran into my mother’s sister and my grandmother. Grandma had asked my aunt to drive her into town so that she could go to the bank and run errands.

My grandmother was a sweet little lady but was also no-nonsense. She could swear with the best of them and didn’t take anything from anybody. She wasn’t afraid of anything.

If we ran into a snake while playing, we would run and tell Grandma. She would say, Where is he? When we told her where, she would get a kettle of hot water from the stove and pour it on the snake until he was dead. We thought it was cool.

We were never sure of her heritage. We thought she was of West Indian descent.

She wasn’t any taller than 4'11. She had worn her hair long in her youth. Because her skin was brown, my cousin Scotty used to tease her and say, I know which tribe you belong to, Blackfoot Indians." She would laugh and laugh. When we were children, she would sit outside in the front yard with half a tree limb in her hand so she could watch us as we played and swat any one of us who got out of line. Sometimes there would be as many as twenty-four of us grandchildren. I used to think how in the world she could possibly see all of us, but somehow she managed to scream at the young ones who she thought got too far out of sight or too near the roadway. We all loved her dearly.

She wasn’t as well as she used to be. She had developed type II diabetes in her later years and would sometimes lose her balance while walking.

My aunt could be kind of a jokester, and Grandma wasn’t in the mood this day. I guess my aunt was in kind of a hurry and was rushing her along. She grabbed Grandma’s arm and said, Come on here, Ma. Grandma slapped at her hand and told her to leave her alone. My aunt laughed at her and told me Grandma didn’t want her to help her. Grandma didn’t mind her helping her. She just didn’t want to be ordered around. My aunt asked me if I would go with her. I said I would.

Grandma had always had a soft spot for me. I remembered all the times she had washed my eyes with boric acid and warm water when my allergies were so bad I couldn’t play with the other children. I figured I knew how to get along with her. I walked over and said, Grandma, I am going to walk with you, and we can go anywhere you want to go. If you feel dizzy, you just take a hold of my arm. And we were on our way. About halfway to the bank, she slipped her small hand on to my arm. I was looking straight ahead, smiled, and kept walking. She was pleased that I let her do whatever she wanted.

We went to the bank, to the Five & Dime, to the hardware store, and anywhere else she wanted to go. When she had gone everywhere she wanted to, we headed back to the car to head home. Grandma passed on about a year later.

My dream was to live and work in Washington, DC. I had many relatives living there. Most of them worked for the federal government. I phoned an aunt and asked if I could come to stay with her and my uncle to look for a job. I let her know that if I found a job, I only planned to stay with them a year and then I would venture out on my own. They said yes.

Overjoyed, excited, filled with apprehension, I headed for our nation’s capital to look for work. Once I arrived, I immediately started searching the employment ads. My aunt helped with the search. We found a large ad: Food and Drug Administration has several vacancies for File Clerks, GS-2–GS-5. Please phone. I was so excited. So we phone the listed telephone number. After a few initial questions, it was suggested that I come in for an interview.

The following week, dressed in a gold/brown suit that I had sewn myself, brown pumps, and a copy of my new GS-2 Civil Service Rating, I headed for my very first