1944 I was in the 7th grade and went to O'Keefe Junior High School. I discovered the library this year and started reading and I loved it. Also a new family came to the Institute and they had a girl, named Barbara and she was in my grade at school. We became good friends that year until we moved across town. I had to ride the street car across town to finish out my year. One thing I remember about the kids who rode the street car was at the end of the line they all went into the drugstore to get a Pepsi and peanut butter crackers. I started going in with them and for awhile I had some friends. But we moved again.

About this time, I started playing the marimba, and Sue started playing the saxophone.  That summer or the next we visited the folks back in Michigan.  On the way we held the Junior Family and their Crusade for Christ, meeting in all these little churches from Atlanta to Michigan.  Mama did the chalk drawing, I played the Marimba, Sue the saxophone and Dixie, Carole and Gary sang songs and Daddy preached. (Corky wasn’t born yet.)  We mostly played in church orchestras first at Wrenwood B. Church in Atlanta, then Flemington B. Church and the Youth for Christ meetings in Ocala. In 1949 I got tired of playing it and daddy traded it off for an electric xylophone which I never really played very much, but I loved the sound of it.

At this time Daddy and some other students from the Institute started Saturday night street corner meetings down in the worst part of Atlanta.  Soon daddy bought two old houses on Pryor Street and made one into a mission and the other one for homeless people. 

Church on Pryor Street