Bremen, GA in West Georgia

In November, 1961, Jim was transferred to the Arrow shirt plant in Bremen, GA, about 60 miles west of Atlanta. We sold our house in Atlanta and bought a small brick house in Bremen. It was smaller than our house in Atlanta but on a much larger lot and no hills. I remember the bedrooms were very small. The kitchen had red brick tile floor and it was easy to clean. We had our first clothes dryer and it was great in the winter. Ronnie was in the first grade and walked home from school which was about a mile away. A big bulldog ran out to the street one day and bit him on the leg. After that he chose a different route to get home.

Soon after we moved to Bremen, we had our one-car garage enclosed to make a den. The carpenter put plaster over the brick wall and told us to let it dry over the week-end and then he would paint it. I had to work that Sat. and Ronnie and his friend Jimmy Winchester played with darts while I was gone to work (Jim was sleeping late) and their sharp tipped darts would miss the paper target they taped to the wall, and there were holes all over the wall when I got home at noon. The carpenter had to come back and put more plaster on the wall. This room made the house seem so much larger. To gain more storage space, we had a small wooden storage building built behind the house. It looked like an "outhouse". We quickly put up a wooden fence and planted tall shrubs by the fence to hide the storage building from the street. We lived there for about 2 years until we decided we needed to go back to Atlanta for James to receive therapy and schooling at the Atlanta Cerebral Center near Emory. Jim went back to Cluett Peabody (Arrow Shirt Co) in East Point, GA and we bought a house in Decatur and moved back in the fall of 1963.

I worked at West Georgia College in Carrollton, as Assistant to the Registrar while we were living in Bremen. We were living in Bremen when my mother died in April 1963. Most of my friends were from Carrollton except people I met at church in Bremen.

Atlanta, GA - Bought our first home

Our first home (that we owned that is). We moved to 1071 Country Lane in NE Atlanta after Jim went to work as an Industrial Enginner for Cluett Peabody (Arrow shirts) in East Point, GA.

This small 3 bedroom house was at the end of a street with woods behind us and a creek. This photo was taken our first winter in 1960. I was working at the Communicable Disease Center nearby but Jim had to drive a long distance across Atlanta to work - and there were no expressways. We enjoyed living here at the bottom of a hill. We had a bad ice storm that winter and our gas furnace didn't work without electricity. I don't remember how we kept warm while the power was off. The house had a basement where we could store things.

What I remember most about this house was the clothes line that was connected on a trolley from the back porch to a tree in the woods. I could stand on the back porch, pin the laundry to the clothes line and pull the line out to the open area over the creek for it to dry. That was so neat. We fenced in the back yard so the boys wouldn't fall down the steep hill. Look close and you can see Ronnie swinging. Ronnie started to kindergarten at Peachtree Baptist church while we were living here. Jim got promoted by Arrow and they sent us to Bremen, GA (about 60 miles west of Atlanta). We sold this house and bought a home in Bremen.

A few years ago when my nephew was looking for a home in this area, he found out that the little houses in this area were very sought after and you had to pay around $150,000 for them. We paid $11,250 for this house in 1960.

Moving on - this time to Chamblee, GA

In September, 1957, we left Kansas and moved into married student housing in Chamblee, GA, just north of Atlanta, so that Jim could go to college at Southern Technical Institute. This photo is of the temporary Navy barracks that was used for the college. Our apartments were about a mile away and looked just like the school buildings. We lived downstairs at 200-F Tech Lawson Apartments. The apartments were very small; kitchen, living room and 2 bedrooms and bath. They were so cold in the winter that our plumbing would freeze. They were also not air conditioned and very hot in the summer. Jim went to school full time and worked in the evenings downtown Atlanta at a bank, and still managed to make good grades. He had to go to Georgia Tech on week-ends to study at the library there. Nobody had computers back then. I worked at the Communicable Disease Center, located next to the school in the old Navy buildings also. We spent two years at this location. Our youngest son Bill was born in July 1958. I stayed home for a month and then went back to work and had a baby sitter who came and stayed with the boys every day while I worked. There were a lot of married students and when they graduated the wives got to go on stage and get a Ph.T. degree (Putting Hubby Through). Our rent, which included utilities, was about $20 a month. My parents would drive from Elba, AL to Atlanta several times while we lived there and bring us food from their freezer. We didn't have much money but we were living among other couples in the same boat so we all were happy and working toward a common goal - to get a degree and get a good job.

Jim graduated in June 1959 and in July 1959 we rented a 3 bedroom house about 2 miles away in a nice neighborhood in Chamblee at 1022 Georgian Terrace. I remember thinking that we were "going up" in the world when we moved to a house. Jim got a job as a Safety Engineer for an insurance company in Atlanta and I kept working. By this time we had 3 boys, under the age of 5. We had fun buying some furniture to furnish the house.

What I remember about this house was the big yard and we had to buy a used lawnmower to keep the grass cut. Our next door neighbor had about 7 or 8 beagle hound dogs and we never heard them except when they howled at night. No wonder people moved in and out of this place! We lived here until the fall of 1960 when we bought our first house and moved to Atlanta, near Emory University and the new Communicable Disease Center where I worked.

A few years ago we were in Chamblee visiting my nephew and we tried to find Tech Lawson Apts. They were torn down and a nice park is located there. Then we went to Georgian Terrace and the small homes have been "recycled" and younger families were buying them and the neighborhood was very nice. DeKalb County airport is now located on the site of the old school campus, which was moved to Marietta in the early 1960s and is now Southern Technical University.

Side note: When we moved to Chamblee, there were no expressways anywhere in the Atlanta metro area. They opened a short segment called Northeast Expressway around 1960 and the next year a big shopping center was built called Lenox Square. It probably had as many as 10 stores, including Rich's Dept. Store. Today that center, located in Buckhead, covers many, many acres and has many, many stores on 3 levels.

The Land of OZ - Living in Kansas

When we were told that we were being sent to Fort Riley, Kansas from Germany, we had no idea what the area looked like. All I knew was how Dorothy described it in The Wizard of Oz; dust and cyclones. And we had lots of both!

We rented this small one bedroom, furnished house at 2120 Elm Lane, Manhattan, KS. We moved there in the summer of 1955 and lived there for 1 year. While living here, our son John Randall was born and when he was one month old, he died of "crib death". He is buried in the Manhattan cemetery. I went to work at Ft. Rucker later and we moved to Junction City, KS to be closer to Fort Riley. Looks like we needed to cut the grass in this photo!


This little frame, 2 bedroom house, was located 702 E. 9th St. in Junction City, KS. We bought just enough furniture to get by because we knew we would be moving to Atlanta, GA a year later when Jim got his discharge from the army in Sept. 1957. Click on the picture to enlarge it and you can see Ronnie and his little red fire truck. It was while we were living here that we heard a tornado passing over our town early one morning. And I thought immediately of Dorothy!
We met another army couple across the street from us from Galivant's Ferry, SC, and we have remained friends since 1957 and visit occasionally.
In 1974, on a vacation trip to Glacier national Park, we spent the night in Manhattan, KS and visited the cemetery for the first time since moving away in 1957. Manhattan is home to Kansas State University and a nice college town. Junction City was close to the army base and more of a military town. While living in Junction City, Jim and Ronnie flew to Fitzsimmons Hospital in Denver, Colorado, for Ronnie to have the first of 3 operations on his eyes. The army would only let one parent accompany the child so I was left behind. The office where I worked was located in one of the older buildings on the army base and once was the office of General Custer! The horse stables were still close by. I worked at the Separation Center and typed up Jim's Discharge Papers, DD214, when he was discharged from the army in Sept. 1957. He was released a few months early in order to go to college in Atlanta, GA.

Tomorrow on my blog, we will be living in Chamblee, GA, a suburb of north Atlanta.

Our homes in Germany 1954-1955

While Jim was stationed in Wurzburg, Germany in the US Army, we lived in 3 different locations. The first place was in a small village of Vietschorheim, near Wurzburg. We lived upstairs in this large German house. We shared the bathroom downstairs with the Gootbrod family, and we ate our meals with the family: mother, father and young son. I remember there were no screens on the windows that opened wide, overlooking the Main river down in the valley. The family did not own a car; walked down the hill to the village or rode on the bus or trains to go outside the village. They rode bicycles sometimes. I carried a German-English dictionary with me at all times to learn to speak German. We had to heat our water to take a bath and sometimes I would take my clothes with me to the army base and get a shower at the recreation center. We didn't have a refrigerator or ice so had to go to the grocery store daily or eat out. We lived here from March 1954 until that fall.
With winter coming on we decided to get a place in Wurzburg. We rented one room in a big house and it contained a bed, stove and table. Still no frig. I remember how cold it was at this place. Luckily Jim got promoted to Sgt. that fall and we were able to get army housing in December. We chose to live in a German house the Government was using for Americans instead of living in a apartment on the army base. Our house was at 66 Zepplinstrasse. We lived downstairs and another military family lived upstairs. We still didn't have hot water but this time we had a refrigerator. We could heat our water by building a fire under the water heater which was in the basement. We took our laundry to the cleaners on the base. We had German neighbors and really enjoyed living in this big house. Our first son Ronnie was born when we were living here. We bought a car that winter - a new German Ford, which we used to take trips on week-ends or holidays. We returned to the U.S. in the summer of 1955 on the US Upshur ship and Jim was assigned to Ft. Riley, Kansas.



We have both gone back to Wurzburg at separate times and enjoyed touring the area where we once lived. A few years ago our son Ronnie went there to see where he was born and took pictures of our house. The US Government turned it back over to the Germans not long after we were living there.

Our First Home - 1953-1954 in Elba, AL

This is begins a series of homes we have lived in over the past 54 years. We lived in this garage apartment on Smith Avenue in Elba for four months, from Oct. 1953 to Jan. 1954, when Jim was shipped to Germany - courtesy of US Army. I went to live with my Aunt Barbara Smith and Aunt Daisy Winston and worked at Dorsey's, saving my money to join Jim in Germany. I did not return to school at Troy State College in January.

This apartment had 3 rooms: kitchen downstairs, living room and bedroom upstairs. The garage was used for storage by the owner who lived next door. We didn't have a car so we didn't need a garage anyway. We spent our first Christmas here and had a Christmas tree upstairs in the living room. We were in carpools: Jim going to Ft. Rucker and I went the opposite direction to Troy State University. This garage apartment is still standing and is painted yellow now, but looks the same.

Fifty years later we met our former landlord when we moved to Elba and went to Elba United Methodist Church. She was Vivian Creswell in 1953. Her husband died and she remarried and was Vivian Lee in 2003. A lovely lady and every Sunday we would visit before church. She has a nice brick home about a mile from our house now, but recently had to go to the Elba Nursing Home. I wonder how many people our age remember their first landlord, and better yet get to meet them again 5o years later.

In March, 1954, I left Elba to join Jim in Wurzburg, Germany where we lived until July 1955.
Tomorrow I will show homes we lived in in Germany.

Happiness Retreat, Sunshine Camp and other camps

I have attended several summer camps with our son James over the years. Most have been sponsored by churches for adult mentally handicapped persons. One of his favorites was Happiness Retreat near Asheboro, NC at Camp Caraway, a Baptist Conference Center. Groups came from all over Eastern NC and stayed for 3 days. Each year there was a theme and we are pictured were getting ready to go to the "Big Top Circus" at the dining hall. A friend in the yellow outfit was laughing because we were having to walk through the woods to get to the party. I dressed up as the circus "fat lady" and guess what! I was unable to get under the steering wheel do drive to the party. I had on a wig and dark glasses and nobody could guess who I was, that is until James called me "Mom". I was the arts and crafts instructor at camp. I agreed to work at camp if I could stay in the air-conditioned conference center hotel instead of sleeping in the rustic cabins near the lake. James elected to stay in the hotel with me. This beautiful camp is in the deep woods beside a lake. I remember how good the camp food was.


Most recently we have been attending Sunshine Camp, held at the Methodist Conference Center at Blue Lake, near Andalusia, AL. They have camps in April and Sept for MR adults. We like to go in September. Here you see the campers gathered for vespers by the lake, and a photo session. Each camper got a photo to take home. James is in the center wearing his red Coke hat.

Several of his friends from his workshop were there with him. I am usually one of the camp staff. They have a full day of activities and in the evenings there's entertainment, i.e., dances, concerts, games, etc.

Here you see the campers walking by the beautiful blue lake. Sometimes there's a problem with the pesky lovebugs in September.

Jim doesn't like to go to camps with James and give up his comfortable bed at home. I give up the comforts of home to go to camp and help make memories for James and his friends. They need something to do for fun and to be with their peers and have a good time.

Once on a camping trip to Camp Caswell, NC, on the Atlantic Ocean, James and 8 of his friends won the talent show. They wore curly wigs and dressed alike (all black clothes) and sang "Turn your Radio On" - they were so funny. We enjoyed walking on the beach and looking for shells. He brought a big bag shells home and we put them in the flower bed to remind us of our trip to the coast.