by Ann Scott

Created on: July 18, 2008

My father was born to my grandparents on November 5, 1910, near Waldron, Arkansas. He grew up in hard times, except, no one really realized that they were hard times. He was the oldest child of ten children born to my grandparents. My grandfather was a sawmill worker, and he worked hard to raise his ten children, and so did my grandmother. Wives back then worked out in the fields during the day, then came inside to do their own work in the house. They loved all their children very much, and met many hardships in their lifetime, including the loss of a child. One of their surviving sons was a twin to the daughter who died in infancy.

My dad married my mother on December 12, 1941, when he was thirty-one and she was nineteen. I was born almost a year later on November 19th. I always thought it was neat that mine and my dad's birthdays were so close.

After Mom and Dad married in December of 1941 he was drafted into the Army in the spring of 1942. Mom had just discovered that she was going to have me. I can still feel the way my Mom must have felt knowing that Dad was going to leave her, with a child to take care of. Mom was a trooper, though, and she did what she had to do with a loving heart. When I was born, Dad was able to be there with Mom, but shortly after my birth he had to leave to go back to the army base.

I was a year old before my Dad saw me again. Mom and I stayed with her parents for most of that time, so you can imagine about how rotten' I was getting to be. All the time of my growing up to that age, Mom had wanted to keep Daddy alive to me, so she would show me his picture (in his uniform, he was so handsome) and tell me that was my daddy. I then started to carry his picture around calling it my Daddy, so when he came home on furlough to see us, I was afraid of him, and when she told me that he was my Daddy, I didn't believe her. After all, the picture had been MY Daddy for quite some time.

When he finally came home from the service to stay, I suppose he had trouble putting up with my chatter and childish activities. I was in potty training' and apparently wasn't always cooperative, so he did some pretty harsh disciplining, spanking me pretty hard. I can imagine how I must have gotten on his nerves, so he reacted the only way he knew how. Soon, though, he saw how hard headed I was and realized that he might be too rough on me, so he quit spanking me, and I don't remember him ever spanking me or either of the other kids. He left that up to Mom.

I remember

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