I graduated from Garner High School, just outside of Raleigh, in 1958. We did not live in Garner; we lived out in the country,
so we were about five miles from Garner and about six miles from Raleigh. It was back in the era before drugs were a problem.
It was really kind of an idyllic life, I think you might say. The one thing that was-. Little Rock happened my senior year in high school,
so it was segregated schools, which was not a good thing, but it was a time of segregation and it's just the way it was, you know.
My father, who was a graduate of State, was the general manager of Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative Stabilization and my mother was a homemaker.
We lived on forty acres but we didn't farm for a living; however I was very much involved in 4-H
and I got up and milked a cow every morning before I went to school because that was my pet.
All my friends thought I was really strange because we'd go have slumber parties and my mom would come pick me up at 6:30 in the morning so I could go home and milk my cow.
I mean, you know, it was just one of those nice childhoods and teenage years. It was probably as stress-less as you can go through that period of your life.