 - John Snyder, June 29, 2012 COLLABORATING WITH PAULINE KELLEY CANNON ON HER REMARKABLE MEMOIRS I grew up on the Coffee Road outside Walhalla in the 1940's. Six sharecropper families lived on our farm and tended the land. Although I moved to New York after college I stayed in touch over the years with many of the people I worked alongside on the farm. Tom  my Broome, Pauline's uncle, was the last survivor of the tenants I grew up with. Until he died in 2006 at 95, I flew down almost every June to attend his birthday party at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in the Five Forks Community.It was at these celebrations that I met Pauline who had also lived for a time on our farm with her parents, Otto and Maggie Kelley. Tommy Broome's birthday parties were great events with dozens of friends and relatives gathering to swap stories, eat home-cooked food and listen to Tommy sing the beautiful hymns he composed. Over our many meetings at Tommy's parties I came to appreciate Pauline's formidable recall of events in her unusual life. I urged her to write them up, promising to convert them to type if she did. She sat down and handwrote two remarkable memoirs, one about growing up on a series of sharecropper farms, the other about attending the DAR school at Tamassee between 1942 and 1946. They were first published serially in the Keowee Courier courtesy of its fine editor, Ashton Hester. Now both are available in their entirety on www.Walhalla.co , courtesy of Mike Davis. It has been a privilege to help my friend, Pauline, make her unique memories permanent. She is working on a third edition, a treat we can all look forward to. John Snyder, Author of "Hill of Beans" Published by Smith/Kerr Associates Continue to --> 10-a Share Cropping in Oconee County Continue to --> 10-b My Life at Tamasse D.A.R. Return to --> Walhalla Raconteurs Return to --> www.walhalla.co |
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