Oral history interview of Frances Ann Jennings McKibben

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of Frances Ann Jennings McKibben
Creator:: Gantsoudes, Lillian
McKibben, Frances Ann Jennings, 1926-
Date of Original:: 2003-10-30
Subject:: World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Georgia--Atlanta
Coursey, Lloyd, 1834-1901
Coursey, Nellie Elizabeth
Speare, William Theophilus, 1877-1936
Speare, Frank
White, Ray
Hudgens, Barrett
Bryan, Wright
Quillian, Hubert Travis, 1890-1948
McKibben, John, -1963
Jackson, Graham Washington, 1903-1983
LaGrange College (LaGrange, Ga.)
Bethany Methodist Church (Atlanta, Ga.)
Location:: United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Georgia, Chattahoochee County, Fort Benning, 32.35237, -84.96882
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Fort McPherson, 33.70733, -84.43354
United States, Georgia, Lawson Army Airfeld, 32.33732, -84.99128
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, Frances McKibben recalls her family's history in Atlanta, her childhood, and her memories of World War II. She describes her neighborhood, Grove Park, and the two cemeteries where all her family members are buried: Hollywood Cemetery and the Coursey Family Cemetery. She recalls the effects of the Great Depression. She discusses family and cultural traditions, such as quilting bees and sitting up with the dead. She describes hearing about the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the effects it had on the community. She describes hearing about the landings at Normandy, the death of President Roosevelt, and the atomic bomb. She remembers her education and career. She describes many significant events in Atlanta history, such as the premiere of Gone With the Wind, the Winecoff Hotel fire, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral, the "Three Governors" controversy, and the Temple bombing.
Frances Ann Jennings McKibben grew up in Atlanta during World War II.
LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: My name is Lillian Gantsoudes. I am on staff at the Atlanta History Center. Today is Thursday, October the 30th, 2003. We are doing a veterans history project interview with a civilian, Frances Ann McKibbon. Frances, would you repeat your name and give me your birth date and place. FRANCES MCKIBBON: I'm Frances McKibbon. I was born at Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta on August the 20th, 1926. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: August of '26? All right, thank you. Were you raised in Atlanta? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yes, I'm the fifth generation who has lived in Atlanta. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Tell me something about your ancestors. Who first came to Atlanta? FRANCES MCKIBBON: My grandmother's great, great, great, great uncles came down in the land grant after the Cherokee Indians were driven out, and staked out a good bit of land over in what is now known as Martin Luther King Drive in that area. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you know their names? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Do I know my ancestor's names? Most of them, yes. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What were their names? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Coursey was their last name. My great, great grandfather was named Roy, and his son was named Roy Samuel. My great, great grandmother was named Mary, and her daughter was named Elizah. My grandmother was the only daughter of nine children. She had eight brothers – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What was her name? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Coursey, and she married my grandfather – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: Nellie Elizabeth Coursey. And she married my grandfather when she was 21 years old, and his name was Walter Theopolis Speer. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And where was he from? FRANCES MCKIBBON: He came from Alabama by way of Lafayette. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yes, they were married in Atlanta. He came to live with his aunt in Atlanta at that time, and I don't remember what her name was. But strangely enough I found out that they're all – I knew my grandmother and grandfather were buried at Hollywood Cemetery, but also all of my grandfather's people are buried at Hollywood. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] someone says I wonder where Hollywood Cemetery is. Tell us where that is. FRANCES MCKIBBON: You know, I can take you, but I can't tell you. It's over around where Perry Homes area – if you know where Perry Homes is, it's in that general area. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Southwest or southeast of there? FRANCES MCKIBBON: It would be northeast. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Northeast. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Northeast. And they were buried there, and as I said, I did not know his people were buried there also. My grandmother's people are buried in the old Coursey Cemetery off of North Avenue and Simpson Road. And that cemetery is still kept by members of the family so that we can go out there if we are brave enough to do so. But my grandmother and grandfather had four children, three girls and a boy that lived – she delivered three children who were stillborn. And I grew up in Grove Park where my mother grew up where my grandmother and grandfather had settled. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And where is Grove Park? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Grove Park is on Bankhead Avenue going out toward Hollywood Road. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Okay. FRANCES MCKIBBON: And it was founded by Dr. Grove, who wanted people to set up just a regular neighborhood and it was a most marvelous place in the world to grow up. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Tell me why. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Everybody knew everybody else and they looked over – well, all the adults looked after all the children. And you could walk to school and if something happened in the school – Lena Cox was the elementary school that I went to, and I went to West Fulton High School, and then from there I went to LaGrange College. But it was just a wonderful experience growing up sitting out on the curb at night and listening to people talk back and forth across the street. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: The house that I grew up in had – and I have to stop and think – eight rooms, and it was what they call a shot gun house because it had a hall going straight down the middle and all the rooms went off from the hall. And my father died when I was two years old, so I don't remember too much about that, but my mother and I went back to live with my grand parents, and I lived with my grandmother until I got married – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: So when you were born were your parents living in this Grove Park area? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yes, they were. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Then when you moved in with your grandmother – FRANCES MCKIBBON: It was still in Grove Park, yes. Daddy died of a massive heart attack and so I unfortunately one of the ones that has inherited all the bad things on both sides of the family. But my Uncle Frank was a football player at Georgia Tech and he went to the Rose Bowl twice and he was supposed to go the third time – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And what was his name? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Frank Speer. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Frank Speer? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Uh-huh. And the third time they found out he was married and they wouldn't let him go. He had gotten married secretly and my mother and grandmother and grandfather didn't know this, and they were very upset that he was not allowed to go. But anyway, it was just a wonderful atmosphere to grow up. All the teachers knew you. Everybody in the neighborhood knew you. The church that we attended is the one that my grandmother and her brothers founded. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Name of the church? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Bethany Methodist Church on Elizabeth Place. And it burned in 1936 I think – '36 or '37. And they had fish fries, carry out dinners, ice cream socials, anything that they could to raise money, and they rebuilt the church, because at that time so many people had gone through the Depression and there just wasn't any money. My grandfather lost his business in the Depression. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What business was it? FRANCES MCKIBBON: He was in what they call the radiator business. He serviced air planes and huge Mack trucks, and he had a good business and made a good living, but it just – everything vanished, and as a result of that my grandmother said when he lost his business it killed him, because he only lived three years after the Depression after he lost his business. He died in 1936, and I don't remember too much about that; I was only ten years old, but I remember – and this was done all the time at that age – they brought the caskets home and they left them in the living room and someone would sit – not necessarily someone in the family, but someone would sit up all night with them until the next morning and then somebody would change and then they would have the funeral and that would be it. But I remember so well seeing that casket and hanging back because I didn't want to go in. And luckily they did not force me to go in. So many of them were forced to go in and kiss the dead one, and I would have died, but my mother had said if you don't want you don't have to, and I didn't. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you remember other of the sort of mourning customs? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yes. The women wore black, not just to the funeral, but my mother wore black for a year. In the summertime she wore white, but in the winter time she wore all black. My grandmother wore black almost the rest of her life after that and particularly after my uncle died. She just said that she had lost both of the men in her family and she didn't like it. But they wore – she wore black. And everybody brought food in. I remember that so well because the tables in the dining room and in the kitchen were just loaded with food and people would come and sit with my grandmother and talk to her. And they did to my mother and her sisters and their brother. The thing that I remember most of all was momma woke my mother up and said something is wrong with poppa, and mother and Frances, my youngest aunt, got up out of the bed, and of course I got up; I had not known what was going on, and there was a doctor who lived in the park area, and we went out the door running up Eleanor place hollering “Dr. Charles! Dr. Charles, please come help; poppa is dying!” Well, that was what my mother was saying. And then of course my grandmother had called my uncle and he came up immediately. And what really – that running up the street calling for Dr. Charles and also my uncle coming in and I was standing in the door way of my grandmother's bedroom and Dr. Charles had already been there and pronounced him dead and we were just waiting for the funeral home, and he had pulled the sheet over my grandfather's face, and my uncle went in and took the sheet off his face and then just stood there and cried because – this was so unexpected. We didn't expect poppa to die, because he, too, like my father died with a massive heart attack. So when I go to doctor's today and they say “What is your family medical history?” I say heart attacks on both sides. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: My family is the same way. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Oh, is it? LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Yeah. I know what you mean. FRANCES MCKIBBON: But it was a wonderful neighborhood to grow up in. You knew everybody; everybody knew you. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You said that you would sit at nights or talk up and down – FRANCES MCKIBBON: And the children would play. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What games would the children play? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Hop scotch, hide and go seek, catching lightening bugs particularly. Let me see, what else did we play? Good gracious, I can't remember that far back what we did play. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: It's all right. FRANCES MCKIBBON: You just grew up knowing everybody and everybody knowing you, and my grandmother had a quilting bee that she went to every Wednesday morning and stayed until usually three o'clock when we would come home from school, and she would go down to my cousin, Etta's, house, Etta Hubbard, and we were also told to come home to cousin Etta's. Don't go to the house, come home there, and you would walk in and I have never seen as much food for six ladies in my life. But they would have this table in cousin Etta's dining room, and they had put cheese cloth over it, and it was every kind of food you can imagine on that table and they would just – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: How often did they meet? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Once a week. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Once a week. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Once a week. And I had two quilts that my grandmother did, and my cousin talked me out of them, and I will never forgive him for that. But he has them and they're well taken care of so it doesn't really matter. But it was just a wonderful time to grow up. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What about moving into the high school years? Were you still living in your grandmother's house? FRANCES MCKIBBON: No. Mother sold the house because it needed a lot of repair and she said it wasn't worth it. It was an old house as it was because poppa had built it when he and my grandmother married so it was only 50 years old. And she built a house on Elizabeth Place. She worked for Atlanta Flooring Company so she was able to get all the material at wholesale, and that house had four bedrooms and two baths, a living room, dining room, kitchen and eating area, and no den. The living room was your den at that time. And it wasn't so far to walk to either elementary school from where we did live to high school, and so I enrolled in West Fulton when I graduate from Lena Cox. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: So four bedrooms? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Uh-huh. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Who was living in the house? FRANCES MCKIBBON: My aunt – nobody when we first moved in, but it was just my mother and my grandmother and me, so we each had our bedrooms. But then my aunt's husband went into the Marine Corp. and she came back to live with us with her young baby, so she took over the two bedrooms upstairs and mother had made sort of a little storage room upstairs, and she made that into a kitchen for Frances. And it was sort of crowded but she needed some place to go with my uncle in service. So she lived with us – I guess, how long? They lived with us until the oldest child – let's see, Michael – there's seven years difference between – Michael must have been two and Carlton been nine – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: When they moved in? FRANCES MCKIBBON: When they moved out. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Okay. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Moved out. And they had to work and save money to buy a house because the money wasn't very plentiful then as it was in most cases for young men coming back from the service. So they stayed there and then they bought their own house. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: So, was it Aunt Frances? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Uh-huh. It was her husband – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Moved in with one child? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Moved in with one child. And he came home – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Was this during World War – FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yes, this was during World War II she lived there. And after Bennie was discharged from the service they still lived there until he was settled in his job. And Carlton was born in 1942, he was nine, so they lived there until the early 1950s and then they moved out. And then mother took over the whole house again. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Well if it was four bedrooms and she had two bedrooms upstairs – FRANCES MCKIBBON: And two down – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And two were downstairs – FRANCES MCKIBBON: One of the bedrooms – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Did you share with – FRANCES MCKIBBON: I shared with her. I shared the bedroom with my mother. We had twin beds, and she brought everything down from upstairs, and I resented it. Oh, I resented not having my own room, but it couldn't be helped, and anyway I was in college or would be going to college shortly so it really didn't make that much difference. But it was interesting to have all those people, particularly babies there, which I thoroughly enjoyed having them. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And you said that your mother worked? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yeah, she worked for the Atlanta Flooring Company. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you know what she did for them? FRANCES MCKIBBON: She was a Credit Manager for the Atlanta Flooring Company. And then when they went out of business she went to work for West Lumber Company in the same capacity and worked for Mr. George West. So it was an interesting life. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: So tell me something sort of in general about your high school days. You said you walked to school. FRANCES MCKIBBON: I walked to school. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Any favorite teachers? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Mrs. Wills [phonetic], she was my Latin teacher, and Ms. Floding was my French teach, and Mr. – god, what is his last name? Anyway, he was my history teacher, and he is the one who taught me to love history. And so, when I went to LaGrange I said I wanted to major in history, but I wound up getting three degrees from LaGrange because I had a triple major when I got out. My mother was of the old school. She said idle hands are the devil workshop, and so she made me go to Emory in the summertime between sessions at LaGrange, and that's how I wound up with three degrees. I would have had just one if hadn't been for her making me go [unintelligible] to Emory every day. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Was College expensive? Your mother must have [unintelligible] been able to build a house. She must have had a pretty good – FRANCES MCKIBBON: She had a good income but she was the sole supporter of my grandmother, and I was lucky enough and fortunate enough to receive a scholarship from LaGrange. My grades were such that I could, and as long as my grades remained at a B level in college they would renew the scholarship, so it didn't cost her as much since I had that scholarship, but she stayed on me constantly to keep my grades up. And there was one time – they sent home a D in French, and she wrote back and she said this is not acceptable and you will take French in summer, and that was all she said. She never blamed me or – she just said this is not acceptable. And I did, I went to Emory and I took classes of French, made A's in all of them and was finished with my French requirements. So, I was real happy because I didn't like that teacher. But it was interesting because during those days it was gas rationing and if I came home I had to come home on the bus from LaGrange, and there were soldiers all over the bus and sometimes we would have a place to sit and sometimes we would have to sit on our luggage or sit one of the jump seats that they had. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Was this coming home – FRANCES MCKIBBON: This was coming home from LaGrange because they were coming from Fort Benning in Columbus coming towards Atlanta – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You'd be on a bus – FRANCES MCKIBBON: Coming to Atlanta from LaGrange. The train schedule was much worse than it was using the bus because the train schedule coming to Atlanta was not as frequent. I know that sounds peculiar but it was more for moving freight than it was for traveling. And so, I used the bus, and sometimes when I would go back to school mother would come and pick me up. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You had an automobile? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yeah. We had a Chevrolet. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What color was it? FRANCES MCKIBBON: It was green. It was the most horrible green I've ever seen in my life, but it was a good and that was when we had gas ration. And I'm trying so hard to think – I now mother didn't have the lowest letter for gas, and I'm not sure whether A was higher than C or what, but I know that they gave her one because she worked so far away from the home and there was no public transportation to get her to the office so she qualified for that. And she would save her coupons so that she could take me to college and then come back and pick me up when school was over. But rationing was something that was new. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What other things were rationed? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Candy, chocolate candy. Oh good Lord, I like to have died, because I'm a chocoholic and – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you know how many people have told me the exact same thing? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Really! Well, once my – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Almost every woman who has come in has talked about the candy was rationed. FRANCES MCKIBBON: It was, and you couldn't have it. But Frances, once Bennie had been in service for six months got permission to go to commissary at Fort Mack and so she could buy two or three candy bars at a time. And she would bring them back to me and she would say “now, you better ration these because you're not going to have any more for three weeks or four weeks or whatever it was.” But everything was rationed. I remember my grandmother planted a victory garden. One of the men who worked with mother – a black man – came over and dug up a portion of our backyard and my grandmother having grown up on a farm in Atlanta it was easy for her to grow things, and she grew beans and butter beans and squash and canned a great many of the things so that we could have them during the winter. And meat – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Did you garden and can with your grandmother. FRANCES MCKIBBON: I didn't garden. She wouldn't let me do any of the canning. She kept telling me you're not smart enough to do this. [LAUGHTER] And I wasn't. I really didn't know what I was doing. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Did you enjoy the garden? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Oh yes, I still garden, but I don't grow vegetables I grow roses now and other flowers. But she taught me the love of working outside. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you remember the man's name that came to help? FRANCES MCKIBBON: No, I don't. I really don't. I remember he spaded the ground up and put everything in it that momma would need. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Did he just come and start off or did he – FRANCES MCKIBBON: He started it off. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Oh, just started it? FRANCES MCKIBBON: After that, my grandmother would not allow anybody to touch the garden. I could go out and weed but I better not touch anything else. And she was out there every day working in that garden. And it was good, because we had food that we wouldn't have had otherwise. And my Aunt Evelyn – I'm trying to think – she started raising chickens on their place. They had about a two acre house – or a house on two acres, and they were able to raise chickens. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Is this in this Grove Park area? FRANCES MCKIBBON: This is in the Grove Park area. And she raised chickens so we had more chicken than we did beef because beef was rationed and you had so many coupons per month that you could use. And I remember Sister would always – we called Evelyn “Sister” – would always save a good fat pullet hen for me for my birthday because I liked fried chicken and butter beans, and momma would always get the butter beans out of the garden and sister would always have her husband to kill the chicken. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] August. FRANCES MCKIBBON: In August. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Perfect timing. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Perfect timing. And we would have ice cream that we'd crank not an electric freezer, and she would always make me a cake that she developed the recipe. And she told me when she gave me the recipe, because it is my favorite cake, if you give anybody that recipe I will come back and haunt you after I die. So, I have given it to no one. Now, my cousin will get it from when I die. But she called it the Garden of Eden cake because it's got – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Garden of Eden cake? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Uh-huh. It's got a lot of spice and chocolate in it. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And chocolate. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Chocolate and spice. But it was just interesting growing up in that neighborhood because you knew everybody. When I went to grammar school I knew all the children that were there. When I went to high school I knew all the children that were there. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you have any pictures of you working in the garden? FRANCES MCKIBBON: No, because we didn't take pictures then. The only time that I remember mother taking pictures was on birthdays. She would take pictures on my birthday and my grandmother's birthday and then her sister's birthday and her nephew's birthday. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you have a picture of you and the Garden of Eden cake? FRANCES MCKIBBON: No, I don't. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [LAUGHTER] FRANCES MCKIBBON: I don't know when – my mother moved in 1963 over to where I live now, and breaking down a large house like she had she got rid of a lot of things that I wish she hadn't. She got rid of all of my Bobbsey Twin books, she got rid of all my Nancy Drew books – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: My mother, when I moved out and went to college, got rid of my Nancy Drew books. FRANCES MCKIBBON: And I think that's a crime. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: I don't understand why she thought that they had to be gone. FRANCES MCKIBBON: I don't know either, but mother had – I had a set of what were called A Child's World book that a friend of my mother's starting me off when I was three years old, and she got rid of all those, and those things are priceless today. But she didn't have any room for them is what she said. At least she didn't get rid of the china that my grandmother and she had. No, I don't have it; I gave it to my cousin's [unintelligible] daughter when she got married. But you wanted to know where I was when I heard about World War II and the bombing. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Yes, Pearl Harbor. [Unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: The 7th, 1941 my mother had take me and a friend to The Fox to see a movie. This was on Sunday. My grandmother did not approve, but movies were open and mother said it's no worse than sitting here getting into trouble, which I was fairly good at doing. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: So how old were you? FRANCES MCKIBBON: 1941 I was 15. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Fifteen. So you were attending [unintelligible] Fulton. FRANCES MCKIBBON: A junior at West Fulton. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: It's Sunday morning and you go to the movies – FRANCES MCKIBBON: No, it's Sunday afternoon. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: I'm sorry. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Sunday afternoon we go to the movie. When we came out mother said “do y'all want to go by the Yellow Jacket?” What used to be something like the Varsity and it was across from where the current Coca-Cola building is, and they had much better hot dogs than the Varsity did. They toasted their buns and they put something on the bun and it was just absolutely delicious. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you remember what movie you saw? FRANCES MCKIBBON: No. I don't have any idea. But we were sitting there and I asked mother if I could turn the radio on and she say “yes.” LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: In the car? FRANCES MCKIBBON: We were in the car. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: So, it's a drive in? FRANCES MCKIBBON: It's a drive in. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Yellow Jackets [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: Uh-huh. And she said yes and cranked the car up, because at the time you had to run the battery. And I was flipping the dials trying to find some music, and mother said “leave that alone, that's the news; I want to hear what the weather is going to be.” And suddenly when we were sitting there they were talking about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And mother said “what?!” And my friend – I remember Mary asking “where's Pearl Harbor?” Because you had heard of it but we really didn't know exactly where it was. But then mother said “hurry up and eat; I want to get home.” And as soon as she got home my grandmother said “Marjorie, do you know that they have bombed Pearl Harbor?” And mother said “yes, I want to hear on the radio.” And so, she sat up – she made me go to bed, but she sat up a good while listening to the reports that were coming from Washington and through Pearl Harbor. And then the next day when we went to school of course all of us knew what had happened by then. Mr. McElwaine, who was our principal came on the intercom and said “I want all of you to report to the auditorium, there will be a special assembly.” And we thought oh gosh, now what? And when we got in there he told us that we were to sit very quietly because we were going to hear the President declare war or ask for a declaration of war. And everybody – you could hear a pin drop it was so quiet. And I remember sitting there thinking I don't think I'm hearing what I'm hearing, but I heard Roosevelt ask Congress to declare war against Japan and Germany. And it gave you a real weird feeling. And the whole day was just very somber. Very few people had anything to say. And the boys in our graduating class were 16, some of them were 17, some of them lied about their age and joined the service. And one boy who had graduated the year – two years ahead of me, was also a very good friend of our family's, he joined the Air Force and the Navy and trained in Pensacola and then went to San Diego and from there went out to the Pacific. And he served in the Pacific only six months and his plane was shot down, and they never knew what happened after that. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you remember his name? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Ray White. I remember – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Ray White? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Uh-huh, I remember it very clearly. And he was the only child. That's what was so bad. And everyone who had members of their family in the services hung the stars in the window. They were usually blue stars. And then when someone was killed it was always a gold star. And I remember going to the memorial service at our church for Ray and Mrs. White saying to my grandmother as we were walking out “I'll never see him again.” And that was sad because it was her only child. She didn't have any more. And in her window was that gold star, and it hung there until – I don't remember when she took it down. It was there even after – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: For a long time. FRANCES MCKIBBON: It was even there after the war was over. But that was the first real casualty that I knew anything about. Later on there were other people that I knew that either lost friends or family members in the war. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: If your uncle was in the service, did you have a star? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yes, my aunt did. My aunt did. She got one and put it in the front window in the living room. And it stayed there until he came home and then she took it down. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Were there many stars up and down – FRANCES MCKIBBON: Oh yes, everywhere. Everywhere you would go there were stars because there were so many young men – in our graduating class there were two boys who were my age, 16, when we graduated and they lied about their age and said they were 18 and joined the Army. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Their names? FRANCES MCKIBBON: One of them was JB Elliott and the other one – gosh, I don't remember what the others name was. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That's all right. FRANCES MCKIBBON: But they came home with no problems. They managed to escape any serious injury, but it just surprised me that the Army would take – but they needed men so desperately that they weren't bothering to check on the ages. And JB lied like a trooper when he said he was 18. He was no more 18 than I was. But it was a very, I won't say hard time, but you always in the back of your mind you were always wondering what was going to happen. We had every [unintelligible] on the streets for fear that we would be bombed. I remember my grandmother getting some black cloth and making black out curtains, which were never used. They stayed in her room and closet the whole time. But it was just that you felt like you needed to be prepared because you really weren't sure of what was going to happen. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You talked about growing up in Grove Park and at night sitting on the curbs. What about during the war? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Not during the war. Not during the war. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What were evenings like? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Usually you spent the time reading or visiting with people. Young, like I was, we would go to the school where they had dances and yet, you loved it and you enjoyed and you had a good time but you never could escape the war. It was always with you because you knew that some of the people that you were seeing would be leaving shortly to go to the war. And yet, we carried on as normal activities as we possibly could. I still went to movies, I still went shopping. I couldn't buy anything because there was nothing to buy. I remember taking make up and putting it on my legs and then my aunt drawing a line up the back of my legs to make it look like hose because silk stockings were all we wore. We didn't have nylons, and they just didn't have anything like that. We were rationed on shoes, and when I went to college mother bought me two pair, one for every day and one for dress. She said “now, these have to last you for four years so you take care of them.” They didn't last me for four years. I had to get some new every day shoes, but the dress shoes did last for four years. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What did the shoes look like? FRANCES MCKIBBON: The loafers that I wear today are similar to the loafers that I wore then. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Penny loafers? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Penny loafers, uh-huh. And saddle locks, which we wore saddle locks. That was the second pair of everyday shoes that I [unintelligible] saddle locks. And the dress shoes were just plain shoes but they had much higher heels than I wear today. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: They were dark, sensible shoes? FRANCES MCKIBBON: No, no. I think mine were navy. That is dark but it was not sensible. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [LAUGHTER] FRANCES MCKIBBON: I'm trying to think. I think it had a bow on it. I don't really remember. Gosh, I hadn't thought about that in years. But the clothing – my mother made a lot of my clothing, she and my grandmother together, because clothing was so scarce and so expensive that what you could find – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] that you wore? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Skirts. They were supposed to be [unintelligible] but they really weren't. I don't remember what mother called them, but skirts to wear to school. Because I was in college you did not wear pants. You wore skirts and blouses. And so mother would always make me at least two skirts before I went to college and buy me a couple of blouses if she could find them, and then I would have to wear the clothes that I had had or a year or two years before then. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Any sweaters that they were sewing? Were they knitting? FRANCES MCKIBBON: No, nobody in my family knitted. I tried to learn but I never could. I'm trying to remember. I think my aunt and I shared sweaters, because again, they were scarce. The war was going to the service and I think she and I swapped sweaters back and forth when I came home at Christmas time so that I would have a new sweater to take back to school and college. The one thing that sticks out in my mind about World War II, we had to take our ration books to school. Everybody had ration books for food. And we had to take – I was down there when we went because they needed it to get food to feed us. Every Sunday for lunch they would serve us spam. And to this day I cannot look spam in the face. I hate – if I see on the shelf in the grocery store I'll turn my head. I just can't stand the sight of it. And Ms. Murphy had a hard time getting food and making ends meet to feed all of us. And milk, she would get the powdered milk. I don't like milk to this day because of that. And it was just – it was very hard for her to cope. And my grandmother would try to send care packages about once a month to me. And everybody in the dormitory would get packages from home. And my roommate's father owned a grocery store and Jane Ellen Summers would ride the bus to Newnan about once every two weeks and she would go in her father's grocery store and we would give her money and say get whatever you can. She would come back with things that we could eat. But we had hot plates and coffee pots in our room illegally and we did a lot of cooking on those hot plates because the food in the cafeteria was awful, just awful. And we could walk from the campus to town because the campus is a little bit out from town and we would always go to the Tasty Diner because that was the one place we could get a grilled cheese sandwich. But college was, it was interesting because the Fort Benning offices had asked that some of the girls from college be allowed to come to the USO down in Columbus, and our President of the college would not allow that. He said “if you want them to be with the girls and to dance with the girls you can bring them here, but I will not allow them to go there.” And we thought it was horrible, but I see his point, because he was responsible for all of us. It was an all female school. It's not any more. So it was very difficult then. There were no boys to date because all the boys that were our age in LaGrange had gone into the service. So if you wanted to date somebody you had to know somebody in the service that could bring somebody to introduce you. And a young man, he and I were sweethearts from the time we were in the sixth in grammar school, joined the service oh, I guess Baird [phonetic] joined probably – I think he completed three years at Emory and then joined the service. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: His name? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Baird Hudgins. He's a doctor here in Atlanta. And we were old childhood sweethearts and everybody thought we would get married and we had no intention of marrying, either one of us. But he came back and under the GI Bill finished his med school. But it was really interesting to see the difference when people would come that you knew what they did. My uncle wanted to go to college but with two children he didn't have any opportunity to do that so he went to night school and then went to work for the Post Office and worked with them until he retired 30 years ago. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: I'm sorry, I forgot the fellow's name you said that was at Emory for three years. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Baird Hudgins. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Baird. Did you correspond with Baird? FRANCES MCKIBBON: No, we didn't. We didn't really correspond with anybody because you were in college you don't have that much money, or at least we didn't then, and one of the things that we had to be very careful was that mother would send me an allowance once a month and that allowance had to last me through the whole month, which meant that I couldn't just go out and spend frivolously on things. I had to – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: I had to count my pennies. And the other thing was that we didn't get Coca-Cola's that often and that's my down fall, that and chocolate. But it really was – I don't think it was hard growing up during the war. Maybe I was so dumb and stupid I didn't realize what I was missing, but I really didn't. We were never deprived of anything. We had to watch what we used. In high school they would tell us when we would buy our lunch use your money and buy stamps with saving stamps. And they gave us all of the saving stamps book, an we would take our money and buy the saving stamps with them and then turn it in when we had enough to get a savings bond, or war bond as they would call it. And we also saved tin foil off of the chewing gum wrappers, and that was our way of helping to contribute to the war effort. My grandmother saved – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What kind of chewing gum? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Beech-nut. And my grandmother saved grease. Now, don't ask me why. I have absolutely no idea why she saved grease, but she had containers and my mother would take it somewhere – I don't know where she took it, but anything my grandmother fried she would poor the grease into this container and when it became full mother would take it wherever it was she was supposed to take it. That was one thing that we – it was the war. And it was just – it wasn't a bad time growing up. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Some other big events, D-day. Where were you – FRANCES MCKIBBON: I had just come home from college and I was tired and I was sleeping late because I didn't have to start Emory until the next week, and I just wanted to rest. And my grandmother came, she never knocked on the door, she always opened the door, and she knocked on the door of the bedroom where my mother and I slept, mother had already gone to work, and she said “Get up. Get up right now.” And I said “I am sleeping momma.” And she repeated it “Get up and get up now!” And with that, I was laying on my side, she popped me on my rear end, and I got up and she said come in here right now, come in here. And she was listening to Wright Bryan broadcast the landing on Normandy. He was a very prominent news man here at that time, and he had been given permission to watch the landing at Normandy, and that was the first I knew anything about it. And then after that we followed it every day, what was going on in Normandy in particular and the South Pacific where so many of friends, sons, and friends of theirs were in service. But yes, I remember that very vividly because my grandmother woke me up. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And what about VJ Day? FRANCES MCKIBBON: I don't remember that much about – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Or the bombs being dropped. FRANCES MCKIBBON: I remember more about the bombs being dropped than I do about VJ-Day. I had come home from college and a very good friend of my mother's son was home from service and he was marrying his sweetheart. We were getting dressed to go to the wedding and mother had the radio on and they announced that they had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. And I said “mother, what's an A-bomb?” Or an atom bomb. She said “I have no earthly idea but if it brings the war to a close that's all well and good.” And so, I really didn't know what an atom bomb was until they began to publish all the information four or five months later, what the atom bomb was and what the destructive use of it was. But VE Day I don't remember where I was, neither do I remember where I was on VJ-Day. But I can tell you specifically where I was when we heard about Roosevelt's death. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That was my next question. FRANCES MCKIBBON: One of my majors was speech and drama – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: It's not that far from LaGrange. Uh-uh. And every afternoon we would do a program on a radio station in LaGrange, and that afternoon it happened to be my time to go down with several of my friends and we were doing a radio program. When we came into the station Mr. Mullinix said “the President is dead.” And we said well, we're not going to do the program. He said “oh yes, you are.” And we said oh no, we can't. And he said “you will do the program.” Because they were trying to get all the information about what was happening and what was going to be taking place. And then when we found out when the train was coming through LaGrange, because it did come through LaGrange to Atlanta, we dismissed from class to go down to the train station and watch the funeral train go through. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What was that like? What did you see? FRANCES MCKIBBON: The car with the casket draped with a flag. We didn't see any of the family. I remember seeing pictures later of Graham Jackson going home, but don't remember other than seeing the train – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: That was in Atlanta. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yeah, he was in Atlanta. But he was a favorite musician of Roosevelt, and I remember him playing the accordion, seeing pictures of him and tears just streaming down his face. But it was a very solemn moment. The train went slow. It didn't just go through quickly. It went slow because there were so many people who had gathered. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: It never stopped, did it? FRANCES MCKIBBON: It never stopped. It just passed. And I don't think it stopped until it got to Washington. I don't know that for a fact but I don't think it did. But everybody gathered, and my mother went down to the old terminal station and she and my grandmother saw the funeral train go through. They were not as close as we were because LaGrange wasn't that large and we were able to be as close as they would allow us to get to the train tracks. But I remember that very well. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Who were you there with? FRANCES MCKIBBON: My roommate, Jane Ellen, two friends, Mary Alice and Ren [phonetic], and some other friends from college. We walked from the college to the train station, which today people would say “oh my, that's so far.” It wasn't that far. Maybe a half a mile or a mile. We got there, that was all that was important. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And then when the train actually passed did you have conversation, was it silent – FRANCES MCKIBBON: No, it was just silent, just silence. And we all turned around and started walking back to school. And we didn't have too much to say. And I think most of us subconsciously wondered what was going to happen now, because Roosevelt was the only President we'd ever known, and I remember Mr. Quillen calling me in. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Who is Mr. Quillen? FRANCES MCKIBBON: He was the president of LaGrange while I was there. Dr. Quillen. Lord knows he'd come out of the grave and shoot me for that. Asking me if I was 18. And I said “No, sir, I'm only 17.” And he said – because at that time Georgia had given the 18 year old the right to vote. And he said “well, I was hoping you were 18 because I wanted you to represent the college at a debate for the presidency.” And I said “No, sir, I'm only 17.” So he declined the invitation for anybody from the college to be on the debate. But it was just – I guess after the war was over in '45 we were a little freer, we felt – [END SIDE A] [BEGINNING SIDE B] FRANCES MCKIBBON: -- less restricted. We felt that we were able to move around and do things more freely than we had during the war. We had chocolate. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [LAUGHTER] And Coca-Cola? FRANCES MCKIBBON: And Coca-Cola. Oh Lord, that was the best time in my life. And it was just a different atmosphere. And when we graduated there were only 18 in our graduating class. We all went to different areas. I came back to Atlanta, went to work for Shell Oil Company, worked for them for five years and then married and moved out of the state for – gosh, how long – for ten years, and then came back after my husband died. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Tell me your husband's name. FRANCES MCKIBBON: John McKibbon. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And you all were married when? FRANCES MCKIBBON: In 1953. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: How did you meet him? FRANCES MCKIBBON: He worked for the same oil company that I did. He worked for Shell Oil. He was the salesman and I was the secretary, and we had bowling teams and I met him there. And then after we were married we lived in Tampa and South Carolina. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Were you married here in Atlanta? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yes, married at our family church at Bethany. And it was sad occasion because the uncle that I was suppose – who was suppose to give me away had had a hunting accident the week before the wedding and was unable to participate so my younger uncle had to give me away, but I'm sorry that Ford couldn't be there. Ford was not seriously injured but it was serious enough to be in the hospital for almost a month because the gun shot hit his leg somehow or other and they weren't sure if they could save it. But it was just wonderful growing up in Atlanta even with the war. I still went to movies. I still bought records when I could save my money, and these were old – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: Oh yes, String of Pearls was my favorite, and In the Mood, Chattanooga Choo-Choo – gosh what else? LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And you would buy records and you had them phonographed? FRANCES MCKIBBON: And had a phonograph. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And these were the – FRANCES MCKIBBON: These were the large records, which I still have. I still have a lot of the '78 records. But you couldn't buy them, I mean there weren't that many available until after the war because there was something in them that they used, but I never felt deprived. Never in my life did I feel deprived. And I think the happiest time, even though I hated it when mother told me I had to do it, was go out to Emory every summer and take three summers and took classes out there, and I dearly loved it. And that's why I went back to Emory to get my graduate degrees. I said something when Gertrude, a friend of mine, who graduated with me from LaGrange, and I went back for our 55th anniversary two years ago – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What's Gertrude's last name? FRANCES MCKIBBON: MacFarland [phonetic]. She's from Dalton. She's been a very good friend ever since college. And I said something about I really must remember to write my check to the alumni fund at Emory this month, because what I had pledged was due. And she looked at me and she said “What do you give to LaGrange?” LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [LAUGHTER] FRANCES MCKIBBON: And I said “well, let's change the subject.” And I really shouldn't, but I just had such a wonderful time at Emory, because while we had good teachers at LaGrange, I wouldn't downplay that at all, it was just a very small school and you just didn't have the access to – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] graduating class. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yeah. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: No boys. FRANCES MCKIBBON: No boys, and you didn't have any access to – it used to be called Candler Library at the end of the [unintelligible] at Emory, and I know the first time I went in there in the summer time I was astounded. We had books, yes, but that was four floors of wall to wall, ceiling to floor books, and yes, a lot of them were old, old, old books, but I had never seen that before. And that's why when I got ready to do my graduate work I went back to Emory. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: When did you do this graduate work? FRANCES MCKIBBON: I got my first degree in '76 and my second degree in '78. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What were the degrees? FRANCES MCKIBBON: On was my Masters in History, and then I got what is called the Diploma for Advanced Standing. I got it right. The one step below the PhD, and I got that in History also. But I wanted to get my PhD, but at that time Emory required that you take a full year and be on campus doing the work. They don't require that any more. And my mother had died and I didn't have the money to take a full year off from work, so I just had been – passed up the PhD and it hadn't hurt me. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: So this – you married, moved to Tampa you said? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Uh-huh. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And back – FRANCES MCKIBBON: From Tampa to South Carolina. My husband died in South Carolina. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What year? FRANCES MCKIBBON: In 1963, and I moved back to Atlanta in 1966. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And got the two degrees from Emory. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Uh-huh. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And then what did you do with the degrees? FRANCES MCKIBBON: I taught school for 32-1/2 years. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Which school? FRANCES MCKIBBON: I was in the Fulton County School system. I taught first at Old Sandy Springs High School. It used to be Sandy Springs – well, it still is called Sandy Springs Circle, but it's were the Kroger store is today. And then Ridgeview opened and I went to Ridgeview High School, stayed there 15 years, and then from there I went to Roswell for two years because the principal that I worked with at Ridgeview wanted me to come up there and work with him, and I had full intentions of staying for the rest of my career, but unfortunately – no, I shouldn't say that. I was transferred down town to be a coordinator of special programs. So I stayed down there and retired January 2nd, 1992. How the 32-1/2 years came in, I taught school three years in Florida and three years in South Carolina, and so I had six years out of state. I taught History, American, European, Russian, Chinese, Middle East History. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And you're still teaching today. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Doing volunteer teaching to senior adults. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: Eleanor Roosevelt, the early years, and then the next quarter will be the years in the White House, and then the third quarter will be the years after Roosevelt's death and what she did then. And I love to read. Except I told my dog last night when I was preparing for – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Your dog? FRANCES MCKIBBON: My dog. [LAUGHTER] Because I don't have anybody home except my dog. I said “I'm tired of studying.” I had just finished going over my notes for the fourth time for the day, and I said “I'm tired of this, Blacky. Believe me, starting tomorrow night I'm not going to do anything but read trash.” LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: And he looked up at me as if to say “I don't care what you read.” LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [LAUGHTER] FRANCES MCKIBBON: But you get tired. I like to study. Don't misunderstand me. I dearly love to study, but there is a saturation point, and I had reached that saturation point. So this weekend and all next week, because my lesson is prepared for next Thursday, I'm going to read what I want to read. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That sounds great. [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yes. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You told me everything that's on the piece of paper [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: Let's see, [unintelligible] bus trip – oh, I did forget, we did have a celebration in May when they declared the war was over in Europe. They gave us the day off from classes and they told us to – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Was this high school or college? FRANCES MCKIBBON: College. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: College. FRANCES MCKIBBON: LaGrange is a Methodist school and they told us to go to the chapel and pray. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: On your day off. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Uh-huh. Some of us did. Most of us went to the tennis court. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Where did you go? FRANCES MCKIBBON: I'm not going to answer that question. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You said most of us went to the tennis courts. I'm going to guess. FRANCES MCKIBBON: You can guess where I went. One other thing, my mother and grandmother were asked by our church on numerous occasions to entertain servicemen who were at Lawson Field and at Fort Mack and at the [unintelligible] air station -- and I'm trying to remember, there were four of them. I don't remember what the other one was – in their homes. They would bring them to church and then mother and momma would bring them home for lunch, or what they called dinner. And they would give them opportunity to be in the home. And sometimes I was home and sometimes I wasn't, but mother always invited my aunts over and their husbands – anyone home. Frances would always come down from upstairs, and sister and Ford would always come over, so it would give the servicemen a feeling of being at home. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Was it a different serviceman every time? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yes, there were always two. There were always two servicemen. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Always two. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Always two. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] same – FRANCES MCKIBBON: [unintelligible]same ones. And I think mother and momma had them probably every other week Again, food was scarce and most servicemen liked beef. Well, beef was very scarce because you had to give those coupons in. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What would you have for dinner? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Mostly turkey – not turkey. Chicken and dressing. And if grandmother – if it was in the time that she was using the garden, green beans, squash, whatever. If it wasn't and she had canned it then she would take the cans and use that, and cornbread. Most of them came from other parts of the country, they didn't know what cornbread was. But some of them would eat it and then she learned to make cornbread and biscuits, and they'd usually eat the biscuits and not the cornbread. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And who would do the cooking? FRANCES MCKIBBON: My grandmother. We had a lady who worked for us, Susie. She worked for us – oh gosh – from the time I was about 10 until after – well, until my grandmother died. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [unintelligible] FRANCES MCKIBBON: Susie. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you remember her last name? That's all right. FRANCES MCKIBBON: I don't remember LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That's all right. Did she stay with you once the war started? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Well she – yeah, she was with us until my grandmother died in 1980. She was very young when she came to work for us, and when Susie died – Heard. Susie Heard. When she died her daughter called and asked my mother to come and do the eulogy because Susie had been with our family for so long. And one of the funny stories I remember mother telling, that she would get so put out with Susie because Susie liked to play the Bug [phonetic] that was our form of lottery with the numbers in the paper. Well, that was all right if she played it. Mother didn't like it but she wouldn't say anything. But then Susie started writing it, and she got arrested I think four times, and the fourth time mother told her “if you get arrested you're going to stay in jail; I'm not going to come down and bail you out any more.” But it was that kind of relationship. We had a very – she went to my wedding, sat with the family. She went to my grandmother's funeral, sat with the family. She was at all the christening and weddings in the family. She was part of our family. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Was she married? FRANCES MCKIBBON: She had been married, but her husband – I don't know what happened. I don't know whether he just walked out or whether he died. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You mentioned a daughter. Did she have any other children? FRANCES MCKIBBON: She had a son who had left Atlanta when he was in his teens and gone to Detroit. And he didn't – he came back once and that was when his mother got sick and then for the funeral. But Louise, the daughter, was always very close to her mother and took good care of her. And mother, when Susie couldn't work any more mother gave her a little pension. It wasn't much but it was enough to help out, because she didn't have any other income at that time. But the funniest thing that happened, I can't stand starch in my blouses to this day and at that time I was wearing dresses, and I picked up one and it had so much starch in it I just rolled it up and threw it back in the dirty clothes bag, and when I got home that afternoon from school that dress was out of the dirty clothes basket spread very neatly, wrinkles and all, on my bed. And I went storming down the steps to my grandmother, and she said “if you ever do that again, young lady, you will wash and iron your own clothes.” And I said “Did Susie do that?” She said “it doesn't matter who did it, did you hear what I said?” So I never did that again. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [LAUGHTER] FRANCES MCKIBBON: And Susie kept putting the starch in it, and it would rub my neck and under my arms, and I would just be infuriated, but I knew better than to throw that in the dirty clothes any more. I was taught very quickly. And something about her relationship with my family, when Carlton and Michael were little and she helped to look after them, and of course I was a little older than that, we were told to say yes ma'am and no ma'am to her. And I remember so well Carlton sassed her one morning when he was eating breakfast. He wanted something and she didn't get it for him and he got very smart with her. And my grandmother – I can see it to this day – drug him up from the table by the arm, took him in the bathroom and spanked him good. And when he came back in he said “I'm sorry, Susie; I didn't mean to be ugly.” And we knew that if we were ugly to her or talked backed to her we'd get punished, and that's most unusual. You don't find that. It has to be a very strong relationship for that to occur. We had street cars. We rode street cars all over the place. We didn't have trolleys then. And that was when they would go to the end of the line and get off and switch the – whatever that thing was that ran on wires. I guess that's all. I can't think of anything else. I've covered everything it looks like. But I don't regret growing up in Atlanta. I just wish it would go back to the way it was. Now it's not Atlanta any more. It's a metropolitan city, and I don't like it. A friend of mine lived here for 30 years, and when she retired two years ago she moved to St. Augustine and I thought she would be miserable, but she said it was the best move that she ever made. But she doesn't have any family here. I couldn't because all of my family are here. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Your roots are very – FRANCES MCKIBBON: I have roots that are very deep here. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Very deep. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Very deep. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You're still in the house now – FRANCES MCKIBBON: That my mother bought when she sold the old house. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Uh-huh. FRANCES MCKIBBON: In fact, I asked my cousin – I have two cousins that are one, directly related to me and the other one is a distant cousin who are very interested in genealogy, and we've been trying – in fact, I've got to come down here to your library to see if I can find some information. But we want to go back to Hollywood Cemetery and see if we can find poppa's people. And we also want to go over to the old Coursey Cemetery where my grandmother's three babies are buried and my great grandfather and great, great grandfather are buried there. But the last time I was out in Grove Park, and it's not an area that you want to go into now unless you know where you're going and you have someone with you other than just – a woman should never go out there, but my cousin and I went out to put some flowers on our grandmother's grave for Christmas and we rode by the old houses where he lived and where I lived, and they are very well kept. I was very pleased, and I know mother would have been pleased. The only reason she left Grove Park was because the blacks moved in and it just wasn't safe for her to live there by herself. My grandmother – mother wanted so badly to move – build a house on Mt. Paran when she built the house on Elizabeth Place, but my grandmother wouldn't move. She said “this is my home, this is where I grew up, this is where I married, this is where I had nine children, this is where I'm going to die. And she did. She died in 1960, and mother stayed there until 1963 and then she moved. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: When did your mother die did you tell me? FRANCES MCKIBBON: '74, 1974. It doesn't seem like it's been 30 years – almost 30 years, but it has. It was just a wonderful community to grow up in. Everybody was so good and so kind, and it was just – you don't have that kind of community any more. If you know your next door neighbor you're lucky. Most of the time you don't know anybody. I'm lucky, I do know my next door neighbors. I've been there since '66, so I know them, but the house right next to me has been sold twice, so there has been a change there. But it's just – Atlanta is so different. I remember going to see Gone With the Wind at the Lowe's Grand – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Were you at the premier? FRANCES MCKIBBON: No. We sat on the curb for the premier, in front of the Carnegie Library. Mother took me and three of my friends down and we sat on the curb and we saw Clark Gable and Carol Lombard, Claudette Kobare [phonetic]. I don't think we saw Vivien Leigh. We saw Leslie Howard. And it was just a very exciting time for us to be growing up in Atlanta. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you remember the Winecoff Hotel fire? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Oh yes. I was coming home from college for the weekend. Mother met me at the bus station, and she said the Winecoff is on fire so we're going to have to go around a different way. And I said “What do you mean the Winecoff is on fire?” And she said “it started last night, and people have died in the Winecoff.” We didn't know how many people or how badly it was until the paper came out the next day. And then we saw the pictures of the people jumping out of the windows. That was the most horrible – I mean, it was just something you don't ever think will happen, and when it does you don't want it to ever happen again. It was just too horrible to even think about. But yes, I remember that very well. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Other Atlanta events, and we've only go maybe 5 more minutes, when Martin Luther King was assassinated and his funeral. Do you remember? Were you in Atlanta? FRANCES MCKIBBON: I didn't – I was in Atlanta at that time. I did not go to the funeral because it was just – I'll be honest with you, I didn't know whether it was safe or not for a white person to be there, but oh yes, I remember that very well, watching it on television as they did the funeral procession. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: How about the Orly air plane crash? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Oh, I was living in South Carolina at that time, and we had gone to the beach, and my husband came in with a newspaper and he said “did you know that a plane had crashed in France that carried a lot of Atlanta art patrons?” I said “no”, and he handed me the paper. And I recognized a lot of the names that I had known. And yes, I remember that very well, and thinking oh my goodness, how horrible. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you remember the Temple bombing? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yes. Yes. That was the most awful thing in the world. That should never have occurred. But you have to understand at that time Atlanta was divided into sections. Jews lived in one section, Catholics lived in the other, and then Protestants lived in another section. And I just remember, why? And I remember asking mother why. What's wrong? I had Jewish friends. I grew up with Jewish friends, and they were just people like me. I didn't understand why they had to do that, but yes, I remember that very well. I remember also when we had three governors. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [LAUGHTER] FRANCES MCKIBBON: Worst day of my life when we had three governors. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: History teacher should [unintelligible] – FRANCES MCKIBBON: I remember all that. But it was – Atlanta has a rich history, and I don't think a lot of people who have moved into Atlanta realize the history that we do have because so much of it has been destroyed. They've torn these beautiful homes down and put up these sterile buildings, but Atlanta has a tremendous history. I remember saying to my uncle “do you remember when the terminal station was there?” Because that's where he went out of and came back in. And he said “yes, and the Union Station.” And I said “yes.” The Lowe's Grand, and the Paramount, and the Roxy, and the Capitol, and all of those theatres, and it's gone. It's ridiculous that you tear down something that has history in the name of progress, because progress isn't that important. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: We did save The Fox. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Yeah, that's the only one that was saved. And even the Rialto -- luckily now Georgia State has it, but even the Rialto was allowed to just disintegrate until Georgia State took it over. But Atlanta was good. It was a good place. I used to get on a street car and go all over Atlanta and never had a fear in my life. I wouldn't even dream of – if street cars were around – do that today, because Atlanta is literally a metropolitan city. At that time I was home from college for Christmas, and my mother had told me to meet her downtown at the old S&W Café. We would have lunch – LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: On Peachtree. FRANCES MCKIBBON: On Peachtree. She would give me the money that I could go Christmas shopping for my family and I was to meet her there promptly at 11:45, not one minute before not one minute after. Well, I sort of just took my time and didn't make it 11:45. My mother wasn't there. I had spent the last ten cents on the car fare coming into Atlanta, and I absolutely panicked because I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't have any money to call. So I remembered my aunt was working that day at the old Atlanta Title Trust Company, and I walked down there and I said “Frances, where's my mother?” And she said “I know exactly where she is, she's back at the office where she's suppose to be. You didn't meet her when she told you to.” And I said “well, will you give me a dime to get home?” “After you call your mother I will.” And mother just gave me fits. And that taught me that when she said to be somewhere I was on time after that. That was the most frightening experience I ever had. To be stranded downtown and thinking I was going to have walk all the way from downtown home. And it was just – it was a horrible experience. As I said, I wish Atlanta would go back like it was. Everybody knew everybody. Everybody took care of everybody, and now they don't care. They really don't. And it's just too big. It's just way too big. And one other thing and then I'll shut up. When I was a senior high school five of us decided we were going to skip class the last week of school. We were seniors; we felt like we had privilege to do what we wanted to. So we went to homeroom to answer the role call and then we left. And we were going downtown just to look around and have lunch and maybe take in a movie but always be home by the time school left. And when I got home my grandmother was standing on the front stoop and she had her arms crossed like this. And she said “how was school today?” “Fine, we had a good time.” “You did?” “Go call your mother.” And so I called mother and she said “how was school?” And we went through this routine. She said “I understand you went downtown.” I said “how did you know?” Five of my mother's friends saw me downtown and they called her and told her. And this was the week, you know, before we were to graduate – have baccalaurean and on Sunday graduate on Monday. I could go to baccalaureate and I could go to graduation. I was not allowed to go to any of the graduation parties. That was my punishment. And mother said “the next time you do something like that you'll be punished even more severely.” So, believe me that stuck in my mind. Ooh, I never did anything else that was bad. I didn't talk about World War II I just talked about Atlanta. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That was wonderful. All right, is there anything else? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Nope, that's it. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That's it? FRANCES MCKIBBON: Uh-huh. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Frances, thank you very much. FRANCES MCKIBBON: Well thank you for inviting me. I hope I didn't bore you. [END INTERVIEW] [KS]
Metadata URL:: http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/261
Additional Rights Information:: This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required.
Extent:: 1:12:31
Original Collection:: Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center
Holding Institution:: Atlanta History Center
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