My sister and I were born in a coal mining town in West Virginia, but we grew up in Danville, Virginia – the last capital of the Confederacy. As children, we saw racism and prejudice up close. In fact, back then, Virginia still had a poll tax in place. It was an insidious and obvious […]
I never knew my Uncle Bob. He was my mom’s youngest brother, the youngest of five children born near the coal-mining town of Beckley, West Virginia to my grandparents, Ray and Effie Mae Patton. He died in 1944 at the age of 19 during a kamikaze attack in the western Pacific on his aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Suwanee. His body was […]