This is an oral history interview with Lennox Tom Thornton, Class of 1948, conducted by Marilyn Summers on July the 6th of 1998 at Mr. Thornton's home in Brazelton, Georgia. The subject of the interview is his life in general and his days at Georgia Tech. Mr. Thornton, thank you so much for letting us come to your beautiful home in Brazelton. It's taken us a few minutes to get ourselves organized, but we're ready to hear your story. Thank you. Let's begin. where did you start? 

Well, I was born in Atlanta at the old Piedmont Hospital down where the stadiums are now and is now on Mother's Day 1924, May the 11th. That's 74 years ago at this time. And your mother and dad were? 

My mother was Eva Thompson Thornton. My daddy was Lennox Thornton. He was the registrar of vital statistics for Atlanta for 31 years. All the birth and death certificates, he had to sign every one of those. All the burial permits, he had to sign them before it was legal to bury somebody. 

So that was his job. Pretty critical, pretty critical to the city. 

And something was interesting about your mom and dad in that? 

Well, you want me to tell the story about what how much two generations have spanned is that the one you're that would be very interesting okay you know that was my mother uh that didn't work in my daddy's family because they had fairly early marriages of course he was 37 when he married and 42 when i was born but with that exception they were normal generations but with my mother her my grandfather and there's still people older than I am. My grandfather was alive at the same time as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. 

Now, we know that because he was born June 30, 1826, and they died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which was four about five days later on July the 4th, 1826. By a hair. Yeah, two generations spanned almost the entire American history here. That's pretty amazing. Your parents were a little older when you were born. Yeah, their mother was nearly 43 and Daddy was 42. And you were an only child. An only child. And we became a rather isolated family a little much there. I think Daddy decided that he'd had enough, you know, of looking after a big family. 

There were eight children in his family originally, and so it kind of boiled down to just the three of us most of the time. And where did you go to elementary school? 

All right. 

I went to old Samuel Inman, which I think is a middle school now, at Virginia Avenue in Atlanta, northeast of the Virginia Highland section. and then went to O'Keeffe Junior High, which is part of Tech's campus for a good many years now, and then good old Boys High School, which was fortunately the alumni have revived that, and we've been able to contact thousands of graduates, and I've contacted some old friends that we lost touch of 30 or 40 years, you know, and so boys high. 

And my daddy graduated from that in 1898 and guess who his professor was, Georgia Tech's president at the time I was there, Dr. Marion Britton. And so they were kind of connected, you might say. 

Atlanta was a small enough community where the same people could be involved in, you know, your high school and your college. Did you always know you were going to college? 

Well, I think so. I mean, with an only child, goodness, it shouldn't be too hard to get one of them into college. 

And, of course, we had no idea growing up that we'd have such a bountiful thing as the GI Bill of Rights. And I think my daddy paid the tuition of around $200-something in the summer of 1942. 

Now, that may have been for my entire freshman year. I don't remember any other money, any tuition he ever paid. 

So the good old federal government paid for everything. 

Before we got there, though, was it Georgia Tech you were always going to go to? 

I think so, because of the proximity. We had some family connections with it, but it was actually a good counselor. 

Maybe my own good judgment would have said, no, that's not the place to go to unless you have a gift for fixing things or interest in machinery and that sort of thing. Or math and science? 

Well, yeah, all right. And I like math when it was statistical, when you could use it that way. 

So I'm not saying as broad as Tech's curriculum was. Even in the 40s, I could have still found things that would have been vastly interesting to me there. 

But as it was, I mean, but it wasn't a waste. 

Well, how did you choose electrical engineering, if you will? 

Well, I started out in chemical. 

Now, why? 

I mean, silly reasons, because I like my high school teacher. You know, I mean, we had no more reasons than that back in those days. You didn't have all the counseling and all you have now. 

So you could almost choose on a phone. Yeah, so I mean, boy, Mr. Hi -Chew is so much fun that I guess I'll just take that at Georgia Tech. 

And by the time I'd finished the first year and came back after three years in the military, I decided, well, I'm going to do electrical engineering. 

Well, let's go back to your first days. 

Now, you enrolled in school the first time in 1942. Right. The world was already at war. Yes, ma'am. What were you thinking about that time? 

Exactly. 

I mean, that ROTC is the most important subject for me personally, and I think a lot of us felt that way. It was a scary time, a very uncertain time. I don't think we've ever had a time quite like that. In our generation, we realized we were heading straight into the vortex of this thing. And, you know, you tend to want to look back in history and blame somebody for it, you know. 

So you went into the ROTC program figuring you were going to learn everything you could, because that was going to be the same. And we had a good one at Boys High School, fortunately. 

So you had already been in that? 

You know, we knew it was good. 

But the one year I had at Tech was very valuable to me. And we had the old bolt-action rifles for training and the manual of arms and all that, you know. And we knew how to disassemble them all even in high school ROTC. 

But at Tech, we had the M1s. We had the same, which were rather new then, the same equipment that your armed forces had, you know. 

So it was a really good... It was very practical. And people were thinking about those kinds of things. Of course they were. 

Do you remember your first days? 

What it was like the first time you actually came? 

You'd been on the campus, maybe. 

Yeah, in fact, my first registration day and all that and taking some of it, they had some little, you know, things you went through. They even had a physical you took. some of it was done before actually before i graduated from high school oh yeah we uh and so it was it was a busy time but then it was a time for pressure people it wasn't you know you either had to enlist in the army or get busy some way you it was a certainly uh people would frown on And anybody, a healthy 18-year -old that wasn't doing something to improve themselves. 

So they were either going off to war or they were going off to school. Were some of your classmates from Boys High coming to Georgia Tech with you? 

Yes. 

So you already knew. And that was good. 

Now, what happened, and of course, I give a lot of credit to Fred Ajax, who was, I think, the assistant in the personnel, number two man in the personnel. 

But he bonded with us students. You needed somebody like that, somebody that even your parents could come. 

And my daddy actually, you know, boy, when that draft notice came and all, he actually went with me to Ajax, and that wasn't so unusual in those days. 

You know, the parents, daddy come with you and say, look, hey, what's the best thing for you to do for this boy, you know? 

Can he get through a year here? 

Sure, Enlisted Reserve Corps. And I love that one on my serial number. you know, volunteer. 

And so most of my friends there did that, and we went in service together at Fort Mac, you know, and we were all called up. Let's go back to the first days. What were they like? 

You had never been away from home overnight, so you were still fairly... No, I was still at home. I wasn't but a half a mile farther from home than I was in junior high at O'Keefe, you know. 

But you told me you had never spent a night away from home. Until I went, you know, I was abducted into the Army, sure. 

So at that time, you were still fairly naive, was the point you were still. I suppose so. 

Well, I think most people are more so than they are now, young folks. Of course. 

Well, what was it like for you to go into college? 

Was it different than high school? 

No, it was just more difficult. It was just at a little bit higher level of, you know, it required more. We went to classes on Saturday, you had three-hour labs in your chemistry department. 

How did you do? 

I was not a good, because I didn't have the, you know, that's what I prefaced all this, by saying that I really had no business going there as far as being the best thing, you know. 

But you did well. You survived. Oh, I survived, yeah, right. 

But I didn't make good grades and all, and it's not, I mean, now all this talk about self-esteem, But there may be some truth to that, at least, that it's not good for a kid to deliberately put himself down. When I came back, I did better, I think, with more experience and all. 

But it was a vastly different thing when I went to my next college, taking courses that I liked and all at Emory University in journalism, and so it was all A's practically there. Okay. 

Well, let's not get ahead of the story now. Okay. 

Were there any other professors that you remember from that first year besides Ajax? 

Well, he was, of course, an official there. 

Now, I might say that my first cousin was, I always felt like, well, if everything goes wrong here, I'll appeal to her. She was a well -known lady on the campus there. What was her name? 

Blanche Turner. 

She was the, you can ask most old -timers, I think all the faculty, all the administrators practically, Well, I wouldn't say all the faculty, but I think just about all the administrators knew her. And most of the old crowd was still there, you see. There was Dr. 

Britton, golly, he must have been close to 80 in those days, but he was still president of the college of tech and the school, I guess it was. 

And Blanche was the secretary of the evening school, maybe the registrar or secretary, that type of thing. 

But she kind of carried some weight, I felt, around the place, you know, and never learned to drive an automobile. 

She was one of the first residents of the Burge Apartments when they opened up along about right after the war. That was, you know, I forget. Was it 1948, maybe, or 47 that they opened them up? 

Right next to the YMCA building. Right. She was a career at Georgia Tech. Oh, yeah. It's been her career. And she was quite a bit older than you, but she was still your cousin. She was, yeah, she'd have been about the right age for my mother. She was born in 98, so she was 26 years older than I, but my mother was almost 43 years older. 

Now, of course, she was my aunt's, my father's sister's daughter, and that family pretty much was the center of my daddy's family there. 

Did you have any other cousins that went to Georgia Tech, or were you the first one? 

Well, my uncle went there. One of those eight children managed to go to college even back in those days. 

So Jerome B., or Bunn as we called him, he must have gotten through around 1900, I guess, because he was born in 1880 and they got through probably 20 or even younger than 20 years later. 

So he was one of the early, early classes. Oh, yeah. 

But when Tech started, what, in 83, 1883, was it? 

It was actually 88. 88 before you had a graduate. 

So this was only about 11 or 12 years after the first graduates that he. And, of course, Blanche's husband, my first cousin, Guy Turner, Sr., he graduated there. 

So you were a legacy family. Right, right, yeah. 

So that may have had some reason, you know, to go there. 

Besides Blanche, did you bond with any other professors or any of them? 

Well, I hardly ever saw Blanche on campus. You just knew she was there. I just knew she was there. 

Well, not particularly. Oh, yeah, I mentioned two of them in my little autobiography here. A favorite of mine, and this had nothing to do with, it was just their own personality. Joe Howey was one of the finest men I think most people would agree on the tech campus then. He's the kind of person you could look up to. He was head of the physics department. 

But he would take these lowly freshmen and he would teach the, you know, in your big assembly areas there, you know, he would teach freshmen. And his department, I think, was about the toughest that the freshmen would take. I mean, it was very difficult to get much above a C in his department. And yet he took a personal, you might say, a Christian interest in his students. 

So he was a good instructor and a good teacher. A fine man, yeah, his character. I knew him later in my church when I joined Atlanta First Presbyterian. He was very active in that. 

So we had some fine people on campus. That was one. 

Now in the military, you had an interesting fellow. 

I was a PMASE&T, Professor of Military Science and Tactics there, an old Charlestonian, and we thought he was a lot of fun. His name was Grimke, a captain, was a captain, a major. His rank wasn't all that high, but he was the head of the Tech ROTC at that time. And he was what you'd call avuncular, like an old uncle to us boys, you know. 

And he would even try to tell us about the birds and bees, you know, before we got out in the terrible big world, you know. And it was all done in a heavy Charlestonian accent, you know. And he'd give commands, you know, and all. But, you know, we knew, you see, you can tell when a person, you know, bonds. Cares about us. Yes, that's your word. 

When a person is caring, Joe Howey was, head of the physics department, toughest professor maybe in the school, tough department head and teacher. 

And yet you felt that my little buddy freshman was, you know, standing in the cold out there on that steep Third Street Hill. Of course, that was the finest building on campus at that time was the physics. I think it was architecture in there, too, I believe, at that time. Yeah, right. 

But it was generally called the physics bar. It was Joe Howie's building. He had the best build on campus. 

Well, my little buddy and I would stand out there in the shivering cold the winter of 43, you know, and wait for Joe to come. We just thought that much of him, you know. And he'd come and say, well, hello, boys, you know. And I mean, just little lonely rats, you know. 

And here was one of the most respected people on campus that cared enough to treat us like real folks, you know, and that does make a difference always. Sure, you remember it all these years. 

Well, sure, and then when I got to know him personally years later in church, you know, and I was the president of a Sunday school class and he was one of the leading deacons, I mean, elders in the church, you know, and all, and we got to know each other at a different level, you know. 

Did you wear your rat cap all the time like you were supposed to? 

Oh, it was required, and you wore it all over the place, and we didn't mind. We were proud to be in Georgia Tech, you know, even at that level, you know. 

Well, what happened to change all of that? 

I don't know. I've never been. No, well, the war intervened. You got your first year in, and then what happened? 

Oh, well, it was just better afterward. The difference was we were more mature. the professors really had a tremendous amount of respect for us, and they would openly tell us that. Maybe that was a way of motivating us. 

Well, you went away to Fort McPherson as the whole class, as a group, or you were drafted? 

Well, yeah. We were all called up on the same orders on June 12, 1943, which was a Saturday morning. We went down to Fort Mac. 

We carpooled us buddies together, you know, and some of them had access to cars, and not many did in those days, you know, but we went down there and that was it, and yeah, and we pulled guard duty and KPI and all the things. 

We got a dose of it right away, you know, and then we all were headed for ASTP, Army Specialized Training Program, which kind of made, I felt twang, you know, some hesitancy about that because, you know, we'd think, well, these guys are over there fighting a war and here we are being paid to go to college. And that's what it amounted to, you know, ASTP. We were sent to college campuses. In fact, it would have been possible, I guess, to have assigned some to actually Georgia Tech. They may have had AST students there. Probably did. 

But we were scattered around the country, which was great for me. I loved to. I wanted to be off some way. You know, I liked that. 

So I just wish I'd have been the same place as some of the others, you know. 

But I was sent to the University of Michigan. I don't think any of our tech fellows were there, but we had a lot of other fine people. And we lived like lords, I mean, considering the middle of the war, a brand new dormitory up there. 

There were five of us in the same room, which was a little much, but I mean, compared to Army life, generally, you know, good food there and plenty of time to go around Ann Arbor and have dates with the girls there and all, and go over to Detroit, which was a little bit scary even then, you know, but it was generally still in pretty good shape in those days. What were you studying? 

Well, again, electrical engineering. I never changed my major from the time I came. Oh, that's right. I hadn't come back yet. No. Okay. 

Well, it was courses that would have been common to both the curriculums. Just engineering courses. Right, right. General engineering courses. 

I was having trouble with math, and I had to do a lot of makeup a lot of them did these kids that i knew they were smart boys but tech standards were they were fairly high even then i mean compared to a pretty good high school like boys high it was it was not easy uh and uh and you had uh remedial makeup tests and all that And you had, let's see, now, Dean Skiles, you know, all that old generation was still there. Mr. Perry and his great office there in the old building, you know, the old main building. What did we call it? 

The one with the tower. Yeah, the old main building there. You know, it was almost intimidating to walk into his classroom. And Dean Skiles was fairly deaf, you know. and he taught calculus. Let's see, what is it? 

I guess that's, yeah, integral calculus. That's about as high as you go. And nowadays, even in a high school curriculum, and he was rather deaf. And I don't know whether he really couldn't hear the whistle or just pretended that he couldn't. Of course, your class changes were by the whistle, you know. And he'd stop dead in his tracks and look around and kind of a dazed look. 

Was that the whistle? 

Now, you know, the temptation would be for the students to say, yes, sir, that was the whistle. We better go. 

But it never happened. They knew darn good and well. He was on safe ground. 

I mean, you could be stone deaf and he wasn't having any trouble with it because he was dean of students you'd end up in his office anyway so so that everybody played that it worked no no he was he was treated probably the most respect of any man there and he had the he had the office up in the front his classroom was in the front on the upper stories of that that building you know right in the keystone of the campus there and uh so but that and then he'd have us recite in unison And I always thought, I think it's because if we make it loud enough, he can hear it. And he wants to hear it. All right, all together now. Rho times the derivative of Rho is equal to theta. That was the thing on the board, you know. And I still remember that, you know. 

But having these old fellows that had been teaching on campus since 1901, that's over 40 years. the president, the dean of students, all those folks, you know, were old enough to be my parents and then some. That was wonderful, you know. There was nothing radical or updated about that. 

You had the same old generation that, you know, that was teaching there at the turn of the last century. How about Okohaini? 

Oh, yeah. We saw him around a lot in his 1934 Plymouth and all. That was the joke, you know. And he kept that car for an awful long time, you know. 

But that was, Uncle Heine always parked up there on the thing right in front of the, you know, the closest to, you know. He was kind of crippled, you know. 

Well, he was an ancient man. Oh, lordy. He was 90 years old then. 

Now, you think about it. That man was a grown man, I mean, a teenage boy in the Civil War. And he was still teaching there. Wow. It was amazing. It was a wonderful thing, yeah. And Floyd Field. Oh, yeah. We knew him, of course, but I wasn't taught. 

Now, one of my favorites was Glenn Rainey. I hope you've heard of him. Glenn was different. 

Now, he was more avant-garde. He was more modern. In fact, I don't know that Dr. 

Britton would have even approved of some of the things he said in that classroom, but the boys just ate it up. 

I mean, they wouldn't have cut one of his classes for anything, because he was about as much fun as Bob Hope or something, you know. I mean, it was amazing. 

And I remember the biggest thing he said, he kept pounding on it, and I thought he was dead right, and it was an outrageous thing. 

When I got up to Michigan, I saw the contrast between poor little Georgia Tech and an affluent place like Michigan. I didn't think the teachers were as good up there, but boy, you know, of the things. He referred to our library. 

Now, that was a tiny little building. I guess it's still there, isn't it? 

The Carnegie Building. Yeah, the Carnegie Building, which meant that Carnegie gave the money for it. They didn't even pay for that little thing. Glenn Rainey would refer to that place as that room. That was what he called it. And that's about it was. I had a house with 8,000 square feet Ann Roswell. I don't think that library had near as big a, probably didn't have as much space as this house does. It's got over 4,000. And that's pitiful. 

I mean, how did we stay accredited with things like that? 

We were still suffering 80 years after the Civil War. 

So when you made it up to Michigan, while you were up at Michigan, you could still see you had good, good, that first year had been good for you oh yeah you know that's that's what I got out of tech it was a discipline and of course the of the when I you know I had qualified qualifications then to teach other things besides social studies I was automatically certified to teach math and I like to teach at a lower level of math you're getting ahead okay we're getting ahead okay how long did you stay at the University of Michigan? 

We were there, let's see, from October of 43 to the next spring. It wasn't for about six months. 

It was just the winter of 43-44, basically, because we got assigned to the, I did, assigned to the Signal Corps and I was sent to Camp Crowd of Missouri and stayed there a year and then sent overseas. 

So you did finally make it overseas. 

Oh, yeah, I was very lucky because what happened was the Army and some of my little buddies from Tech got caught in this. 

Instead of, after they'd earned all the specs, you know, the specifications in the Signal Corps, all that training, ready to go, the Army threw them into the infantry and sent them over to the Battle of the Bulge, which was the last big terrible thing in World War II in the winter of 1945 over there. The good Lord above looked after me. I know it wasn't my grades, it wasn't my personality, I don't know what it was. 

But for some reason, I think only 15 percent of us were saved to go over there and I ended up in MacArthur's Signal Company, directly connected to the General. Mr. Thornton, tell us about your experience overseas. 

Well, after a year's training in the Signal Corps at Camp Crowder, Missouri, down in Southwest West Missouri. 

I was lucky enough not to get thrown in the infantry and sent back like most of them were into the Battle of the Bulls over in Europe, but to go on where I was trained to go, that long 31-day boat ride, you know, on the troop ship across the Pacific Ocean down to New Guinea and below the equator and then on up to the central Philippines, not Not to Luzon, but Leyte Island, L-E-I -T-E, Leyte. 

Now there at Tacloban was the place where MacArthur had returned to U. S. territory for the first time after, of course, being pushed all the way nearly to Australia by the Japanese in the early years of the war. 

But he returned there in the spring of 1944, and I got there a year later, and it was mostly lifting boxes and all that. 

I was assigned to the 232nd Signal Operation Company of the United States Army, which was attached to General McCarthy. 

It was the company that was supposed to look after his own communication needs, you know, of his headquarters. 

But we didn't see him and we didn't work at his headquarters for a long time because at that time you had a great motivation, the Army did, to get everything ready for a push up to Okinawa. 

Of course, we had no idea, never heard of an atomic bomb, and we thought the war was going on for five or ten years more, you know, and it would be little by little. At that time they had only gotten up as far as Okinawa, I think. 

But after a few months, this was, say, from April up until June of 1945, and the war in the meantime had ended in Europe, but that didn't mean anything to us except now we were top dog, you know. We felt we were always second class to the big war in Europe, you know. 

But now everything would focus on our war out there, you know, which would probably go on longer than the whole thing had lasted, you know. 

So we didn't know. The Japanese were a much harder enemy to subdue probably than the Germans. That's the way we felt. 

So moved up to what's now the capital of the Philippines, Quezon City out on the northeast side of Manila, which was way out in the country in those days with water buffaloes laying around and everything. and we were in tents sleeping on the ground and you'd have an earthquake. 

You'd wake up in the middle of the night, you know, with nothing between you and Mother Earth, you know. 

And we would get to see headquarters sometime, which was a waterworks building in downtown Manila down by the waterfront there. And, of course, you had the usual, you know, there's always some negative talk. Ah, MacArthur, he owns the whole place. 

He builds, buys real estate everywhere he goes, he's rich as creases, he's profiteering on all of this, you know, and everything, you know. You even had criticism of the president, Roosevelt, or anything. I mean, people of people, you're going to have that. It would be unnatural if you didn't. 

But, of course, the unity and purpose we had in our nation and the respect we had for our military, it's almost inconceivable. 

It still is to me that our military, the boys that were in Vietnam were, you know, when you've been treated so well as public opinion and everything in World War II and given all the benefits of, you know, government paid education and all that, you wonder, you know, what happened later, you know. 

Well, what did happen to you? 

Well, it was all nice. 

I mean, the main problem I had was, and I realized my mother would write me every day Now, if I'd saved those letters, I'd have had a diary from her standpoint, continuous for all that period. 

But I could read between the lines and tell that my daddy's health was declining rapidly, and he had a lot of high blood pressure, and they had no way of treating it back then. He was up in his 60s then, and both of them were. And so I could tell that, you know, I wanted to get back and help out my family, you know. They helped run the farm out here. We run this farm over at Athens. He even had a place he owned down in Oglethorpe County and even a tenant down in Wilkes County. 

So your dad, although he was a landowner. Yeah, right. He loved it. He knew nothing about the country. He was raised in the city. 

But to him, it was more fun to look after his wife's property out here. there, and he helped out a lot. He never made any money off of it, but he poured money into it, you see. 

So you stayed how long? 

Well, I was overseas almost a year over there, from April of 1944 to March, well, of February of, I mean, 45, excuse me, April of 45 to February of 46. 

So during the time when the war ended in Europe and when it ended in, of course, with the Japanese surrender after the atomic ******* in August of 45. 

Now probably the most historic place. Go ahead and ask your question. 

Where were you when that happened? 

Yeah, I wanted to point out I was in the middle of the Pacific when Roosevelt died. Of course, that was, you realize my generation, I was eight years old when he was elected president. 

And, I mean, I grew up with that man as our president, and nobody's ever dared do anything like he did, you know, to run for four terms. And so it was like, you know, the great fathers died. 

What are we going to do? who's harry truman but little did we know then if i can inject a little personal opinion i think harry truman was the finest man of the most real man that we've ever had in the white house and history supports you with that yeah and i didn't agree with all his politics but i'm talking about as a man we didn't know what we were getting that fellow was tougher than fdr and And really a fine man, so I sound like I'm campaigning for good old Harry, yeah. 

Well, where were you when the bombs actually came out? 

Well, we were, of course, still down there, moving boxes, getting ready for the push-up toward Okinawa. 

And I was still down there at Manila, out from Manila, at Quezon City, which is now the capital of the Philippines. and of course it was absolutely i don't think anything i doubt if anything will happen in this new century we're entering is as profound as that and you know how did you hear about it you just heard about it well yeah they had uh you know communico we didn't have any radios out there in the tents well maybe some of them did but anyway the word got there pretty quickly that this thing a thousand times, what was it, more powerful than all this TNT, which was the most powerful thing you had then, and we couldn't conceive of anything like that. And the thought was, well, that's a way to end a war, I guess, isn't it? 

Drop another one. How many is it going to take? 

Well, two is all it took. 

Now, of course, there's been an awful moral problem with that ever since. 

But you have to think maybe it's just rationalization that we saved more Japanese lives than we did anybody else. But, of course, that's a terrible thing to do just to wipe out a whole town unexpected, you know. 

But maybe it's been so horrible that fortunately we've survived this long, what, 55 years or something like that. That's almost 53 years since, and nothing like that's happened again. 

And how did that directly affect you? 

You realize you were there? 

Well, it just changed the whole world because we had been, I mean, you could look back. I didn't like the appeasing of ******, Mussolini, any of that. It was hard to even look back now. I hope this country doesn't ever get in the frame of mind that it would not support. 

I mean, the way to do is what President Reagan did, and that's what I think most people want, is to be prepared, and that's the number one function of government, is protecting us. 

Did you know that you were going to be able to go home then? 

Well, I assumed that it would rather quickly, but we had these poor old, Adderburn Stained veterans over there that had been in our company since 1942, all down in New Guinea and all that. And of course, we realized they're going home next. 

But it was amazingly quick, you see. 

Now, I wanted to tell about being, I think, the most historic setting I've ever been in my life, we were one of the first companies in, naturally supporting the commander, you know, as his communication company. 

So we were up there. 

We were actually in Tokyo Harbor, inside of, if I had had binoculars, I could have watched it just like your newsreels. That's what we called stuff in those days, newsreels. We went to a movie theater to see it. We didn't have television, remember. 

And Battleship Missouri was right over there, and anybody with binoculars could have watched Tojo and MacArthur sign the thing, you know. I witnessed the history, the greatest war, the worst war we've ever had. Of course, the Civil War killed more Americans than World War II. That was the worst war this country's been in. 

But there you were actually witnessing the end of the war. and little specks, I guess you could see them on the deck of the Missouri. And so we were free to go ashore. I mean, we took possession. We were on this little island in a little warehouse out in Yokohama Harbor there on the bay. Spent the first night there. That was the night of September 2, 1945. Then we moved on into Yokohama. And oh, the contrast, the respect that I gained then for the Japanese. I had no reason to hate them because nobody that I knew had ever been hurt by them. 

I'm sure I would have felt differently if I'd have had a brother that had been killed by them or something like that. 

But I just had the most marvelous. I didn't know human beings could be like that. You see, they were utterly subdued, disciplined 100%. And I kind of admire that. I'm afraid I'm not a very democratic person. 

I don't want to tell people what to do and have them obey you rather than tell them what do you want to do you know let's have a consensus on this no but anyway i mean i have to fight that all the time you know and i'm sure i wasn't that bad as a school teacher i wouldn't have lasted but that's kind of my root way of doing you know so you knew you were coming back yeah so i admired them whereas in manila those people down there and i'm not bashing the filipinos i'm sure they're good people and good Americans and all that, but good in their own country. 

But they left everything just like it was. Old dead streetcars sitting in the middle of Rizal Avenue in Manila. The buildings, nothing done for reconstruction, just helpless. You get up there to Japan and all the firebombing, the whole thing, everything running. The streetcars running, the railroad's running, the poor things. they'd used all the metal they had and they were uh of course the women worked like slaves with them you know so it was very efficient very efficient i thought well i have seen something here i never saw human beings in a place like this man i'm glad we defeated those folks because wow i don't know that we could have had the uh discipline that they showed and of course they They were, you know, real frightened of us for a while. I imagine they'd been told terrible things about us, you know. 

Well, when did you return then to the United States? 

Well, I returned about six months later. 

This was, of course, we were there officially then September 2nd, and it was sometime in February, so that was when we shipped out, you know. 

And what did you find when you came back home? 

How was your dad? 

Just got back before he had the only ****** that he had other than his terminal ******. 

But you could tell he was really going downhill. 

So I got back I think two weeks before that happened, so just barely in the nick of time. 

Now he lasted another four years. 

His mind was all right and everything, but he was going downhill and pretty, you know, know, hampered somewhat. He went on with his job and tried to look after the farms and all. It was good you were back. Yeah, he was. 

Now, did he want you to go back to school? 

Was it accepted that you were going? 

Of course. They never pushed me. I wish my parents had pushed me more, because I'm the kind of person that needs that. I'm not self-motivating that way. I'm not an adventuresome type of person, really. 

But you went back to school. Oh, yeah. 

But not right away. 

He needed, I wanted to help him in his office, and it It was nice to have a little dose of civilian life. 

I wasn't quite ready to jump back into that rat race, and it was going to be that, because I felt that I had to finish as fast as possible. I don't know why, but we thought, Lord, I'm 22 years old. I only got through a freshman year. I should be almost through by now. 

So you had to catch up. Yeah, you had that idea. Yeah, well, so, of course, it was all paid for, so I just went around the calendar. I finished in a total of three years, you see. What was the kind of tech that you came back? 

Two years from the time I came back. Of course, now we had some credits from the ASTP in Michigan, so that helped a little bit. 

But it was nose to the grindstone. 

What kind of tech did you come back to? 

Was it different? 

Yes, because you had all these veterans. And as I said, the atmosphere, they were dead serious about what they were doing. 

The professors had to re-gear their thinking because they were used to babysitting these poor little irresponsible kids, you know. And, oh, wow, we've got folks there that have seen more life than we have. And, I mean, they're dedicated. We just need to stand back and help them graduate. 

So there really was a difference. Yeah, that's the way I had in this system we had in DeKalb County. I'd get a class that was absolutely super, and so you just stand back and help them. You don't need to do any babysitting with these kids. They know what they want, and you just help them get it. Dr. Britton retired. Yes, he had. Van Leer came in. Van Leer came in. 

Can you remember any professors during that two -year time that you want to mention? 

Well, the electrical, I don't know. 

Well, we had some characters there, and I better not say anything about him, but I'm sure he was a good man, but he was, I won't even mention him. 

But you had changed to electrical by this time. Oh, yeah. 

Yeah, and the electrical was in the little front building there, you know, facing North Avenue to the left of the main building, the old building of the tower. Yeah. 

Was it a lot different? a lot easier a lot harder well you didn't have that pressure that you were going to be ****** out in the Lord knows where in the military it was over yeah it was over and and I mean you figured well the worst that could possibly happen in my life has already happened so and I think that was generally with our generation we grew up through the depression and and the world war too just one trauma after another we were nearly 30 years old before things settled down so what did we our generation i guess gets criticized for uh for just wanting normalcy again you know and letting our children have everything they want and uh you know and no realization and and we didn't put on the brakes soon enough on this moral slip that now we realize has happened in our country you know what was your social life like at that time not much no i didn't i didn't really get swinging socially till i was in my 50s and 60s you might say you didn't have you didn't participate in campus activities no i never had any of that and now not in high school or in college no no gosh i didn't know where you didn't go to dances you didn't do anything on the campus no no just studied. Yeah. Tom was just a hard -working studying guy. 

Well, yeah, when I was helping my family, I had the daddy couldn't, mom never did learn to drive, and daddy, it wasn't safe for him driving, you know, was partly paralyzed, so, and they tried to, still trying to run all the farms and everything, you know, so I had, I had work to do for them too, you know. On the weekends. Did you go to football games? 

Oh, yeah. Okay. Some really exciting ones. 

The most exciting game I've ever seen is when Tech beat Navy, I guess it was, in the 46th season, the first season I was back. In the last two minutes of the game, they overcame a two-touchdown deficit and beat that. 

Now, one of my little classmates from Boys High was a hero, and his jersey was retired and all that was Clint Castleberry. He was in the class of 42 at Boys High School, a little fella. He was, I guess, the quarterback. And, of course, he was killed in the war. 

But the era of Bobby Dodd came in, and I guess that, to us, that was great. I'm glad they named the stadium after him, because I think he deserves it. 

So you, other than the games, you didn't really participate in too many of the other things that were going on. That's right. Yeah, that's right. 

Well, it came time for graduation, and you did it in two years. Did your folks come to your graduation? 

Of course. They did. They were happy. 

It was held at the Fox Theater, and we only had two auditoriums in Atlanta that could accommodate as many as, well, they had three places that could accommodate 5,000 people. 

You had the old city auditorium, the old municipal auditorium, and then you had the First Baptist church. Imagine nowadays they wouldn't allow that probably. And then you had the Fox Theater. And so there you were at the Fox. You had done it. You had actually graduated. Yeah, and so I had a job with IBM, which was a fine company to work for and an excellent situation. Mr. 

Jones of the Atlanta office sent me down to Savannah and that was just like a family down there you could you could learn every phase of their business because we only had about five people in the whole employee down the employment down there to handle everything from brunswick georgia up to paris island south carolina territory and back to swainsborough georgia enormous territory you were leaving your family again well that's that's okay i was home on weekends and i loved living down there no i mean that was uh not really much of a separation and i But the only thing wrong with it was that wasn't my cup of tea, you know. I didn't understand, didn't like the machine. 

For instance, some of my little worker that worked with me, he would do some stupid things, but instead of seeing that the problem was a little speck of dust on a relay point, you know, that's what you had then, no solid state, no chips, nothing, you know, nothing like like that. It was all magnetic things and relay points and little, you know. 

And instead of learning that you could correct a horrible seeming problem with one of those machines, you know, with just something as simple as getting a speck of dust off of a relay point, he tore the machine down to the timing gears and put it back together. 

Well, that's great. That boy had aptitude. He wouldn't be afraid of anything, you know. 

But you knew that wasn't what you wanted to do. I knew I was very limited. 

Yeah, I could wipe the dust off the relay point, but it'd be just like if I took a watch apart or something. I had no idea of ever doing anything like that. 

So how long did it take you to make up your mind that you were not going to stay there? 

They made it up for me. Oh, they did? 

We had a... It was the morning after this wild party We had a lot of fun. When I get enough beer in me, I'd love to sing. I'm a great, you know, I like to sing. I've done solos in churches and been in choirs and all for years. I should have been in a glee club back in those days. That's what I should have been in, high school in Tech. It's a great bonding thing is being in a choir. But, yeah, you know, we had a party out there at the mouth of the Savannah River. you know, at old Fort Moultrie in Savannah. And the next morning they told me that, well, you know, you're not really. I kind of wrote a letter apologizing for IBM spending as much money on it. 

And I thought in recent years, I thought, I wonder if I could have been real honest with them and said, look, if I'm going to work for you, put me in sales. 

I'll do all right in there, you know but not fixing these machines and so so you came back to it but I had never occurred to me you know 24 25 years old ever ever doing anything like that but so I came back and finally mama gave me some advice next time do what you're good at now that was is good advice for anybody so I did I went I I knew I liked communication and, in fact, what I wanted to do was get a job in the radio, you know, and just script writing and just live broadcasting, you know. I'd have probably enjoyed doing what you were doing and going out interviewing people, you know. 

So what you did was you went back to school. 

So I went to Emory University and they had a journalism department. Mr. Nixon has just recently died. 

I wrote an article for them in the little publication they have for, you know, those interested in journalism there, and they published it reminding them of what it was like. You had a tiny, a little small department. 

You could go in and talk to Ray Nixon, the head of the department, you know, any time you wanted, and he was real fatherly with us, you know, and, of course, by that time I was in my late 20s you know this was in 19 I was 25 years old 1949 but that's when you started back to school yeah and it was just lovely I mean and I was involved in more things then I you know there we had little acting groups you know and all and all but I wasn't involved yeah much socially I didn't start dating any of the girls in the, let's see, until later, yeah, when I was taking teacher training. 

Then I started dating some of these earlier girls, younger, I meant to say, girls that were in my class then, you know. How long did it take you to complete your journalism? 

Oh, no problem at all. 

This was getting a master's degree, you see, and you had some requirements, like, of course, to get a master's degree, you had to get the language thing, you know, and I had had Spanish was I knew was the easiest language. Of course, there was a requirement of German in tech back in those days, you know. You're supposed to be able to read scientific documents in German. I guess that was the reason. I doubt that they have that blanket requirement now, but, you know, it was fun to learn German. German is more fun maybe than Spanish, but it's a lot harder. 

So I took the requirement in Spanish, and I think I had to do it twice to get past it. That was the only difficult thing. The rest was just a piece of cake at Emory, entirely different from my experience at Tech. Everything was A's and just a lot of fun. You know, one of the most fun, perhaps, was on-the -job training down at WSB Studios. Of course, our AM 50,000-watt clear channel station was the biggest thing in Georgia in those days. Television was just getting started then, you know, 1948 and 9. 

So I did my thesis personally, monitoring local news on our three stations. You know, we had three television stations. Actually, I could do that. It was that everything was live television. 

It was some of the most ludicrous stuff in these live commercials, you know, trying to get a carton of Lee Jordan on WSB TV, trying to get this carton of frozen biscuits open, you know, bang, bang, bang. 

Now, what the sponsor was thinking while that was going, I'm paying this guy to make a fool out of my product. to know, but Lee was pretty cool with it, you know. 

So how, you got your degree in how many years was it? 

Well, there, let's see, I graduated in 51, so, and started back in the fall of 49, so a year and a half, I guess. Yeah. A year and a half. And that, you knew this time you were on the right track. 

Well, I wasn't because I didn't know how to get a job and what I would have had to have done. And by that time, Mom and I had made enough money off of timber out mostly on this place out here. Incidentally, I don't own any land out here now. 

We sold it all, but anyway, we had enough money to where we could have bought into a radio station if I had gone out in the country somewhere. 

But I was so naive, I thought I could ask our professors for a job. I mean, our professor was Marcus Bartley, the station manager of WSB. 

So you figured it would just give it to you. You know, and Elmo Ellis Israel. Elmo Ellis is still active, bless his heart, and he wrote some good columns in the paper. All right. 

Now, what happened next? 

You have your degree from Emory, and what was the decision made? 

Where were you going to go? 

Well, I still wanted to get a job in radio because I'd had technical training and journalism. 

Now, those are the two basic things you would need to be a well-rounded radio person. I knew nothing about business or selling ads or anything. I didn't know that end of it, but I knew some of the other things. But, of course, Marcus Bartley couldn't just up and give me a job at WSB. It wasn't quite that. Right. You couldn't walk right into the top station in the southeast or something. 

So the way to have done it would have been to have gone out in one of these little towns and bought into one of the radio stations. They were proliferating all over the place in the late 40s or early 50s, this was. And also, television was coming in a little bit. 

But a lot of little radio stations around. 

But I didn't do that, again, because I felt I had to look after my mother and all his farm property and all that. And now, we had quit operating. 

Daddy had sold all his cattle and there were no more tenant farmers or anything like that, no renters like that, but a few of the neighbors here rented part of the land, you know. 

So we got into timber and, of course, that's the best use of the land, the best and highest uses, as real estate folks say. 

So because the time was right. They had set up a good forestry thing, fire protection and all, and so I just went up here. Of course, Mama went with me, but I was in charge of it. 

Went up here to the state forestry station up here at the Blackshire Place up in Oakwood in the south of Gainesville and said, look, I've got all this land in Hall and Jackson County here, and what do I do? 

I'd like to make timber a crop and do it right. 

Well, he said, I think I've got a young man that can help you. He's working over here at Longleaf Lumber over here in Buford, and you go see him. He just graduated from the forestry school at the University of Georgia. 

So that's why Claude Brown and I got linked up. He's a few months younger than I am, just almost same age, and so Mama bonded to him real well. Mama didn't trust too many people, thank goodness. By this time, had your daddy passed away? 

Yes, he had. This was just after that. In fact, I was, of course, that was before I graduated. Of course, I may have said it wrong. 

Well, I didn't say it to you on our interview officially here, but he died in 1950, and I graduated in my master's program in journalism in 1951. Okay. 

So he was already gone a whole year before that. Okay. 

So you got hooked up with the forestry? 

Yeah. 

We looked out, so I figured my job was self-employment to look after the estate I had and not go, I didn't, you know, there was more money to me made here selling timber than there was any salary I could command anywhere. 

So that left me open to only do what I wanted to do. and I don't think really working at a radio station was that it. 

Back of my head, and I knew that really I wanted to teach because that's the ultimate in communication, I think. 

But for a few years you didn't. 

And so, well, I had to get certified in more training, get maybe a little more mature, and see that that was not satisfying just looking at the property. For a while it was fun, you know. Claude and I would get together. 

It was like having a brother working with me, you know, a nice kid that my mama liked and everything, you know, and he drew up plans and maps and we figured all this and what the proper way to handle, you know, the latest techniques of forestry and conservation. And it's wonderful, you know. It's like a crop. 

You can cull out your bad trees and you can maybe double or triple the growth rate of your your trees you don't have to plant them or do anything it's just there so you learned a lot yes and I learned to mark and estimate the volume of trees and I was doing about as well as Claude without an official education of forestry school you know and so but that got a little a little you know it was It wasn't enough content. It wasn't fulfillment for me at all. And so, well, it ended up in sometimes you have something internally that will affect you. I have always been an upbeat person, but I got into a state of depression, and that is no fun. You know, you hear that people, that's one of the most miserable things you can be. a healthy young man 31 years old depressed you know you can get to the point where you almost want to kill yourself you know and so what it was and again i don't ever remember my mother's you know but saying but about two things that time i come back from savannah lost my job you know well next time do what you're good at well i was good enough at this other stuff but it wasn't fulfilling. 

So when I got that depressed, she finally says, we need to go join the church, you know, get involved with other people, you know, which was excellent advice. 

So if you go to a church and say, look, I'm doing fine financially and every other way. I just want to help out. Can you find a job for a Lord? 

Yes. 

I mean, they had me in charge within a year of helping with the teenagers, which I knew absolutely nothing about, you know. 

But it was so much fun to get involved, you know. 

So that was a turning point in your life. Yes, it was a tremendous turning point. And I was doing it to save myself. I mean, I was forcing myself to risk outrageous things that these people would let me do. They told me years later, you know, we thought you were going to wreck the church in no way. You know, but bless their hearts, they'll let you do a lot of volunteer work, you know. 

And that's one reason I've continued to do the Meals on Wheels program once a week, every Friday, all these 20 years since they inaugurated that program, you know. As you know, it's an important thing. And bring volunteers down there to help and all. Yeah, because I always say they saved my life. 

But you needed to. That was a tremendous turning point, Marilyn. And that's exactly right. And that occurred in January 1956, and that changed everything. 

Did that help you make your decision to go after that teaching certificate? 

Of course it did, because I was involved with teachers there. We mentioned Joe Howey, which was my favorite at Georgia Tech. And it just opened the whole world, you know. 

So churches are wonderful organizations to get in, you know, to find your way. And find another family for you. 

Well, right. That's what they are. Exactly. And so I got to know a lot of people that, you know, that were fairly prominent around Atlanta. You couldn't get a handle on Atlanta as you could on Roswell or out here at Brazelton. I already knew my family, but that certainly helped. The mayor of Atlanta, of course, was active in that church. When you get my age, you can't remember even the most obvious names. Ivan Allen, of course, and his family. He was a very active elder in that church at that time. 

So you went from that back to Emory and got your teaching certificate. That didn't take very long, did it? 

No. And, of course, the best part was the practice teaching. And I had a real good time at that. I taught at Bass High School and had this lady that had never had that mature a man. After all, that was 1958. I was 33 years old then, and a male, too. And, of course, I was teaching American history and 12th graders and 11th and 12th graders. Did you know right away? 

It was just great. I thought, boy, if it's going to be this much fun. 

And it wasn't quite, because the next year they put me teaching eighth graders, and that's quite a jump to go from teaching juniors and seniors, you know. 

But so I got a job at DeKalb County, which was the best. 

I still think it would have been the best school system to work with back then, public schools, because those people had moved out of Atlanta, DeKalb, to get their kids in the school. And Jim Cherry could do anything he wanted to. We'd pass bond issues 10 to 1, and it was a glory year, as I always call it. Teachers were treated like heroes. You had very little problem with the kids, you know. One word to a parent was generally enough back then, you know. And nobody bothered us. 

We had the track system where you had your kids, which was probably really wrong, you know, but you had them segregated according to, you know, different levels of aptitude, and that made teaching easy. You could plan for, you know, so it was a lot of fun. Did your mama approve? 

What did she think about it? 

Oh, gosh, yes. She wanted to be a teacher. Oh, did she? 

But her papa wouldn't let her. No daughter of mine is going to get out there and do that. 

Well, he was a real old-fashioned, this grandfather I'm talking about. Wonderful man. I mean, he came out of the Civil War with $10,000 in hard money, and we're still living on it. We're still living. That did it. I mean, you knew that was there. And that was a huge amount of money right after the Civil War. 

So he could buy land anywhere he wanted, go anywhere he wanted, do anything he wanted. You know, it was wonderful. And he enabled you to do what you wanted in that way. 

Well, yeah, even though he had been dead 25 years when I was born. 

But you were able then to. 

But it does make a difference through the generations. Sure, sure. uh so uh now where are we now let's see how long did you teach you oh yeah 17 years okay we started opened the school cross keys high school and in uh in august 1958 and i was part of the original faculty there and of course i made some wonderful friends in the faculty and some of them uh two of my best friends, you know, or one of them was a teacher that came there two years after I started, and the principal called me up one Sunday afternoon and said, Mr. 

Thorne, we just generally didn't use first names, you know, in those days, and I've got a teacher coming in here now that I want you to kind of take under your wing, and he had it figured right. He knew that we would be compatible, you know. 

This fellow, he couldn't see well enough he was myopic you know he was our language teacher and all and he so we've been good friends ever since then and I did take him under my wing and that's and so and of course we followed through when he married and his wife caters a lot of my meals for me when I have these dinners and things So it's been a good fruit. Oh, yeah. 

And then the guy that really ran the school, one principal through, principals came and go, but this administrative, whatever, administrative helper or whatever you call him, you know, was a fish title, but he actually had the character to run the school. 

So he's been a good friend all these years, and he's 12 years older than I am, but it looks like he's going on forever. 

So here you are. You spent 17 years there. Oh, yeah. And that became another family for you, another very rewarding thing. Right, and, of course, I picked up some friends among the students, too, you know. Sure. 

But finally, I was getting to my health -wise. It was too fast a pace for me, and mainly it was the system changed. Accountability came in, which can be a little rough. 

If we handled the school as a family is the way we did, we'd help each other, you know, the faculty. And we didn't have to follow any edicts that came down from the central office, you know. That wasn't the way it was done. 

So when things began to change, it became a little more uncomfortable. And I thought, well, I got high blood pressure. I may end up like my daddy. I think I'd better quit this fast pace and look after. and we were starting a subdivision over on my property over in Athens at that time and the guy that was running that, Tom, quit this teaching business and get down to your own business. Look after your own business over here. 

It didn't take a whole lot of pushing from my doctor, you know, you're going to die if you don't do something about this blood pressure and all that sort of stuff. 

So I thought, well, I don't have any aspirations to. 

So I did a terrible thing. I quit in the middle of the year. 

You're not supposed to do that, you know, but I carried through the year, you know, I would make out exams and let the substitute teachers give them to the kids, but I just suddenly just gave out. It was time. It was time, yeah. 

But I've enjoyed some of the classes that had me back to their reunions and all, and it's fun, you know. 

So you focused then on the family business. Yeah, and we had this subdivision to run over there and all. And, of course, we did a lot of traveling. 

Now, I admit feeling a little bit like, what am I going to do, you know? 

You know, I've got to develop something here. You almost panic when you suddenly walk out and there's no job to go to or anything. No structure, no coaching. Right, no structure. And so what I did, well, I loved to travel. I got a good project. I've done this before, and a lot of people have done it. I'm going to photograph every courthouse. Boy, it's a beautiful in this morning's paper, that Douglas County at New Court. I hadn't even seen that before. 

So I went out, and Georgia's too big. I finished up South Carolina first. It only had 46 counties. 

So that was fun. 

I had traveled, you know, *****-nilly around the country, all over the country, but I never specifically, and I really enjoyed that. I went into counties in 28 different states. 

I finished up eight states completely, turned it into the state archives, you know, you know, and so that kept me occupied for several years. I did an awful lot of traveling with that. And by that time, well, let's see. 

Actually, what happened was I think the key to it was when our minister of program at Atlanta First, Presbyterian, decided he had had enough there. It got too hot for him there. 

So he did what he was real good at too, which was starting a new church. 

So he arranged it through his – he managed his own presbytery so that he set himself up as the – and actually it was the first dual presbytery church ever heard of. 

The Methodists don't have church in two districts and Presbyterians don't have churches in two presbyteries, but he did. 

And he got Atlanta to spend its money in Cobb County and another presbytery, which was really a good thing. And then he would really motivate people to get on board. And it was fun. Boy, I never had as much fun. I wrote a book on it. I did the history. You can see it in there, and I'll let you have a look at it. Our first year, I call it. And that was 20 years ago, 1978. 

So that was another turning point in my life. And what church was this? 

Well, it had two names. I gave it its name. He was going to name it Concord, and I suggested Highlands, and he liked the name. And everything up there on Long Sandy Plains Road is Highlands. You've got Highland Point, Highland Colony, two subdivisions. 

So it's the Highlands Presbyterian Church. Highlands, that's what it was. And then they took some money forcing them to use the family name Ray in the name of the church. 

So that was a real traumatic time when the church had to vote on that, you know. I'd rather change my child's name than change this church, you know. We had all kinds of things, but Gene talked him into that, and I helped him. He said, Tom, please help me on this, and I did, you know, gave a speech, you know. You can call it Little Bo Peep if you want, but we need that money. It's for the Lord's work, so don't get hung up on the name. Yeah, it's devilish to make us name it after Ms. 

Ray, but anyway, so it's Ray hyphen Thomas, who was our son-in-law, Ray hyphen Thomas Memorial Presbyterian Church. That's the full name of it. And it had one of the best choirs of any of the North Metro churches. And I ended up, that was a difficult choir. I ended up, you know, I was in that choir. came back and rejoined that church in 93 just to get back in that choir, but it was tough. 

But what happened is, just as you said a while ago, it was your family. 

Well, I got greedy. I knew it worked, and so I'd say, I'll start a new family. I'll go over and every new church has come along. 

Well, Daddy's family are all Methodists, and I always usually went to Methodist churches in other parts of the country because you didn't have Southern Baptist churches and, you know, the Presbyterians weren't that, you know, numerous either. 

But the Methodists were a lot of fun, you know, and so they had a lot of up-date programs. 

They had children's, you know, Siemens and all that long before they had some real talented people in those churches up north. 

So you went to work for a different church? 

So I, well, the Methodists finally, after seven years, North Georgia Conference opened the new church, and he is now the minister. 

The bishop let him be the minister at Glen Memorials, and he's running the Emory faculty, whatever they want to do there. 

But anyhow, that was the next one, and I had a lot of friends there, and then there were several churches that started up. 

I'd go get involved with them even though I wasn't able to join all of them joined uh uh alpharetta presbyterian when they got going there and then back to ray thomas to get back in their choir you know so you retired from teaching so that you could become a full-time well yeah i was in i was in of course kiwanis club the same pastor that started that first new church that i was involved with he started kiwanis club and that was even more fun in a way so you got involved in yeah i learned what it uh the fun of of a person like me you know to enjoy uh public things like that uh as the we started the historical society in roswell about time i moved up to roswell in 71 i was i was one reason i was well yeah this church started to 78, so I'd already been living out there and was commuting back and forth to Atlanta because I was a deacon in the other church, and, of course, I was an original elder in the new church up there. And when did your mom pass away? 

She didn't die until the end of 1968. She was in her 88th year, so I had her for 44 years, and she talked all the time like I do. There was no secret. You knew everything about her. 

My daddy is an enigma if I could have somebody back because I wasn't mature enough to do like you're doing, interviewing. 

And he had all this history and wonderful things bottled up in him and not much of it came out because he was not a compulsive communicator. My mama was and obviously I am. 

So she had an opportunity to see you get over all this depression and really get involved. Oh, Lord, yeah, that didn't last but a few months. man i just got so busy and she well it opened up a life to her too the advice she gave me she took herself and she joined it got into everything at the church so in our mid-70s it was a she was back up in the she had entertained out at our homeland buckhead and and we had moved left the down you know in boulevard park and moved out to buckhead and uh and eventually and she just she had a great time and we kept on traveling and all that and uh and so she was uh it was a it was a good time for her too and of course she enjoyed seeing me vicariously she saw me do what she and i i really believe that she would have been a better school teacher than i am because she was more focused and and and tougher person than i am but she got a chance to see you oh yeah And after she passed away, you moved to Roswell. That's when you went there. Yeah, because she didn't want to live that far. As long as she could, she would ride. People thought she had a job downtown, really. 

I mean, she'd get on the trolley bus or something and ride all the way downtown every day because it just entertained her. 

She liked to get down there in those old stores on the south side of town, you know, where they'd get into pulling contests over some counter, you know, some cut-rate thing, you know. She kept herself going. Yeah, I remember the day she bought these Rebel Wieners down on Georgia Avenue. 

The idea of somebody buying you groceries down there, you know, and brought them home and had stuck up the whole house. And I thought, Mama, we've got to quit this business of shopping down in that part of town, you know. 

Well, let's buy it at some decent store, you know. You don't need to save that money. We've got plenty of money now, you know. And she finally did. She began to wear good clothes and everything. In the old days, if you gave her something, you'd take that right back and get the money back. I'm not going to have you spending money frivolously like that, you see. And she kept Daddy pretty well under control, you know, and me too, you know. 

So that helped. 

If you go through bad times, it's hard to be anything but frugal once you've gone through bad times. 

Well, she never, you know, as I said, her father had all this money, so she never had it. It was just her nature. No, thank goodness. 

But the world was having a depression and things like that. Yeah, Daddy foolishly got in debt to the Brazelden family. I mean, people did some awful naive things, and it was her property that he got the debt on. 

So I imagine that shortened his days some. him. He evidently gambled on cotton futures. You could do that. 

He put a loan thinking the price was going up and, of course, the Depression in 29 was just as much of a shock to those people as it would be to us now, maybe more so. 

Well, fortunately there was enough to sustain them. Oh, yeah, because he had his fine salary and he was real quiet. 

If he hadn't kept the low profile, probably people would have said, this guy doing a clerk's job is raking in all this money, 50 cents out of every certified copy plus a good salary. 

What's he doing in all this? 

And, of course, Daddy nearly worked himself to death because he had to finance his whole department there. And he would hardly hire anybody because it meant that much less out of his earnings. And he poured it all into this out here, you know, into helping these people out. When a mule died, that was $300. Huge money in those days. And he helped a lot of people out. I'm proud of all the things he did, and I sure had a good background. 

They didn't have to preach at me because they lived such fine lives, both of them, my father and mother both that strong role models yeah right and and that's that's i wish all the kids could have that i mean i that my complaint was they didn't give me enough outside social life and i didn't i wasn't most kids will claim it you know they'll just go out and start chasing girls or get involved with their peers and all that but i wasn't that way i was shy about that you know and I didn't learn how much fun social life was until I was way up in years, you know. 

But I enjoyed it then, and I had, I guess, more money and more experience, you know. 

So I threw big parties on both my 64th and 65th birthdays. 

We rented Naylor Hall in Roswell, and I had, I think that was the most people I ever had in a bash, you know. About 300 people invited. 64 and 65. 

Well, yeah. One was kind of a preview. Of course, 65 is something to celebrate, man. 

You get, you know, I hope that'll continue that people can look forward to Social Security and all that stuff. Are you having one every year since? 

Oh, no. No. 

Well, we have a little dinner, you know, of 20 people here or something, you know. 

But no more 300? 

No, I have a monthly, about every month I invite a different group of people. I've got a bunch coming the 18th of this month, you know, and all that. And I mix people. Some of them I haven't seen in years. I mix different people together, you know, and social engineering, you could call it that. Another degree for you. Right. You continue your volunteer work, not only with Habitat, but with the churches. 

Well, I have done some with Habitat. I'm at Meals on Wheels. Meals on Wheels. Yeah, they got one of the best private programs down there of anybody. 

And at one time, they were delivering about, I had charge of about 50 meals each Friday at Calvin Court High Rise in Buckhead. 

Now it's dwindled down about 10. Tom Thornton, you've got some real passions in your life. Tell us about some of them. 

Well, I think I'm a communicator. and so I like to sing, I like to talk, I like to write and I don't like, well I read a good deal too I take a lot of publications and all. One of them is politics I've always enjoyed that. 

I can remember walking home from junior high in 1936 when Roosevelt was running for his second term you know and this little fella from up north, he was going to be a Republican and he was opposing Roesfeld even then, you know. And we would argue, and you'd never get mad at each other. And I'd follow him up into his house, and the argument would continue for the longest time, you know. 

Well, one of the things you did all this time that very few people do was you kept a diary, didn't you? 

Yes. I guess I can give some credit to my parents on that. They would give me one, and I'd of course make, it was pitiful. I mean, you'd go a few days and give it up. 

But every year they'd give me another one. 

Now, why they knew to do that, I don't know. 

But it was a good idea, and I'd keep it a little while. 

As I grew older, a little bit longer and a little bit longer, and then there was so much disruption during the war years and all, and it took me a while I was living down in Savannah and off and on. I did work for IBM, as we explained down there. there. 

But I think there was something about entering the second half of the century, January 1, 1950. And I was 25 years old then, and I thought, I got to do something about this. I got to get serious and get back to this diary keeping. You know, I did pretty well in the 40s. And so I started January 1, 1950, and I haven't missed a day. 

Now, this cousin that looks after my computers, he had my belongings when I was really out of it, you know, for about two or three days here with his heart bypasses back ten years ago. 

But he proceeded to write the entry in my diary for those two days so the chain wouldn't be broken. And I've never corrected it. I just left what he put in there. It was way too flattering of me, you know. 

But that's what he wrote, and that was history, you know. 

Now, my will says that they go to the Atlanta Historical Society. I was an early member of that, and I think they can look at it. I like Franklin Garrett. You know, everybody knows he's a streetcar nut. Yeah, now, we haven't brought up the fact that you're a streetcar nut. 

Well, yeah, I grew up at the end of a car line, and that did it. That huge presence there was just more than I, it had to mean something to me. i just absolutely got in love with them i think one thing is it's the opposite of an airplane it is the most rigid particularly if you've got an overhead well or the third rail idea either one you're you're more rigid in the thing of course that's one of its drawbacks you know but it is so rigid uh it go you know where it's going uh you can see the tracks you can see the overhead or something and it's not it's not going to go one way one day and one another it's the security of it you know and then of course uh the year after i was born in 1925 was a point when that became the decline it was the fifth largest industry i think that was maybe in terms of employment or total revenues in our country in 1925. it was downhill of course the automobile did it mainly I love automobiles and always have, and that's why I have a little problem with this guy that restored. We are good friends and correspond, and we've been good friends for a quarter of a century or more. 

He was a fanatic enough to actually restore one of our Atlanta streetcars, and it's operating up there in our museum in East Haven, Connecticut. Our museum being the trolley car? 

I'm a member of it, yeah. 

Now there's lots of museums around the country. Southerners, for some reason, have very little interest in trolley cars. I've got one theory about that. We were so poor down here that we didn't have a network of interurban systems. 

In other parts of the country, every little village was on an electric car line back in the early days of this century. And you had your choice, either take the train or ride the clean electric trolley car. You know, you could go from Maine to Minnesota practically across the north, but down here nothing. 

I mean, Texas had a fairly good little system out there, but in the southeast, there were a lot of plans, but they never got enough money to get started with it. 

Now, do you spend time going to visit these old cars? 

Oh, I had seen it. I had, fortunately, a recollection of a lot of the systems before they were gone. I can remember streetcars in Athens, Georgia in 1930, 30 the last year they were operating there. Gainesville, they cut them out a little too soon, but the car tracks were there for years and years. They didn't pave over the streets so anybody could see where they used to run, you know. 

So that's become a hobby of yours. Yeah, and my mama liked it, too. And she would come by herself to Atlanta back in the early days. She would get on, you know, people weren't afraid of being mugged or anything in those. They'd get on by herself and ride out to the end of all different car lines. That was the way you sightseed, you know, did your sightseeing. And you're still doing that. 

Well, I don't travel as much as I used to, but I did an awful lot. I got to see just about all the operating systems in the country. And I have been to a few trolley conventions, one in Cleveland and then a real big one in Chicago. 

We had over 1,000 people from the two largest trolley fan associations together, and you'd hear every technical point there is on that. 

And I have helped Carson do the one book he did get published on the general corporate history, more or less, of Atlanta streetcar system, but the other two books, and a lot that i wrote a good part of that second book finally i think he's got some funding to get through those two books uh one will be on the the act details of the atlanta streetcar system the georgia power system and the other one is on all the uh all the cities of georgia there were many many different streetcar systems in georgia uh and so uh so that's that that's been i've helped him some with that. And of course, we've corresponded. he'll give me assignments and I'll go check things out for him and all, you know. 

So it's an abiding interest. Right. And now, giving these dinners has been a great fun for me. 

You know, I find out if you feed them, people really will block out enough time to come see you and enjoy and talk. 

And one of the other big passions, one of the things that you're working on now is your autobiography. Right. And this has introduced you to the wonderful world of computers. 

Well, one of my cousins, that was really his interest always. Almost any job he had, he'd get into the part where he ran a computer. 

So finally he's reached the point where he's working for IBM Lotus, which I think is where he belongs, and he can teach groups. Last week he was doing that. And he's teaching you. Oh, yeah, right. And his mother, which is a lot harder problem than me, you know. 

So, yeah, he's very patient with us. And tell us how the book is coming along. 

Well, I have gotten up to page, let's see, 896 is what I'm on now. Wow, this is so hard. And I've tried to close the gap. 

I started it in 93, and, of course, you know, I didn't move as fast with it, But I'm going faster and faster with it, trying to close the gap. And I want to end it with the end of the century, which I think is the end of year 2000. I think most people agree we've got one more year. We've got next year and the year after. And if my health lasts, I think I can finish the thing in that time. and I have published this book on Georgia counties that I did back in the 70s and got it in the libraries, and I was trying to get it in all the school systems, but I didn't do enough copies to bring the per-unit cost down low enough, you know. 

But I like to publish things. Tom, now this book is based on your diaries. Yeah, that's your main source. It's more than just your life. It's the life of the times around. Right, that's the thing. 

You think, well, who in the world would be interested in this nut writing his own personal experiences? 

Well, look, if you tell what the weather's like, if you tell this store opened now, they paved this road now. 

So it's a history of the time. Yeah, it's a history of the time. 

Some of the best history, most fascinating in Atlanta's historical society and our records are people that kept a diary back in the early days of Atlanta. And, boy, they put some things in there that I wouldn't put in mine. I mean, they'd personally criticize somebody, you know, and that was a little rough, you know. 

But it was perspective. 

Well, yeah, so I've tried to be careful, maybe because I had a little bit of training in journalism about libel and all that stuff, you know. And I just don't want to be mean-spirited anyhow. What's going to be the name of this book? 

I don't know. 

I thought about Tom's 20th century or something like that because it covers three-quarters of the 20th century. 

They had me, of course, we were always out here at the farm, as we called it, so they had me sleeping in a bureau drawer. You know, you pull out an old chest of drawers and put the baby in there. They've told me that story a lot. Of course, I couldn't remember that. 

I was just a few weeks old, and an old house that doesn't even exist, you couldn't even find where it was, you know, down in the woods here. We had many families here. 

Now, this property, this subdivision zone was our caretaker's place. We did not own this particular piece of land. 

That's kind of ironic that you end up buying a house that didn't actually be on the land when you owned it. Right, because the developer paid more for this than he did for all the adjoining land. 

And I did sell it, and he's starting just up the road here, the next phase of this subdivision on land that was mine. 

But I'd rather be over here because Green Baird that had this place looked after it. 

He kept the fields open, and to me it's much prettier than a second-growth timber over yonder, you know. 

So we're going to be writing this book until we complete the century. Yeah, I've got to close the gap. I'm up to December 1989 now, and I've got to close the gap up to current. 

And wouldn't that be great? 

Hopefully sometime along about 99 or 2000, I'll be able in the next couple of years, I'll be able to have it absolutely up to date, you know. 

And tomorrow I can write what today, you probably should leave a little gap there to think it over you know but then then terminate it and of course by that that time at last year i'll be whining getting a publisher uh you know and a lot of this i've got now photographs i've got 200 albums of photographs uh you know back yonder and we can cover a lot of this uh put illustrations in the book whatever way is the now this paper port works well on this humongous yeah Yeah, you can actually collate it in with the text, you know, yourself. 

But I let a publisher guide me through it, and Billy will help me on that, too, you know. 

So that's a fun project, and I look forward to that. I'm going to give it away, just to give it to anybody that, you know, is significant in it. 

There must be hundreds and hundreds of names of people in that thing, you know, and those that are still living would have any interest in it. Are you indexing it? 

I'd love to give you a copy of it. You keep in touch with me now. We'd love to have a copy of it. Lord willing, in the year 2001, we'll have that thing hand out. 

Well, that sounds wonderful. Is it going to be indexed? 

It better be. What I'm doing is I figure by years is probably the easiest. 

I've got a chapter arrangement, But I think one of the quickest things is probably a better arrangement is by years, you know, because it is chronological. 

Well, it's quite an ambition to take on something like that. And it's going to be a real what we call a tomb, isn't it? 

A tomb, obviously. 

Now, I like choir work. That's something that's... And you're still singing? 

Oh, yeah. I've got the deepest voice and I'm the oldest person in our choir. And I just go crazy some days. Like yesterday, you know, we did the July 4th pro. We opened the service with the national anthem. Two stanzas of it. And I've never done that in a church before. But, boy, we belted that thing out, you know. And I thought, boy, this is great, you know. I just really enjoy that, you know. And so, yeah, and I like to write. I love to correspond. And there are a few people that like it just as much as I do. 

I've got several people, and some of them are very interested in learning more about their family history and all. 

Are you still keeping track of the property up in Athens, or have you been able to do all that? 

What that represents now is the Goodyear store down in, and that's a real special store. 

It's in a black, rather affluent neighborhood, you know, in southeast Atlanta down off of 20 East, you know, Snapfinger. That's where it is. 

And the Goodyear Company paid me rent on that a whole year before they felt comfortable in opening the store. They wanted to get just the right fellow. They really wanted to make that work. And I'm all in favor of that, you know. It's been a difficult thing. We've seen at one time Greenbrier was the best shopping center. It was better than Lenox Square at one time. And you saw what happened there. they all ran away and and you've got a you know a section out there in southeast South DeKalb but hopefully and so the Goodyear company and we got that written up in the paper you know I don't they didn't I don't think even I don't want it in there but I feel good about that you know that maybe we're helping to do something that you know that way because well Tom you've had a very colorful life You've been involved with lots of people and done lots of things. Yeah, for a kid that was so shy he couldn't hardly do it. 

Well, then a lot of young people are there. You certainly know that teaching school. 

And I guess I put them through miseries because in teaching geography, I wanted them to make, even in American history, but particularly with the younger ones in geography, I had them up talking. Everybody had to do it. I mean, up talking in front of the class. And I'm sure that was misery for some of those shy kids. 

But the other kids, they were pretty tolerant of it. And I think I helped them a little bit by giving them that experience, you know. It's hard to imagine that you were shy. It's hard to imagine. Yeah, that's what everybody tells me. 

But this is a cover-up, you see. That's the way you overcompensate. That's exactly it. 

Particularly if you've taught school, it wouldn't mean anything for me to walk up to a podium and start talking to a big audience, you know. But, I mean, privately with people, I don't think I'm as shy as I used to be with that. 

Well, you get old enough, you don't care so much anymore. 

Well, I mean, there is a certain amount of respect and interest you have. 

I wish I could live to be 100 just so I could, you know, you've got to be past 100 now before anybody really pays much attention to your age. 

But just think how colorful you would be. Yeah, my most helpful cousin out here is 92 years old, and boy, she is something else. See all the history she has. 

She will come here and just, well, she'll take charge, help you out with all kinds of things, active in everything that's going on, knows everybody. What a wonderful way to be able to live all those years and stay involved and stay useful. And that's what you're going to be doing. 

Well, I hope so. 

Well, when you look back at all the years, any regrets? 

Anything you would have done differently? 

Well, yeah. I mean, sure, there's regrets. It would have been nice to have had a family and all that, but you can't worry about that. You didn't make that choice. Yeah, right. And maybe the right person didn't come along to get into it. 

But anything you would have done differently? 

Not a whole lot. 

I think you probably hear that from a lot of people, because I think I wanted to follow the path that my parents had led, and I think we've got a great challenge now that finally our country is realizing. 

Maybe we needed to ease up from the old Victorian things and a lot of the hypocrisy that we had earlier in the century, but I think we've gotten—you had an example the other evening on television. You had Milton Berle, who was 90 years old. You had Art Linkletter, who was 86. You had all these people, you know, all past 75. 

And Larry King asked them, he said, what about like language and all that, what do you think of the president? 

They absolutely said, no, no, we wouldn't. You know, why can't we get back to, you know, more civil times than most people are. and i i think the pendulum always swings too far before it's yeah yeah you're right that's it that's what we have to believe and it'll come back yeah i mean uh it's it's okay to show more than your ankles you know and that i mean things were so strict back there in those days and all this ***** that went on quietly and nobody knew about it you know of children and everything that is There's been a lot of good that, but it's just the general, you know, when you see our faith and our religion and our things like that bashed publicly by the elite journalism and all that, you know. 

And I think one solution is to keep folks in power, and I think we're heading that way, which will continually get the people straightened out, you know, and move, but we don't want the pendulum to go too far the other way either. You always got to watch that. Yeah, the old saying, it's got to get worse before it can get better. And I think it's gotten worse and people realize that. I was, I'm getting on my, up in my pulpit now. 

I'll tell you my own personal experience in teaching school and what it was like at our school, which was typical, I guess, of many schools when things were cracked down on that, that we had more evangelism going on in public school because most people liked it. And, I mean, nobody was forced into it or anything. And then all of a sudden you couldn't do any of that. You couldn't read the Bible. 

You couldn't have your Christian athletes meeting on campus during the school day or anything like that. And people, of course, are going to react to that. What's happened? 

They've stole our way of life. You remember football games at Georgia Tech and how much fun it was. You'd get the old guy from Auburn Avenue, you know, and wow, they'd applaud like a touchdown. When he'd do those prayers, it was showmanship. And it was good to show respect for somebody for a higher authority than we are, you know. And I think that's going to come back. I think you're going to see it now as more discussion of that. Morals seem to be one of the main issues when you get your divorce rate up like it is now. 

And I tell you, my generation is going to keep on complaining because, yeah, a lot of things were corrected that needed to be. Don't go too far. Yeah, right, and you've got to pull the old ship back in line. You said that one of the major things you learned at Georgia Tech was discipline. Oh, yeah, right. You had a job to do, and they were tough enough. You see there, the guy I admired the most was the toughest of all, Joe Howey, wonderful man. 

So discipline never hurt you at all. It was kind of a cornerstone for you. It helped you do everything you've done along the way ever since. You have to have it. Everybody recognizes that. Even people maybe that we don't admire too much have had that. You never get anywhere if you don't follow through and have a goal and go toward it. 

Well, if we had to wrap this all up, we had to sum this up, how would you look back at your life, Tom Thornton? 

What would you say? 

Well, I think I've been very lucky and I think the Lord's been real good to me. And I hope I haven't hurt anybody. I know a lot of times, particularly when you teach in school, you don't realize you know that much. You've got to be sensitive to that and that. I would think just from listening to your story today, you helped a whole lot more than you hurt. 

Well, you're real gracious. Yeah, I think that would be the case. 

It sounds like all your volunteer work and you continue New Year volunteer work and looking out for other folks. It's been a life well lived. Yes, sir. We'll look forward to the next 25 years. I'd love it. Somebody come back. Come back and interview me again. We'll start another. Somebody will. All the buyers of the new millennium here starting in the year 2001. I keep on writing those diaries. One of these mornings I'm going to wake up and say, gosh, I can't remember anything. And I have to go back and look at my appointment. But, oh, that's what I did yesterday. It'll happen. 

But until it does... It keeps you alert anyway. You keep fine writing. Thank you for letting us come and join you today. We've very much enjoyed hearing your story. Thank you, Marilyn. I think we both did. We're glad you're a compulsive communicator. Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much. Thank you.