{"id":533,"date":"2017-06-08T01:13:25","date_gmt":"2017-06-08T05:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=533"},"modified":"2017-06-08T01:13:25","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T05:13:25","slug":"an-uncommon-young-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=533","title":{"rendered":"AN UNCOMMON YOUNG MAN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_0874\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Roy Oliver (Senior Picture) 1957<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"IMG_0886\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction,\u00a0 and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction.\u00a0 Available at: NewSouth Books:\u00a0www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and Amazon<\/strong>.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

As kids these days might say, many of my memories of my school days suck.\u00a0 Being one of the biggest and oldest in my class, because my parents didn\u2019t bother to put me in school until I was well past eight, didn\u2019t help.\u00a0 Neither did being poor and barefoot until 6th grade.\u00a0 Extreme shyness added to my problems.\u00a0 With all that, however, there were bright spots\u2014a few teachers who took an interest, books which I soon found provided a world of adventure I could share with siblings, and several amazingly wonderful kids who took the trouble to be my friends. \u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n


First among these would have to be Hazel Brooks.\u00a0 Hazel was so well liked by everyone that just being her friend guaranteed me a certain degree of acceptance,\u00a0 Miss Albertson (Later, Mrs. Brackett) and Mr. Benson were two of the East Side School teachers who encouraged and praised me.\u00a0 Then, much later, there was Roy Oliver.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know Roy until 10th grade, when four Whitfield County Schools formed a consolidated high school.\u00a0 My school, East Side, was the poorest of the county.\u00a0 One of the high school teachers told me much later that East Side kids either sank or swam in that new school, and that it seemed sometimes more were sinking than swimming.\u00a0 In everything but math, I guess I was swimming, though only by great effort.\u00a0 Roy Oliver was from the far more prosperous and scholastic Pleasant Grove School community.\u00a0 He was involved in sports\u2014lettering in football\u2014and he was popular with both students and faculty.\u00a0 Every year he was one of the class leaders.\u00a0 This is a lifetime responsibility, by the way, Every reunion we\u2019ve ever had, Roy was there to call us to order.\u00a0 In addition to all this, Roy was intelligent.\u00a0 He was the valedictorian of our class.<\/strong>

With all this going for him, you\u2019d think Roy would have been stuck on himself, but he wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 He was nice to everyone.\u00a0 He was gentlemanly.\u00a0 One big proof of this (for me) was something that happened senior year.\u00a0 Back then, each homeroom was responsible for cleaning the room.\u00a0 This meant sweeping, emptying trash cans and pencil sharpeners, and cleaning chalkboards.\u00a0 The janitor took care of halls and restrooms.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think this was a bad system, by the way.\u00a0 Students were included in the responsibility for maintaining the appearance of the school.\u00a0 The chores were rotated among homeroom students, two of us each day.\u00a0 Somehow, on one of my days, my assigned partner was absent, and that suited me fine.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have to make small talk with anyone.\u00a0 At recess, I got the broom and waited for the room to clear so I could begin work. \u00a0<\/strong>

Suddenly, there was Roy, moving desks for me voluntarily.\u00a0 \u201cTwo people can work faster than one,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cBe there in a minute,\u201d he called to his friends.<\/strong>

Embarrassed, I protested, \u201cI can do it.\u00a0 It\u2019s no trouble. You don\u2019t need to help.\u201d<\/strong>

It was no use.\u00a0 He refused to leave until the last of the cleaning was done.\u00a0 It was a small thing, but not so small either\u2014for one of the most popular boys in school to be so kind to someone who definitely wasn\u2019t in the In Crowd.<\/strong>

The years have taken us in different directions\u2014Roy and me\u2014and yet Roy Oliver is still on a short list of those people I\u2019ve most respected down through the years.\u00a0 His values were in the right place in 1957, and, from what I\u2019ve heard of him since, his values are still rock solid.\u00a0 People like him are not found in great abundance.<\/strong>

<\/h2>\n

But then, they never have been.<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roy Oliver (Senior Picture) 1957 My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction,\u00a0 and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction.\u00a0 Available at: NewSouth Books:\u00a0www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":538,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}