Newnan is probably the small town I’ve spent the most time living and working in. But there was one other that I will never, ever forget. From my book, “The Veterinarian’s Wife, a Memoir:”
All four years Rick was in vet school, I worked full time at the local bank in Tuskegee, Ala., on the town square. I showed up six days a week to perform my duties as executive secretary to the president and vice president.
Alabama Exchange Bank President Allen Parker was an older white man in a predominantly Black town — a well-respected, civic-minded, big-hearted soul, often hiring wives of vet students when there were openings. Mr. Parker was kind enough to employ me when no one else had or would. I was still a rusty typist when I showed up in 1971, and I knew nothing about banking. I learned all of that on the job, thanks to him.
Mr. Parker lived with his sweet wife and two little yip-yip Pomeranians in a modest brick ranch just down Main Street, halfway between the bank and the grassy corner lot on which our tuna-can trailer was situated. A staunch proponent for the Black community, Mr. Parker granted an unsecured loan to a prominent local Black lawyer and civil rights activist, Fred Gray, by providing bank funding to finally litigate the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Parker required no repayment until the case was settled.
I was fortunate enough to walk right into a position being vacated by a senior student’s wife. Richie and Sue Savino were from Long Island, N.Y., and would be moving back there after graduation. Sue was brilliant and friendly. She trained me and showed me the ropes. Richie was innately funny. His Long Island accent and sunny personality made everyone around him happy. A burly guy who looks at every dog and says in a laughing falsetto, “Hoo hoo da pwuppy dwahwg!” was immediately our kind of guy.
After four years, I had learned how to type like the wind and be a phone-answering, task-juggling, problem-solving, customer-service-rendering, multitasking secretarial whiz and general Girl Friday. I took Lionel Richie’s phone payments in person when he was still a Commodore. I filled baskets on the lobby tables with matchbooks bearing the bank’s logo and watched daily in amusement as customers opened wide their purses or paper bags, dumping them all in. I typed loan papers, insurance forms and letters. I essentially did whatever needed to be done, including roasting the bank president’s fresh peanuts each week.
The bank’s vice president, J.T. DanielJr., was probably in his 40s at the time. He was a sweet, sunny man whose large wooden desk was positioned next to mine behind the polished wood, courtroom-style banisters that encircled the bank lobby. J.T. was a paradox. He wore his fastidiousness — always neatly dressed in pressed slacks and polished shoes. I noticed his hyper-clean, manicured hands right away when he opened an envelope, taking a small mother-of-pearl pocketknife from his pants pocket and slowly slitting the envelope with careful, surgical precision, pinky up.
J.T.'s desk, however, was a rat’s nest. It was piled at least two feet high with papers, books, folders and things unseen. For years, J.T. and his desk were the butt of good-natured jokes, but he could produce anything he needed as effortlessly as Elvis could sing. Mr. Daniel also had a regular hobby. I bolstered him with compliments on the days he came into the bank proudly brandishing yet another handmade, shiny, green-glazed celery dish from his weekly ceramics class.
After four years, that was a lot of peanuts and celery dishes.
My co-workers were all Southern to the core — most of them well over 40 — and had names like Dovie and Miss Louise. Many grew up in Tuskegee, lived in Macon County, had never left and were fine with that. Others commuted from “out of town,” which included Auburn or tiny Notasulga, whose population was in the hundreds.
That full-time, six-days-a-week job of mine at the Alabama Exchange Bank brought home the princely sum of $300 per month with no benefits.
It was a unique, four-year adventure during which I earned my secretarial stripes and bragging rights and gained a ton of valuable insight. I witnessed true perseverance, generosity, kindness and engagement daily in friendly, inclusive conversations and community awareness — at my job, in the town, and at Rick’s vet school. It was an eye-opening sociological experience as Rick and I learned what it was like to be a white minority in a predominantly Black community. We also knew that even though we were in the minority there for a short while, nothing in our experience could ever match the civil rights inequalities suffered by Black citizens and students who struggle every day of their lives to be heard and given equal standing under the law.
At graduation in May 1975, the veterinary school issued DVM degrees to the graduates, mostly males at the time, and each female spouse received a PHT degree: Pushing Hubby Through. I swear; I am not kidding.
It’s been almost forever since we lived there and moved on with our lives. But, like Newnan, some places are forever. And some never leave you, even if you leave them.
