“It was like a big family getting back together…like a family reunion!”

00:01 Hi, I'm John Hurston. I'm the son of John Hurston junior. And I am John R. Harrison, senior, and I'm from Petersburg, Virginia. That's my, I'm a native of Petersburg, Virginia and a graduate of Peabody High School, which during the great, great transition, moved to a junior high school. So Petersburg High School no longer exists. Peabody High School no longer exists. And miss, what is your name? Your name?

00:43 My name is Rosa May Valentine. I'm from, I live presently in Washington, DC. I left Gary, West Virginia, 19 and 59. Gary District High School was the focal point of my life. We really had more than a high school because we went from the 7th grade to the 12th, so that makes it a junior high. In high school, the teachers were very approachable, friendly, and if they had to, they would come to your house and talk things over with your parents.

01:27 What kind of student were you? What kind of student were you?

01:32 I was medium, I guess I really went to the 7th grade with an attitude because we would leave in 6th grade where we had recessed and all that stuff. And so here I am, a little girl going to the 7th grade, having school with all the high, big, high, tall girls and boys. So I was like, I got to put my guard up. So I'm going to be, let them know, don't bother me because I'm going to get you. So after I got over that, then I was fine. But it's a trauma going from the 6th grade to the 7th grade and having classes with 1011 and 12th grade kids. It's like having classes with your mama, you know?

02:19 So what was, was there a favorite teacher? You had a favorite teacher?

02:27 Oh, yes. Oh, yes. My favorite teacher was Misses Nickerson, Miss Stewart, Miss Spencer, Miss Shannon, who was the director, taught music. And we had a greek club and we won many, several awards for our greet club. Miss Shannon was very, very, very good in her direction and training. Several kids learned to play the piano under Miss Shannon. That's how close she, the teachers were to us. Now what, what happened? When I was like in the 11th or 12th grade, we had a teacher that I knew was dealing with other kids, but I didn't tell. I didn't have nobody to tell. I couldn't tell. So I took it on myself to protect this child. So when the, when the coach said something to me, I said, who do you think you're talking to? And he went farther. So I ran down the hall and picked up two coke bottles I was going to slam him across the head with. I said, I'll hit you with this. So he went his way, and I went my way. I never had any more trouble from him, but it's just like life. I mean, I was kind of sorry for that, but I was always taught by my father, you got to protect yourself. And what you can't do, I'll do for you. So he didn't allow nobody to bother us. Nobody to bother us.

04:08 Who would you say was there? Did anyone at Gary district make a big impact on your life?

04:14 Oh, yes. The principal misses Nickerson, who was a health teacher, and she taught Jim, Mister Hite who was the principal. One day I got angry with the teacher, and I didn't like it, but he said. So I went to the office and I said, miss Titan, I came to say goodbye to you. He said, where you going? And I said, I'm quitting. I'm leaving school. This is it for me. He said, oh, no, take a seat. You're not going anyplace. You're going to stay right here and get your education. I'll check on. I'll fix what was wrong. And that's what he did. So he was like my school father. And, which was good, because, I mean, you need somebody that maybe you may not and maybe other kids, but I needed someone that I could go to if something happened. So I didn't have no more trouble out of any teachers or anybody because he told, leave her alone. So I went on. I was a cheerleader. I was in the band. I did so many things for the school. I was in the school plays. Both 11th and 12th grade had the main role. I played the Miss woman. There was fur coats and all. And believe it or not, I fashioned that in my own life. As I got older, I couldn't wait to get my mink coat that reminded me of the plate we had for fun. We had. We had. We didn't, you know, you didn't. Couldn't get a job there, so you had to make your own way of making money. So we would go, several friends of mine and I would go around and we'd pick up them. We call pop bottles now. They call them sodas. We pick up many pop bottles that we could get and take them to the store, and they still wouldn't give us any money, but we could get all the potato chips, all the snacks that we wanted from the money that we got from the pop bottles for fun. It was always nice to have the pitch. Horse shoes. I was on the softball team. We would go different places, travel and playing softball with the other areas in West Virginia, which was really, really nice. Our parents would get on this big truck like they were going to see us play professional, professional ball. So we had to make our own fun, you know, so.

06:54 And how would your classmates remember you?

07:01 My classmates was great. You learn to get to know everybody, their ways and what they're about. And it happened. I mean, we jailed like, we all big family. We had no fights, no disagreement, and we had the largest graduating class that the school had ever had, which was 99.

07:25 See, that's amazing because I interviewed someone yesterday that had twelve people. So that's huge for 99. Wow.

07:38 To graduate.

07:39 Yeah, it was a smaller, not every class was 99. Some were like 19, some were. That's a huge class. That's big.

07:48 The happiest moment I can say of my life, which was many. But my mother on her 7th child and my grandmother was a midwife. So when my mother went into labor, when we lived next door to each other, she came around and she couldn't do anything. My mother was bleeding profusely and my father worked in the coal mine, so he was in the coal mine. So we didn't have telephones in our house. Nobody did. So we had to walk. My grandmother and I was late, like 10:00 at night. We walked to the doctor's office and banged on the door and he opened it. So she explained to him that her daughter in law was having trouble. And she said, now I'm telling you, doctor, if you don't do something about my daughter, you're going to be sorry because I'm coming back for you. So he called them. I guess he had the telephone in his office. He called the ambulance and the ambulance came and picked her up. My mother was away in the hospital 18 days, just having a baby. And when she came home, I was so elated, I just cried to see my mother again because I was like eleven years old and have that point. You need your mother, you know. So that was a very, very happy moment in my life.

09:03 So let me, let me ask, so you've been coming to, this is your first convention. Yes. Yes. And you went to, when you talked a little bit about your school, was it similar, whereas african american students. It was, it was. I grew up in the segregated south and my first school was Virginia Avenue. Very nice school. Very, very nice school. I don't ever remember, you know, my wife telling me about it. She used to crawl through the window and she would make a fire, you know, and warm the little school up. But we never, I never was cold in the winter in any of the schools that I went to, and never hot in the summer. It was a very good school. The teachers taught us. I learned how to read. I don't remember anybody, any of the teachers having any outbursts in class. I mean, everybody was manimal, so. And I went to. I went to primary school, then I went to elementary school. I went to elementary school. I went to elementary school and then high school. The high school was from the 9th, from the 8th until the. To the 11th. No, the 9th to the 11th. That's what it was. So both of you have had similar backgrounds in a segregated school? I have never had that. How would you say what was the same or was better or worse? As an example for me, I think that a black person growing up, where all the teachers were black, that they gained much more than they did, they would if they were in an integrated class at that time. At the time, the culture was. I mean, you know, you get the culture, and the culture is to be manable, to respect one another, to respect yourself and respect elderly. The elderly, you say, yes, ma'am and yes and yes, sir. And you just learn. All the things that you would learn in kindergarten are the very same things you need in life. You know, this is not yours, so you don't touch it. You don't put your hands on anybody. You know, the things that they teach you in kindergarten, these are the lessons that you need as an adult. Does your schools or any of your schools have reunions similar to this? Peabody high school does have reunions? I've never gone. Why not? When I looked in the book, I didn't see anybody that I knew. No, I didn't see. When I go back to Petersburg, I don't see anybody that I. Even today, if I go down there, I don't see anybody that I went to school with and miss, you've come, or, ma'am, you've come to. How many of these, these reunions. How many of these reunions have you come to?

12:58 How many years? About eight, nine.

13:03 It's amazing to me because I've always felt that what Gary was doing was different, and I don't know why. What would you say the reason is? The reunions took off. This is the 53rd reunion.

13:18 Yeah.

13:19 So. And you went to, you know, all black school, right? You went to an all black school, but the alumni is different. Why do you think that is?

13:31 Well, what happened we had, the one who started this reunion, I gave him much credit, was Billy Madison. He's here today. He started this in 67 at DC Little bar little. And so many people came. I said, I'm not going. That's not going to be too much, so I'm not wasting my time. Well, I was wrong because it was so great that it's never stopped. And each city that people live in, they would have their own, they would have their own organization and they would say, well, next year we're going to sponsor the reunion. They've been on boat rides. They've just been everywhere. Now back to thinking in 53 years, I've certainly come more than eight or nine times, but it's, you have a tendency to lose the years as you get older. But it was just, it has been nice. I mean, it's like family. I told someone today, I said, we don't have to have a family reunion because we're having a family reunion here, because all of us are joined some way. We're using the same bone. And they agreed it's just a joy to come. The girl downstairs, they told her family, you know, that girl right there is white. And I said, you should stop it. I'm not white. She said, yes, your daddy was white, which is where he was white. And due to that, because he was white, it came from a long story, and I'll tell it short. My grandmother, who was really, really white, her mother was a slave in Danville, Virginia. The slave owner took it upon himself to have eleven children by her. Of course, the wife couldn't say anything, but this slave owner was concerned about the slave, so he bought her a house that still stands at number nine Murray street in Danville, Virginia. Sometimes I'll pull it up, you know, just to look at it. That was his. But he wasn't responsible for what he was or how he happened to be white. And he married my mother, who was brown skinned and she was from Kentucky. So, you know, it was great. I could, my father really wouldn't let anybody bother me, any of us, if we were downtown, I wanted to go and get a hot dog. The person said, you can't come in. He'd go and say, what are you talking about? Who do you think you're talking to? This is my daughter. Of course, things changed. My grandmother and my sister, older sister, didn't have a chance, didn't have a problem because they were discovered, you know, so it's been up and down and I've been. I've really enjoyed life. I don't think I would have wanted to be born anyplace else because it's a difference when you were born in a little country town that cares about you, and this is a unique area, unique school, because I'm sure, you know, that sounds West Virginia, take me home, you know, and that's. That's. A lot of people that I know were left West Virginia because of the jobs. Went to the city, worked, and came back home at an old age. Say, I'm home now. I said, why don't you come back to West Virginia? This is my home, you know, and they loved it. And I think everybody's sorry. I don't think that school in Welsh has the same, same feeling that we had in Gary district High. I mean, we were. We was just. It was just amazing. I really can't say anything else, but the teachers were good. Only a couple of was not what I wanted, but that's anything, you know, so I can't complain. And we said, we used to, as I told you, Miss D and Miss Nickerson and Miss Spencer had a great, great change in my life, because they would. Anytime you had a problem. Miss Nickerson was almost like my mama. Cause I would go down on weekends and help her clean house with just some change. And Mister Hite was always, Rosa, how you doing? I told John, I said, I think Mister Hite told every teacher that whatever, she won't give it to her because I don't want her to quit school.

18:11 She was determined that she was not going to quit, as some of her family members did. You are not going to quit. That was a very good principle. But I don't ever remember anybody in my school doing what she said happened to her. Totally different experience altogether. Yeah, totally different experience. I mean, all black, mostly. Well, there were several males in the school, but I don't remember anybody saying, you know, this is giving me counsel about what you're going to do after you graduate. The reason I graduated is because I was determined to graduate. Mama didn't have anything to do with it. No one in my family. It was my decision to graduate from high school, and I had made a decision that I would graduate. I would give myself a couple of years, but if I was not in college, 20 years old was. I set a goal. Before I'm 20, I have to be in college. If I'm not in college, I'm going to be in the military. That was it. And I made that decision, and the time came, and I wasn't in college, so I joined the military after about 19 years old. Most of my time was spent away from Petersburg. I mean, I would come in for a on leave and see my mother. But then I'd be leaving. I wouldn't stay. But talking about school, there was a white school one block away from me. One block. I think I took you there down about a park on Fillmore street. There was that bowling, bowling, bowling, bowling. Junior high, I think it was down there. But anyway, that school was there, but I had to walk 2 miles. There's no bus. Walk 2 miles to Virginia Avenue, to the college school, as opposed to going a block away to the. To that school. That was close in the neighborhood. There were in. I talked about the park. There were two swimming pools in that park. Two swimming pools in the park. One was for kids that were, I guess, four, five. The water came up to your knee, to an adult came up to your knee, and there was another one, a kiddie pool, where the water would come up to your ankle for an adult, and they would have the toddlers down there and maybe one, two, three years old, they would go there. When I say they, I'm not talking about colored people or black people, because not one black person ever put their foot that pool. Not one. They. When they integrated, when the integration came to Petersburg, Virginia, and they were forced to integrate, they made. They put sand in the pool and made it. You go there today, if you go to popular lawn in Petersburg, Virginia, and you will see flowers, the one that's close to Sycamore street, and you will see sandbox, the one that's closest to Fillmore street. Not one black. They just would not do it. They wouldn't integrate that. So I never got a chance to swim or put my feet in that water. There's a wall that I used to. This is my childhood memories now, but there was a wall I used to pass by going downtown, living, leaving my home. I would go through the park and there was a wall, and the wall was a brick wall. And I think that there was a daycare center on the other side, and I could hear people on the other side, but I couldn't see because I wasn't tall enough to look over that wall. So I said, one day I'm going to be able to look over this wall and see what's over there. But at five, six, I never got a chance to look over that wall. Never. I never. Even today, I can't. I don't even know where that wall is there now. But as I grew up, I never was taller enough to look over that wall. And I just needed a couple of more inches. So, last question. How would you, with this convention. Would you come back next year? And why? Can you repeat it? Will you come back to this next year? And why?

24:30 Well, first thing is going to be close to where I live. It's going to be in Virginia. I won't have to travel 300 some miles over these high roads.

24:41 Where is it next year? Where is it?

24:43 Where is the country?

24:45 No, no. Where is it next year?

24:46 In Virginia.

24:47 Oh, okay.

24:48 I didn't know, Linda, the president told me that they don't want to have it in DC because DC is expensive. They can have it in Virginia in a nice hotel, much cheaper. Plus they got the casino right there. They. Mgm. Mgm. So, yeah, I just enjoy. I mean, he asked me, what do you all do? I said, man, we talk. That's basically we're catching up because some of the people here this year, this year I haven't seen since I grew up and up. So that's over 60 years. You know, the one of the girls here, she was my very first girlfriend when I went to elementary school. And that elementary school, we had three rooms, only three rooms. First and second, third and fourth, fifth and 6th. We only had a pot belly stove in the first room, which was first and second. I don't ever remember being cold, but because I guess I had gotten used to it. And no playground. No playground, nothing. And I had not been used to a commode, so. Cause we had to go to the outhouse. So I had to go to the bathroom. Do we wee? And I went in, and I'm not sitting on this thing. I went outside like I've been used to doing. I said, you know, and the first time I got in the bathtub, I thought I was going swimming, you know, I thought I drowned in the bathtub. So all those experiences has helped mold me. And I think that's what's these kids now don't have to work. They got everything to their hands. They don't have to cut wood. I had to cut wood. I had to bring in coal. They hit the button, they got air, they push a button, they got heat, and they don't have anything. And the parents can't make them do anything because there's nothing for them to do. So I would, my life, I would want to have the same life with just a few changes if I could go back.

26:49 What about you? You're going to have to come because she's coming. But, oh, you know the thing that I noticed right off when I was stationed in New England? New England. I was up there for a while, three years and there was a certain seemed like a distance in New England standoffish, as a matter of fact. I would just say they were just discourteous and I took it to be racism, but it wasn't, it wasn't racism. They just treat anybody that's not from New England as if they don't exist. Okay. And here what I noticed was everybody's friendly. I run across some of the friendliest white people I've run across and I've been all over the country. And that's what struck me was the camaraderie here in west Virginia with everybody. And that's what I would take back with me is the camaraderie, friendliness. I just took my car down to get it serviced. The guy got me in in 2 hours. Dc, you're talking about 8 hours. You know, you're just not going to walk in and get it 2 hours. You forget that, you know, but they were very, they were very friendly, very friendly people here and being around. They've treated me like I was a part of the family. They treated me like I was a part of the family, you know. And they, it was like a big family getting back together. It was like a family reunion from number nine, number seven. I used to tease her about number nine and number seven. You know, that was strange to me. I'm still trying to imagine what it is. Number nine and number seven. I don't know whether that's a house number or whether that's a hollow. I don't know. I still don't know. Oh, I don't know. When you say number nine and number seven, I still don't know where that is. So for the recording, what is when y'all say number nine? Number seven. Number four. What is that?

29:37 Well, that's, that's the same area because we were not incorporated. So number, we just, I don't know who started this number stuff. But you had number seven hill, you had number seven heights, you had seven. Another seven over there. We had houses on the south.

29:55 So it's a neighborhood and it's by the number. You know, the number is the mine.

30:01 It's a mine. Oh, remind you. So you had number nine mine.

30:05 Okay.

30:06 Okay. And we had the hollers. He doesn't know what a holler is. Number eight, Holla.

30:12 So what is it?

30:13 It's a long I've been up in the holler. It's nothing but houses and cut wood and trees like a valley. It's just like you're going in the country road. That's a hollow. You know, you had number five. Holland. You had number nine. We didn't have a Holland. Number seven, because it was rose. You know, we had roads, we had trees up over our house, but we didn't have deer, Roman. We didn't have squirrels coming down, eating your corn and stuff like that. So it was just. We didn't have air conditioned. We didn't have. We had to have. Our furnace was not like you see in these houses. It was a big thing that sat in the living room and the pipe. And you had my daddy cut a hole in the ceiling so air heat could come up. And you had the cold stove. You cook by wood and coal. I've made that fire many morning, and I would get so upset that it didn't start. And this was very dangerous. I put a little kerosene in it. It could have blown the whole house up. But thank God he was with me, you know, so it's. It has. Nobody knows what a holler is. Number six, holla. But it's just the same area, the Gary, Elbert. In fact, you know, my little place was Elbert, not Gary, but our school was in Gary. And then you had the town, which I thought I would get lost when I went there. When I was like 17 years old, it had two streets, Welch. But here now, you know, it's like, gee, I have arrived. I'm somebody now. I've arrived.

31:59 She don't talk about it, but she retired as a vice president in a bank. Did you really? Vice president in the bank, yeah. But when she first went there, they wouldn't even let her. There were certain jobs that she could not handle now. She ended up being the branch manager of one of those branches.

32:23 And then I was promoted to the president. Before I retired of the branches they ever gave me present, I was promoted vice president reasons. So they have what they call investors in the bank, and the one I was manager of, a very bad area, very bad. Parkway was very bad. So I told my boss, I said, I'm probably going to retire in a few years, but I'm going to make you proud. I'm going to do 1.2 million this year, 1.2 million this year in investments. And I did. I did. So the bells started ringing. The phone was ringing. And then after about three or four months, they transferred me back to where I originally started in banking. And I was at my desk once, and this guy was raising so much rukus, I went over and said, what's wrong with you? What can I do for you? He said, I'm coming back. I'm coming back. I'm coming to kill you. And a friend of mine was sitting at the desk, and he did come in the door, and I flew. I ran, you see? You know, I didn't know he was going to kill me or not. So I retired after 34 years of service. 34 years of service. And I was only 58.

33:49 But she didn't. She, you know, she was very assertive. She said, when are you going to promote me? I need a raise. She didn't seem she would do stuff like that.

34:00 You know, I have a lot. I was raised. I went to church. I loved going to church. When I was a kid, I was in Sunday school. We had a gospel choir that we traveled, just girls. There was a church choir. I taught Sunday school when I was about 14 years old. I was a junior usher. So, I mean, it was a lot of things there. That was what I should go do on Sundays. And the parents said, you can't wash your clothes on Sunday. You can't. A lot of them didn't cook on Sunday. So Sunday was a meeting place like this is, you know, we couldn't wait to get there. I couldn't wait to get there. Didn't want to come home. My father said, what is my church? I just love church. I still love church. But with this illness I have, it's hard to get to church. And they don't break the church to you. But I'm all right. I've paid enough dues up this. I'm all right.

34:58 That's right. Well, thank you both so much for sharing your story.

35:03 I hope we didn't talk to you too long.

35:05 No, not at all. Thank you so much.