Kelly Caffarelli and Tom Russell

00:08 Hello, my name is Kelly Russell caffarelli. I'm 53 years old. The date is July 13th, 2021. And we're in the storycorps. Atlanta virtual Boo. And I'm here, talking with Tom Russell. Who's my father name is Tom Russell. I am 79 years old. The date is July. 13th, 2021. We are in the store Coors, Atlanta, virtual booth. And I'm here talking with Kelly caffarelli. Who is my daughter.

00:40 I thought that it would be fun to do this cuz we were just looking at pictures from when we had gone around to all the houses you had lived in for your 70th birthday. And so we're almost on your 80th birthday, which we won't tell anyone else, but it's so I thought it would be fun. Just to capture some of those stories and

01:03 Whether you ever thought that when you were growing up in Atlanta of it, you know, 75 years later, you'd be pretty much right back where you started, but seeing all the changes over that. Of time.

01:15 Well, when I was growing up, I don't know that I would thought I would ever see said that mine, but I'm grateful for it. I miss being a native, atlantan by 6 weeks, my family lived in Atlanta, but my father traveled excessively. And so my mother went up to her home in Northern Alabama and I was born in Florence and I stayed there for six weeks, came back to Atlanta. So I'm not a native atlantan, but I only 6 weeks, but I did spend my whole life here until I went away to college and Athens. My mother's hobby was buying houses. And so we move all over Atlanta. We, we lived in 11 houses between when I was born and when I graduated from college, so, and we, sometimes we would move around.

02:15 Block, so that was fun to know how to get home from one time. And another, but Atlanta has changed a great deal from a small town to a huge metropolis. And it was fun going up in Atlanta, in the, in the forties. One of my most Vivid memories of Atlanta. At that time, was my father's office was in the mortgage guarantee building, which was across Ellis Street from what was Ben Davison and abutted the Winecoff Hotel.

02:56 And the anyone who's been at Atlanta, very long remembers, the has heard of the Winecoff Hotel fire and terrible tragedy that night in 1946. In My Father's Office was on the 5th or 6th floor of his building which was across a short alley on the Winecoff hotel. And in fact, some of the people that survived the fire actually set up makes your Bridges across that alley and made it over to the mortgage guarantee. Building number didn't make it and actually died in the Allen from from falling. But I can remember looking across that alley into the Winecoff Hotel.

03:50 Completely burned out even though I was only five or six years old and it took a long time for them to do anything. It must have been several months before they did any kind of cleanup and it was even as young as I was, it was such a horrible, horrible sight that even to this day. I'm a little bit uneasy about staying in hotels on Upper floors, but that was I guess my earliest one of my earliest memories of Atlanta which was very sad one but the part of love part of the history of the of the city with him when you were growing up, a story about something the kitchen blowing up or something.

04:50 Yeah, but he live to be within a month of 90 in my mother live to be 90. And so the stories that they could tell went back to he was born in 1880 and he would Regale the family with stories of going up and he live with us for a good portion of the time and he was, he was a, the greatest grandfather anybody could ever have. He would take me to the movies, every Saturday religiously so that we can see our Cowboy double features, but one night.

05:29 In order to be hell, for my father, was cleaning, the kitchen to load him and he was using mineral spirits and my grandfather came in and saw this big bowl of mineral spirits and decided he would move it out of the way. And unfortunately, he moved it and sliced it into the gas stove. And I almost took the kitchen out and seeing what was happening by getting up and everyone yelled and I headed out the front door and a neighbor called me about three houses up and I don't know where I was running to, but I was going to get out of Dodge before that fire took care of the house, but that was another vivid memory of Atlanta, and a great great grandfather. Who was who I missed very much. He lived so long. I was married and I guess I was 27 or 28 years old when he died, so I was blessed to to be a

06:29 Enjoy him even into adulthood and I still remember him very well. Everybody should should have the enjoyment of having a grandfather liked him and have one that lasted as long as he did. He said, he used to just stay with you and then just take Northern Alabama, was where the family was from and he would stay with us for several months and he would get up one morning and say he was leaving and we wouldn't see him for two or three months, and he would go back to Alabama and stay at a small hotel up there. And I guess he did the same thing up there. He would get up one morning and he would show up on our doorstep and unannounced and we were always happy to to see him and I was glad to have a movie partner. So we're going to eat. He was one of a kind.

07:29 Amazed that you still have good friends from high school. That I know you kind of reconnected with. What did y'all get up to when you have free time? What was fun in high school for you? All? Well, I went to Southwest High School which doesn't exist anymore and

07:52 I was in the van mainly because if you were in the band, you had didn't have to be an ROTC. I don't think I contributed much musically, but it was a lot of fun and the one of the members of the band was that it was a very competitive and very talented group of musicians and they would from time-to-time challenged each other to move up to first chair second chair. And there was a good friend of mine lady who's still around Atlanta, and she and I would, I think we were like 18th and 19th share and we will sit at all as these people challenge, each other to move on, because the sort of challenging somebody musically was so far out of our realm of possibility that we didn't even give it any thought. But it was great fun to go on trucks. Go to

08:52 Football games song, solo thing. As Kelly said, I still am in touch with the four or five of the old man members, all of us or 80 or nearly 80 and we get together for lunch from time to time and tell half truths about our time in high school and and have an enjoyable time and there again, it's so it's a blessing to be able to. I'll still connect with people after 60 plus years that have gone through a pretty much. So, what I've gone through, and if it's enjoyable to see him, we we usually get together about every 4-6 weeks. Some of us at the varsity. Well, we, we did go to The Varsity, Southwest group had lunch there and then, of course, the pandemic into that. But after the old

09:52 Just got back too late. We were able to get back together and we get some Zoom meeting over the past year in between, but we're, we're able to get together and Personnel drug store while you were also in the band on weekends at the drugstore Cascade Heights, which was where Southwest was enough. That was the greatest job. Anybody can have when your 15 16 years old, because number one, it was cool. So was it was air-conditioned. You have all the free ice cream that you could eat without for the old after pretty soon. And you got to see all your friends, come and go while you were working. So, well, there was, there was no downside to it. I didn't really consider it work. It was some more fun than anything else to to go in or we would go in

10:52 Saturday and work from 2 to 10 and then we'll work on Sunday from 8 to 2 and then the next week we will do the alternate we have different shift. So you still had some weekend time to be with people. But as I said, I didn't consider the job. It was just a lot of fun with this guy. They were I made $0.75 an hour and I thought I was very wealthy course gas was $0.18 a gallon. So I guess I was pretty rich. That's happened with your friend. He asked for a raise. The lady said that she thought she could get somebody for $0.75 an hour and he need to go on his way. So.

11:47 I guess that told me not to be too aggressive in asking for money.

11:55 Russell.

11:59 You said you weren't a musician and we're either academic or he's a troublemaker worried. The prankster. What role did you play know? I pretty much went with the flow and I wasn't.

12:17 I just had a great time in high school. I have told people that if they ever invent a time machine and I can get back to 1957. It won't take me long to push the button and I'll be there, but it was just a great time. I, I didn't have any particular leadership role or anyting. I was in various clubs. And, you know, the drama club in the Latin club in the bank and just did what high school people do or did at that time and just just had a lot of fun.

12:50 Didn't get called anyone. So one of my children, Sam is stuck with him. That you went to military school for a little while. And he wanted me to ask if you go to military school. It's because you got in trouble, so he wanted to know why you ended up at a military school. When I was in the third grade. I went to El Conley Elementary School, which is is still operating. I think Cascade Heights in South and Southwest Atlanta, and my parents for some reason thought that I wasn't studious enough. It wasn't that I was getting in trouble. And so they decided the Georgia Military Academy was a place, I should be. And so, I went there for 6 minutes for years and I think the only thing that made it right was going back to South

13:50 I appreciate it even more not having to march in the afternoon and wear uniforms and shine shoes and do all the things that military schools do. So I was not cut out for military school. Although it was a very, very good school in that. Very good academically for sit now, it's Woodward Woodward Academy and it's not military anymore. But I and I had made some friends that I still keep up with from time to time during that. But as I said, I was it wasn't cut out for the military line. Is it true that you had to carry a broom? Instead of a rifle? I wasn't

14:32 Do it right from something. And so, would rather than carry a rifle. They made me carry a broom on the parade and I thought that was great because the brand Wade about 6 oz in life away 9 pounds. So I think your dog don't have all of a sudden that this really wasn't much of a punishment for me. So they switch me back to them to the rifle and you're not going to tell what he did to have to do that. I don't really remember that. I did very much. I just wasn't soldiering. Do you have any memory of what you do as an adult when you were in middle school or High School?

15:18 I always liked history in school. And I thought maybe I would major in history and I went to the University of Georgia and in the business and I was there for a porter and a friend of mine from high school. Was it George? And we were talking one day and he said you should come over to the journalism school and major an advertising because you like business, but you know, really don't know what you want to do. And I said, well why not? I don't really know what I'm doing. So I went over to the journalism School.

15:58 Major than advertising and knew nothing about it. It was just Serendipity and I absolutely loved it from the first course. I took to the last course I took it was the greatest thing I ever did and I enjoyed every second of it and I've off out and I still keep in touch with the my old, buddy from Southwest to encourage me to do that. And weep. In fact, I saw him within the last year and I still tell him every time I see him if that was the greatest by SIA ever gave anybody and you know, I look back on the almost three years when I was in the car with the school has been just one life. I had probably the best way for anybody can have if you from high school through college and on it. It's been pretty wonderful.

16:58 That was their name, Frazier Moore, who was something of a mentor to talk to you about moving, over to the journalism school, and he encouraged me. But he, as he always did, told people that they should make up their own minds and follow their own course, but they're divided aside to do that. He would be very helpful to me and he was a great mentor and when I got ready to graduate and he suggested it, maybe I should would want to go to graduate school and then he would run interference for me at the University of Illinois. What year was somebody who had never been out of the state of Georgia, other than on vacation vacation in the idea of Illinois was so far to me. It was like going to China.

17:56 And Mom, but he encouraged me to give it a try and I applied, and I'm sure he probably pulled some strings. And I got into graduate school at the University of Rhode Island master's program. And again, had a great time at some people that I again, still keep in touch with. And when I finish was finishing, my Master's one of the people there said, maybe you would be interested in going for a PhD. And at that time, I was

18:31 Gitty my wife and I were planning to get married and I couldn't do it. She was Ill in school. So I came back to Georgia for a year while she graduated from the University and then we we did get married during that year and then move back to to Urbana and I got into the PHD program there. And in fact, our son Kenneth was born in Urbana during that time. And so, we spent another two and a half years in Urbana and then Frazier Moore again, being the great mentor that he was offered me a job back at the University. So I'm like a yo-yo came back from to the university and was there for 34 years, so

19:31 Think about the midnight or cuz that just happened. I think the most important thing you do in life involves people is not. This is not how much money you made for what you do. It's the people. And I don't think many people have a lot of friends in and I don't, but I think you, you have good friends. If you're lucky, and I've been very fortunate. I have a, you know, poo and maybe twenty people from high school, from College from graduate school. A few people on The Faculty that I still keep up with. And and they're very, very important to me and I still go to him for advice and we get its back and forth on email and so on and so forth. And so I don't know that it's something I think out if you know, I'm going to, I'm going to maintain this friendship.

20:31 This person is this something that happens naturally when you connect to somebody? And I've been lucky enough that people are at least a few people are going to reciprocate and connect back with me.

20:46 Talking about people in relationships and impacting people. At what point. Did you think you wanted to teach?

20:56 Probably before I left the undergraduate program again. I don't want to keep harping on Frasier more but he eat was such a role model to me. And I thought this is something that he doesn't do so, well, it would be nice to try to follow him in the same footsteps. And so I pretty much made the decision particularly when he had encouraged me to go to Illinois to graduate school, if that's what I want to do, you administrator of work, or would you rather stayed in the classroom or

21:39 Will I die? Really enjoyed teaching? And the administrative stuff? I enjoyed that, too, because I still got to interact with students. I kidded people and said that when I was down to the college that I saw the very worst students and the very best students and I kind of missed out on Bush the middle middle ground, but I still kept in contact with students, through their organizations and occasional guest lectures and stuff. But I do enjoy the administrative part 2. I was just kind of a natural transition. And then course, when I retired from the University, I went to for five years to a small college and just talk exclusively. I didn't do any in administrative stuff. Inside was a good way to wrap things up, to start off teaching in the end up my career again today.

22:39 Mom must have really loved you. She was willing to go to Illinois, straightaway. Ashley. She'd, I didn't like your style of the school, but the flat land in the cornfields. And I really, I really wasn't a Midwestern kind of person. I like the the woods in the hills and so on and so forth, but Judy your mother really enjoyed or nonmetal and she she like I has maintain friendships with some of the people we met up there and in graduate school, so she enjoyed it. We were ready to get back to Georgia. No doubt about it, but it was no burden on her.

23:26 How did you already do? We need?

23:30 We met at the University of

23:34 I think we met at a social at a fraternity, social with her sorority. I think that's the first time I ever met her and it just so happened that she lived about a mile from be in Atlanta and someone told me that or something. And I offered her a ride home whenever she wanted come back to Atlanta for holidays or whatever. And so, that's how we really connected was just because she lived close to where I lived in Atlanta. And so, we would drive back and forth is this story about her sitting on a wall and you pestering, our true? Well, she was reading a book in front of the library and I was walking by the library. I didn't have any intention of going in and I stopped and asked her what she was doing. We did chat for a while. I think that was the first time I ever really had a long conversation with her.

24:30 I heard pestering, but maybe that wasn't right Marvel. Now is I'm a parent and went through having teenagers and everything. Just how much you are. You and Mom made your lives, revolve around my brother and me and just all your activities and everything really soon to Center on us. As we were growing up. We'll always took the view that children are a kind of a passing phase. You send that you don't have them for very long and you better make the best of it. And I hope your mother and I did that with the Athletics and so on so forth. We certainly tried to be there whenever we could and I think we I think we were pretty successful in that but

25:26 As I said, I would hate to look back and think of things that I should have done it and missed out on, and I really don't do that. I think we took took advantage of most most of what we had available to us and I didn't realize it at the time. But you were saying it's cold out there, but we're so warm under here and you were actually teasing mom cuz she was out there and saying, oh, we're so nice and warm under here. So

26:13 You are a good husband. You are a lot of midnight, errands, were different chocolate and such. What is a 40? What years of marriage there? So now you're right. So, what's the secret?

26:44 I think it's just a matter of first while respecting each other and then giving people respecting their opinion enough, to let them go their way, you know, we don't we don't have her on each other, but we're always there for for the other one.

27:01 I always tell people. It's, it's what you don't say. Watch and wait, and it'll turn out. All right, you'll say if you don't, if you don't feel very strongly, you let it go. But that when you do, you will, I think, I think people should take their places. I think people get in trouble when they ascribe important, say everything. When when generally, they're there aren't that many topics that that you should really take a stand on end and I try to follow that rule.

27:50 If, if I really want to say something about it, I will I will, if I don't feel that strongly about it, and it really doesn't matter if it wasn't putting your foot down. But speaking very

28:07 Emphatically about my college choice.

28:12 I don't know if you remember that but I was kind of going to the path of least resistance. I think. And and you said, you really should think about this one. I remember that more is your brother than you. Yeah, I think college is always College. Selection is always been a mystery to me because I don't think anybody makes a more important decision other than maybe getting married, then the college they choose and yet you, most people do it on such a limited information of a day trip to walk around the campus of a look through a catalog.

28:55 Somewhere, somebody's boyfriend when or whatever but generally There's no practical way for you for anybody to really get a very kind of information given how important the situation is. And of course, you can see that with a number of people that change Majors after they get to college that, they obviously either chose the wrong institution or wrong school or whatever. So yeah. I know I think it's it's hard to really, to mystify the the prom and the other part of that situation is that I've always said the people have personalities and so do institutions of higher education and there are mediocre skills that are a perfect match for some students. And there are great schools that are terrible match for students and there are certain departments in them and of college that are great in the

29:55 And so it's such a mixture of Parables and it's just hard to sort out. And now I think that it's more luck and science that people do as well as I do, in choosing a college or a major, go to college. And people I met from different places more than the classes.

30:27 So I have two last questions. One is whether there's a specific story that you ordered or thing that you would like your grandchildren to remember.

30:41 Oh, golly or their children demon. Well, you do live. The greatest thing. I would, I don't know that I'll ever achieve it, but if if my grandchildren think of me half as well as I think of my grandfather, that would be all I could ask for whatever but I couldn't ask for anything more. It's a special relationship. I remember that about being with my being with your mother that when you grow up with somebody, you know, babysitting and taking care of that. It's not a special occasion. When you see somebody that it's special to know that someone who's not

31:27 Obligated to take care of you and really does either.

31:38 Either Grand grandparents have passed or they're not there, or they're indifferent. They they really miss out on on something very special. And I think most of the people I know who have grandchildren, I have that kind of relationship and they were little. So we're glad that you're back in Atlanta. Now, I don't have to do that. So, last question, whether you

32:12 When you think back over 80 years of seeing Atlanta, you know, what would you have ever thought you'd be living in the middle of Buckhead in Buckhead? Would be what it is. What do you think of Atlanta? In the way? It's grown and changed.

32:30 Well, I don't know that. I'm surprised that I'm back in Atlanta cuz I always loved the city. It has changed in many ways for the better. I think.

32:47 And growing up in the forties and fifties. I talked about what an ideal is life. I had but at the same time you have to realize that it was very much a segregated City and we

33:05 Preteen and teen Ager, why? I guess just oblivious to what was going on. It wasn't that we were necessarily.

33:16 Advocate, you know, you just it was the way it was and I look back on that and I think it's a it's a sad commentary on the south in general and Atlanta, certainly get better than most cities with mayor, Hartsfield and Ivan Allen and the kind of leadership that they provided during that period which switch save the city from a lot of great but having said that, you still had a great proportion of the citizens who missed out on opportunities, so we're treated badly and I think it's it's a terrible stain and it's something that I think people of my generation certainly feel a lot of guilt about and I don't know.

34:07 Specifically what we would have done differently as a teenager or whatever, but it, when I was at Georgia, it was when the University was desegregated and Charles and Hunter. Now, Sterling Hunter call was a contemporary of mine in the journalism school and looking back on the problems that she had. Although, it was more indifference than I don't recall in classes that there was any problem. Of course, there were problems outside of class, with her dorm being.

34:47 Tear gas keeps on so forth. But looking back on that. She certainly, you know, what, such a talented person and had to endure the kind of environment that that she did what was really terrible. And I think it it speaks highly of her that she has reconnected.

35:10 With the university and is is helpful and supportive of it. Despite what she had to go through. She and Hamilton Holmes had to go through during that. You know, I like that Lana. As I said, I hear. It's a city. I love, but it's a city that looking back on it, at the time. That, did you ever meet her. Oh, yeah. I mean, we had classes together and the, as I said there, I don't recall any within the environment of The Charmed Ones go. I don't recall any bad of them, other than indifference, which is bad enough. And I think people just

35:58 Really didn't know what to do because they had grown up in a segregated world and there was pure pressures and it was just, it was a terrible environment. But as I said, I like the fact that she had the

36:16 Florida to to go through, first of all, to take up the challenge to start with and then to endure and graduate and going through a super successful a career speak. So highly of her this year, you know, she's one of those of the unsung heroes of that. Do you ever remember having any conversations with her?

36:44 Yeah, she connected back with with the Peabody awards, which is a television broadcast award the school day, and she would go to some of those. And she would be on some committees and things like that. So yeah, I mean, we have chatted, from time to time.

37:08 Her experience or coming back here? And I don't know where she is, giving talks about it on campus and so on and so forth, but she's still working to be willing to do. The fact.

37:39 You know, there was any question about her being enrolled in the University's.

37:48 It is. Well, thank you for doing this. This was fun, and we can have it transcribed before we wrap up. So can I get your grandfather's name? Thomas, Cox Easter?

38:09 Cox. Okay, you mentioned that he would go and stay in Florence, Alabama, in a, in a host. And I'm sorry, he would stay in Athens, Alabama. I was born in Florence, but the family was from Athens. There was no hospital. So I don't know the name of the hotel that he stayed in when he went to Athens.

38:40 It's probably a motel with his yard. And what did you play? The clarinet?

38:54 I play trumpet and self-love. You play Russell.

39:08 Chewed.

39:11 Cool. Alright. And

39:16 At the, I think that's pretty much it, right? Just one second. He's getting the name of the hotel. I'm going to end the recording now.