Karl Clarence Priest and Melody Layne Priest

00:03 I'm Melody priest 51 years old today's date is June 25th. 2005 location is Kanawha County Charleston West Virginia, and I am the wife to Carl priest age 56 June 25th. 2005 Charleston West Virginia and Kanawha County and I'm the husband of the the interviewer.

00:35 Carl, can you give me can you tell me where you first grew up?

00:41 I grew up in the Charleston West Virginia area started out in Charleston and the the unique I mean Downtown Charleston unique thing about it is that I was born in the Union Mission my parents were both residents there. They came to Charleston with a personal troubles in their lives and got straightened out through the Union Mission.

01:09 I will throw the five is a famous evangelist that started it and that's where I was born. Then we moved to a

01:17 2 South Park, which is in an area of Charleston, Kanawha City. They're my dad was a caretaker of the Union Mission summer camp for the they're orphans and a certain point the administration changed at the mission and we had to leave when we went to public housing. We ended up at the orchard Manor renowned the housing project. Sometimes called the South Bronx at West Virginia on the west side of Charleston and right before you get to North Charleston and that's where I spent the 10 years until I went off on my own and what were your parents names?

02:01 My mother's name is Ruby Jane Justice and my father was Howard Mason priest.

02:10 Both of them were limited it and education my father had an eighth grade education, which was good for his at his time in history. My mother had a sixth grade education, but both are more honest to a tee hard-working good to their neighbors.

02:30 Just a wonderful people.

02:33 Let's get back to you and in your childhood. Did you ever get into trouble and Papas worst thing that ever happened to you or growing up in a housing project that I was surrounded with a lot of them?

02:46 Lot of broken homes. I was unique in that. I have a two-parent family. And the one of the parents was not an alcoholic most of them were single parents or if they had two parents. Usually the father was an alcoholic sometimes both of them. There was lots of trouble in the neighborhood and although I wasn't in the worst of it. I did have trouble sometimes with the police and the fortunately by the grace of God. It didn't lead the prison of the worst that I had was an assault charge and the six months.

03:25 Sentence of the county jail which was suspended with probation.

03:30 What was your best memory?

03:33 Your childhood ruined my best memory was I had a lot of brothers and sisters. Although I was an only child there were so many children in the in the project that I never felt like an only child then that I really didn't know I was poor until I got into my late teens. I just enjoy being a a boy's boy and the doing things that boys do I want good thing about the location of Orchard Manor is it was on the edge of a wooded area? So not only did I have the negative aspects of the sort of inner city housing project, but I spent a lot of time in the woods and down at the creek and enjoyed some of those sort of rule activities also,

04:17 What did you look like as a child? I was to hear that the skinny. I was wearing glasses when I was in the third grade. So always have glasses they were usually broken in and tight.

04:32 Who is your best friend back then?

04:35 Are the five good friends that I can remember to older one was Gary. I was to Gary's the first Gary the older one had a terrible home life, but that he overcame it became a veterinarian and the retired the in early age of a very successful practice the other and was a fella named Jean. I his father was an alcoholic but Gina work done. Well, actually Jean was very intelligent should have graduated from college, but he didn't but he worked at a local food store Kroger's and recently retired from their long-term marriage, very successful life.

05:19 The other three were younger than me. There's a third Gary. He died of alcoholism in any sport. He's there was Ricky Thornton that I'm I'm still friends with the guy has a amputated leg. He had a lot of a lot of trouble with the

05:39 With the circumstances of the neighborhood and family circumstances, but he married and stayed married and has stayed out of trouble as an adult. The third one is Jimmy. He was best man at my wedding here.

05:55 Became mentally ill and recently died of a undisclosed causes in his forties.

06:02 Let's talk about school. Did you enjoy school? I didn't like school. I just tolerated schooling and had my mind on the playing baseball in the spring got there.

06:17 What kind of student are you ever sees or satisfactory? I remember I was in a homeroom in junior high school and the teacher was out of the room and one of the kids got into the the records and I were looking through them and they discovered that the high the highest IQ in the room and they pointed that out to me and that no one believed it but I guess the future after junior high school or after a high school was over bore out that I had a fairly good intelligence.

06:57 What's your best memories have grade school high school college and graduate school.

07:04 The best memories of a grade school is a riding bicycles to to a school with the my friends which we weren't allowed to do that. But we did that and it was just enjoy what the high school the best thing. I can remember is making the cut on the baseball team seeing my name posted on the on the locker room door as a sophomore and they're only a four of us that the made the team that year.

07:35 What about college?

07:38 A lot of good memories in college course out. I was out of the service then and I was in a new Christian and play college baseball one year. I met my wife while I was in college and

07:57 I was really involved with a group called campus Crusade for Christ there.

08:02 What's your worst memories does anything really stand out when you think back over your school years?

08:09 First thing that comes to mind was in the sixth grade and I was working a math problem. And I know it wasn't the best behaved student in the class. But at that time I was not a disrupting anything. I was actually trying to do the problem in the the teacher a lady teacher.

08:28 I came up to me and without a word raised my chin with her hand and smack me in the face and told me I was doing the problem wrong.

08:39 Let's move on to love and relationships. Do you have 11 year old?

08:43 The love of my life is my wife. We've been married. This will be our 33rd year.

08:52 When did you first fall on?

08:54 Fell in love with her the first time I saw her and we just met at a church activity that day and then we didn't see each other for a year.

09:06 Can you tell me about your first kiss first kiss with her was the next time we met was also.

09:14 Sort of random I guess is the best word for it though. I had went to a Revival meeting of friend of the invited me to and she was also there and her and other friend invited me to have pizza. We went to the pizza place. It was too crowded, so we went to her friend's house, and we just we talk there. I don't I think we might have took a picture with us. I'm not sure as I was leaving up. My wife told me my future wife told me. Goodbye and gave me just a friendly kiss.

09:50 And how did you propose?

09:54 I proposed to her on the bleachers at the West Virginia state college baseball field. I was a very much involved in baseball and it was just a quiet place down there. We just sit down there and we're talkin and I propose to her there.

10:11 What were the what was the best time that you can think of when you're thinking of marriage? And what was the most difficult time?

10:21 For marriage the

10:24 The positive thoughts are are the far outweigh. The negative ones. I guess the most difficult was a seeing my wife when she was you at one point surgery had the went wrong and she was seriously. Oh, I guess I didn't realize at the time how close she came to having a fatal accident during that surgery. And after I realize that that gave me a lot of negative thoughts and causes for concern of positive. Things are just there. It's good to have a a soul mate.

11:07 Someone that

11:10 That is also a Christian and

11:14 I probably could go on and on with the good memories. It's just good to be married to my wife.

11:20 Did you ever think about getting divorced my mind?

11:27 Replacement you have for young couples today.

11:31 My advice for young couples would be to get yourself in right relationship with God and then the base your marriage on scriptural principles.

11:44 And put family before work and hobbies.

11:50 Let's talk a little about raising kids. When you first found out that you were going to be a parent how that make you feel feeling. I don't remember when my wife told me that she was pregnant with her first child. I do have a visit with remember memory of the second child that I have a vivid memory of us seeing our first born child are son at that time. The father had to spend time in the waiting room. It's been showing on cartoons a lot less pretty much what it was with me. I spent the whole night in the waiting room while my wife was in labor and when she brought him out of proximately 8:30 the next morning, it was a little Filipino nurse and then she showed me my son and it was just a wonderful feeling to Indescribable.

12:43 And how has being a parent changed your life being a parent?

12:50 Totally will change your life if you do it, right? Because the only does it restrict your social life.

12:59 It the limits finances limits vacation opportunities. There is lots of things that does to change your life, but I don't want to leave the impression of it's not worth it is well worth it to be a parent.

13:13 Let's go on to religion you spoke a lot about God. So obviously you believe in God.

13:22 And what is your religion the best way to describe my religion is a relationship with Jesus Christ as a born again Christian.

13:31 So you believe in life after death absolute do you think that you'll go to heaven?

13:43 You said I'm talking about serious illnesses. Are you ever afraid of dying of the really been concerned about dying? I don't think anybody in their right mind would relish death, but it's something that as a young man that I knew was inevitable and there's an old man that hasn't changed.

14:09 If you were to give advice to the children to come in our family, what would it be?

14:16 Also have to repeat something I said as far as I know a marriage relationship and that is make sure that you're in right relationship with God and then take care of your family and put things like that far ahead of a profession and the Hobbies other activities.

14:40 So what you've learned from Life, what's the most important thing?

14:46 The most important thing that I've learned from life is too to do the best that I can for everyone as often as I can and especially this to share the love of Christ with him and how do you want to be remembered remember those a person that was although he wasn't perfect did the best that he could to to do what was right and scripturally, correct?

15:17 Let's go want to look at your family heritage. What's your ethnic background?

15:23 The family on my side is a

15:27 English Irish mother said was probably the same. I'm familiar with my side dude a lot of genealogical work.

15:42 So you've doubt delved into that lot?

15:46 Yes, I have it then my ancestors.

15:51 On the priests side. We're in trouble in England in a rebellion and sent over here as punishment sent to Barbados and migrated to Virginia and long into West Virginia.

16:06 Have you ever been back to places of where your family grew up? Mostly all my mother said that my mother was ten years younger than my father by the way, my father's father. Who am I never met? My grandfather was a a civil war baby. And I'm sure he he had some stories that he could have told had he been alive at the time that I was my father was born late in his life. I was born late in my father's life, but the spend a lot of time with my grand mother's Farm which is my mother where my mother was raised that was in Kentucky out in the country. They were

16:48 Part of the West Virginia Mine Wars they had been though.

16:53 In the Via border state border of West Virginia and Kentucky and the they were in like one of my uncles was born in a pit dug in the floor because there was so much danger in the mining Community from bullets flying around that they they wanted to see his mother which is my grandmother's be safe.

17:17 And I remember my both my parents were raised in the totally self-sustaining Farm situations. I no electricity and the only occupation was farming what they got for money was through selling farm products. They had no electricity and no running water is I when I started going down there they did have electricity but no running water and I can remember drawing water from the well for drinking and cooking and the bathing in a tub and on the kitchen floor sounds like you had some good memories from then

17:56 Sure did

17:59 What traditions have been passed down through your family?

18:04 Well, the Traditions passed down through my family or

18:09 Once again, probably the

18:12 Recommendations I give the future generations and that is put Family First treat and help your neighbor worship God.

18:24 Those three things that will help everything else fall into line.

18:29 You were in the military. Is that correct? Tell me a little bit about that came out of high school with the

18:39 Beginning of the peak of the Vietnam War 1966 in a couple of weeks in college and went to join the Navy at the at that time the Navy had filled their quota and the recruiter told me to try the naval reserves which has a two-year program which is the same as the draft. I really wasn't worried about the draft. I had always wanted to be in the Navy so join the naval Reserve ended up in the boot camp with a regular Navy and then have the two-year commitment which was cut short due the political concert situation at the time with the President Lyndon Johnson who decided not to seek re-election, and he wanted to tell he

19:27 American people that the Vietnam War was winding down and he was going to release several thousand military personnel and I got out several months early do that. But by then I will see a new Christian and I was ready to go to college and even though I had thought I would make a career out of the military. I told him at the time if they would assign me to ship a Vietnam. I would go ahead and not take the early out. They told me there was no guarantee. So I got out of them went to college.

20:00 What's the most strongest memories you have of the military were there ever a time when you were afraid?

20:09 I was assigned to the presidential Command Ship which at the time was one or two ships that were Escape Routes for the president and his cabinet in case of a nuclear attack. The Vietnam War was just a i major Battlefront of it of the what a lot of people consider the third world war, which is the Cold War and the hat that time there was lots of a concern that the Russia would launch a missile attack against the United States.

20:41 So the ship that I was on was one of the two designated for the president. They also have other places to escape for a the president as well as Congress and other government officials, like underground bunkers. They had an air borne command post, but the probably the place that we that

21:05 He would have went to was the one of the ships. I kept one of them off the east coast of at all times. We would spend two weeks out there on the East Coast off the east coast and then as we came in our sister ship would pass us and they would be the alert ship for 2 weeks.

21:24 One of the most vivid memory I have is how difficult it was to be at the at see some people spent more time at sea, but then it was very tedious. Sometimes we would anchor off the coast where they had a communication station cuz we were communication ship and we we just spend several days with inside of the coast. Well, they they shuttled the officials back and forth on helicopters. And then they did their Communications activities. Sometimes we would just be way out there off the coast of North Carolina where there was a lot of high seas things will be flying around if we didn't take them down.

22:08 When the first things that happened when I was on the ship at Sea as they went through a drill, I didn't realize was a drill because I was just a lowly pot scrubber at the time. It was a very realistic nuclear attack and they made announcements on the ship and I thought we were really a weed really been attacked and if it went on for an hour before I realized it was a drill.

22:31 So do you think the military was a positive aspect of your life. It was very good for me showed me that I could handle anything. And also I became a Christian before I left the military.

22:48 Let's talk about what type of work you're doing now.

22:52 What is it that you just recently retired? Is that correct? And what do you did you do?

23:01 32 33 years for those years as a principal I didn't like Administration. So I went back to teaching in the last nine years was on the Junior High 7th 8th grade level. Of course. I changed at the middle school during my last 6 years.

23:20 When you thought of your your life growing up, did you always want to be a teacher across my mind and I want to enroll in college if I hadn't crossed my mind. I have the GI bill. I went to remember speaking to the dean at the West Virginia state college and he asked me what I wanted to Major and I said, I don't know he said well, they they could use male elementary teachers and I said, that's fine with me also about that time. They ask me the teacher 6th grade Sunday school class at church and it just play the Lord that led me that way because it turned out to be a special gift that I had as a teacher to be a teacher when you have anything that you wanted to be when you grew up at that point when you are a little Feller baseball player or an Empire if I couldn't make it as a player

24:22 So what lessons has your your life's work taught you?

24:26 Being a teacher and everything you've been through.

24:31 I could give a lot of answers. That's first one that crosses. My mind is that the kids are humans. They're just at a different the developmental stage there a lot of fun and

24:43 I think I'm very thankful that I was able to be a teacher.

24:48 Well now that you've retired. What do you plan on doing with the rest your life probably substitute this year and see how like that I'm involved in a Ministry called the Kunal creation science group with you debunks evolutionism, which I think is really cancer on society. So while we do what we Kansas to to refuse evolutionism with science and scripture and the have a lot of hobbies that one of them is the entomology, of course genealogy. I think that then I'll be very busy as a retiree.

25:33 Talking about some of your hobbies tell us about a few of your very unusual pets that you had.

25:42 We wish we have the normal dog pets. But then we've also had that crickets praying mantises and the hissing cockroaches and it's been fascinating to a to have those insects as pets so they're very complicated the intricate.

26:03 Holly technically designed creatures

26:09 At one point how many praying mantises did you have?

26:15 How to choose the most that we've had that had Stouts and we had 250 did the make a egg case deposit which we kept and then when you hit with the kept it in the refrigerator, and we wanted to

26:37 To bring it out in the springtime for a

26:41 Church activity that I had with insects so that we can do given to the kids course. You can't tell just the exact time they will hatch and naturally they came out when no one was home and got all over the place in my wife and daughter had to catch each of them and put them in an individual to which we called their Nursery.

27:03 And it took you or it took us about two hours a night to feed and water all of our new additions to our family.

27:16 Cotton swab dipped in water

27:21 So is there anything of rolling closing that you like to believe with us?

27:28 Well, I'll just talk to you for a few minutes of things that come to mind as we've had this interview my parents were or people that went through the depression of two World Wars the Korean War and the Vietnam War and it'd be great if they were both living and feed the could tell their stories. I'm a child of the 50s.

27:55 And the sixties as a young man, I went through the assassination of President Kennedy in high school. I remember very very well today that that that occurred Cuban Missile Crisis. That's when we actually thought we would I was in high school with that time. Also. I actually thought that we would be in a nuclear war. I can remember I was out playing.

28:23 One time while the crisis was going on in a jet broke the sound barrier in the everybody took off running. We thought it was a bomb. That was the first time that we had a jet in the area break the sound barrier.

28:37 1968 while I was in that in the service and on the ship a lot of things happened the assassinations of the younger Kennedy and Martin Luther King the race riots, I remember

28:54 Being involved or being alive while those occurred in the the black Sailors on the ship how they reacted to what was going on. I wasn't too bad that there was some tension at the time.

29:09 I remember the the

29:13 The freedom efforts in the South during the sixties and my parents were not prejudiced. Although the housing project was segregated. And in the sense that the other blacks lived in one area of the whites lived in the other we've intermingled all the time. There would be fights mostly it was whites against whites, but that if it involved with somebody from outside the neighborhood I can remember times when the white and black boys with the combine.

29:45 The back to the I remember watching the the news and the seeing the the people pose down in the South and and I really didn't I didn't understand why that was going on. I thought that was that was wrong and I guess I went to a segregated school with Elementary School ever no black kids, but then I don't remember I didn't actually know that occurred in in junior high around the 63-62 as when I started going to school with black kids had a good friend and I still remember him then Pat Patterson.

30:26 The

30:30 The other things I remember.

30:34 Related to to those times was the

30:39 The beginning of the breakdown of society the the breakdown of morals the the rise of humanism in the in the school system's I was also involved in the Yakima County textbook controversy, which got national attention and that occurred the

30:58 The second or third year that I was a teacher and it was good overall because the people had the right idea as late as a sole Society began to crack but unfortunately the Violet the element overshadowed the peaceful elements and then that's all it's remember to are the bombs went off which I had no knowledge about before they happened. I just read about him. I was at the Kanawha County school board meeting the night that the board members were physically attacked as matter fact, I had spoken and was sitting just a few feet from the table and somebody got up and started pounding on the one of the board members course that was wrong. But those are the the the things that the destroyed what would have been a a good peaceful situation.

31:58 Thank you for your time. Is there anything else you would like to to say to us and closing?

32:05 No, thank you very much.

32:15 Oh, I'm sure don't don't hear this.

32:20 You are just want me to talk or you want her to call you feel like you feel comfortable talking for awhile. Talk about the kids since you're the mother.

32:31 41 experience

32:45 We're going to we were just talking about the kids. We had mentioned by shop at several kids. We had to a boy and a girl or a boy is about 6 before Aaron and he's 32 and will he'll be 32 and Noelle is 27 +.

33:10 At Croix mention when he found out that we were pregnant, he does remember much of Aaron as far as been he'd staring at the living room with me with no l they didn't allow him back. Then when Aaron was born that he was with me the whole time through Noel's birth. He said he really didn't want to come in but he now he's glad that he did. He said he wouldn't have missed it for the world and that it was a very long long hard labor with Erin is almost 32 hours of Labor with Noelle. She was a breeze. It was only 15 1/2 probably why there's four years between the kids.

33:56 That

33:58 They have grown up now and so far. We only have a little Grandpop and two grand kitties, but someday we might have a real grandchild.

34:09 About as interesting as we saw a personalities develop even a young age. He Aaron had the business Instinct and that's what he ended up being as a self-employed. Businessman and Noel. I don't know if I can say this without sounding too negatively, but she like to attend people's business. So she's a counselor now, she just wants to delve into everyone's psychic psychic. She just loves to psychoanalyze Mom 2.

34:42 And she works at the same hospital where I work.

34:46 What's tell me a little bit about you and your your life and I have waited till the kids went to school and then I went back and got my degree and most of the kids were much younger and my nursing class and they would come in on Monday morning. Talk about how they partied all weekend. That's who I wanted you to not too. Well, I studied I went to the store. I cleaned the house. I did the laundry out studies her more and all they did was party.

35:20 Sad, but I think I appreciated my education a lot more and since then I have been I've been working at Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston West Virginia now for 18 years as a registered nurse not working a GI clinic. So I playing Collins and stomachs all day. I love it.

35:42 Met other Nana ever since I was knee-high to a bullfrog. I said someday I want to be a nurse and I'll always knew that and went well after we got married and had both kids and then I decide to go back and get my education to get my degree as an extended family. My parents were elderly independent upon me. So Melody Melody varia graciously pitched in and then we lived in a liking Upstairs Downstairs Apartments. My father became ill with cancer while Melly was in nursing school and she helped care for him gave him shots and I was terribly difficult for everybody to specially her going to school. And then the the next year my mother died of a massive heart attack while melody was in school. You want to come in any of your memory of those situations?

36:33 Especially with your dad. I had to learn to give injections so I could give him his pain medicine to keep him comfortable and that point in my nursing career. I hadn't they hadn't on shed how to give injections. So they gave me a special crash course in it in light of the situation and they helped me out to sew as a result on Sable to keep him comfortable. But sometimes it's a little scary being a nurse and knowing what you do know and still dealing with your family members. I've had that to happen even with my brother who is in a big explosion at 1 they are the chemical plants and he he was transferred to the West Penn burn trauma center for the nurses up there with speak to me as a nurse and not as his sister as a little harder to process the information and I would have to filter out the information. I will give to the family because they didn't know everything.

37:33 Didn't need to know everything that could happen and what all the potentials and I knew I just had to give them enough that they could deal with a situation to handle has her. Sometimes it's been a little difficult being a nurse.

37:47 How you came from a family with three siblings and and you just mentioned that your brother was seriously injured what with your thoughts and memories about that situation.

37:59 Has a very very bad situation. We were in Mexico at the time and we got the call that there'd been a big explosion to run Polanco chemical plant in Institute. And he was the one that was blowing up and he as a result we had to fly back from Mexico that next day and went directly to the hospital and stay till 2 a.m. And then we went home and I called us at 7 a.m. To come back and I blew out for my Pittsburgh and stayed there for three weeks with him. And then eventually he went on to the Cleveland Clinic where he received a double lung transplant and he made it almost 3 years with a transplant and then he died this past November, which is very hard that the family's real closing and everyone's really good to support each other and my parents are both living and we all live on

38:59 Farm together so we have all my brothers and my one brother and my other sister and mom and dad is very beautiful as a matter of fact in the high school. I have a picture of her when she was in high school riding on the back of a convertible as one of the beauty queens of the high school.

39:23 I think he's a little Prejudice to

39:27 1 minutes any last words

39:30 Well, we entered our married life with without any air conditioning without a TV. Although they were out took we spent the first year. Just getting to know each other and and doing things like walking around the capitol grounds and in the local parks Los that you can do for free don't have to have a lot of money to be happy.

39:52 And I concur with that.