"We were taught to believe that God could do everything, and he did everything for us."

00:01 Vivian Anderson Kimball, West Virginia.

00:07 Walter Benjamin, born Edward, West Virginia. And I'm John Hairston. I'm the son of John Hairston junior, who is a graduate of Gary district, and I'm from Cleveland, Ohio. So what years did you graduate from Gary?

00:28 1960.

00:29 219 61. Describe Gary District High School. What was it?

00:40 It was a place that I went to to mostly enjoy myself and to learn, because when I started school, that was my parents greatest issue. That was that for us to go to school and get the best education we could get. And Gary District High School offered that to me because they put me in a direction of discipline, of learning, how to be a leader, how not to follow everything that was put in front of us. We were taught the best ethics. We were taught how to reason. We were taught how to give and not take all the time. And most of all, we were taught that we were not put on this earth to simply survive, but to leave something worthwhile.

01:54 What did it mean to you? Well, what Gary district meant to me was leaving a junior high school from Anawalt West Virginia, graduated in 9th grade. Mean to me going to Gary, that there was another step. And when I got to Gary, I met new classmates whom I practically already knew because I was born in Gary Elbert West Virginia, and my mother come from a family of five boys, and three of them finished high school. I quit in 1959, and I came, I went to Detroit, Michigan, to try to get a job. And when I got there, my sister in law says, where is it? I thought she was talking to me. I said, where is what? She said, your high school diploma. I said, oh, I quit. She said, well, the bus leaves Sunday morning. You can go right back, and don't come back here until you get a high school diploma. And I was on the train at 03:00 going back to West Virginia. And when I got back to West Virginia, my daddy asked me what was I doing back? And I told him that they sent me back and told me, don't come back until I got a high school diploma. And I kind of hung around at home for the rest of the year. And then I decided when school started again, I was going to go back to school and talk to the principal. Well, when I went back to the school to talk to the principal, the principal gave me an opportunity to start all over again in the 12th, go back and finish the 11th grade. And I chose to do that. And I stayed there, and I finished school in 61 with high school diploma, and I graduated.

04:47 What kind of student were both of you?

04:49 What would you were you good students or.

04:54 I was a good student because I was competitive, and we always had a. Coming out of number nine, we had a competitive edge about us, and we were always wanting to be better than everybody else. So I was very competitive. I made good grades, I studied hard, and did everything that I could do to be better than everybody else. And if I felt like if my girlfriend could get an a, I could, too. So that's what I did. I worked hard to get a's and not b's or c's. And daddy used to say that if you got d's, then you weren't doing too well, and an f was a failure, and that was not acceptable in our house. So when you came back, how did you do?

05:46 When I came back, I averaged a c average, and I graduated, and I went back to Detroit, and I got a job at Ford Motor company, and I worked there two years. And then I left Detroit because a construction company offered me three times the money that I was making at Fords. And I worked out a year, and the company told me that they was moving to New York, and he wanted to take me with him because I was a good worker. And I traveled to New York with the company, and I stayed with the company for almost ten years. And I left there, Detroit, and went to Chicago. And over there I met one of the guys that I went to school with at gear district, and I couldn't find a job, although I had that high school diploma. So he offered me a job to work with him at the internal revenue office, and his name was raymond Johnson, and I worked with him, and I got another job as a longshore one, which paid very good money. And I done that, and I got caught in the hole of the boat, stealing copper off the boat, putting it between the pallets. And the guys put me up to that because I didn't want to do it. But when they told me what kind of money I could make, I was willing to take a chance. So my job was, is when the winch come in with the pallet, I put the copper bars up under there between the pallets, and at lunch, I go out and unload it and put it in one of the guys car. And when I got off from work, there was a bunch of feds told me to follow them, and I got in trouble. Well, I lost my book as a longshoreman. And so they get. They put me. I was a good worker, and they put me at. Made me a card, man, you could call your card out at number in the morning when you get hired. And I was one of the first guys called with the cardinal. I was a good worker. I was a good worker, and I stayed there, and I became the hole in the boss. I mean, a hole in the bottom of the boat loading. And that was my job until I left Chicago and went to New York. And when I got there, looked like everything just fell out the bottom. I started to go to clubs at night, and I met some singers, and I was dancing, and the guy came over to me and said, man, where did you learn to dance like that? I said, well, I'm from Detroit, and I used to watch the guys dance from old Town. He said, man, you can go. And he told me to get in his car. He had a white cadillac with red interior, convertible drop top. And I said, where we going? He said, I'm just going over to the couple blocks and dropped this cigar box off to my uncle. And I got over there, and I carried the cigar box into the gas station and came back and got back in. We were on our way back to Brooklyn, and he gave me $101 bills. And he nicknamed me Cash money. And that was my street name in New York, because when I opened the cigar box up, it was 100 $1 bills in there. And I started selling drugs, and I got caught up. So how did you come back from that? Well, I was on it for almost 25 years in New York, and I got down on my knees in front of Macy's department store one. And I said, God, come back into my life. Take these drugs away from me and let me live again. And when I got up, it looked like it was daylight. And I went to a treatment center, and they got me detoxed. And I came back to Detroit after I got that one day and got me some money to ride the greyhound back to Detroit. And I came back to Detroit, and I got into a drug program. And I finished the drug program. And the man on the program told me, you got a good story. You need to stay here and go to school. And I listened to him, and I started Wayne county community college in Detroit. And I was getting a's and b's, and he said, wow. And I stayed there, and I graduated with associates. I got the papers of art with four point something, grade average, always.

12:11 That's an inspiring story to come back from that.

12:14 Vivian, did you know all of that?

12:16 No, not like that, because I knew a lot. I've known Walter for long years, and we've been wonderful friends for long, long years because he was married to my first cousin, and she was like a sister to me, and he has been like a brother to me for. But his journey, I've known his journey for most of the time. That's the reason why I probably understand him better than anybody else. How would you say being at Gary helped with that?

12:44 I mean, do you think it was easier for you to come back? God led you through that, or what do you guys both think?

12:53 Well, I think that we have. We were taught so much stuff about that. That's what we were taught. We were taught to believe that God could do everything, and he did everything for us because, I mean, they led us through a lot of things in and out in Gary, you know, because we were poor people and didn't even know that, because we had a depth, a deep belief in who God was in our lives. And that's what our families was comprised of, was basically religion, most especially our mothers and strong fathers. We were. That's what we were led to believe, and then we were led not to look down on one another. If we had a brother or sister in trouble, we were not allowed to look down on them and, you know, to put our feet on them. As my mother would say, you don't walk on anybody's back because somebody will walk yours. And that's the way we did, and that's how we've done with Walter.

13:50 Now, you actually remained in Kimball the.

13:55 Whole time, or did you? No, I have. I left. I stayed in Kimball until 1960. I got married, had. We had three children, and my husband was going to school at Bluefield State, and the Vietnam war was going on, and he went. Got in the army because we knew that we couldn't. He felt like he could go in the army and make some more money, and it was okay with me. And I had a little job. But prior to that, my father died in the mines when he was. Well, he wasn't in the mines. He was in a mining accident when he was 46 years old, and he died because of that mining accident. And so that left my mama with three children and four children, three girls and a boy that had to be taken care of. Back in those days, you didn't have Social Security like they have now. You get it right away, so you had to wait on it. And mama had to sue the coke us steel to get daddy's money because he was a. Died because of a mining injury. So I had to get a job. The first job I got was at Grace hospital in Welch, and I got that job cooking in the kitchen. And made $0.63 an hour. I made $0.63 an hour, and every Friday we got paid. I bought my payday home to my mother, and she used that as the income for the house. Well, I worked there for a while, and then I got a job working at a thrifty dress shop in Welch, and I made a dollar an hour there. And what we did was we folded boxes in the back of the store, because at that time, they didn't put the latest clothes in a bag, and they didn't put them on hangers. You know, they got their hangers from the. From the laundry. So they put them in beautiful, nice boxes, and that's what I did that in folding boxes. And then I got a job working in a sewing factory in Kimball, making dollar 50 a week. So that's how my life had gone since I had graduated from high school. And then when my husband went in the army, then I got an allotment of $108 a month. That was my allotment check. Well, being that the allotment check was $108 and I was making $50 a week at the sewing factory, then I was making big money. So my mother didn't have an income much, and my mother in law didn't have an income of much. So my mother decided that the allotment check, she would divide it between herself and my mother in law. And then I had to take care of the family with the $50 a week that I made. And as soon after that, mama got her settlement with us steel, which was a really, really good, excuse me, settlement. And my husband came home because he was stationed over in Korea. He came home, and we moved to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and he stayed there 13 months until he got out. So we decided that we were going to go to school at. Go to college. I thought, lord have mercy, how do we go to college with three children and us? So our mothers decided that they would keep the children and we would go to college. Well, I was hoping that we would go to college at West Virginia State, because that's where all the fun was. So we applied at West Virginia State and got accepted, and we both applied at West Virginia University. Lo and behold, we got accepted because at that time, they were needing black students to come to their institutions to keep their federal monies coming. So we got accepted there because we had been outstanding high school students when we graduated from high school. So I got what they called a Benedict scholarship to West Virginia University, and my husband got the GI bill, so we were able to go to college at West Virginia University, take care of the kids, do everything that we had to do. And I finished college, actually, in three years. I got a bachelor's degree in three years because I went year round. And if you made a 4.0 average or better at West Virginia University, you could carry 21 hours. So that's what I did. I carried the 21 hours so that I could get out. And he graduated. My husband graduated, and he went on to law school there at West Virginia University and graduated the school of Law in 1973. So have both of you. I mean, you moved back to Kimball or you. I moved back to Kimball. What happened was, after we lived in Morgantown, actually about 13 years, my husband was the attorney for the students with housing, and I got a job at West Virginia University as secretary. And I worked there even though I had a degree. And we decided to move back home because he had gotten an offer from the prosecutor's office to serve as assistant prosecutor in Welch. And the school board, the McDowell county school board was getting sued because they had failed to serve Larry Harrison, who was the mayor of Gary. He had a special needs daughter that had spina bifida, and the school board has failed to serve her. And he sued. The board of education won the suit, and they had to hire certified teachers with degrees in special education. Well, when I graduated from West Virginia University, I had a bachelor's degree in regular elementary education, and I had a bachelor's degree in special education, servicing all areas of special ed. So when they found out that my husband was coming back to the prosecutor's office, then they offered me a job to teach in tidewater elementary school as a teacher in special education. And that's what I did. And I continued to do that for 39 years.

21:20 So you both had different paths.

21:22 Of how many reunions have you come to? Well, I've come to nearly all of them, with the exception of four. I think.

21:34 I have missed one. What brings you back? Why, you know, I've grown up.

21:42 I'm generation, I don't know what generation I'm in.

21:46 Why does this work so well versus other things?

21:53 This is, by far, to me, probably one of the most loving things that I do or have done, because if you've noticed, when we're here at the reunions, you hear a lot of laughter. When you walk through that door in any hotel that we've been in, you hear laughter, laughter, laughter, laughter, laughter. And we hug each other and we kiss each other. We're happy to see each other. And I've had some friends that have come to the reunion that weren't even a part of the reunion. And before they left, they said they felt like that they were from Gary, because we embraced them in such a way that they didn't know how to accept us any other way. And we allowed our children to become friends with each other. And it's just amazing. And we have a friendship, a kinship almost with each other, you know? And it's just a part of who you are. And actually, in the beginning, when we first started having the reunions, these were actually vacations for all of us, because most of us that are here today, we didn't have a lot of money in the beginning, we were all struggling parents with children, with young children. My oldest daughter is 61 years old, so she'd come to the reunion. We didn't have much money. We would save money all year long to come to the reunion. We'd get one room, and everybody in the family stayed in that one room. You'd sleep on the floor. You bought a cooler, and in the cooler, you'd have some bologna and some milk, have a little sugar. You would bring some corn flakes and some oranges and apples and things like that for the kids to eat in the room. You slept in the bed with each other, where it was one or four, and that's what we did. And it was just actually loving to see each other. And it's amazing when we get together now, because we still love each other, and it's just a matter of just, oh, it's just awful to think that here we are, 54 years down the road, haven't seen each other in four years, and today, on this weekend, this was like the greatest day of our lives, just to sit down, eat a piece of chicken, some mashed potatoes, and eat some broccoli. And today was a good day. What about you, sir?

24:57 Well, after I started to work, when I finished college at Wayne County Community College, I was offered a job at a treatment center through the major of the Salvation army. And I was very successful at being a leader of relapse prevention. That means that guys who relapsed, I was given didactics on the roof every Thursday, and they gave me Friday off, and that was my advancement, and I done that. And then I went back. They wanted me to come back to school, what I was doing so good, and I didn't go back to school to get my associates, and I would have been making the same money. So I said, well, I just stayed what I'm doing, and I did. And all the guys that was relapsing, it came to my mind that, why are these guys relapsing? Well, I found out that when they finished the program, they didn't have nothing to offer to go. So I went to a day labor center and I got to know the guy real well, and I was getting guys jobs, I went to the major and talked to him about this, that I was going to the state and I'm going to get these guys jobs and have the Salvation army to put their money up until they get graduate from the program and they could find a place to stay. And that's what happened. I went to the state and explained the situation about this relapse prevention. And I got a pay raise at the Salvation army. And the state gave me a certificate of a certified counselor to advance me in the relapse program. And they couldn't put the guys out, you know, without a place to stay. And I won that case through the state. And guys who had trades and degrees and those guys that had lost their job because of no place to stay when they heard that the state couldn't put them out the program, so they came back to the program for 30 days and they got a place to stay and they started getting their jobs back. And right today, everywhere I go in Detroit, I see guys say, Mister Benjamin, Mister Benjamin, Mister Benjamin. And some of them had, they were roofers, they were mechanics, they had all kind of trades. And I get my car fixed now, I get a roof put on my house free. The guys just loved me. And then I met a man who had a place where guys who got those jobs could stay there. And he gave me a job, and I had two jobs, and I had to run the three quarter house and work at, at the Salvation army as a full fledged counselor. And I was making the money that people had, bachelor's degree. And I done that up until three years ago while I was working the major at the Salvation Army, I went up to told him that we having a school reunion every year, and I would like to be off during that time. The major granted it, and I been coming to these year school reunions ever since. Ever since. And I know all the students that went to Gary school. I know little Vivian. I met her cousin and I married her, and we had a good life. And of course she passed, and I still ain't got over that, but I go and I do what's right, and I just been successful ever since. And can you describe, you have a picture that you brought in? Can you describe that picture, because there's no video, so you have to tell what it is. This picture here of my class, when I graduated from gary district school. These guys here were all in my class. The first guy is Odalis Price, who was a school teacher. And then there's Audrey Gunn. She had a good job. Her mama was a cook at the school. And then there was Wanda Thompson, who was successful to marry a guy in Chicago who has a million dollar house. And there's another one of my classmates, Wanda, who worked for the government. And my buddy Price taught school. He gave me a job, you know, to watch the students who had special needs. And I worked there, and I'd just been working and saving my money, and I didn't have a thing to do with it. And all of these are my classmates. And I started this year, all of my classmates. I started a school reunion with these people here who were in my class, and some of them deceased, and some of them are still going, still going good. And all these guys on here, and girls went to college, and they doing well. And ever since then, I just been coming to these school reunions. Cause that's my vacation. I don't care what I am doing. When they schedule these school reunions, I make contact with the supervisor, and I let them know that every year I will be going to my school reunion. And I got permission. And I've been coming to these school reunions. I'm faithful about paying my dues, whatever I have to do. And I send my money to little Vivian, whom I'm very close to. And I love her. And sometimes I get filled up and get a little rochesters that come from drug counseling and. But I let go. I got a good heart. I give. I go to church every Sunday. Every Sunday. I don't care what happens. I go. Unless I'm at this school reunion. And I let the preacher know that I wasn't going to be there today. And that's the way I've been doing, and I'm still going, and I must keep going until God called me home. And I love everybody here. And this. I know everybody down there. So let me ask you a question.

34:00 We're almost out of time.

34:03 How would you like Gary District High.

34:06 School to be remembered? Vivian, if you want to go first, I'd like to be remembered by the place that taught us a lot of things. Dorothy Stewart taught us how to put the words on paper. She taught us where to put the periods, where to put the questions. She let us know when to do the exclamation points. We had to, she would give us little sayings. One time she gave us a saying that said, the man is the father of the boy. And we had to write an essay on that. And I never understood that until I got to be a grown woman to understand that the man is really the father of the boy. And we had to think about things. We had to write legibly that we had to stay in the lines. Miss Spencer taught us every county in the state of West Virginia. We had to know where those counties were on the map. Today I can tell you where every county is in West Virginia. Ursula Smith taught us about the clouds and what generated the rain. And I never forgot that. Mister Wilkerson taught us math and algebra and I never forgot that. And I didn't have any clue that I would need any of that stuff until I actually got in college. When I got in West Virginia University and I realized that all of those little idiosyncrasies that we had to go through to stay on track at Gary district was what was going to make the leadership in my life. And it truly made the leadership in my life. And it taught me that I had to stay time on task at all times to be able to be successful in anything that I did, regardless of how simple it was, big it was, or who put it in front of me. And I could not be sidetracked by what was looking in my face.

36:36 What about you? What do you want Gary District High School to be remembered for? I wanted Gary District School to remain of and keep going and doing what they doing with these school reunions. My goal is now is try to set some kind of goal to make Gary District school a museum. And that's, that's my up goal. And I haven't started, but I got some guys I've been talking to about it here at the reunion and I mean some positive guys and I know some guys who don't come to this reunion who has higher degrees and better jobs. But I haven't talked to the president of the chapter here about making Gary district a museum or a place to go where people can see it. And when the world sees this year, it's going to open up a lot of doors it's going to open up a lot of doors to see this ground at home. Just look at it where I went to school, just sitting there and deteriorating. And nobody, they all right with it because when you go home, you can go back over there and look at the school and it looks all right. They got it nailed you know, some up. And. And that's my goal now. I'm going to try to work on that until I be successful. I'm gonna work with little Vivian, and I know she will help me in any kind of way that she can and give me some points. And I listen, you know, and that's my goal now.

38:54 Well, thank you both for the time.

38:58 This will be. This was great.

39:00 Thank you.