Ware Co GA: Pafford Carolina Miller Ray part 1

WAYCROSS-BAXLEY NOVELIST CAROLINE PAFFORD MILLER RAY GAINED FAME BUT ALSO HEARTBREAK

Though The World Sent Her Roses, This Writer Would Find Many Thorns Along The Stems JUDGE BEN SMITH REMEMBERS THE PULITZER PRIZE WINNER THROUGH A SERIES OF LETTERS

These Two Shared Happy And Sad Moments By Correspondence Shortly Before Her Death In 1992 By Robert Latimer Hurst

Though she achieved worldwide fame, Caroline Pafford Miller Ray faced her share of heartbreaks. Receiving the honor and awards for writing "Lamb in His Bosom," which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1934, was one thing; but the Waycross native, who had penned the novel about Southeast Georgia dirt farmers while in Baxley, found that there was another side to fame. And, perhaps, it's the "another" that created a sharing of correspondence between Mrs. Ray and Judge Ben Smith. These letters, written in the 1990s, also give insight into this individual's thoughts and feelings, as well as a lesson in the use of words to create images. "Dear Benjamin Smith, you might think that I did not appreciate your beautiful letter referring to my father. It happens to be my only echo about my father from the past. I thought so much of it that I sent `zeroxed' copies to my children. I was quite small when my parents died...." She was writing Waycross' Judge Smith a few years prior to her death in 1992. "There was one other beautiful `happening' that meant much to my family --and me. We were aligned on the back seat of the courthouse in Pearson. In court!" She is writing her remembrances of the painful divorce that separated her and first husband, Will Miller, a former Waycross High School teacher. Her ex-father-in-law, A.G. Miller, had testified that he "was afraid that I would abscond with the three little boys, to Mexico, and he would never see them again." The older Miller served, at one time, as Waycross' Superintendent of Schools. "The old silver-haired judge leaned forward a little," she tells, "and made a statement, ponderously: `I knew her father! She will never do anything that is illegal and underhanded. The reporters gave me very kind smiles, and no newspaper account was written. Unusual." One can almost hear the sigh that accompanies both painful and kind remembrances of times past. "How I wish I knew the name of that magnificent judge! He was beyond doubt one of the grand men of our old country in the loblolly pines and huckle-berry bushes and ladies' big palm-leaf fans (for sweltering Sunday sermons!). God bless them! There never were, never will be stronger, more loyal, more honest men anywhere ever! "They knew about galluses and old mules (smarter than any thoroughbred!) and `taters baked in hot ashes pulled forward and on the `hearth.' They were noble men!" Mrs. Ray is now Caroline Pafford again, and her remembrances return to that time when Cean and Alonzo, main characters in her award-winning book, took that wagon ride to their new home in the oak scrubs of Southeast Georgia before the Civil War. "Overalls and bare feet and watermelons and `mush-melons' stacked higher than your head in the hallway (breeze-way!) of my Uncle Richard Hall's country home out of Tifton... "I'm proud that I was a little country girl. I never heard of a drop of liquor or a cuss-word in those old days..." She interrupts her nostalgic rambling to ask Judge Smith, "Did you know about my father's brothers --Jesse, Marcus --Was there another? I hope you'll go to the old Pafford Church and grave-yard for (the) Pafford Reunion always on First Sunday in September. And it has never rained on it! I'm inviting you! Go! Never will you eat such wonderful country food! "H.M. Jr. and his wife, Allie, were there last year. My son, George Miller, will be there if he lives and does well. Remember that `ole chicken n' rice'? It'll be there..." Caroline, then, requests that Judge Ben tell her relatives living in Waycross about her day in court. "His father, Morrison --what a wonderful man he was! --sat beside me on the last row at that courtroom, with a loaded pistol in his pocket. "Those were terrible times for me, grossest calumnies... But until this day, there are people who believe those old lies --that I didn't write the book...." (Part II continues the word pictures created from Caroline Pafford Miller Ray's letters to Judge Ben Smith and his response.)

Continued...NEXT.