CHAPTER TWO

DURWARD THOMAS ROBERTS

EARLY LIFE

Young Durward Thomas Roberts was born at 10:00 AM on January 1, 1915 the third of five children and the older of two boys of Zephaniah Thomas and Bessie Lee Simmons Roberts. All of their children except the youngest daughter were born in the Roberts family farmhouse in Jasper Co, GA about one and one half miles west of Monticello. My grandmother Bessie Mama named my father after her oldest brother William Durward Simmons in honor of her brother’s accomplishments as a merchant in Mississippi.²² My father received his father’s middle name. The following appeared in the Monticello News on January 8, 1915. As a young child Durward Roberts lived and played on his family farm. At the age of seven after his grandfather

died, his family moved from the farm to a house in Monticello (see page 6). The Monticello of my father’s boyhood in the late 1910’s and early 1920’s was a prosperous small town of around 1700 people located in the rolling hills of central Georgia. This area of Georgia and the town had lots of hardwood and pine trees with numerous farms located outside the city limits. Growing up he experienced hot summers and mild winters with only an occasional snow. As my father grew to become a teenager in the late 1920’s, the boll weevil and the depression took its tole on the town and the local people suffered. His family seemed to do fine because his father worked hard running a flourmill. Everyone needed to eat.

My father attended school for twelve years in Monticello and walked the three quarters of a mile to and from school twice a day (lunch). During the 1920's the honor rolls for the local school appeared in the Monticello Newspaper. My fathers sisters’ and brother’s names almost always appeared in the paper as honor students but never his. He was not a studious child and told me many times that his grades in school made his father very unhappy but that mine were just as bad if not worse than his.

By his own admission he claimed to be a mischievous child. For example, young Durward Roberts and his brother Jabus set fifty bales of cotton on fire while smoking rabbit tobacco one day. I’ll bet my grandfather blistered their rear ends for that stunt. As a teenager my father told me that if his father had not been extremely strict with him during his adolescence, he would have wound up in jail instead of a contributing member of society. With the history of some of my father’s ancestors described in this book, I can see why my grandfather felt the way he did.

During his teenage years, dad worked for his father at the flourmill after school and in the summers. The mill ground grains (wheat, corn, etc.) produced by local farmers into flour for use in making bread and for chicken feed (see pages 6 – 8). During the summers my father, also worked packing peaches into boxes for shipment by train to various customers up north. The packing shed, located next to the railroad, was a large multistory unpainted wooden building. At the end of a days work he must have been sweaty and covered with peach fuzz. That must have been a miserable job in the hot middle Georgia summers but his work produced a paycheck for a teenager during the depression, without him having to work at the mill for his demanding father. We can all understand a teenager wanting his own paycheck and how important those checks can be. As a young child I can remember the old dirty looking building beside the train tracks where he worked so hard packing all of those peaches.

Durward Roberts played for the "Purple Hurricane" Monticello High School Football team, starting at center for two games and substituting at center in two other of the total of six games played during the fall season of 1930. My grandfather did not let my father play in two of the games most likely because of his school grades.²² The Monticello News papers published articles that covered each game in the following weeks paper.⁷⁶ The newspaper listed my father, if he played, as a starter or a substitute and his position in the game for the preceding Friday. The 1930 team finished 5-0-1.

After the season in early December the Monticello News reported that the school honored the team at a banquet for "outstanding event in the annals of the school's 1930 team... very impressive and triumphant season." On January 7, 1931 the football Coach Blackmon presented fifteen of his players including my father a purple and white letter with a small football woven onto the cloth.⁷⁷

My father attended twelve years of school in Monticello even though at that time schools in Georgia had only eleven grades. He told me that he did not graduate after his eleventh year so he could go back and play one more year of football. I believe several other boys in his class tried to do the same thing because only five boys graduated from the high school in 1931 versus 12 in 1932. After the successful season of 1930, I can understand why dad wanted to play football for another year. Either the school or his father did not let him play because he was not listed as a member of the 1931 team nor did he play in any of the games according to the fall issues of the Monticello News. Only a few of the players returned and the football team had a poor season.⁷⁶

In January 1932 my father played Mr. Hardcastle in the senior class play "Courting". The musical comedy centered around the theme of a misunderstanding between a husband and wife, as well as their daughter, a judge, who loved a local trial lawyer.⁷⁸ I can see my father performing in a comedy, but I have a hard time picturing him in a musical play, because he did not have any interest in playing a musical instrument or singing. On the other hand, he did enjoy listening to some types of music.

Durward Roberts graduated on May 23, 1932 from Monticello High School along with 34 other seniors including only 12 boys.⁷⁹ It appears many boys his age decided to go to work rather than finish high school. He chose not to go to college or business school like some of his class mates because he felt he was not ready to study hard enough and might flunk out; therefore, he went to work for his father at Farmers Milling Company. I am sure money was tight and his father could use the help in the mill. The mill, located across the street from the family home, ground grain into flour. He worked hard at the mill for four years, and he later told me that his father greatly appreciated his efforts. Being an ambitious young man and realizing there were few opportunities during the depression for him in Monticello, he decided to get an education in order to obtain a job with a large growing company. His younger brother Jabus attended Draughon School of Commerce in Atlanta in 1936. The school trained its students in accounting, bookkeeping, commerce, penmanship, shorthand and typewriting.⁸⁰ His brother must have been happy with the school; therefore, in late 1936 or early 1937 my father left Monticello to attend Draughon. He had saved enough money to pay for his entire education. My father spent approximately one year mastering these skills and could type over 100 words per minute with little or no errors. An article of congratulations on his graduation from the school appeared in the Monticello News on January 6, 1938.

EARLY CAREER, MARRIAGE and NAVAL SERVICE

Upon graduation from the school in the late fall of 1937 and after obtaining his Social Security number on November 27, 1937, Durward Roberts landed a job in December 1937 as an assistant or clerk for the Branch Manager, Mr. Clemmons, at the Atlanta office of a relatively new company called International Business Machines (IBM). He started at around $75 a month, which was average for the times. My father believed the company had a lot of potential for job growth. He told me many years later that at the time his goal was to earn $300 a month and his future family would be comfortable. Like his father twenty years earlier, he worked very hard to learn the business. He very much wanted one day to be promoted into a sales territory and then into management.

After being with IBM for one year and nearing the age of twenty-four he wrote a letter dated December 21, 1938 to his younger brother Jabus, where he revealed his ambition to succeed in the business world and how much his parents meant to him. Some quotes from this letter are as follows: "I had a long talk with my boss last Saturday afternoon and he assured me that if I kept up my present work and continued to study that I would be an executive in this company some day. This is something to be proud of…. Men like Ford, Carnegie, Al Smith, and our own President Watson, started out like you and me. They worked hard and earnestly; they gave their employer all that they had, and look at the results…. We both have clean habits, we apparently like our work, we have better than average ability, we have nice personalities, and the ability to make and keep friends. What we want to do is to keep up our good work; never slack off because if you do, then things begin to lag behind…. I am a firm believer in making breaks…. We both should be very proud of the fact that we were born in a home of refinement, of honest, lovable parents. A person does not realize all of this until he gets out in the world alone and starts the struggle of life with people that are less fortunate…. I contend that success is just around the corner when you believe in yourself, treat people fair and square, make and keep friends, and concentrate on your job with all your heart, brain and soul."

"You should save your money because some day you will want to take unto yourself a wife. I contend that a man is one-half man until he marries, three-fourths of a man until he has children and then he becomes a man…. Have I done everything today within my power to better my religion, my work and my family…. I am sending father a copy of this letter so that he may understand my outlook on life for both of us. He certainly tried his best to train us the right way when we were growing up…. I certainly appreciate this more than I realized when I left home and will someday make him proud of me…." My father told me years later that be believed he made his father proud of him before his father died in 1944.

Also, in 1937 IBM hired my mother Eliza Rose and sent her to Atlanta as a Systems Service Girl to train customers on how to best use the new IBM equipment. A day or so before she arrived in Atlanta, the Branch Manager of the office, told all of the male employees that if anyone dated Miss Rose he would be fired.⁷³ My parents first began to see each other as friends over lunch. Sometime later their friendship developed into love and he proposed to her. Dad would not get married until he could properly support his wife. They were, therefore, only married after my father received a promotion into a sale position. In early 1940 he got this opportunity and left for Endicott, NY to attend IBM’s sales training school. Before his first sales territory became available he worked at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair in the spring of 1940 at the IBM Exhibit. In New York he demonstrated the latest IBM equipment and answered questions from the visitors at the exhibit.

Sometime before my parents married my father took mother to meet his family in Monticello. The weekend before their visit my farther went home and made sure the house looked good. Did he believe my grandmother’s house keeping needed some improvement? My parents married in Shelby, NC on June 19, 1940 at the home of my mother's parents. My grandfather Z.T. Roberts and all of my father's sisters Evelyn, Sarah, and Martha and his brother Jabus left Monticello, GA early the morning of June 19 and drove to Shelby in the clothes that they wore to the wedding. After the reception they drove back to Monticello.²² That must have been some drive to make in one day in 1940. Considering the cars, the roads of the day, and the distance of about 250 miles, the drive most likely took about eight to nine hours each way.

Submitted for use on this site by Tom Roberts - Thank you Tom!

roberts@plantationcable.net

GO TO CHAPTER 3 - JOHN ARTHUR ROBERTS