And One Was a Priest by Johnston Araminta Stone;

Author:Johnston, Araminta Stone;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

“WE ARE RESPONSIBLE”

Oxford, 1957–62

WHEN MOVING TO OXFORD had first come up as a possibility, Ruthie was less than enthusiastic. “It wasn’t Oxford. Oxford was fine. I’d been in college there. It was leaving Cleveland. We were so settled in there. I was born in the same house that my mother was born in, and I just hadn’t been raised with this moving around. Since we’d gotten married, we’d lived in New Orleans, Shreveport, Pittsburgh, and Sewanee. I’d rather not have moved again. Once we got there, it was fine, of course.”1

In 1957, the Gray children—Duncan, eight; Anne, five; and Lloyd, three—were too young to have much feeling one way or another about the move. As it turned out, they found life in the town of a few thousand to be “idyllic” for a child.2 Their house in Oxford was on a short dead-end street with woods to play in behind it. The town’s business district, which centered around the courthouse square, was within walking or biking distance for a school-aged child. The square included drug stores that still had soda fountains, dime stores with candy and toys, and, just off the square, two movie theaters with regular features. The church itself shared a parking lot with one of the theaters. The public library was in the courthouse. The university campus offered a swimming pool. In a day when girls were less likely to participate in organized sports, Little League was popular with boys and pick-up games were easy to find.

People who grew up in Oxford and return after some years as adults are often struck by the narrowness of its older streets and the shortness of their blocks. In some ways it was a child-sized town where most people knew each other and where adults usually knew who a child’s parents were and could be counted on to both look out for a child’s safety and, if not always directly correct a misbehaving child, at least inform the child’s parents if misbehavior occurred. More than forty years later, Lloyd recalls, “Oxford was such a great place for a kid. We could wander anywhere we wanted to go. I loved Oxford. I loved my life there as a kid, separate and apart from the fact that I had wonderful parents and a happy home. Every time I drive over to Oxford even now, there wells up in me this good feeling.”3

In Oxford, as in Cleveland, Pastor Gray continued his habit of bringing “lost sheep” home. Son Duncan remembers an extended visit from “Teegar” when he himself was nine or ten. He was part of a youth sports league that played on Saturday mornings on the playground of the town’s single white elementary school, which stood across a street that ran by the side of St. Peter’s. “We were playing football,” he recalls, “and I looked around and Dad was standing on the sidelines with a guy who had sideburns, a leather motorcycle cap, leather pants and a leather jacket. The

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