We got back home and Daddy said, “Sammy, what’d you give for all this meat here?” I said, “I give Kenneth Stiles twenty dollars for it.” He said, “He give it to ye, didn’t he?” I said, “Well, he said he’d let me have it for twenty dollars, and I was glad to get it for that.” Back then you could buy dinners a lot cheaper. I’d get five drumsticks, breasts, mash taters [mashed potatoes], pinto beans, coffee, and cornbread, all for seventy-five cents back then.
A Special Note About Sammy Green
At the conclusion of Sammy’s interview, when the tape recorders had been turned off, he began to share his concern about not having any insurance or any way to pay for his funeral expenses. He was the last living member of his family, and while Sherri had been generous enough to take Sammy in and care for him for the past seven or eight years, he did not want to leave a financial burden on her.
After the interview in December 2006, Sammy’s health took a turn for the worse. In March 2007, Sammy was admitted into the hospital and the medical staff decided they had done all they could and needed to call in hospice. We [students] decided to raise the money to bury Sammy. We took this on as a Foxfire class project and were able to involve other classes at our school in our effort to help Sammy.
I met with Sammy again to let him know that we were preparing a bluegrass music barbecue benefit for him to raise money for his funeral expenses. At that meeting, I asked him if there was anything special that he might want to have at his service. Much to my surprise, his only reply was that he had always wanted to be buried in a simple pine box. I remember thinking, “A pine box? How in the world are we going to accomplish that?” I knew if anyone could help us, it would be a local funeral home director, Lloyd Hunter. Mr. Hunter was so sincere through the whole process and provided us with the dimensions for a pine box. He also said he would be honored to perform Sammy’s funeral, when the time come. So, with the dimensions of a pine box in hand, I went to the industrial arts class at Rabun County High School. After hearing my request, the boys were shocked, but after hearing the entire story, they, too, were more than willing to help fulfill Sammy’s wish. Throughout the process the boys learned that we had become Sammy’s family. They took a stand that I never would have expected: They said they would be privileged to be the pallbearers at Sammy’s funeral.
PLATE 8 Six ninth-grade industrial arts students built the pine box for Sammy Green’s burial and served as pallbearers when he passed away: Jake Welch, Harrison Sumlin, Jordan Coalley, Ethan Hunter, Austin Gragg, Colby Nichols
When all the benefit preparations started, it was just a few small-town high school kids who saw a need and wanted to meet it. Little did we ever know that it would become a nationwide event. Sammy’s story was broadcast on channel 32 TV news out of Toccoa, Georgia, and the Neil Boortz national radio show, as well as in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Clayton Tribune, and numerous other outlets. We received a phone call out of Elberton, Georgia, from a couple who own a small granite business. They had seen Sammy’s story on the news and wanted to help. They expressed how it would be their privilege to donate a headstone for Sammy. And the agriculture students at the high school assisted us the day of the benefit by cooking all the barbecue. From all the publicity and the people who came out the day of the benefit to eat and hear the bluegrass bands who volunteered their time, we were able to raise enough money to pay for Sammy’s funeral; we even had some money left over for the hospital bills.
Sammy expressed to all, time and time again, how grateful he was for everything we did, and for everyone who participated in the benefit. He said we all gave him a sense of peace and a will to live, just by knowing that people still cared for him. Sammy had no idea, when he agreed to a Foxfire interview, that he would gain a whole host of people who cared for him and would become known as his family.
Sadly, Sammy left us and went to be with his Heavenly Father on August 18, 2009. Friends of Sammy, including the New York Times reporters and photographers, attended Sammy’s viewing at Hunter’s Funeral Home in Clayton, Georgia, to see our promise to Sammy fulfilled. Only about two dozen people attended Sammy’s funeral, several of whom barely knew him but had been touched by his story. Sammy wore overalls and a blue button-up shirt, just as he had requested. The pallbearers were the six boys who had built Sammy’s pine box in the high school industrial arts class. As they marched to the graveside, with Sammy’s favorite gospel tunes being played softly on the guitar in the distance, we were all filled with honor that we could help such a man fulfill his dying wish.
Acts 20:35 says, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” I realized this through Sammy Green. Sammy touched more lives than he ever knew, and he will forever live on in our hearts.
—Casi Best
PLATE 9 “When Sammy agreed to an interview with me, neither he nor I imagined this story would sweep the nation and touch the hearts of millions.” Sammy with Casi in Dillard, Georgia
“Don’t you ever stop by my house again asking for whiskey.”
~An interview with Madge Merrell~
My first article as a new student in Foxfire was published in the edition of The Foxfire Magazine featuring former teachers. When Mrs. Green, one of my Foxfire teachers, suggested Mrs. Merrell, I knew she would be perfect. Mrs. Green and I arranged to meet Mrs. Merrell for the interview at the nursing home in Highlands, North Carolina, where she resides. When we opened the door to Mrs. Merrell’s room, we were greeted with a big smile. Throughout the interview I was more and more amazed by the amount of information she shared. I thought, “Wow, this woman is almost ninety-nine years old, and she is still as sharp as a tack.” In her fifty years of teaching, she watched countless children grow and mature. In addition to teaching, Mrs. Merrell also had many priceless experiences, such as living in a tent on the side of the road, seeing the first car to ever come to North Carolina, and learning to drive at the age of sixty-two. Life wasn’t always easy for her, but she made the best of her situation.
—Samantha Fountain
My name is Madge Dillard Merrell. I was born June 25, 1907, down there at Chattooga, right under the shadow of Chimney Top Mountain in North Carolina. I had the happiest childhood in the world. My daddy’s name was Tom Dillard, and my mother’s name was Susan Fugate Dillard. My father died October 31, 1947. He was the county commissioner, a school board member, and all kinds of stuff. He was deeply involved in politics. My mother died May 31, 1949—eighteen months after he did.
I was born where Chattooga Club is now. My mother said I was the least [smallest] baby she ever saw. I didn’t weigh but about three pounds—I got lost in my clothes. I survived, and I was the happiest child. As long as I was around where my mother was, I was happy. I had a happy childhood. My parents were Christians, and they never let anything stop them from going to church. Regardless of anything, we went to church. We would go to church in an ox wagon. I now belong to the Methodist church. I have belonged to the Methodist church for eighty-five years. I am their oldest member ever. I also hold the longest voting record in Jackson County.
PLATE 10 “We called him Dink.” Mrs. Merrell and her older son, Dink
We had plenty of food when I was growing up because we lived on a farm. We had plenty of food and lots of love. We all loved each other. We had very little money, but we didn’t need any money; we had everything. We were very happy. I had four brothers and two sisters. All my brothers and sisters and I were born in Cashiers, North Carolina. I was the fourth child. My last brothers and sisters were far apart. One was seven years younger, and one was thirteen years younger. All of them are gone now; all of my brothers and sisters are gone.
We were always warm in the winter and cool enough in the summer. My mother would always come out on the back porch and say, “Come to the house, children. Supper is ready.” My mother had a gristmill; you know, that you ground cornmeal in. You took the toll [a portion of the corn] out of cornmeal you ground for people. You took a gallon of toll out of a bushel of corn
meal to grind it. I used to go with my mother down to the river to grind meal. I would walk down there and listen to the water. My daddy was in timber all of his life. He cut timber and logged with horses and cattle. That is what he did, and my brothers did, too. One brother worked on the highway. He worked with men to build roads.
I saw the first car that ever came to the mountains, driven by Henry Ford, so they told me later. It scared me to death that day. Of course, it made the awfulest noise. I climbed the bank, and I tried to get away from that monster. It was scary. I didn’t know what to think [laughs].
Since we didn’t have a doctor, when my family got sick, my mother went out and got yellow root, and she boiled it. I used to have tonsillitis, and I had blisters that big [motions with her hands the size of her blisters]. She would make us warm medicine with Jerusalem oil. Oh, do you know what that is? Don’t ever find out. That is the awfulest stuff. She used that when we got sick. When we got a cold, she would put flannel on our chests. She would make it hot and put all kinds of concoctions on it. It was not hot enough to blister us, but pretty hot. We had different things for whatever was wrong with us. I remember the cough medicine she made. She put alum in it and a little bit of whiskey and a little bit of honey, and it seemed like a couple of other things, but those three I remember. It would help a cough. My mother was our doctor.
For entertainment when I was growing up, we had parties and square dances, and we had all kinds of, you know, no-harm activities. Nobody was drinking. We would get together at night and have us a party. We would play different kinds of games. We went to square dances. One night I went to a square dance, and there were forty-two couples on the floor. The big thing with us though was going to church and singing at church. We had singings, and maybe we would have a preacher up there at the schoolhouse during the week. He might be there with us to sing and read. That was the big thing with us back then. We had a good time. We never knew who would come home with us after church on Sunday. My mama always said she cooked for the man in the woods—meaning anybody might show up to eat.
I went to school in Cashiers until I was in the seventh grade. My dad wanted me to finish high school. We didn’t have any high schools in Cashiers or Glenville, so I went over to Western Carolina to the high school, which was affiliated with the college at that time, and I finished high school there. I stayed over there as a boarding student. We had eleven grades when I was in high school. I didn’t finish high school until I was nineteen because I missed a year of school. We could stay in the dormitories at Western. That was a happy time, too. When I finished high school, I went back to college there for about a year and a half. Most of the teachers who taught school back then did not go to college. I had more education than most of the teachers. You didn’t even have to have schooling to teach during the war because they didn’t have any teachers.
I started teaching when I was twenty-one. The first year I taught was up in Canada in Jackson County, North Carolina. They called it Little Canada. Little Canada is really in the boondocks, about one and a half hours from Cashiers. I had seventh grade. It was very primitive up there where I stayed. There wasn’t even a john [restroom] up there where I taught, or where I stayed either. We had a spring where the children got water to drink. They used a dipper. I bought them one of those collapsible cups, and they wouldn’t drink out of it because they had grown so used to that dipper. They loved to use that dipper. I thought the collapsible cup would tickle them, and they wouldn’t have to use that dipper. It didn’t tickle them at all. The first year I taught, I got one hundred dollars a month, I think. Out of this amount, I paid about twenty dollars for board and lodging. One year I got paid fifty-two dollars a month during the Depression.
I went from Little Canada to Cashiers to teach. From Cashiers I went to Bull Pen [Pleasant Grove]. The school at Bull Pen was a schoolhouse, and the community also used it for a church. It had two rooms in the front of it—one of them they called the cloakroom, and one was where you put lunches. We walked every day to school. It was a mile exactly from where we lived to the school. I took my lunch with me to school. The kids brought theirs, too, something like the fried cabbage from the night before. They had two rooms up on the stage where they dressed if we had a program. We didn’t have any electricity. It got pretty dark sometimes. We had wood. We used wood to heat the building. We had a boy who built fires for a while for me. The stove was one of the long ones. It had a door where the ashes were. We had to take the ashes out.
I married Merrett Merrell on June 9, 1930. I had already been hired to teach at Cashiers when I married. After I married, I got pregnant. At the end of my school year, my oldest child was born June 9, 1931. His name was M. H. Merrell Jr. We called him Dink. Four years after I had my first child, I had my second child, Curtis Ward Merrell. He was born June 28, 1935. My oldest son, Dink, died a few years ago; he died January 10, 2000. Curtis, my youngest son, died August 20, 1960—he was twenty-five years old. When my oldest son went to school, he could wear a pair of overalls a week. He would pull them off when he got home and put him something on to play in. I had two children and a husband that was sick a lot.
After my children died, I just didn’t want to live anymore. I give up all reasons for living, but Dink left me grandchildren. I just couldn’t leave them. Both of my children were born in June. Of course I had to have a babysitter. When Curtis, the last one, was born, I had taught school in Bull Pen for three years. We had a cabin that we lived in the first year, and it had lizards and everything else in it. I always felt like a snake was going across my foot. It scared me to death. The second year we lived in a house, which belonged to Cecil White, right across from where you turn up to the schoolhouse. It had cracks in it this big [motions with hands to show the size of the cracks]. We lived there that winter, and the next winter we didn’t have no place, so we bought us a tent, and the family built a wooden floor and stretched the tent over it. They really did do a good job on that tent. And then they built me a little kitchen about twice as wide as that door [pointing to the door]. I had bought a new woodstove, but I didn’t take it with me down there. The furniture store found a little step stove—just a tiny stove to cook on. They loaned that to me, and I cooked on it, and it cooked real good. We had a woodstove that was tin, but that was the warmest winter I ever spent. We had a lot of birchwood to burn. We had chickens and had plenty of eggs. I think we butchered a hog that winter. We had good food to eat down there. Mr. Rochester would come and eat with us. He sure did enjoy his meal. He would burp real big and say, “That sure was good.” We raised most of the food for our family. I grew carrots, beans, corn, lettuce, radishes, and all kinds of stuff in my garden. My husband got out and got apples and had them ready for me to can when I got home. Women would can, make jelly, and all kinds of things like that.
The tent we lived in was so close that we almost lived in the road. One afternoon, it was almost dark, and some men came by, and they said, “I want to buy some whiskey.” I said, “I want you to understand that I am a lady and that I am a schoolteacher. I am teaching school down here, and my family is with me. Don’t you ever stop at my house again asking for whiskey!” But I can understand why they did it. Why would a tent be out there in the middle of nowhere? What fool would live on the side of the road in a tent? I couldn’t be too hard on them. I never knew what became of that tent, but we had a good time.
When I taught at Bull Pen, I was the whole thing—the teacher, the principal, and all. I remember one day, they had a school committee meeting. Each community had a school committee. My uncle was on the school committee, and, of course, my daddy used to be. They come and spent a while with me to watch me teach. They were the ones that recommended the teacher. The county paid me.
One year I was going to get my children their Christmas presents—well, what I could. I let one of the teachers take my voucher to the bank, and she lost it. They found it under the carpet. They had swept it under the carpet, but they did write me a check. One Christm
as, the first Christmas we were at Bull Pen, I went to Sylva, North Carolina, and bought the children their Christmas. I bought them new shoes and some clothes and a little wagon—a little red wagon. We made chains—red and green chains—to put on our Christmas tree at school. That is all we had, but it looked real pretty.
We lived at Bull Pen for three years, I guess. I don’t know what happened down there at the Bull Pen School. The parents got to where they didn’t want to send their children to me to teach. Some of them moved to Cashiers so they wouldn’t have to send their children to me. I continued to teach school at Bull Pen with just two or three children. The funny thing about it was that when I was appointed to teach back at Cashiers, I had to teach their children again. That just killed them, I know.
I went back to Cashiers after I left Bull Pen. We bought property at Cashiers in 1932. We bought twenty-two acres for four hundred seventy-five dollars. It had a house on it, but it was a sawmill house. They had seed in one of the rooms and hay and everything. We hired a man to rebuild it. I was still teaching school, and they said that they would have it ready for me. My husband and the babysitter moved us to the house by horse and wagon. You just couldn’t believe how happy I was. It was a mile from my house to the schoolhouse.
The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book Page 5