The date set for the arrival of my third child was April 26, 1950; it was also my father’s birthday. I had an appointment with my doctor the day before she was due. He said the baby didn’t seem to be ready, and it might be as much as two weeks yet. The next morning I woke up with labor pains. I called the doctor and said “Oh yea, meet me at the hospital!” After she was born I told him “she knew her granddaddy was expecting her and she was anxious to see him.”
As she grew, we found that she had inherited her Granddad’s natural curly hair, but she was having a problem with a condition called “Cradle Cap” which meant I had to scrape her scalp and wash her hair each morning to keep it under control until the problem was eliminated. I also had to keep her hair cut very short. This resulted in her having a head full of tight golden curls. One day, while I was cutting her hair, a friend came by to see us and complained loudly, when she saw the curls blowing across the floor, as the breeze blew in the door. She said, “They are just too pretty to be cutting them off!”
Rebecca, or “Becky”, as we called her then, was only two years old when her Daddy was transferred to Raleigh, North Carolina. Since his job required him to travel most of the time, he would take a week off and drive the family to Maryland, and leave us with my Mom and Dad until it was time to go back to school. Then he would take another week off and come back, pack us all up, and head back to North Carolina. A few years later we were transferred once again. This time we moved to Atlanta, Georgia.
When Becky reached High School she decided that “Becky” was a baby’s nick name and asked us to call her “Becca”. While in High School Becca met a girl who was born on the same day she was, and they became best friends. During her last year there she also met a boy who invited her to a dance at VMI (Virginia Military Institute) in Virginia, where he was going to school. After much discussion we decided she could go for the weekend.
She was so excited, but she still had to go through one more week of school, and one more rehearsal for the school play that she had a part in. Her best friend’s mother was picking her up from the rehearsal, and bringing her home. As Becca got out of the car in our driveway, her foot slipped on a stone and she went head first to the ground. When she got up she had a big “goose egg” just above one of her eyes. The result was that she had a very black eye that would, if anything, look much worse in the few days left before the weekend, and dance at VMI.
Becca had a very big decision to make! Did she go to the big weekend at VMI, or did she call John and tell him she couldn’t make it? After much thought, and a telephone call to John, she finally decided she would go -- black eye and all. John was not able to meet her at the airport, because he had a very important test scheduled at the same time. He had asked his roommate to pick her up at the airport for him. Of course, his roommate had never met Becca, so John told him, “Just look for a girl about my height, with a very black eye”. This must have been the right decision, because she had a very good time over the weekend, and John DuBose was the young man she married.
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