HAPPY BIRTHDAY to you, Carlene--a remarkably ageless, lively mother who started life South Georgia in 1925.
According to her birthday lore, Mimi and Papa didn't have a baby bed for her at first, so she slept in a dresser drawer! Papa said it was the hottest day of the year.
She grew up on a farm and had to ride the school bus to school in Perry. Her big brother Bob died at the age of ten, when she was only 7, then another brother, David, was born three years later. She was devastated to lose her big brother and later named my brother after him. Richard was the third brother; he and David both died two years ago.
Carlene loved friends, as she always has. One day she announced to Bob that she wouldn't be going home on the bus, that she was going home with a friend instead. It didn't take Papa long to retrieve his little brown-eyed girl from Perry and take her home.
Another day a teacher asked her to make a phone call, and she didn't know how to use the phone so she picked up the receiver and talked into it, pretending to be making the call.
Carlene attended GSCW--Georgia State College for Women--where she was editor of the literary magazine and Flannery O'Connor was her assistant. In 1945, after college and my daddy's Navy days, they eloped and then my daddy got his degree in agriculture at the University of Georgia while she typed dissertations for students. I was born three years later and we lived in Married Housing in Athens.
Of the five Ogletree children, only the two, the daughters, are still living--Dot and Carlene, best friends and almost-daily telephone chatters. Both are healthy as ever!
Here's Carlene today--photos sent by Jocelyn from their birthday lunch at Carlene's house.
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