What a day!
An eight day old baby boy is introduced to his new home - Atlanta, Georgia. Little did he know that this was the beginning of a love affair with an elegant, southern lady. One that would last for all of his life.
Ernest and Hazel Decker had survived great hardship and sorrow in their individual lives, as well as in their marriage. Born in 1920 and 1922 respectively, each came from a humble background. He as one of nine children born into the family of a farmer and part-time Deputy Sheriff in Fulton County, Georgia. She as one of two girls from a coal-mining family in Walker County, Alabama.
Their initial challenge as children came during the Great Depression of the 1930's. Enduring the hunger, poverty, and difficulty that came to all Americans during that era, each would recall in later years the scars left by their experience. Unforgettable stories of trial and sacrifice spilled from their hearts and memories. Things such as being forced to quit school in the sixth grade to work on the family farm, and the stabbing, consuming pain of a hunger and desperation that made even stray animals fair game for the family's one chance at something to eat other than cornbread and buttermilk.
December 7, 1941, brought their world to war. Already a PFC in the Marine Corps, later he left for Guadalcanal and later Peleliu. She, having quit school in the tenth grade, did the odd, meager jobs available in a poor, Alabama coal mining community.
As a machine gunner and squad leader in the 7th Marines (1st Marine Division, 7th Regiment), he was thrown into the most unfathomable horrors of jungle warfare. The oppressive, equatorial, heat of the South Pacific, along with disease, hunger, and the killing and death he experienced was a far cry from his boyhood farm back in the outskirts of Atlanta.
During his last days on Peleliu, a fellow Marine showed him a picture of a young lady he knew from back in his home of rural Alabama. Evidently liking what he saw in the photograph, Ernest Decker began to write Hazel Trice. In late September of 1944, when his orders for a first furlough back to the states came through, he hurried home.
After visiting his family in Atlanta for a time, this young Marine Corporal bought a Greyhound Bus ticket and headed for Burnwell, Alabama - a little hole in the road approximately twenty-five miles west of Birmingham. Showing up virtually unannounced at her mining camp home, he met the family, sat on the front porch swing for several hours getting acquainted with her, and planned a day trip back into Birmingham for the next day, October 13, 1944.
When they finally made it back to Walker County two days later, they were husband and wife.
After two more years of Marine Corps service, which he spent on Guam and she working in an A&P Grocery Store in Williamsburg, Virginia, they both finally came home to live and work in the coal mines of Northwest Alabama. Her family gave them an acre of land, and helped them build a small, asbestos siding, five room house, which they would keep in the family for many years in the future.
In 1947, they had their first baby, a girl - Connie Jean.
After a few years of the hard, coal mining labor, he got a call from his family back in Atlanta. The Decker siblings had become a Southern Railroad family. His older brother, Alan, had risen through the ranks, and had become the personal Engineer for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When Roosevelt died at the Little White House in Warm Springs, this writer's uncle Alan piloted the train that took President Roosevelt's body from Georgia back to Washington for the funeral and burial.
The call that came from his family told of job opportunities in Atlanta with the Southern Railroad. They immediately packed their belongings, their little girl, and their hopes for a better life, and moved to Atlanta. He soon got a job on the railroad, they bought their first house on Oak Street in an area known as Center Hill, and they settled into building their post-war life - as so many other Americans were doing.
In early 1954, Connie got sick. After many months in the hospital, and at least one exploratory surgery on her brian, she died on October 7, 1954, at the age of seven. The death certificate stated, "Cause of Death: Unknown."
Distraught over her daughter's death, and left alone often by a railroad working husband, Hazel went home to Alabama to spend time with family, and to stay again in their small home where they had lived when Connie was born. Eventually rejoining her husband in Atlanta, they carried on with life as best they could after having lost, so tragically, their beloved daughter. In later years, Hazel said she prayed every night that God would "fill her arms" again with a child.
In early March of 1955, the doctor brought them good news. God had answered her prayers, and a new baby was on the way. As the pregnancy moved along, Hazel wanted to have the same doctor deliver her new baby that had delivered Connie seven years earlier. Ernest arranged for a temporary transfer to the Southern Railroad field terminal in Birmingham, and they set up temporary housekeeping in their old, five room house in the country in Walker County.
On October 14, 1955, at just after lunch time, in the old Carraway Methodist Hospital in Birmingham, a baby boy was worn. Weighing in 6 pounds - 11 ounces, they named him after his Grandfather on his mother's side and his mother's favorite Bible character. His name would be, "George David." His mother would call him by his full name many times over the course of his childhood, especially when he was in trouble for some wrongdoing.
Given only a temporary transfer by the railroad, the baby's father was instructed to come back to his permanent duties in Atlanta as soon after the birth as possible.
As a result, on October 21, 1955, the "new" Decker family rolled back into Atlanta. This writer doesn't personally remember that day, nor the next few years of his life. But, he does remember many of the details his family told him about his life, his new hometown, and all that brought him to this first installment of this blog.
Living in Atlanta for the majority of the fifty-five years that have now passed since that time has been a great thing. Like all of life, so many things have changed in Atlanta since this writer was a boy. This blog is meant to paint a picture of how great it has been to have lived in this wonderful old city for almost a lifetime.
I hope you enjoy reading these reflections even a fraction as much as I have enjoyed living them.
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