VIOLA E. FRAZIER, A.B.

From the very beginning my opportunities in school were very limited. I was the third child of a family of eight children. My parents were very poor and we older children had to work hard helping father fight the wolf from the door. Then too, father did not take the interest in sending us to school that he should have taken, although he was an educated man, and taught school nineteen years. He claimed that we could learn as much at home as we could at school. Holding to this theory he kept us at home. The theory might have worked well, if he had given us fixed hours for study and play; but instead of this he kept us at work on the farm all summer and fall. In winter he would cut and sell wood. Every morning, when the weather was not too severe, he took my two oldest brothers (and me too, when mother could spare me) to the woods to cut or saw a load of wood, while he hauled a load to town and sold it. Of course, I could not cut wood, but I could pull one end of a cross-cut saw equal to either one of my brothers. When the weather would not allow us to go to the woods, father made us study. 30

I had a yearning desire to learn to read and cipher. Still, like all other children, I liked to play, and devoted most of my time to it. One of my cousins, who lived near us, used to come over and play with us every Sunday. She would tell us what a good time she had at school. This made me anxious to go too, and I pleaded with father to let me go, but my pleading was all in vain. He said I would learn more mischief than anything else, and he was not going to send me. Mother saw that I would learn, if I only had an opportunity, and she, too, insisted on my going to school. Still father would not listen to the request.

At the age of twelve I had never been inside of a schoolhouse. Mother saw that father was making a mistake by keeping me out of school. So she decided to send me without his consent. One day when father came to dinner, he did not see me and inquired where I was. Mother told him that I had gone to school. He hardly knew what to say or think; so at last he said (realizing that he was in the wrong): “If she is determined to go to school, let her go, and let us see what she is going to do.”

The question then arose, how was I to get my books? I knew father would not get them for me. I told my cousin (Miss Nettie Bruce) my situation, and she agreed to lend me her books the first year. After that I always raised turkeys or ducks enough to buy everything that I needed in school.

I went to the public schools five sessions. During 31 this time I made fairly good progress. An almost uncontrollable thirst for knowledge took possession of me. I was not satisfied unless I had a book in my hand. My teacher told me that I ought to go to college. I thought this was impossible. So I decided that I would teach the next year.

During the summer Professor J. J. Lincoln, one of father’s old schoolmates, paid us a visit. He insisted on my going to college. Father wanted to send me, but was not financially able. Professor Lincoln told him how I could go with very little cost to him. He told him that he could get me a position in the dining room, by which I could pay half of my board. He thought that father could certainly arrange to lend me the other half, and the college would wait until I finished for my tuition. This seemed reasonable, and after a little consideration father agreed to send me.

On September 5, 1906, I started to Elon College, N. C. This was my first trip from home. The first few weeks were trying ones with me. The thought of being two hundred and fifty miles ............