Interview with William Corpew O'Neal 19
February 22, 1996



C: You're talking about Pat now, your son?

0: Yes. The first grade period it happened. If he made almost straight A's, we'll give him
 a job tutoring in one of the minor sort of credits and put him on scholarship. Fine, you know. This was going to be a snap. It would have been just a snap if he hadn't started running around with the big-shot football players. He was damned lucky to make a C average, much less a scholarship. So, Bruce and Allen Trammel and the other players
 became very close to us.

C: Now he didn't stay in Yon Hall then?

0: He not only didn't stay in Yon Hall, I don't think he stayed in school, but there were a lot
 of football players' girlfriends hung around the house. Katie was their off-campus momma. They started calling her "Aunt Katie" and started calling me "Uncle Willie." I started it but I didn't count on that I didn't care for anybody calling me "Uncle Willie"
 because anybody I knew of whose name is Willie and also accepts the name Willie is not the same color I am, but at any rate, they sort of hung around together. The boys had
 played football in the decade.

C: before the sixties, you were going to say?

0: Oh, I'd say not just exactly in the 50's or 60's but the earlier ones had started an
 organization. They called it the Golden Era. The idea was to have a meeting in the summertime, not just like a house party, but to have an organizational meeting in the summer, where guys, kids and wives each other, met each other, and they became
 acquainted and friends as they grew older.

C: This was after they graduated?

0: After college. So after seeing how well that worked and knowing how well it worked,
 Katie suggested that we ought to do that for this group and name it something appropriate. They decided to try it one summer, and we tried it and it worked quite well.
 They have an organization now starting with the boys in the early Graves era.

C: Ray Graves era, you're talking about.

0: Yes. Having such a beautiful place, have a meeting every summer since the original
 organization began, and it has other little things like one boy got killed in an automobile accident. They put his two boys through school. His wife has gotten remarried, and I think the boys adopted the kids and now they are going to school at their own father's
 expense out of the organization.

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