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L: Gave me hope. I got down to Washington, was staying with my
cousin Walton Flournoy and wanted to get a ride home, and
0. K. Armstrong walked in about 10:00 one night. He said he
was going down to Waycross the next day and that he had an
appointment over in the State, War,and Navy building with
someone over there. If I would meet him there with my bag,
then we'd go down to Waycross and he'd be glad to take me that
far on the way to Florida. Well, the next morning at 11'00
I was in the hall of the old State,War, and Navy building when he
came out of an office, and he said, "Now I must go see Dr. Harvey
Wiley." I said, "Dr. Harvey Wiley?" He says, "Yes, I'm writing
his biography." Isaid, "May I go with you?" He says, "Yes, I
want you to and then we'll go." So we got over there and went
into the building where Dr. Wiley had his office, and he took
me in tomeet Dr. Wiley. He was an old man at that time and I
sat down and he told me that that story was true. That
happened two weeks after I'd read the story. All right, well,
that cinched it. You see, God was directing me again to this
girl.
P: You certainly did romance under good auspices.
L: Well, I went to Tampa and she was just more adorable than ever.
She hid her wings under her shirtwaist, but anyway, she was just
an adorable girl. She'd been president of the student body up
here the year before. So then I went home, and all the next
year I grieved about Sadie in Cleveland. She had one unfortunate
experience on a date up there, so she wrote to me and she told
me about all those Yankee boys that didn't have any manners.
P: And you agreed.
L: I was ready to go up there and fight somebody, but she had told
me in Tampa that she planned to go to Western Reserve for one
year and then go to London and do social work. She had studied
psychology at FSU--beginning of psychology, I suppose you could
call it. She believed that if you made up your mind and
stuck to it, you could do what you wanted to do. Well, I'd
made up my mind and Iwas going to stick to it and Iwas giong
to marry that girl. I didn't know how I was going to support
her, but this was the girl for me. I had to get my master's degree
as fast as I could so I could go to London and marry this girl.
She wouldn't write to me during the year and during the summer.