Readers share letters
To whom it may concern:
I would like to thank whoever is responsible for sending me the Peabody Gazette-Bulletin. Sometimes I see names I know. I enjoy the paper. I graduated from Peabody High School in 1945.
Joyce (Pulaski) Seaman
5637 Bebb Road
Alden MI. 49612
Dear Friends:
I am a 1944 graduate of Peabody High School and I have many fond memories of my school days. My best friend, Naomi Williams Davis, and I both married guards of the German prison camp after we graduated. My husband was from Lexington, N.C.
I have lived here and raised my three daughters and four grandsons. (One we lost in 1985 in a car accident.) Plus now, I have six great-grandchildren (four boys and two girls.) Sadly, I lost Floyd in 1989.
One of my fond memories of PHS is selling candles before Christmas as a member of the "Girls' Reserves Club." Then on a certain night when the candles were all lit and shining, the whole group would trudge all over town and sing Christmas carols to the homes where the candles were.
I just recall how cold it was trudging through the snow and ice! After we had finished, we went back to the school and had hot chocolate. (Naomi and Jewell Davis still live there in Peabody
Oh, what memories! You couldn't pay me to do that now, but it was fun back then!
Mildred Lackey Shoaf
PHS class of 1944
Dear Editor:
I had many happy Christmases with my children and grandchildren, but the Christmas I am going to tell about was about my own Christmas as a small girl around 1914 or 1915.
We lived on a homestead and didn't have much. At Christmas we always hung up our long black cotton stockings. There would be an orange and apple in the toe (which were very special), then nuts and hard crinkle candy.
Well, this Christmas there was a tree draped with strings of popcorn and cranberries which we ate later. But the great joy on Christmas was the red doll beds and pretty bedding and the big box of building blocks, and a wheelbarrow for each of us. Dad had made everything and Mom had painted them. Now where had he gotten the materials?
Back in the fall Dad took the wheat to town and laid in supplies of food for winter. He bought dried fruit in wooden boxes. From the boxes he and my mother made the toys for us. It was the best Christmas ever.
I don't know whatever became of the doll beds or wheelbarrows, but my own boys had the wooden blocks until they were lost and scattered.
I am 96 years old and almost completely blind and deaf. I lost my sense of balance, but I do fine with a walker. I live in St. Luke Living Center in Marion. We get wonderful care. Peabody is still my hometown.
Gladys Mann
Marion
