only had a couple of winks but have to go to class and hear what my young hopefuls have learned about Russia since I last met with them.” Another letter was interrupted when a student came to the teacher’s bedroom asking for help with the algebra homework.
You would like him. He’s from way back in the mountains, almost grown before he went to school, but is determined to study medicine and help his community. Oh, I almost forgot. We have something I’ll bet your campus doesn’t—forty cases of mumps. One of my classes has been almost wrecked, and a good many of the “survivors” have been wishing I’d get sick, but so far I’ve disappointed ’em.
When the mumps epidemic was over, coach Martin took the women’s debate team to a tournament in Asheville. Although that city was only twenty miles away, 1920s rough and winding mountain roads made the trip a challenge. But a trip to town was a treat, especially for the young women who had strict curfew hours, especially on school nights.
We left Asheville about 8:00 p.m. but a clogged gas line and a flat tire delayed us so that it was midnight before we got home. Pretty serious for the young women to get in that late, but no trouble from the Dean of Women yet.
Martin loved his job, the students who reminded him of the ones at Yancey Institute, and the chance to return to the mountains of North Carolina. During school vacations he and a fellow teacher world explore; other holidays he would take off alone with only a bedroll, a cook pot and some oatmeal. On these hikes he covered much of the area that is now the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Some of the friendships Martin made among the teachers at Mars Hill lasted the rest of their lives, or his.
But the small college in the little village was not immune to outside pressures. Once Martin could not get his paycheck cashed because the bank failed. Students were having difficulties paying the small tuition. And the Ku Klux Klan tried to penetrate the college. While the teacher from South Carolina used to joke that he was too poor to pay the membership fees, and especially to slit up a perfectly good bed sheet, he was troubled by racial hatreds and by people who wanted to divide rather than to heal. Although by this time his grandfather had died, Martin was still determined to use his life in honor of the man who had saved Jasper.
4
One organization which brought students of all races and religions together was the national YMCA, which had a conference center near Asheville, North Carolina. Student YMCA and YWCA leaders applied for summer jobs, which allowed them to make money as waiters and waitresses and also take leadership classes. Since Martin was older and had had many different jobs, he was chosen as dining hall supervisor.
One of the waitresses was a college student and student YWCA leader from Athens College in Alabama. Mabel Orr had been born in Decatur, Alabama, on June 22, 1908, but at age six her family had moved to Birmingham. Mabel’s father John, a printer, hoped to find work in the city to support his wife Florence and their children Elsie, John (nicknamed Brother to keep the two Johns distinct), Mabel and Freeman. While the parents struggled to make ends meet, they also encouraged their children to share with others who had even fewer material advantages. A newspaper picture from 1918 shows a ten-year-old Mabel with eight other girls:
Children Give an Original Play and Raise $14.35 for The Birmingham News Milk and Ice Fund.
Education was important to the Birmingham family. Mabel’s sister Elsie and elder brother John had won scholarships to local colleges. But Mabel was adventuresome and wanted to live on a campus. She had graduated from high school at sixteen and worked for a year in the school office. She was supposed to be the secretary, but sometimes the principal needed a substitute and put Mabel in charge of a class. Some of the boys in the class were older than their teacher!
After saving her earnings for a whole year, Mabel still did not have enough money to attend an out-of-town college. Her mother, who had been a teacher before she married, remembered that one of her college classmates was now president of Athens College in a small town several hours north of Birmingham. Mabel wrote to her mother’s classmate, asking for a scholarship and a chance to work on campus. While she was working at a Methodist Church camp in Trussville, Alabama, Mabel received the following letter:
June 20, 1926
Office of the President, Athens College
“Governed by Women for Girls and Women”
Dear Mabel:
Your dear mother wrote me about you last summer and the registrar has again brought you to my attention with the recommendation that we give you some line of employment by which you could meet at least a part of your expenses at Athens College. Please let me know frankly what your financial condition is, and if you really desire to come to Athens. I knew your mother, and your grandmother (also a teacher) before you were born, and if I can help you I shall be glad to do so.
Sincerely your friend,
Mrs. J. M. McCoy, President
At Athens College, Mabel did any job the college offered her. By sophomore year she was the editor of the Crow’s Nest, the campus newspaper. The young woman from Birmingham had been inducted into the literary society and her classmates voted her Best All-Round Student. In her junior year Mabel continued with classes in the English department. Since she was so tall, enjoyed theater, and there were no men on campus, she often played male roles in college productions. “Once a classmate came to my room,” Mabel recalled years later, “and asked why I had a framed picture of myself dressed up as a man for one of the college plays. It was Brother’s (John’s) graduation picture. I guessed we did look like siblings!”
Mabel was elected president of the drama club, an officer of the athletic association and the junior class, and she was chosen to be the editor of the Maid of Athens, the college yearbook. Since arriving at Athens, she had been active in the student YWCA and, in her junior year, was the vice-president.
It was not surprising that a student leader with special interest in the YWCA had been accepted to spend the summer at the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly in western North Carolina. At the end of that summer Martin went back to teaching and Mabel to her senior year of college. Their friendship, begun in the dining hall, continued through letters. Remembering Blue Ridge, Martin wrote, “Was ever so much of life—I should say life, packed into such a short time? I doubt it.”
At Christmas Martin took the train to Birmingham and was welcomed by Mabel’s family. In a January letter he thanked her: “I don’t know when I enjoyed a week more.” They continued to get acquainted by frequent letters, and Martin hoped to spend part of the next Christmas holiday in Alabama. But the year was 1929, and the bank failed again. Martin could not cash his salary check and had no money for a train ticket. “New Year’s,” he wrote, “was far too quiet after last year in Birmingham.”
On May 27, 1930, Mabel graduated with honors from Athens College. Finances had been a continuing struggle. At the beginning of her junior year she had owed $306 from the previous term. Room and board, after scholarships and work study, were $159 per semester. Each club had a $10 fee. Mabel must have wanted badly to participate in them to pay for each campus organization she had joined. But the experience of living away from home and taking part in so many activities had been worth the expense. While she was happy that her family could travel by bus to see her graduate, she missed Martin. He would have come, but once more his salary was tied up by bank failure. And Mabel had to cash in one of her academic prizes, a $20 gold piece, to pay for graduation expenses and her trip home.
The summer after graduation Mabel had an experience she would talk about the rest of her life:
I wanted to work professionally for the YWCA and needed training, but
