The Merritt Family Archive · Cartersville, Georgia

EugeneWalterMerritt

1936 — 2024 recorded in his own voice, autumn 2023

His life is below — walk through it

Gene Merritt at 87, in his study, lamplight
Gene at 87 · the study · 2023

Chapter I · 1936 – 1947

A mill house on Etowah Drive

His voice · 0:41

What are your earliest memories?

·

The house on Etowah Drive had four rooms and a porch, and the porch was the biggest room we had. Summer nights, Daddy would sit out there after his shift with his shirt unbuttoned, and you could hear the mill still running — that low hum down the hill. I thought the whole world hummed like that. First time I ever spent a night away from Cartersville, the quiet like to kept me awake.

Four children on the porch steps of a mill house, 1941
Troy, Gene, Faye & Junette · Etowah DriveMFC–1941–003

Gene is the one squinting — Troy had told him a photograph steals a second of your life, and he was deciding whether to allow it. The boy under the porch is the neighbors' and was not invited.

Mama made biscuits every morning of her life except the Sunday her own mother was buried. Flour, buttermilk, and a pinch of something she never would name. I have eaten in restaurants from Atlanta to Frankfurt, Germany, and I never once ate anything better than a Tuesday biscuit off her stove.

— as told to Katie, typed October 2023

“We were poor as field mice, but I did not know it, because everybody we knew was poor in the same direction.”
Chapter I · on the Depression years

Chapter II · 1942 – 1949

Miss Ophelia keeps him after school

His voice · 0:39

Who were your favorite teachers, and why?

·

Miss Ophelia Sanders kept me after school in the third grade. I thought I was in trouble. She sat me down with a book about the sea, and she said, Eugene, the mill will still be there when you finish this. She kept me after school for two years. Was not either one of us ever said the word reading out loud. That woman knew a boy's pride is a thing you work around, not through.

Sixty years on, he still owned the book about the sea. It sat on the shelf behind him in every recording Katie made in the study.

Chapter III · 1950 – 1954

Third base, lawnmowers, and a Falcon he hadn't met yet

Cartersville High baseball team, 1953 — Gene standing far right
Cartersville High · spring 1953MFC–1953–011

Standing, far right, glove still on. The team photograph ran in the county paper; Ruth Merritt bought four copies and mailed none of them.

First money I ever earned: a dime a yard, push mower, no shirt, July. First thing I ever bought: a ticket to see a Tarzan picture and a cold Coca-Cola, and I walked home feeling like the richest man in Bartow County.

— on his first jobs, September 2023

“I played third base like the ball owed me money.”
Chapter III · Cartersville High, class of '54

Chapter V · 1958 – 1960

Friedberg, Germany — and letters to a girl he'd met once

Army studio portrait of Gene Merritt, 1958
Pvt. E. W. Merritt · Fort Benning · 1958MFC–1958–001

His voice · 0:44

Talk about your experiences in the military.

·

They shipped me to Friedberg, Germany, with the Third Armored. Twenty-two years old and I had never been past Chattanooga. I fixed deuce-and-a-halfs in the motor pool, and yes, Elvis Presley was on that post the same time I was, and no, I did not know him, and yes, the girls back home asked anyhow. What I remember most is the cold, and writing letters to a girl named Dorothy Chandler I had met exactly one time.

Make your bunk. Oil your tools. Write your letters. Do not volunteer for anything — except when a man needs help, and then you volunteer first.

— “What the Army taught me,” G.M.

“The Army taught me a man can be scared and steady at the same time.”
Chapter V · 3rd Armored Division

Chapter VI · June 17, 1961 — sixty-two years

A yellow dress on the church steps

His voice · 0:36

How did you meet your spouse? What were your first impressions?

·

First time I ever saw Dorothy Chandler, she was standing on the church steps in a yellow dress, laughing at something her sister said. And I turned to my buddy Ray and I said, Ray, I am going to marry that girl. He laughed at me. Well. Sixty-two years, three children, and a whole mess of grandbabies later... I reckon I got the last laugh.

Gene and Dot on the steps of Pine Log Baptist, wedding day 1961, rice mid-air
Pine Log Baptist · June 17, 1961MFC–1961–019

The rice is a blur. Dot kept a handful of it in an envelope, and the envelope is still in the cedar chest.

Living picture
The porch swing · their sixty-second summerMFC–2023–207

A grandchild's phone, an ordinary Tuesday. In the app this is a video memory — here it just quietly breathes.

Chapter VII · 1963 – 1969

Three of everything

The Merritts beside the station wagon, Christmas 1972
The Merritts & the Chandler cousins · Christmas 1972MFC–1972–044

Gene holding Buddy, Carolyn mid-holler in the gingham, the rest Chandler kin. The wagon made it to 1981; the wreath hanger is still on that door.

His voice · 0:42

Name each of your children and tell us about them.

·

Wayne came out serious, been serious ever since. Carolyn came out singing. And Buddy — Buddy came out sideways and never did straighten up, and I mean that with all the love in the world. People ask what it is like having three. I tell them you do not divide your love by three. It multiplies. Do not ask me the arithmetic on that. I just know it is true.

If you three are reading this after I am gone, quit arguing over the Falcon. It goes to whoever drives your mother to church the most. I keep count.

— Daddy

“You do not raise children. You aim them.”
Chapter VII

Keep scrolling — watch the years move

1958
Private, Fort Benning · age 22

Chapter VIII · what he wanted you to know

The porch swing feels the same either way

His voice · 0:47

What are the top life truths you would like to pass on to your grandchildren?

·

If you remember one thing your old Pop told you, let it be this. Love God, and love people. Everything else is just noise. Money comes and goes. I have had it and I have been without it, and I will tell you, the porch swing feels the same either way. Be the one who shows up. Say your prayers out loud. And when you find your yellow-dress moment... don't you dare let it pass you by.

Gene teaching three grandchildren to cast on the Etowah River, 1996
The Etowah, teaching the grandkids · 1996MFC–1996–132

“The river gives you patience or it gives you nothing.”

Katie's question

His voice · 0:45 · a question his granddaughter added just for him

Pop, what do you want the great-grandbabies to know about you?

·

Katie tells me there is a twelfth great-grandbaby coming that I likely will not get to meet. Well. Little one, if you are hearing this — that is exactly why I am talking into this phone. You come from people who loved each other hard and worked with their hands. Your name was on the church prayer list before you had a name. And your old Pop knew about you, and was glad.

He was glad

She was born in June, three months after he passed. One day she will press play — and he will introduce himself.

Don't read it in order

Ask him about…

his mother's biscuits the yellow dress Elvis, in Friedberg who gets the Falcon third base Miss Ophelia the porch swing the twelfth great-grandbaby