“Big Charlie”, or as Charles and I called him during our teens in his absence: “Snazro” or “Bic”, was our father. Life had not been easy for him. Born in Kemper County, MS, on August 28, 1892, to Frances Neville and James Hector Currie, a lawyer and district attorney. Our dad was in his freshman year at Mississippi State College when his father died and he had to drop out of school and go to work to help support his mother.
He found a job as a clerk in a timber business in southern Mississippi. One day he went into the closest town to conduct business. He came back to camp to a strange, threatening, quiet. He walked on the dirt road into the camp office building. As soon as he entered the building, shots rang out from both sides of the road he had just walked down. A full blown race riot was underway. Fortunately for my dad (& me!), he was liked by both sides.
In later life, he proved that he still had the trait of moderation. Both of my parents were ardent Democrats & supporters of FDR & Truman while most of their friends were Republicans or Southern Democrats. But this difference never got in the way of their friendships.
Big Charlie won several thousand dollars, including $15 from his younger son, as a result of the Truman-Dewey election. The betting odds were 15:1 in favor of Dewey.
After retirement, the Truman’s returned to Independence, MO. Mr. Truman had an office in Kansas City. My father arranged a meeting and took a train from Atlanta to Kansas City, stayed overnight in a hotel and went to Mr. Truman’s Office the next morning. He was ushered into the President’s office. Mr. Truman looked up at him and said “Currie, why in the hell did you come all the way from Atlanta to see me? I thought that all of you fellows down there hated me”.
My father looked him in the eye and replied “Not all, Mr. President”. From this point they had a 45 minute chat which was a high point in my father’s life.
Though our mother gave Charles & me 1st stage punishment for misdeeds, the really egregious acts justified waiting for our father to come home in the evenings. One or the other or both of us would be invited to join him in his ”office”, the bathroom adjoining our parents bedroom. He would ask us to “assume the position” and he would then whack our fannies a few times. As a rather well-behaved little boy I got far fewer invitations to the “office” than did my more rambunctious older brother.
Over the years Charles started calling me “The Favorite” because I was always easier to manage. This was partially because I was sneakier in my escapades than he.
Charles always got caught. Any misbehavior that he did always cane to light - he made sure of it if I didn’t. He must have liked the disruption even if he got punished for it.
One factor in our family was that Charles was more popular with the Currie side and I with the Berry side. It worked both ways too. My mother’s family was quite different than my father’s. Both of her brother’s were early engineering graduates of Georgia Tech. Francis Rigdon Berry, the older, was the Chief Engineer of the American Waterworks in New York City. His family lived in New Rochelle.
Her other older brother, Maxwell Rufous Berry, started his own company, The Electric Products Company, in Cleveland, Ohio. He was my favorite uncle and probably the main reason I went to Georgia Tech and became an engineer myself. Whenever Uncle Max came to town (see letter to Mark Berry), I was delighted.
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