Places We’ve Lived

We lived in Wrangell, Alaska in 60-62, where Allison was born. I had an emergency teaching certificate. We came back to Mississippi State for Hurston to go to school while I worked. He finished his degree in Forestry in January of 1964, then lived in Winona, Mississippi during the week and came home on the weekends while he worked in the Yazoo-Little Tallahatchie watershed. I was taking classes at Mississippi State and living in Starkville. Then when I finished at Mississippi State (in Education) in August of 1964, we moved to Oregon for a couple of years, and Ruthanne was born in Lebanon, Oregon. It took us a while to finish our degrees because we did it the hard way.

We lived in Sweet Home, Oregon, then Mill City, and then we transferred to Washington State, which is when I asked Hurston, ‘when are we going to go home?’ I was a Southern girl, Mississippi is my home, and he likes it out west. He answered, ‘well, I didn’t plan to go home,’ and I said, ‘I didn’t plan to stay!’

So we moved to Berea, Kentucky next, where Hurston worked on the Daniel Boone National Forest and then Hurston was promoted and we transferred to Whitley City, Kentucky, where Allen and Allison finished high school. Allen and Allison went to Mississippi State; Allison had been made homecoming queen at Whitley City, and they flew her back there to crown the new queen the next year. Ruthanne went to Auburn, because we were in south Alabama then.