A Final Thought: You Should Write a Book
By Mitch Allen
In July, my sister and brother-in-law drove from their home in Traverse City, Michigan, back to our hometown of Columbus, Georgia. My brother-in-law was a high school band director for 40 years and they were attending a reunion of his former students.
While there, they had lunch in Phenix City, Alabama, with my 88-year-old Uncle Ray, who married my father’s sister when he was 21 and she was 17. After lunch, my sister called me. “Uncle Ray has written a book,” she said. “Can you help him publish it?”
“Sure,” I replied. “Just have him call me.”
My sister hesitated.
“Okay, I’ll call him instead,” I offered.
“Thank you,” she said. “He wouldn’t ask you for help on his own.”
The next day, I called my uncle and a few days later a 27-page manuscript handwritten on notebook paper arrived in my mailbox.
The story is short—but riveting.
It begins with the murder of his father when Uncle Ray was just 8 years old. A rival moonshiner shot him in the head three times, leaving Ray’s mother with no money and ten children. The book goes on to reveal how Ray went to live on his grandparents’ farm for two years, where he “chopped cotton, picked cotton, milked the cows, churned the milk, plowed the fields with mules, and worked from daylight until dark.”
He explains how he met my Aunt Judy at a spin-the-bottle party when she was 14, how he was drafted into the army where he learned to send and receive Morse Code with breathtaking speed, and how stationed in Germany his heart ached for his young bride.
He writes about how he became a picker, buying antiques from people. “Most of them were poor,” he writes, “and I fit right in with them because I had been poor all my life.” He went on to open an antique store.
He ends with the death of my Aunt Judy, writing, “My wife Judy passed away December 30, 2021. She was 81. This was the worst day of my life. She was a great wife, mother, grandmother, friend, and my best friend for 68 years.”
Uncle Ray’s education amounted to a G.E.D. he earned in the army and a year at a community college on the G.I. Bill. The language in his book is simple, yet the story in powerful and sweet.
It is in every way a love story.
I transcribed the book, designed a front and back cover, bought an ISBN number and a barcode, and made a PDF proof of the finished book, which, including my foreword, came in at 58 pages. When I sent Ray a proof, he couldn’t believe it. He was over-the-moon-excited.
The book is now at a printer in Mentor. We’ve ordered 100 copies for family and friends. Uncle Ray also plans to put a few in some shops he frequents, and an assistant manager at the Walmart promised to stock a few copies. When I found that out, I redacted the name of his father’s murderer, who was never charged because at that time Phenix City was corrupt, including politicians, police, and judges. In 1954 the National Guard took over the local government after the assassination of Albert Patterson, who was running for Alabama attorney general on the promise to clean up Phenix City.
Why am I telling you all this?
To encourage you to write a book.
When I sent the proof copy to my editor, he replied, “Everyone ought to be required to write one of these so their descendants have the reference material.”
I agree. As an avid genealogist, I would love to have books written by many other family members and ancestors, helping me understand how they lived and what was important to them.
It isn’t hard. Uncle Ray told his life story—a series of about a dozen events that were important to him—in 27 handwritten pages totaling 5,000 words. You can do that in just a few days.
And you don’t have to be a writer. You just have to be real. Uncle Ray wrote, “Judy’s grandmother Lillie Shavor was a fine woman and a great cook. She would cook anything I wanted and it was always delicious. Judy had a lot of aunts and uncles and other kin, and I got to know all of them. They were all good people.”
No, he isn’t going to win a Pulitzer, but he’s talking about Granny Shavor, my great-grandmother, who I remember fondly, and his words made me cry.
That’s the effect you can have on your own children, grandchildren and more far-reaching descendants.
Everyone has a story to tell, so please take the time to tell yours. If you don’t want to share it right away, that’s okay. Put it in a safe place where it can be discovered after you’re gone.
You never know when it will be too late.
If you do this, will you please let me know how it goes?